The end of the world as we know it?

A couple of days ago my flatmate and I were curled up in my room in our jammies, tea in hand and somehow the conversation meandered onto the cheerful topic of the end of the world. What would get us first she wondered, would it be all out nuclear war? Would India and Pakistan turn each other into smoking holes in the ground? Would Russia and the USA in a fit of high spirits send nuclear warheads screaming across the Atlantic? It was a worry we agreed but I was of the opinion the world had bigger problems. I think the world has been nearer to nuclear meltdown. I remember a conversation with my mother a few years ago. She remembers some of the Cold War and how there were times when impending nuclear doom seemed not only likely but probable. I’ve not quite reached that stage of terror so I’m still taking out the rubbish and not cowering under the bed with a paper bag over my head just yet.

If not nuclear war, then maybe terrorism? Again I wrinkled my nose, not convinced. Terrorists, as has been proved over and over again, have been capable of terrible things but I think they lack the organisation to threaten the entire world order. The main advantage to terrorism is that most terrorists are motivated by their own perverted beliefs and the problem (or advantage) with that is that no-one quite believes exactly the same thing. So you get splinter groups and then splinter groups from them until you get a bewildering array of terrorist groups who probably hate each other more than their supposed enemies. To paraphrase Augustus De Morgan, great cells have little cells upon their backs to bite ‘em, and little cells have lesser cells and so ad infinitum.

No, I think we’re looking at global warming which will eventually be the downfall of humanity. I study geology (not geography! Please don’t get them mixed up or you may find yourself being punched by an irritable geologist. Nothing gets a geologist more riled up than people thinking they study geography. The film The Core comes a close second but that’s a story for another day) and I’m sorry folks but it’s happening and there’s bugger all you can do about it. Recycling your milk cartons and using energy efficient lightbulbs is not going to offset all the damage that humans have done over the past three centuries. Rising sea levels will push more people into less space. Less land means less room for agriculture and the poorest will be the first to starve. Dwindling resources will push humanity to the edge and we’ll disappear into extinction in a blaze of war, protectionism and arrogance.

But to end on a positive note – what an achievement for mankind! Never mind agriculture or the electric toothbrush, we have managed to throw a spanner in the workings of an entire planet.

Gardening

I hate gardening. It's right up there with midges, the Daily Mail and people who don't know how to use punctuation. I blame my mother. She has an unfortunately massive garden and even bigger plans to landscape it and to do it she will willingly rope in anyone unlucky enough to be passing. In a burst of 'The Good Life'esque intentions half of the garden is given over to vegetables which have to be watered twice a day and some of the most ferocious arguments between me and my sister have been over who gets the relatively easy job of watering the plants in the greenhouse and who has to water the rest of the bloody thing. Needless to say my sister won most of the time and I spent a goodly portion of my summer heaving a hose around. The rest of the summer I spent mowing the endless expanse of lawn with a juddery diesel lawnmower which turned my arms to jelly (it took hours for my boobs to stop vibrating), making a rockery (sensibly located on a raised flowerbed) and spreading horse manure. And what did I get from all this effort? Nothing but dodgy tanlines and splinters. It's just not worth it.

Down at my dad's gardening is something that's only ever done in short bursts. My stepmum takes a notion every now and then that 'something has to be done about the garden' and off she goes to B&Q, returning with armfuls of bulbs and seedlings which she proceeds to plant over the next two days. My dad meanwhile only does the practical and manly jobs around the garden. He drags the lawnmower out of the barn and cuts the grass (the explosion of swearing when he hits a forgotten toy lurking in the grass is something to be witnessed), has a good hack at the bushes and rakes up leaves. I can't help feeling that it's all in vain. The horses in the field behind us eat every scrap of vegetation they can reach and my little brother with a football can turn even the most robust flowerbed into a sorry, desolate mess of broken stalks and bent petals in less than fifteen minutes.

I think though that the prize for the most manly gardening has to go to my flatmate's father who takes a more direct approach. When asked to remove a fence that was running through their garden he decided that it would be too time consuming to take it down by hand and he set fire to it instead. Apparently it got rid of the fence but there was a long streak of burnt ground for months. A nearby bush still hasn't recovered and now looks like a horticultural version of Twoface; full and green on one side but black and burnt on the other. My favourite story though involves pampas grass. Pampas grass needs to be burnt back every so often so it can grow back bigger and better (this is one of the many things I know although I have no recollection of anyone actually telling me this) and my flatmate's mother, clearly not learning from the fence incident, asked her husband to set fire to the patch of pampas in their front garden. Set fire to it he did but to help it along he'd doused the plant in petrol before hand "to get things going". I'm told the resultant whoooomp could be heard two houses away.

My mother assures me that I'll come round to the idea when I'm older which, frankly, is a terrifying prospect. The minute I willingly plant a daffodil bulb I might as well join the parish council, order in Reader's Digest and accept that I am middle-class, middle aged and it's all downhill from there.