THAT OTHER CRUNCH


Cormac McCarthy's The Road seems to haunt everyone who reads it, so bleak is the picture it paints of a world of depleted resources and a truly broken society. Here, George Monbiot and Paul Kingsnorth debate eco-collapse and whether industrial civilisation is worth saving. Timely, prophetic stuff - well worth a look.

In Monbiot's words "... the survivors of this collapse will be subject to the will of people seeking to monopolise remaining resources. This will is likely to be imposed through violence. Political accountability will be a distant memory. The chances of conserving any resource in these circumstances are approximately zero. The human and ecological consequences of the first global collapse are likely to persist for many generations, perhaps for our species’ remaining time on earth."

CHANGEABLE


When I was a kid I used to play at being Doctor Who, and that entertained me even in the playground, or walking to school. In particular, his abilty to regenerate fascinated me. Being transplanted very suddenly, as I have been this month, sets off the same kind of dislocated feelings I imagine would happen were you to wake up in a new body. My whole adult life has been like this. When you measure it in eras, life seems long, even though you know it isn't really.

I’m here in Nottingham, to all intents and purposes alone, and surrounded by relics that are like the memorabilia of my past lives. Where did I find time to read all those books in my 20s, for example? I only have the sketchiest memories of them, and it took me a whole day to clean 12 years of dust from the spines. I’ve also unpacked my CD collection, the soundtrack of very different days. My old clothes don’t fit, for some reason – and here are a couple of cardigans (cardigans?) and jackets I can hardly remember wearing.

The place like a new planet. People seem very different from Hungary – mostly because I can understand what everyone is saying in public places. I have to mention this example, overheard at a bus stop – a son, in his late 40s, to his mother (thick midlands accent): “You’re the age Gran was when she pegged it and I’m the age you were when Gran pegged it!”

The climatic conditions are (what else?) changeable. I seem to remember the wind blowing the clouds across the sun in some other waning summer, and being caught in the rain. Have I been here before?

There are some continuities too: I still have an appetite for red wine, and now my console is reconnected, I’m in magical touch with everyone I knew from other time streams. This is a good thing when you’ve got that exiled feeling.