Floods everywhere and never have I felt this lucky to live on high ground. I once read that we live at the same level as the top of Blackpool Tower, which seems the place to be now that The Flood has started. It's good to know that when the Flood waters recede, the only people left on the planet will be fans of the Chuckle Brothers or Roy Chubby Brown.
The talk is about climate change, of course, but I blame a far greater menace in the form of Alan Titchmarsh. Ours is one of the last gardens around here that isn’t covered by ornamental stones inspired by his gardens. I imagine that the rest of the country is the same. The country is suffering skin suffocation, like the Bond girl in Goldfinger, with just a small gap at the base of the country’s spine where the water can leak away. Of course, the other thing I don’t hear many experts point out is that flood plains usually exist for a reason and just because somewhere doesn’t flood for a decade or more, doesn’t mean it doesn’t flood regularly according to geological age. Not that it helps the pool souls I see being ferried out of their homes in rubber dingies and deposited before the Sky News cameras. But then, just because you’ve not been shown trying to climb out of a rubber dingy wearing your old pyjamas in the past ten years doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen regularly according to the Sky News calendar…
Here in the dry (but cold), what should have been an easy matter of sending off a manuscript suddenly turned ugly when Thunderbird popped up with a message, pointing out that the sample of the book was a whopping 31 megabytes.
I built this PC for video editing and rendering 3D graphics, so I tend to forget how big my Word files can get. I’ve packed the book with drawings – I think there were about eighty at the last count -- which means the sample probably had about 30. That wouldn’t have been too bad but now I come to look at then, every single one was 2000 pixels wide, probably a megabyte in size. I spent about two hours slowly bringing the sizes down until it was a more reasonable sample. I still removed a few drawings to get it to a size that wouldn’t seize up the agent’s inbox.
Anyway, the manuscript is gone. All I can do now is wait for a reply or The Deluge, and I'm not entirely certain which will come first.
I don't know about you but I'm building an Ark.
ReplyDeleteJust a little one because big animals are dangerous and I don't want to be stuck on a boat with them. Plenty of space for whisky, tobacco and food.
Thing is, I would fully expect to see a dinghy drift through the mist-covered endless ocean, with a Council Yellowjacket shouting through a megaphone - 'Oi! You can't smoke in there!'
I knew I'd forgotten something. Torpedoes.
Hmm... Wouldn't have thought you a climate change believer / Ark building type. I'm totally on the fence about it, of course, though slightly to the side that thinks it's probably a bad idea to drive everywhere and replace trees (which I like) with more spaces for slobs (who I don't like) to park so they don't have to walk more than 5 meters to their sofas.
ReplyDeleteThat said, the whole Biblical flood scenario just isn't going to work in the modern world. The only buggers left alive would be those yachting types with their cravats and wives in mauve polyester, bobbing around the place wondering when they can next moor because they've forgotten to stockpile the G&T. They're mostly bankers, of course, which doesn't say much about God's logic if he really is thinking of making us play his Flood scenario.
Climate change? Incompetent waterway management will get us all long before the climate has a chance to change.
ReplyDeleteNow that's a thought. We're all going to end up landlocked in a heavily silted riverbed except for the Chuckle Brothers who were performing at the top of Blackpool Tower at the time.
ReplyDelete