The Soggy Bottom Boys

I am sitting at my desk with my carton (those big card containers aren’t mugs or cups) of latté slowly steaming. I mean that in an almost literal sense rather than suggesting that I’m angry or annoyed. I doubt that I am telling you something you don’t already know, but I seem to be experiencing an ongoing continuity error. I came to work expecting to play the roll of an over hot and weary civil servant who wished he was on his summer holiday.

Those were the lines I’ve learnt and rehearsed over the past few weeks. Clearly a different memo went out to the set dressers. It’s the same basic place, but dressed for mid November. The lighting is dull and subdued the temperature down and the rain is coming down in stair rods. While I was queuing to buy my latté, I could feel the water trickling down my arm inside my jacket. Said jacket is currently drying out over the back of my chair, smelling and looking not unlike an elderly spaniel that’s been out to play in the brook.

Why do damp jackets smell like damp dogs?

There’s an article in today’s Times (I would link, but you know, the Murdock pay wall and all) suggesting that the regular 11 year cycle of sunspot activity is slowing down and the next one may even not take place at all, plunging North West Europe (why just us?) into a so-called Little Ice Age as the sun possibly enters a second 70 year “Maunder or Grand Minimum” (I think I had one of those once) as in the period 1645-1715. This is the period when the Thames froze to a thickness of 11” (28cm) for up to two months a year and horse drawn carriages and winter fairs used it.

I seem to recall when I was a kid in the 1960s, scientists were predicting a new Ice Age, in the days before the greenhouse effect was postulated and then global warming came along. We seem to be moving back in that direction again. Or more likely whatever the climate does and whatever the reason for it, scientists, governments, media pundits and anyone with an interest, intellectual or otherwise, will expend huge amounts of hot air defending their respective positions.

See what happens when my head gets soggy?

The Soggy Bottom Boys

I am sitting at my desk with my carton (those big card containers aren’t mugs or cups) of latté slowly steaming. I mean that in an almost literal sense rather than suggesting that I’m angry or annoyed. I doubt that I am telling you something you don’t already know, but I seem to be experiencing an ongoing continuity error. I came to work expecting to play the roll of an over hot and weary civil servant who wished he was on his summer holiday.

Those were the lines I’ve learnt and rehearsed over the past few weeks. Clearly a different memo went out to the set dressers. It’s the same basic place, but dressed for mid November. The lighting is dull and subdued the temperature down and the rain is coming down in stair rods. While I was queuing to buy my latté, I could feel the water trickling down my arm inside my jacket. Said jacket is currently drying out over the back of my chair, smelling and looking not unlike an elderly spaniel that’s been out to play in the brook.

Why do damp jackets smell like damp dogs?

There’s an article in today’s Times (I would link, but you know, the Murdock pay wall and all) suggesting that the regular 11 year cycle of sunspot activity is slowing down and the next one may even not take place at all, plunging North West Europe (why just us?) into a so-called Little Ice Age as the sun possibly enters a second 70 year “Maunder or Grand Minimum” (I think I had one of those once) as in the period 1645-1715. This is the period when the Thames froze to a thickness of 11” (28cm) for up to two months a year and horse drawn carriages and winter fairs used it.

I seem to recall when I was a kid in the 1960s, scientists were predicting a new Ice Age, in the days before the greenhouse effect was postulated and then global warming came along. We seem to be moving back in that direction again. Or more likely whatever the climate does and whatever the reason for it, scientists, governments, media pundits and anyone with an interest, intellectual or otherwise, will expend huge amounts of hot air defending their respective positions.

See what happens when my head gets soggy?