Paranoia?

So. We are slowly getting back into our normal lives here in Brisbane. Actually, it's not been that slow. Kids started school last week and were straight back into all the soccer grading sessions, Ta Kwondo, Kung Fu and ballet. Choir starts this week and I am back to teaching and so we are in our normal headless chicken acts. Hmm - possibly not a good term to use, since I intend to get more chickens this weekend...

It has been unseasonably cool this last week, making my morning walk with The Even Hairier One a joy – the air is full of mock orange blossom and the chatter of a million birds and the kangaroos have been gambolling around the dewy grass – and kangaroos really do gambol, much more so than sheep. Snow and ice, hot muggy winds and the scent of sewage are all a thing of the past – I hope.

The trouble is that it's so easy to forget, to move on. People keep saying that “oh yes, Australia is a land of extremes, we have always had bad weather,” etc etc. I know that's true, but still, the 1974 floods were meant to be a once in a life time experience and then the 2011 floods were just bad luck; but they seem to have been followed awfully closely by the 2013 floods. And I may be misremembering, but back when I lived in England, only 14 years ago, we didn't always get snow in the winter and when we did, it was pretty short lived. I don't remember schools and roads closing – not in the London basin at any rate – and yet this seems to be a normal occurrence now. Then there's New York. Two floods in two years, in a city where they have never been flooded before.

Now, I'm going to go out on a limb here, as this is my blog so therefore it is my privilege! But maybe, just maybe this extreme weather is something that all the scientists have been warning us about for years. Maybe this is what Gerald Durrell and David Attenborough and highly qualified, brilliant minds like theirs have been wittering on about. Maybe this is what the weather is going to be doing for the next few years – getting worse and worse and more and more extreme, so that by the time my kids grow up, they won't be able to plan anything in advance and will have to make sure they always have a plentiful supply of toilet paper and candles and chickens and live on a hill.

Or maybe, on the other hand, I am just being completely paranoid. Maybe this is just part of a normal weather pattern and I should just start focussing my attentions on the Really important issues at hand – whether to vote for a man who believes that the world was created a few thousand years ago and that the Aboriginies should be grateful for the British invasion, or whether to vote for someone I don't particularly like or trust just to make sure that said lunatic doesn't get into parliament. Because this is what is filling the news at the moment, so it must be the most important matter, mustn't it?