Snow On Snow

[poliphilo]

Maybe this'll stop us dreaming of a white Christmas.

Tony Robinson's timely series about historic climate change took us to Greenland to moralise over the Norse settlers who were driven out by the medieval mini-ice age.  Their mistake was wanting to be too civilised.  If they'd given up farming and reverted to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of their Inuit neighbours they'd have been fine.

Odi's central heating has gone phut- and her landlord says there's nothing he can do. Peter thinks this is racism; I think it's just landlords. We've lent them a couple of electric heaters and told them to contact their Home Office minder.

We were planning to go down to Kent for Christmas. It  now seems very unlikely that we will. It's been snowing all morning. Snow on snow, snow on snow.

I just trudged up the road to buy kibble for the in-laws' fat little dog.  We don't have seasonal food in stock- what with having planned to spend Christmas away- so I dropped by the butchers in the airy hope that he might be giving away unsold turkeys. He wasn't. In fact he had very little in his shop. What he did have was a clutch of Bury black puddings- the nation's best. I bought one- and I'm going to serve it for lunch with eggs, apple sauce and (a seasonal treat that was demonstrated for us last night by the BBC's Hairy Bikers)  fondant potatoes  

Comments

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

Myself and some of my friends in my new Pagan group have been talking about how the climate change may actually create a need for the skills that all the Pagans, Renn. Faire folk, and SCAers have been developing over the last 20 or so years for recreating low-tech skills. Most recently, they have been practicing primitive archery, which could come in handy if something suddenly interrupted our current high-tech food production.

[negothick.livejournal.com]

If (for whatever climatological reason) the Gulf Stream diverges even a tiny bit from its present course, the UK (and Southern New England) will be seeing a great deal more snow in the near future.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

And it could happen.

In fact anything could happen. We've been fortunate that the earth's climate has changed very little in the few thousand years since human civilisation was first established.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's a good point. If our technology failed I'd be pretty helpless. I don't suppose I even know how to light a fire.

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

I can light a fire with a magnifying glass. I could use it to brew herbal medicines, provided someone in my tribe knew how to grow the herbs. Fortunately, someone does. Herbal medicine and keeping track of the seasons, those are my 2 big contributions.