Always Look On The Bright Side

[poliphilo]

I love heavy rain. Yesterday we had bouts of it. There was one just before Ailz and I set out on foot for the health centre and another just after we arrived back home. Good timing, eh?

Of course I'd rather watch from shelter. Under cover of the Rashomon gate for instance....

Down in Cornwall heavy rain- perhaps the same belt of it that hit us later- caused a flash flood that swept away the heart of the village of Boscastle. Amateur video footage showed cars being swept down stream and out to sea. At the last reckoning no-one appears to have been killed.

It seems like our weather in Britain is getting more and more extreme.

I don't altogether understand the panic over climate change.  The way I see it, it's going to happen whether we humans help things along or not.  During the lifetime of our species there have been any number of switches. There was the Ice Age of course. And before the Ice Age our corner of Northern Europe enjoyed a climate in which giraffes and hippopotami flourished.

Maybe I'm being naive, but I think we underestimate our ability to cope...

P.S. The spell checker has problems with the word "Boscastle".  It suggests that I may have meant to type "bookstall" or "bisexual".

Comments

Re: Survival

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I was always fascinated by pictures of the "frost fairs" they used to hold on the Thames in the late 16th century. These days it is unthinkable that the Thames should freeze over. I don't believe it happened during the Middle Ages either.

It was an anomaly- a mini ice age- and people made the most of it. They got out their skates and their sledges and their furs. There's a rather splendid frozen Thames episode in Sally Potter's film version of Orlando.

I think you're right about there being a built-in coping mechanism. I remember when I was a small boy we were told (by some barmy religious group) that life on earth was going to be wiped out by a huge tidal wave (they even named the day). I thought this was a thrilling idea ( because of course I would be one of the few survivors) and had all my plans laid for a Robinson Crusoe existence.