The future's bright, the future's bright green

The Great Global Warming Swindle, Channel Four's infamous documentary caused uproar, bringing home how strongly many people feel about the threat of catastrophic climate change. It was riddled with inaccuracies and shoddy science, but it did get one thing right. Some people are so convinced about the dangers we are facing that they are no longer able to allow any debate on the topic. Well known commentators reacted to this programme with white hot disbelief. HOW DARE they say we might not be right? They are setting us back YEARS...

I know more than most about the force of this conviction in the green movement. I spent three miserable months working in one of the major environmental charities. I thought I was green and a committed environmentalist, but compared to some of my colleagues I had a long way to go.

I worked alongside people who really, and I mean really, believed that the world as we know it is going to end in a matter of years, not decades. That we are going to descend into a nightmarish future all because we couldn't give up our addiction to air travel/Starbucks/strawberriesinfeb.

I admired their commitment, passion and ability to still keep fighting for change even though they thought it was too late. I did not admire the religious fervour of their beliefs which meant they berated, hectored and looked down on people who asked questions about the validity of the models they were using. The thing is...

WE DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE

This is a fact sometimes forgotten in climate change discussions. The science of climate prediction is an art, a very sophisticated crystal ball gazing exercise. We do have to make an attempt to work out what is going to happen to inform policy and to control our increasingly profligate use of resources, but I believe it is dangerous to present scientific prediction as fact.

I heard a joke on the radio recently.

Scientists have plotted the increase of Kate Moss as the model of choice for various products over the last year and have predicted she will be used to advertise 99% of all new products if current trends continue.

Obviously this is a flippant comparison, but even something as pointless as Kate Moss's career is very unlikely to follow current trends as there are other factors the graph maker has not included.

There is nothing more complex than the Earth's systems. And though the methods used by climate scientists are rigorous and thorough, can't we allow the possibility that the models may not be right?

Yes, we need to cut down our use of power, plastics and petrol. We need to do this now. But not by frightening people into compliance. The human race is not worthless group of parasites, we are not a scourge on the face of the earth, we are a wonderful part of it. Granted we have made many mistakes and it is vital that we learn from them and move to a more positive future.

The organisation I worked with divided its supporters up into segments which were painted an imaginary shade of green. People who wrote a couple of postcards a year were light green and extremely committed supporters were dark green. I think we should find another way, and we should become BRIGHT GREENS.

The Dark Greens are desperate for change and they are frightened. They think that to get everyone else to change they need to frighten them too.

A small child is carrying a glass of orange juice. Her dads says, 'be careful love, not near the new sofa.' She looks up and wobbles. 'I said watch out you are going to drop it, mind the table.... I SAID WATCH OUT....'

Guess what?

She is probably going to drop that blinking glass of juice.

We are all addicted to power, it's too late, we are going going to die, waves of climate refugees will flood into this country, you mustn't fly, you mustn't eat fruit out of season, you mustn't eat MacDonalds, you mustn't, you mustn't you mustn't...

The thing is I know what I must do, and I whole heartedly embrace it as a positive choice. I face my future and it is bright; bright green.

Is it possible to fall in love with a place, like you do with a person?

Yesterday I was practising my surfing at Godrevy, the beach was empty and I was the only person in the whole stretch of white rolling waves. I had just got out and was lying on the wet sand next to my board to catch my breath. Everything was perfect, the warm sun on my the back of my wetsuit, air laden with salt fresh spray. I got up walked back to the sea for my second batch of fast paddled clumsy pop-ups. The water was about a two feet deep and there were elongated circles of white sea foam on the surface, mirrored by dark moving strips of shadow on the sandy bottom. A flock of tiny sea birds flew in a tight cluster ahead of me above the bigger waves out of my depth.

I felt wave of what I can only describe a love for this place.

I had a huge grin on my face all afternoon (apart from the times I was under the water) until I was stuck in a traffic jam in Redruth. It must be said that I don't think I'm in love with Redruth.

Facebook.com; the answer to america's gun problem

I’ve been thinking about the guy who shot all those people at Virginia Tech.

Loner, that is how he is being described.

I know I’m a bleeding heart, dyed in the wool, liberal, pinko, guardian reading twat in many ways. I also know that what that man did what he did alone and if he were alive I would want him to face up to the consequences of his actions.

But surely to avoid violence and terror like this in the future the NRA has to sit down and have a quiet word with itself. Does the free access to guns, including semi-automatics, (which thank god we don’t have in the UK) and the culture of violence towards women (which unfortunately we do) have nothing to do with the terrible tragedy that occurred a few days ago.

So he was a loner was he? People with friends don’t do terrible stuff like that. Perhaps Charlton Hestonites in the NRA wouldn’t mind if the gun laws were amended so that you could only get a gun if you have at least 10 friends on www.facebook.com

Blyton and Cartland

Yesterday I went into town to do some competition analysis at Foyles Charing Cross Rd and as it was so close, popped into the National Portrait Gallery to check out the Women Writers exhibition.

I peeled of the tracksuit-t-shirt outfit I have been wearing for the last few days and donned a checked shirt, smart trousers and silver shoes so I felt a bit more like a girl about town.
The exhibition was small, just one display case of black and white photos mainly from the '30s and '40s. I stared at buckteeth, wrinkles and large jaws and I wondered why I was obsessed with the way these talented, successful women looked. Possibly the only other photos I am familiar with from this period are of glamorous starlets with perfect rose bud lips and glamour outfits.

There are a couple of beauties. Barbara Cartland as a young woman caught my eye, about as far from the pink frocked make-up encrusted woman I am familiar with. She could have held her own with any starlet.

She is standing with her hands together in front of her lap, index fingers in a downward steeple, forming, what I can only describe as an opening. She is holding this opening directly in front of her other more private opening. It is an extraordinarily sexual pose, contradicting with the innocent faced girl.

There is a really funny picture of Enid Blyton looking like she would cheering strangle the two children posing with her. And then there was only the famous four.

Photographic memory

This weekend we have been staying with my parents and on Sunday night, my mum dug up a load of old photos to show my other half, childhood holidays mainly. The photos charting the change from toddler to child, child to teenager.

Three photos got me.

One of me and my sister holding hands when we were about 3 (me) and 6 (her) wearing our matching stripy t-shirt dresses. We are holding hands. The other two were of me and my sister when we are 15 and 18 respectively on holiday in Cyprus.

In one she has her arm around my shoulders and she is gazing at the camera, I am looking up at her, adoringly. She is so beautiful and calm, with a mona lisa smile. In the other we are lying on a bright white sandy beach asleep with our heads almost touching on a crumpled beach towel.

As my mum handed them to me she said, 'You two always did love each other so much.'

This was the last family holiday we had before my sister suffered a severe breakdown and was caught in the jaws of schizophrenia. She was sectioned, taken from our family home and locked for many months into the local psychiatric unit, in her first of many hospital stays.

For the first few weeks my sister slept in a corridor divided up into 'bedrooms' by heavy green and brown curtains. She was locked in with people that I, a fairly hardy Hackney girl would have crossed many roads to avoid if I had met them on the street. Shouters, screamers, silent rockers; All confused, drugged and unhappy.

So on Easter Sunday, my feelings took a nostalgia trip and the bright grief and pain returned for the evening. I remember thinking that my beautiful sister had died and something else was moving her now leaden, drugged body around, making it do and say horrible things. I can remember thinking that, but I had forgotten how it felt.

She has been so well for the last few years, at least 3 without a section or hospital visit and my recovery has followed hers.

But after looking at those photos, I slipped into the grief again like it was comfortable old jumper. I'd forgotten the feeling of crying quietly lying on my back in bed with the tears falling sideways and filling up my ears.

I had forgotten how easy being unhappy all the time had felt.

Brackets and Crayfish

Over the last two weeks I've been doing a lot of proof reading or copy editing as they call it. After a whole day of just starting at words on a page you start to get into the zone. Mistakes sort of jump out at you, like a lonely bracket without its partner or two guilty looking full stops huddling together at the end of a sentence.

It probably hasn't had much effect on my spelling (consistant or consistent, I dunno) but I think it is definitely helping.

It reminds me of a time when I worked on a dive boat in Far North Queensland which ran day trips to the Great Barrier Reef. I would take groups of qualified divers on little underwater tours, around coral bommies and through sea canyons. At first I was no better at spotting things than any of the other divers, it was all a jumble of sea life swaying in the current, but after a few days my eyes adjusted to the underwater world.

I started to spot things and was able to point them out to my trailing group of divers. Little things would start to jump out, like the lone bracket, except in the sea it was the eye of an octopus peering out from a small crack, a tiny translucent shrimp hanging mid water inside a barrel sponge, or a pair of long delicate crayfish antenna hovering just above the sand, giving away its hiding place in a shallow sea cave.

But the thing about proof reading, is that you have to assume their is a mistake, if you think the best you will not spot any errors as your brain will skim happily to the next word. So you have to read with a pessimistic mindset, assuming the worst and feeling pleased when you do find a mistake. And spending hours thinking like that left me feeling moody and depressed at the end of the day.

Struggling as I do with a natural leaning towards pessimism it has made me realise, quite apart from my spelling eccentricities, copy editing is not the job for me.

Human Wreck

She's sat motionless at the bottom of the stairs. She has her back to us, fur lined hood up over her head; not moving.

Love, you alright?

It is 10.30 on a Sunday morning and me and my other half are off to the climbing wall.She's not moving, sitting on the bottom step, just outside our front door. It is Sunday morning. I can see the lacy pink T of a g-string on the pale skin above her jeans. It's twisted off centre.

Eh?

She leans uncertainly to the side and twists around to look at us standing in our doorway. I see her blotchy face. Her eyes are flat and dead. Ah, of course what was I thinking? She's a prostitute, a druggie. In all senses of the word, a human wreck. Have you seen Shawn of the Dead? Like that but without the laughs.

You can't sleep here, this is our home. You've got to leave.

I'm firm, assertive. It worked last time.

I wasn't sleeping, I just fell asleep.

I am angry and a bit frightened. I don't want to leave my flat and find a prostitute not moving, outside my door. How long had she been there? All night?

She doesn't get up. She picks up her handbag and starts to scuffle around in it. My heart is pounding. Then I notice the pigeon. It must have flown up the stairwell. It is flapping against the glass, trapped. It rests on the window sill just in front of the woman.My other half is standing next to me. We'd talked about this, what to say to them. I think it is better for him to stay out of it. It is better for me ask them to leave. They have so much grief from men. More respectful.

You CANT stay here. Get OUT!

My voice has changed, I'm angry and shouting. My insides are shaking. She just looking inside her handbag. There are three things inside it. They rattle as she sticks her hand in. I see a comb but no keys. She is sitting up with a very straight back, every few seconds she sways ever so slightly from side to side. She is off her head and she is not getting up.

YOU HAVE GOT TO GO.

I'm just getting my things together.

You're not checking out of a FUCKING hotel. You haven't GOT any stuff to get together. GET OUT.

Ms Respectful in da house.

She still doesn't move. I start shouting at her for real now. Go away, go away. She looks at me and does a small laugh. This is horrible, my stomach twists. She mimics me saying, Go away, go away softly under her breath.

I'm calling the police.

Another small laugh. She says 'so what?' with her shoulders.

9 9 9

Then, Sorry, all our operators are busy.

I think, that actually HAPPENS! Shit. My other half is looking at me. Wha? he mouths.

She continues to sit and continues to re-arrange the three items in her handbag.

Eventually.

Police please. The is a woman outside our house and she WONT GO AWAY.

I am shouting down the phone at the operator.

She is being threatening towards me.

She stands up at this.

How am I being threatening?

I give our address to to the operator.

I'm not being threatening.

She sways slightly where she is standing. I tell the operator that she is one of the prostitutes that works on Lordship Rd. The ragged dirty skinny woman laughs again. It is not a real laugh, more a world weary acknowledgement of how shit the world is.

The operator tells me she will pass my message to our community safety officer. My message?

The prostitute walks down the stairs. Mumbling. Wasn't being threatening...

So we go to the climbing wall. And they say climbing is dangerous.

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I'm thinking a lot about truth and the way we tell stories and change them to make them better or more entertaining.

So for the sake of honesty, it was more like 11.30 – we'd had a bit of a lie in. And I didn't say that thing about the hotel, I thought of it later.

Everything else did happen. The pigeon, the g-string and everything.

And talking of truth, she wasn't threatening me, in the truest sense of the word. She was there, blocking our way down the stairs and I felt very threatened by her. Does that mean I lied to the police?