Opinion Column
the big rant
columnist boyd farrow on… summer in the city
illustration by Rose Barton
At the time of writing, the bruise-like clouds are lifting and the stinging rain is subsiding. Winter is finally over and we are heading once more into a cascade of summery horrors. Half the people you will meet during the next few weeks will be dressed like they are heading for the beach, even if they are actually on their way to the office, an industrial tribunal or a bar mitzvah. The other half will be droning on relentlessly about global warming until winter stalks us once again – which will probably be before you finish reading this sentence.
It is actually quite hard to decide which type of person to dislike the most – the creosote-skinned attention-seeker who has had sunglasses resting on his head, sausages sizzling on his barbeque and “No Woman No Cry” whining on his turntable since the end of April. Or the preachy, neurotic albino with a self-regard that could put Al Gore in the shade. Obviously, it is insane to fret about global warming after we’ve just endured a nine-month winter, especially when every other YouTube clip features a chubby polar bear cub with more toys than an orphanage. Surely the time to be concerned is when our governments start doling out free Clinique Sun Block and holding all their meetings in New Zealand.
It is clear by now that the sort of person who panics about global warming the second the sun appears will wail about almost anything. Twenty years ago these harbingers of doom were predicting that radiation leaks from the kyboshed Chernobyl reactor would create a mutant race. Instead, Ukrainian girls have gotten even cuter, their only worrying body modifications being upper-arm tattoos that look like Meat Loaf album sleeves.
Frankly, climate worriers are merely those curtain-drawing losers who suffer from hay fever, freckles and Kabuki complexions, who happen to get bitten by the one mosquito that manages to drift into Western European airspace each year, who get stung by the one bee that manages to hoist itself higher than a rosebush or the one jellyfish that manages to wobble through the Straits of Cyprus. The trouble is, however, the sun worshippers are even more irritating. One patch of blue sky and the company lawyer starts dressing like the jet-ski hire guy; the women in accounts leave the house looking like they’re off on a nail technician’s hen weekend and the sales guys turn into Earth, Wind & Fire. The sun only has to shine for half an hour before people who manage to get through most of the year with their dignity intact and their shortcomings hidden begin stripping away the former and throwing the latter to the westerly wind.
Don’t these exhibitionists know how hard it is to respect them when they’re wearing a Hawaiian shirt and interlocking toe-rings? Don’t they realise their bottled tan is making them look like a radioactive hairdresser? And don’t they realise that if we don’t want to see their holiday snaps we certainly don’t want to see the undress rehearsal in the work canteen. There is a time and a place to appreciate the tops of people’s underwear, their exposed midriffs and the bottoms of their feet, and that place is the internet. And the time is when your goddamn colleagues aren’t around.
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