Ecological Consequences

I woke up this morning to strong sunshine muscling it’s way through the curtains. Like any decent Englishman, I found this disconcerting. So anyway it was off to the shower with me, to wash away the red-eyed, praline-crazed face of the man who worked in the library until after dark.

All went well to start with. Just as I was rinsing the last of the suds out of my hair, though, the shower made a disgruntled gurgle and dropped to a sullen dribble of water. Being suddenly robbed of my cosy cocoon, I realised that it wasn’t that warm today after all, and hunched, panicked, in the insufficient stream. A logical conclusion might be that someone had turned on a tap downstairs, or next door, or somewhere else in East Oxford. My sleep-addled mind, fuelled by the horrors of the New Internationalist, concluded that this was it: our capitalist consumerism had used all the water.

I didn’t take long for me to realise what the consequences would be. We’d drunk the Thames dry, which would certainly make London Docks a lot less profitable. Pot noodles were a thing of the past. It was going to get a lot smellier in this part of the world.

Then the real consequence hit me. I was going to have to go another morning without a shave. The Thames could be happily splashing the underside of Tower Bridge, but so long as our shower was sulking, I would have to join the ranks of Barbary.

Inexplicably, several men in college seem to have grown beards in the last six weeks.

World leaders, I urge you: If this isn't a sign that we need to take climate change seriously, what is?

Song in my head: “Stay Outside” by Candidate