Global Warming

I'm writing this while relaxing in my own comfortably large carbon footprint. Like an old relaxed pair of slippers my carbon footprint allows me to stretch out here in the front room while a real coal fire burns away decoratively in the hearth, Christmas fol-de-rols packed along the mantlepiece above, even though the temperature outside is more like September than darkest December. The stuff - as we gardeners call it - in my garden is still growing. This really pisses me off. I don't even approve of it growing in the height of summer when I have to get out there with machete and industrial strength weed killer to keep it under control and now, when I'm expecting some respite, it looks as if this close to Christmas Eve I'm going to have to cut the fucking grass! And there's a climbing thing next to the wheelie bins which is like a fucking triffid, it's indestructible. You think you've dug it's fucking roots up but it still comes back leeching up the walls. It's going to come through the bedroom window one day, I'm sure.

And we've had rain recently which if we get it again we'll have to upgrade the common or garden gutters to monsoon ditches like we're living is Singapore instead of the west of Scotland. The only good thing about all this is that we get spectacular film of calving icebergs on the National Geographic channel which is just as entertaining as watching skyscrapers being demolished. We've just got one of the new high definition tellies and the other week we were watching Planet Earth with David Attenborough speaking in reverential tones while hundreds of male Emperor Penguins huddled in the deep Antarctic winter incubating their chicks while the female was off at sea enjoying herself. The freezing males might have welcomed a bit of global warming. Now don't get all upset. I'm not personally in favour of the planet overheating. I'm an Independent reader, a more bleeding, bleeding heart you will not find. I just like a coal fire. I haven't the room for a nuclear reactor, which is probably the best alternative but the neighbours might frown on mushroom clouds coming out the chimney.