planet? The electric sucks from a fossily power station, the safety
is made of steel and non-biodegradable plastic which will end up on a landfill site, possibly cutting a gull’s throat to boot, with God knows what ecological consequences.
And when I recall cleaning my teeth, the tremors start all over again. I have an electric water pick for flushing old dinner out at dawn, but I daren’t use it any more. I would have to
plant a tree. I do not know where you get these trees you have to plant every time you burn carbon, but I bet you have to drive there, and you would have to buy another tree to offset the petrol. I
can’t do that every morning, especially as I have a very small garden. In less than a week, it would be a very small forest. Its roots would gobble up the water table and the house would fall
over.
Which leads me to my non-electric toothbrushing: it wasted ten times more water than the water pick would have done, because we had pork belly last night, and most of it was still wedged between
my molars. The brushing also used a lot of energy (mine) and that doesn’t grow on trees: or, rather, does, given that I got the energy from the protein which Mrs Coren cooked last night with
gas made from what might well have borne conkers, once.
Mind you, I had already used most of that energy before bedtime. I had to take the rubbish out to umpteen different eco-categories of bin, but I wouldn’t put the garden lights on to do it,
obviously, and the bottom fell out of one of the wet paper sacks we now use instead of planetocidal plastic, so I had to crawl around in the dark burning up precious pig, and when I finally got
back indoors, Mrs Coren had turned off the telly standby light, and my disorder wouldn’t let me turn it on again to watch the cricket highlights.
However, if England ever get another whiff of the Ashes – and how non-sustainable is that? – I think I could manage, just the once, to force one compulsive obsession to override
another. Even if it cost a tree or two.
Sea Fever
M RS Coren and I have reached that happy point in life where we get asked out a lot. Fat glossy invitations plop daily to
our mat. Some kind hosts want us to join them for an invigorating game of shuffleboard in the Bosporus, to be followed by a jolly sing-song in their candle-scented sauna; others insist we come with
them to camcord penguins, and, when darkness foils the straining lens, foxtrot the night away to the internationally renowned melodies of Morrie Plunk and his Mandoliers. More yet beg us to
island-hop with them from one Maldive to the next, tantalisingly dangling the promise of a dinghy whose transparent bottom will allow us, while sipping sundown cocktails shielded from gnats by
titchy parasols, to gawp at turtles.
Of course, there will be a price to pay. That is how cruises work. And they work better at it with every passing day as more and more OAPs pluck equity from the stratosphere into which their
properties have soared and grope creakily for their cruisewear. It is why, last Sunday, the
Liberty of the Seas
, the hugest liner ever built, hove to off Southampton on its first
promotional trip. Know what it was promoting? Not merely its malls, cinemas, casinos, pubs, ballrooms, swimming-pools, and all the other gewgaws of common or garden cruiseboats, but also its common
or garden, which boasts a running-track, an ice-rink, a nine-hole golf course, a waterfall, and a cliff-face to enable rock-climbers to keep their hand, or at least their fingertips, in.
Not, I’m afraid, my idea of a ship; my idea of Basingstoke. I write this because, yes, Mrs Coren and I did receive an invitation, and this piece will save us the bother of a formal reply.
Thanks, but we shall not be sailing off to shop, filmgo, bet, booze, boogie, swim, sprint, skate, negotiate the tricky dog-leg fourth, go over the falls in a barrel, or up the north face of
anything, because if we did want to do that we would not elect
is made of steel and non-biodegradable plastic which will end up on a landfill site, possibly cutting a gull’s throat to boot, with God knows what ecological consequences.
And when I recall cleaning my teeth, the tremors start all over again. I have an electric water pick for flushing old dinner out at dawn, but I daren’t use it any more. I would have to
plant a tree. I do not know where you get these trees you have to plant every time you burn carbon, but I bet you have to drive there, and you would have to buy another tree to offset the petrol. I
can’t do that every morning, especially as I have a very small garden. In less than a week, it would be a very small forest. Its roots would gobble up the water table and the house would fall
over.
Which leads me to my non-electric toothbrushing: it wasted ten times more water than the water pick would have done, because we had pork belly last night, and most of it was still wedged between
my molars. The brushing also used a lot of energy (mine) and that doesn’t grow on trees: or, rather, does, given that I got the energy from the protein which Mrs Coren cooked last night with
gas made from what might well have borne conkers, once.
Mind you, I had already used most of that energy before bedtime. I had to take the rubbish out to umpteen different eco-categories of bin, but I wouldn’t put the garden lights on to do it,
obviously, and the bottom fell out of one of the wet paper sacks we now use instead of planetocidal plastic, so I had to crawl around in the dark burning up precious pig, and when I finally got
back indoors, Mrs Coren had turned off the telly standby light, and my disorder wouldn’t let me turn it on again to watch the cricket highlights.
However, if England ever get another whiff of the Ashes – and how non-sustainable is that? – I think I could manage, just the once, to force one compulsive obsession to override
another. Even if it cost a tree or two.
Sea Fever
M RS Coren and I have reached that happy point in life where we get asked out a lot. Fat glossy invitations plop daily to
our mat. Some kind hosts want us to join them for an invigorating game of shuffleboard in the Bosporus, to be followed by a jolly sing-song in their candle-scented sauna; others insist we come with
them to camcord penguins, and, when darkness foils the straining lens, foxtrot the night away to the internationally renowned melodies of Morrie Plunk and his Mandoliers. More yet beg us to
island-hop with them from one Maldive to the next, tantalisingly dangling the promise of a dinghy whose transparent bottom will allow us, while sipping sundown cocktails shielded from gnats by
titchy parasols, to gawp at turtles.
Of course, there will be a price to pay. That is how cruises work. And they work better at it with every passing day as more and more OAPs pluck equity from the stratosphere into which their
properties have soared and grope creakily for their cruisewear. It is why, last Sunday, the
Liberty of the Seas
, the hugest liner ever built, hove to off Southampton on its first
promotional trip. Know what it was promoting? Not merely its malls, cinemas, casinos, pubs, ballrooms, swimming-pools, and all the other gewgaws of common or garden cruiseboats, but also its common
or garden, which boasts a running-track, an ice-rink, a nine-hole golf course, a waterfall, and a cliff-face to enable rock-climbers to keep their hand, or at least their fingertips, in.
Not, I’m afraid, my idea of a ship; my idea of Basingstoke. I write this because, yes, Mrs Coren and I did receive an invitation, and this piece will save us the bother of a formal reply.
Thanks, but we shall not be sailing off to shop, filmgo, bet, booze, boogie, swim, sprint, skate, negotiate the tricky dog-leg fourth, go over the falls in a barrel, or up the north face of
anything, because if we did want to do that we would not elect
Similar Books
