No To Snow (At the Mo)

The other morning, I thought it was Christmas. I woke up and snow, actual proper snow, was floating dreamily past my window in big, lovely snowflakes, settling onto the ground outside, coating the streets, rooftops, cars and any passing people in thick layers of white. Annoyingly out of season - I could have done with it at the real Christmas - but beautiful all the same. If I’d wanted to I could have built a snowman. Luckily I didn’t or an hour or so later the snowman would have died. An hour, just an hour afterwards the weather changed; first it started raining, turning the snow to a delicious slush, then sleeting - then a little more snow - then sun. It was a proper sunny day, the temperature was acceptable, and it actually looked like April. If I’d woken up a few hours after I actually did, I would have never known the snow had even made an appearance; it was like a whole rainbow of seasons all in one day. Later on it snowed again, settled slightly. Then it hailed. I asked myself, what actually is this? How can such contrasting weathers appear next to each other so ridiculously closely, as if they were friends that didn’t want to miss each other? Maybe God has contracted a mental illness. Or, something much scarier: global warming is starting to control our environments.
Now don’t think ‘not another global warming campaign’ because I know there are a lot of them and I myself am guilty of flicking past them because I always think same old same old. I’m not a scientist nor am I an activist, I’m an ordinary person who has suddenly realised that this serious problem really is serious. Picture this: a dry, riverless wasteland with shrivelled up plants and a tornado sweeping past to blow what remains into the stifling air, a mars-like desert that makes us wonder why oh why is our drinking water being rationed when so many of our homes were flooded - the water didn’t look very short then. No, we’re not in that sci-fi situation right this minute and I’m aware of a certain opinion called ‘won’t effect me in my lifetime so I don’t care’ (I’m sure your kids and grandchildren will feel really special to know you thought that), but I personally find it pretty eerie stuff, and the weather freakshow the other day just shows us that it is effecting us, this is our lifetime, a lifetime which would be preferable to not seem like a crazy clock fast forwarding a year’s worth of time in a day.
I’m sure you’ve all heard of how you can help the situation before, and yes, some things are annoying. I’m not going to tell you all to stop driving cars; the day the world does that will be the 31st February two thousand and never - it’s unrealistic and it won’t happen (although some of us could cut down car usage - I won’t argue with that). But I do think if everyone did something, and regularly, we can make a difference. My favourite way of helping is the bag for life. They are so much better than crappy carrier bags - they hold a hell of a lot, and I also use mine when I go out clubbing (not as a handbag), so everyone can fit all their stuff in it when it comes to the cloak room, and that way everyone can share the cost. If there’s one thing I think everyone can do, it is buy a bag for life - no, buy several, they’re all less than a pound - and stop using those depressing bits of polythene that really are cluttering up the world. According to the Asda website, 6billion bags are wasted each year (apparently enough to cover the whole of London) - pretty disgraceful, if we’re honest - and 1 in 10 people take a carrier bag for an item they’re going to eat as soon a they leave the shop! And I doubt a lot of them put the empty bag in their pocket until they find an appropriate place to dispose of it. Luckily I’ve noticed that supermarkets are stocking up on biodegradable carrier bags now, however (in fact, I noticed this the day of the freaky weather), so if you happen to forget your bag for life, make sure you ask for one of these. I do feel guilty, I really do, but I’m confident if everyone actually makes an effort we can start to change things, and when you think about it, reusing things such as bags is probably less of an effort than going to the trouble of getting something new, isn’t it?
So, in the words of Oasis, it’s “little by little”, but in the words of Hannah Montana, “we can, we can do anything” - if we all do it together. Maybe then we will get snow at Christmas, and we can keep it there. I’d like to remember what summer, spring, winter and autumn are this year, but not all at the same time. This is Great Britain, not Narnia.