Malone implores us all to repent

Things have changed. We’ve moved on from the tired repetitive conformity of having a summer in July. This is the age of Aquarius after all, summer is so last century…holding us back with its scantily clad frivolity. Summer was that two weeks in May and it was nice wasn’t it. If we are good and eat all our greens we might get another two weeks of turning the radiators off in August. If we are good. Collectively.

While the majority of us have largely been good…clearly there’s some of you that have been naughty. Some of you aren’t rinsing out your jam jars when you chuck them in the recycling are you? Some of you aren’t even recycling. And some of you think recycling is when you have to go back up the way you came on your Raleigh. Some of you are not saying thanks to the bus driver (yes you’ve paid him to do his job, but it’s basic politeness).

“Please can everyone call their mums and do the recycling”

And some of you are not ringing your mums enough. This woman gave birth to you! Yes it’s annoying she wants to know what you want for Boxing Day breakfast in July, but she loves you more than anyone else will, even if she doesn’t show it well. Yes she might say things like, ‘How can anyone read your handwriting!?!’ and, ‘My god, you always have a cold. How will you disguise that red nose on your wedding day?’ She might not remember you haven’t eaten wheat or dairy in 17 years, ‘I can’t keep up with what you do and don’t eat.’ But she would be the one throwing herself on your coffin if you died, making the sandwiches and doing the washing up without whinging. Please can everyone call their mums and do the recycling.

Surely then the weather overlord will see we deserved less rain and wind in July! I’m not even asking for sun, oh mighty weather overlord! Is this what it was like 100 years ago? Kids telling other kids, ‘It’s your fault it rained all day because you wouldn’t give my sister a piggyback.’ My daughter would have believed little Alfie Smith. For thousands of years the weather has been a symbol of the gods’ anger at us. Used against us to make us scared and repent our sins. Now we read it’s the jet stream causing the freaky weather.

What’s causing the jet stream to change the usual weather systems though? The warming up of the earth, you say? It can’t be climate change, can it? We’ve always suffered weird weather. In the middle ages they had weather so bad no crops could grow, ‘the great famine’ lasted two years. Dear angry weather gods… Can we have sun if I start recycling by hand at home in the bath? And how about I hug the bus driver when I get off and ask my mother to move in with me? Pleeeease!

Illustration: Jake McDonald www.shakeyillustrations.blogspot.com