I just popped out to feed the cats only to find that there are crocuses in flower in the windowbox outside. I planted them at the end of September, not expecting to see much till the end of January at least. No sign of any of the winter and early flowering bulbs at all, not even small shoots, which is a bit worrying; they need the cold and it’s been so warm and wet I think they may’ve rotted in the ground.
I suspect gardening’s going to be even more trial and error from now on and all planting advice will be suspect because of fluctuating conditions.
If this is happening in our pocket-handkerchief courtyard how much more devastating the effect on subsistence farmers worldwide must be : for me (at least for the moment, who knows what the future holds) global warming is just an inconvenient oddity and a gardening challenge. Whether I eat today is not dependent on the weather, nor whether my children go to school, have shoes or clean water or retroviral drugs.
No, my life is actually quite nice. So why can’t I enjoy it?
It’s a beautiful day, the sky is blue and the air still and crisp, the perfect day to get on a bike and do some Christmas shopping around the grachten, where the festive lights on the gracefully curved bridges are reflected twinkling in the canals and all is safe, warm, prosperous, pleasant and deeply self-satisfied in that cosy yet stylish Dutch way.
Most unlike conditions in the world’s megacities, which are growing steadily more overcrowded because of inward migration; people from climate-ravaged farms and countryside desperate for the chance to work 80 hours a week for 5 pence an hour, for the likes of such respected high street names as Tesco, Asda-Walmart or Primark. It’s not just a few flowers that are going crazy it ‘s whole harvests and agricultural systems and the resulting migrations are huge, making the population repercussions of the Industrial Revolution look like a small wet demographic fart. (Mind you it is Dickensian, so at least it has the saving grace of festive appropriateness).
Those people in those megacities and factories are what’s propping up this beautiful city and its pleasant liberal lifestyle. These smartly dressed burghers and their spouses make a nice living moving around the goods and cash those people produce for their owners. We live comfortably because they don’t. We are inextricably linked but it’s a death-dancel that most of us feel individually powerless to do anything about – nor do we want to while life is so gezellig.
There are millions just like me today all over Europe, out festive shopping, taking the opportunity of this lull between storms and trying to get one last good Christmas in before it all gets shot to shit.
Despite appearances many are, like me, grimly aware of the actual cost of the life we’re living. We just don’t know where to start doing something about it, so we’re going shopping. (We’re also trying to forget for one day that the future of Iraq and the Middle East and the likelihood of an unprecedentedly vicious transnational war between Sunni and Shia are dependent on the petulant whim of a man teetering on the edge of full-blown insanity but let’s not talk about that.)
So if you see me out and about around the Negen Straats today, one amongst many other smug, reasonably smartly-dressed but not too flashy middle-aged matrons laden with full, moderately priced but not too cheap carrier bags, recognise that I’m not enjoying myself at all: I too am suffering horribly. My neck aches with the strain of trying to deal with the liberal guilt.
Pity me, sit me down and buy me a coffee, but just make sure it’s Fair Trade.
Read more: Christmas, Amsterdam, Liberal guilt and hypocrisy
