Poetry

A tune for my godson Todd who's five years old it was inspired by listening to him talking about his modern dance class which involves quite a lot of acrobatics including parkouring from the kitchen table onto the floor then spinning round on his back hissing loudly like a fried egg or an angry snake.

A poem I wrote about our cenotaph , every town in Britain has one of these grisly reminders to the great war and then ever war there after .At first they were a pilgrimage for the patriotic to come and worship their glorious dead but now they're used by so many different swathes of society as a place to rebel, and then there's the drunks and drug addicts who seem to favour and gravitate towards these ancient monuments almost similar to those druids who worship in the circle of Stonehenge.

For someone who's fifty something plus tax and sexually straight it's quite hard to understand all the new sexual genderisations that are now taking place but as they always say let love rule .

A song I wrote to commemorate the courage of Christine, the first transgender beauty queen who, back in 1953, bravely decided to have her gender reassigned to its rightful sexuality, in order that she might be set free from the burden of living with her very unwanted masculinity. But it would be a long journey from the first roll of that snowball before the LGBTQ+ community finally made their stand for equality at the pub we now know as Stonewall.

A comprehensive piece discusses the mercenaries known as the "Dogs of War" who engage in conflict for financial gain across the globe. Africa has long struggled with the presence of such militants, and even today, they continue to sow chaos worldwide, including in regions like Israel, Palestine, Russia, and Ukraine. These "Dogs of War" are hired by numerous superpowers, and their growing numbers have started to turn against those who once trained and supported them – including countries such as America, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, among others. In fact, all major powers have played a sinister role in funding these private armies to carry out their covert operations. The unfortunate consequence is that these mercenaries consistently choose Africa as their battleground.

From Bonaparte to Lionheart from the mayflower to the superpower all Nations have produce refugees at one time or another we're all to blame for this ever increasing burden of shame

A short song I wrote about the monster munch crisps as a love song I did it whilst riding aboard a train the 11.34 from Bicester to London Marylebone station 12.38 recorded in two takes outside McDonald's in double quick time.

A speech come eulogy I wrote for a dear friend of mine who to me will always be the last bohemian fugitive, an artist for more than 65 years a very impressive figure who change my life for the better with his mindful mentoring.

A short poem about the wind a vandal hell bent on destruction.

A song for a love honey we called Ann Summers due to her working there, she asked me for a birthday card poem and caused me a writer's block which when I tried to explain she cursed me a look of pure disdain , so I wrote this along the lines of a frigid flustering fool that she'd doubtless be serving at the Ann summers shop. Katie looks at all men with indifference and always takes fun from them , Bravo darling it's all we deserve.

A short story I wrote about our Neo Omnipresence that seems almost God like in its power and control , the all seeing eye that invisible entity watching over everything we say and do , as the super computer takes over completely and begins to do a billion tweeks a minute to everything mapping the brain body and everything else in our universe maybe one day soon a connection with the great unknown will happen but would we humble humans even know let's face it the vacuum seal of space or infinity is the perfect place for the digitalised Deity to inhabit and the language is of cause cosmic microwave background that it's been using in a constant continuum for billions of years .

Hidden in her silver box were those secret letters of love from a dead lover who in a moment of war when passion was the fashion and she fed hers red and raw to his hungry dog of amour .

Living our lives as nocturnal belfry bats fuelled by booze and nose gay narcotics we'd flutter back at dawn after sharing shrink spiel and serotonin Smarties at all night high octane piss and powder parties in H-gate is there any wonder that we all became navy blue neurotics suffering from nervous breakdowns and depression.

A poem written for a sibling son whose quest for frolic and fun wedge hatred in-between his brothers love by what he'd gone and done , it's difficult to understand the parable of the prodigal son especially if you're looking through the eyes of the other hard working one who through restraint and strive hath managed with diligent life toiled and tilled the farm in order to fill empty bellies and winter barn now back without a crumb returns the squandering sibling pun doubtless to take the family fortune for yet another hit an run better remember this of the prodigal son who fritted away everything from dad and mum let him now work to the rise and fall of a burning sun whilst you yourself seek out some frolic an fun

Legend has that the Robin gained his red breast from pulling the thorns out of the crown of Jesus at his crucifixion to ease his suffering

Grandfathers are like old sentinels that stand guard over us in our early infant years, as stolid as grandfather clocks. Their old, heavy hearts pendulum their rhythm of life into our newborn ears, a mortal metronome that keeps a steady beat to the timpani of our tiny feet.

A eulogy I wrote for a dear friend of mine who to me will always be the last bohemian fugitive, an artist for more than 65 years a very impressive figure who change my life for the better with his mindful mentoring.

Humorous little sketch I wrote for Jeanine who was going to see strictly come dancing live in Leeds I wrote the sketch after listening to two old men complaining about the aches and pains in witherspoons Darlington it's narrated in their yorkshire accents, the photo is from strictly come dancing the same night in Leeds sent by JEANINE .

Le poeme en francais ,the language of love. Forgive my French it's been twenty-five years since I was there. A poem about women should always be in the feminine hence why I use La poeme instead of Le masculine , it sounds and lends it's self much more to L'amour which is masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural , entre l'androgyne et l'ambigute'.

The four main elements to life if we do not learn to respect them as ancient cultures did then they will cease to respect us .

Living as an artist's muse, you can understand the expression of "The Doom In The Room." What artists don't realize is that their egos can be so burdensome to everyone else. Probably, this is how they have to be in order for them to achieve what they do. This is usually why their muses are always so miserable. While living with an artist as a muse, I was painted with my own blood; She thought it to be a wonderful contrast of the color red splashed onto a stark white canvas, which was my Anglo-Saxon skin, finished it looked reminiscent the of the George Cross.

A poem about falling into destitution especially ex soldiers and sailors who you find in the beggars brigade of most British towns and how easy it is , "lest we forget " that we are all in their debt.

A little tune i wrote for James who's very devout in his religion each Sunday we usually have a long discussion with him trying to convert me to his Christianity and me remaining with my humble hallowed humanity both of us respectful of each others theistic thoughts.

A eulogy for Dave a wonderful man who I knew for forty years. Grandfathers are like old sentinels that stand  guard over us in our early infant years , stolid as grandfather clocks their old heavy hearts pendulum the rhythm of life into our new born ears a mortal metronome that keeps a steady beat to the timpani of our tiny pattering feet.

A song about an old rag and bone man who started out with just a horse and cart then after a life of skinflinting strife became very rich but even after acquiring great wealth he still retained his beggar man roots and rhetoric.

A poem I wrote for the everso beautiful Lindsay who is leaving after 11 years she brought her LGBT spirit and colour into our drab fifty souls of grey community bombing us daily with vivid wondrous paintings she takes with her an extraordinary feng shui losing her is like the loss of a perpetual summer's day , artist are the community take them away and you kill it's soul you're left with empty plastic people with tarmac tongues and concrete craniums.

A little ditty I wrote for lillian's birthday who was born on the first of may now aged nine .all rights reserved

A little swing jazz tune written for a friend who has an extremely high sex drive it uses the feminine and the masculine tense due to the person in question being bisexual he once called him self a sexual psychopath.

A poem written about my rolly Polly fat flat mate who lost a massive amount of weight becoming ever so serious and slim , I on the other hand have taken his place becoming fat and happy obviously morphing to the company I've kept .

A poem about a cherub child called Lily who arrived so divine and right on time to save us from our our self destruction just as if Gabriel had gifted to us his immortal lily shaped horn .

A short minute musing about infecting your friends computer's with a virus and how they treat it as though you've infected them with a sexually transmitted STD .

Three Haiku poems WISDOM , SUNBEAM , HEADLINE NEWS.

It's about time the human realised that a tree is flesh and blood not just timber or a price of wood ,  these beautiful living entities give us shelter shade and our lifesaving breath ,without them we are condemning our selves to curtain death

This is a short song I wrote for Colette's birthday she's an angel faced florist who works out of a norman church on a country estate, surrounded by angelic statues all halos and wings adding to this heavenly scene is her being bathed and baptized in the divine light from the stain glassed windows along with the scent from the flowers you think you've arrived at the garden of Eden, but then again when she puts on her leather and lace and hits the town well that's a different story , A Saturday night sinner and a Sunday morning Saint. All rights reserved.

Her swan song is what you hear just before your love boat runs aground and the scent of sulphur be the final pheromone you smell as you slowly begin to drowned .

Every experience of adult behaviour through the innocent eyes of a child is quite terrifying now as an adult even death is placed into a calm casual context your maker might as well be a baker.

A chalk and cheese Husband and wife with very opposing opinions on the arrival of some neo hippie neighbours with their green dream machine .

A musing about a taxi-dermist cabbie who wouldn't stop spieling about his slaughterhouse side line job, my friend and I could see and smell the blood by the time he'd finished our short journey.

Ruby's a teenage dream queen that's been hand made in heaven to a cat walking cool talking size number seven , she glares an glints guilty as a guillotine , her temper is a mix of gunpowder an nitroglycerin.

The strange phenomenon of dizygotic twin estrangement when nothing of similarity seems to have been shared apart from their identical indifference that mirrored in a perfect reflection towards each other .

All Medieval religions outlawed usury as a sin , profit of any kind wasn't allowed it still stands as a judgement against you , the pathway to Perdition is going to be littered with alot of Gods righteous as well as the Devil's detritus .

Listening to the climate conference's waffling old windbags wheezing on about saving our world as they quaff down expensive wine squandering fifty pounds a glass and then dare to set the price of carbon capture at three pounds a ton , this be the token tariff to save your granddaughter or grandson ?.

A poem I wrote about the sixty three year love affair between a member of the royal family and one her dutiful long standing servants known as G M for short the old Queen mums cool companion.

A musing written for lily age 9 and her cat Sean who's got terribly fat due to been neutered, he's put on a lot of weight I've narrated it in a yorkshire accent due to Sean being born and raised in Harrogate .

Walking into a very expensive veggie vegan boutique i listened to the sermon of a spiritual salesman , it felt as if you we're about to adopt his precious vegetables , this high priest of the Celtic druids so worshipped his wild woodland produce I got to feeling that my blood would be sacrificed under an oak tree named Zeus after i touched a sacred sprig of his mistletoe obviously punishable on pain of death .

This is a musing I wrote after listening to my father, who had been conscripted into the British army during the Second World War. You can quite easily see why, by year twenty three, most members of the military have gone completely mad with OCD. It's perhaps due to the esprit de corps of the British army, which has a relentless marching rhythm beating to the sweet spot tempo of 120 from day one. Your heart, soul, body, and mind are recalibrated and realigned to the measured metronome of the military kind in order for you to keep in perfect tune while playing together in the theater of war with the other synchronized members of your platoon.

Male prowess in the 1970s and 1980s of British northern towns usually ment you had to attempt to drink a liquid suicide to verify your masculine side to your alcoholic man tribe .

The only true miracle that we mortal beings are likely to see comes in the form of our genetic immortality—the gene transfer continuum, better known to you and me as a baby. Throughout human history, we have believed in many different deities and divinities, ranging from Greek gods to our present-day Corpus Christi. But when it comes to the real miracle-making capability, it's the female of our species that is graced with life-giving fertility. This poem is written for a close friend of mine who described the birth of his baby daughter as quite divine. He said she resembled a blue Buddha of death and then suddenly gasped and bloomed into life by taking her first extrauterine breath.

Is vanity a sin ? or is it just the selfish substance that we need in order to win .

The macabre story about a great grandmother who's ashes were made into a bone china plate by her broken hearted lover , this practice of using powdered human bone in pottery still continues to this day with artists such as Crow and Kraft who call it crafting cremains .

Looking at my Godson watching the Lion king I cast myself back to childhood where I first saw a pathetic lion used as a guard dog in a scrap yard chained toothless clawless and castrated never should these beautiful beast be caged into torment and cruelty for our amusement we should leave them to roam wild and free on their sub-saharan Savannah .

A poem written for a sibling son whose quest for frolic and fun wedge hatred in-between his brothers love by what he'd gone and done , it's difficult to understand the parable of the prodigal son especially if you're looking through the eyes of the other hard working one who through restraint and strive hath managed with diligent life toiled and tilled the farm in order to fill empty bellies and winter barn now back without a crumb returns the squandering sibling pun doubtless to take the family fortune for yet another hit an run better remember this of the prodigal son who fritted away everything from dad and mum let him now work to the rise and fall of a burning sun whilst you yourself seek out some frolic an fun

A song I wrote for Nina's birthday she's lock down with covid and the kids a soft swing song to say we all do love you take care xx

Paint me warts and all said Olivier Cromwell who had the skin of an old toad after his death he was hung at Tyburn then decapitated his head was put on a pole outside Westminster palace the parliament he'd spilt so much blood to put in place . I have used some archaic English which is still used in many Yorkshire rural communities to this very day.

Simmer the sapien inside a tin can especially in a stop start traffic jam and they quickly revert back to primitive man and that includes pacifists and your little old gran .

a musing about an artist girlfriend and her crazy cultural crew,  their works of art or gestation periods of genius seem to carry similar traits and time scales to those of real pregnancies .

This is a poem I wrote about the catastrophic consequences of having too much cosmetic surgery, leaving many patients in a reconstructive purgatory. The surgeons are often referred to as the Picasso's of plastic, but they can end up with foot-in-mouth or tongue-in-cheek . Sculpting with scalpel the face fantastic, but sadly you're left with a gargoyle freak.

The birds and bees have joined us from the flowers and trees you find them at Macdonald's an champagne bars lapping up our left over cream teas they'll hardly be floaty lite on the breeze after feasting on our fat fantastic sleaze .

Musing about an old friend who has now divorced and gone back onto the dating sites, looking for lust, not realizing that his old sex pistol has long since turned to rust. Men of a certain age with faint hearts and feeble flesh really need to be careful while looking for a piece of freshness. I told one friend that his dating site, 'Bumble,' might be better called 'Crumble' due to the dusty dispositions of its clients.

This poem is about our fixation with fear, which I must add is definitely here. We're all living like mendicant monks; our decadent café latte lifestyles are all but defunct. This virus hangs about us like the prophecy of Macbeth, creating constant hysteria as though it were a new strain of black death.

A musing about the private member's bills passed with rousing British Parliamentary pomposity it sounds as if they're committing a serious aural atrocity but it's usually being diatribed by someone whos spieling loudly through their own suppository .

A poem about a miserable old man who people nick named stan he once had a palace and a kingdom then unfortunately lost everything and was reduced to that of a normal man , alas such a tragedy to fall down amonst we the mere mortal clan .

Emperors Popes and Kings believe themselves to be the devine demagoguery even as children they  had whipping boys  to take away their punishment and guilt scapegoats for them to stripe and slaughter If the true devine deity did arrive on planet earth these mobsters and megalomaniacs would soon see them quickly murdered .

Back in the sixties heavy industry was extremely hard work the way the men eased their brutal burden was with non-stop humourous quirk today its seen as a social deride that one must hastily hide .humour has become a malignant tumor cut away by political correctness until its now all but a rumour .

Steve McQueen once said he came from the gutter and that he'd not done bad for an orphan boy , after a fifty different jobs from lumberjack, getaway driver, pimp and gunrunner etc he finally found his niche .

Covid 19 as seen through the eyes of a squirrel , watching them  fighting for scraps from the dustbins whilst under lock down ,they appear so confident and carefree without us I think possibly the only thing they'd missed about our absence is the leftover Ben and Jerry's ice cream .

When you turn on a virtual assistant, such as Alexa, Siri, or Cortana for the first time, even as an adult, but especially as a child, it feels like you've tuned into a new god or goddess of the wisdom channel. Children of the future will almost certainly rely less on parental guidance and instead immerse themselves in 'Space-book' while being comfortably cocooned in their futuristic homes, perhaps resembling something of a Walt Disney Crack House.

A musing about the craziness of the Boer war and how lord Kitchener was more obsessed with his missing pet starling showing terrible emotional distress whilst all around him in the Boer war hundreds of thousands of people were dying of disease and starvation due to his scorched earth policies especially women and children in the first ever concentration camps with conditions worse than those of the ones in Nazi Germany , thank heavens he's not here to sort out the coronavirus .

A poem about the rain cycle's continual celestial cleansing this perpetual purification of precipitation shows no discrimination of skin treating us all to the same asperging sanctification from sin .

A musing for Lily's tenth birthday, with a leather jacket to match my own design of course; Mother isn't not too keen, but I have a sneaking suspicion she'd like one too. By years ten , kids of today are Silicon savvy sage a decade of age and they're ready to fledge the family fold, far too cool for school, they just let god Google TikTok rule!!.

A poem written for a crazy young woman who I fell hopelessly in love with during the summer of 1992 whilst working in the South of France aboard yachts in the port of Antibes . Together we stayed in a huge stone pile called the chateau Laval courtesy of Jack et Michelle Olga was a green-eyed goddess with olive skin and a temper that she'd borrowed from the dog cerberus , I was a dotting fool but hay to everyone who's ever suffered from the lightning strike of love at first sight or as the Italians call it "amoure a prima vista" or in the French" le coupé de foudre", all I can say is that like myself i hope that you've never recovered and never do because it's a beautiful feeling of being processed by the madness of passion.

When children first acquire their tongue they sing along like a fledglings song and on the first day of spring they chirp their rhyming swing which to them is a brand new play thing without any of our restraining ring , their simple melodic crooning needs no interference or fine tuning but unfortunately then school comes along with its lexicon Lego box tongue "dislexicating " what was once a beautiful song leaving that innocent syllable swing broken the veritable birds fragile wing. kids then become too frightened to fly and drag their dislocated diction ar in a sling untill eventually as teenagers they at last cut loose from our apron string and once again learn to sing.

Krystyna Skarbek was a Polish beauty queen, a countess, and the longest-serving spy in Churchill's wartime Special Operations Executive (SOE). With a life expectancy of just six weeks, she managed to last seven years as a field agent, fighting against Nazi tyranny, only to be betrayed by her own trusted powers, the British. At the end of the Second World War, with a stroke of their metaphorical Judas pen, they turned her into a stateless refugee and leaked her name to Stalin's newly formed KGB. On the day she was due to fly out to be married and, alas, finally set free, she was murdered. She was the bravest of the brave, a true Femme Fatale of destiny.

A musing about two relatives who should never have entered into a doomed relationship due to their persuasions and personalities being planets apart—one a reclusive miser and the other an extravagant extrovert. Perhaps now, with the internet, we might make a much better match.com or sexual selection of it with God Google's precision and profiling us to the last detail of our mortal minutiae. It should make for some interesting pairings that are not left to the seven senses of the sapien.

This is a poem about the complacency of people and their attitudes towards the temperature rise of two degrees you'd think that the powers that be were waffling about a couple of cream teas or the price of peas, some have the audacity to blame the up and coming new economies such as the Chinese after we have been pumping out the smoke and sleaze since the early 1750's others think that it's just a temperature tease and come the next year we'll all be back to the big freeze I don't know what it's going to take to move the world's most powerful trustees maybe when it begins to back flush the drains up around everyone's knees .

The English aristocrats are completely crazy. One member of the aristocracy used to ride around his country estate on a giraffe-drawn carriage, and as a child, he had giant tortoises. He kept every type of animal in his house. This is a funny sketch about Thornton Harding the Junior and his obsession with exotic pets. He's building a kangaroo netball team.

Old Colonials talk of empire its quite shocking how they used to think of human beings as nothing more than chattels not just the natives but also the white workers and soldiers such as my old father now 95 years of age he told me during his time in India just after the second world War whilst protecting the British Raj who looked upon him also as their SLAVE OF EMPIRE .

When you're a teenager there's always one of your real tight crew who takes too much powder and drinks too much brew, we use to called him the Glastonbury gladiator , funny but with them having so much testosterone and adrenaline they also make brilliant parents when they come of age after finishing their thirty year teenage rampage .

A short story about doing a favor for a rich friend who lives in a country estate in the middle of no where . This then turned into a terrifying experience of trying to get back to some semblance of civilization.

A musing for a women we called Ann Summers due to her working there she asked for a birthday poem and caused me a writer's block which when I tried to explain she looked at me with utter disdain so I wrote it along the lines of if I bumped into her serving at the Ann summers shop Katie scowls at all men with indifference and takes fun from them Bravo darling It's no more than we deserve. Art work by Steven Richardson .

A short poem about riding aboard the busiest train in Europe, the 7:32 from Woking to Waterloo. One hundred million passengers a year pass through Waterloo, which creates both terrifying and tantalizing flesh-to-flesh points of view.

In the swinging sixties a sexpionage spy scandal took place called the Profumo Affaire unfortunately two of its players were amateurs and didn't know what the rules of their spy games were ; one was sacrificed as a scapegoat and the other Christine Keeler lived life under a long dark cloud until she died and all because they were enlisted by MI5 into taking part in a Russian honey trap for Queen and country which went dramatically wrong ; Dr Steven Ward a brilliant osteopath and gifted portrait artist was demonised and double crossed to the point where he took his own life with an overdose of sleeping tablets the poison chalice , Baron Profumo who was the cause of it all retired in disgrace cleaning toilets and working for a charity where he was eventually awarded an OBE to pin next to the MBE and bronze star that he'd won as a military hero in the war . A wax statue still stands of Steven Ward in the house of horrors at Madame Tussauds a terribly cruel homage to say he was only doing what the British secret service ask or doubtless ordered him to do . The scandal also brought an Iron Curtain crashing down on the conservative government of Harold Macmillan .

Growing up in a witches coven with all of them casting spells over everything and everyone I couldn't understand the horoscope stars then or now  , they  were always fighting for the Sorceresse's supremacy .

My words may seem a little callous and cruel that's because they are the comments I've collected and collated from the café clientele who share their space with these disabled individuals , by the grace of good fortune there walk we .

The high functioning alcoholic starts the day with a liberal libation of liquid sin, beneath their Celtic cream coloured skin once beat the heart of Gunga Din .

A poem I wrote to commemorate the courage of Christine the first transexual beauty queen who back in 1953 decided bravely to have her gender reassigned to its rightful sexuallity in order that she may be set free from the burden of having to live with her very unwanted masculinity. but it would be a long haul from the first roll of that snowball before the gay community finally made they're stand for equality at the pup we now know as stonewall.

The building blocks of life are made from nucleic acids , Lysergic acid has also been around since the dawn of time doubtless it would have been eaten by our early primate mammalian species increasing hallucinogenic and conscious brain capability hence where the homo sapiens may have got their jump start on the evolutionary ladder the human is now beginning to experiment with the capabilities of LSD administering it to elderly patients in order to awaken the parts the brain that had shut down due to dementia and other brain disorders with remarkable results.

This invisible foe of fear is here our café laite life styles are over we're living like trappist monk in self isolation cells our secular society has all but been defunk .

The Westminster war of brexit has spilt a lot of blood onto the backbenchers but who will win the feudal few or the milky middle class crew .

Another crazy  sketch about the life of Thornton Harding the junior an aristocrat who is mad about his pets he calls them by the strangest names such as his dog Greyfriars Warton Benson the junior who i might add is allowed to do anything even attempting to drive the car.

"The ghost in our mortal machine is like a spiritual symbiotic twin, a collaborative companion that shares in our secular sin. Silently and secretively, it hides within our sapien skin, accompanying us from the womb to the tomb, and then ultimately giving evidence on the day of our doom.

A short sketch about a friend who was constantly in and out of dry out clinics and the Shrink clink where he would telephone us to explain what his psychiatrist was doing and then in exasperated tormented tones shout "it's nothing to do with the drink " he called his depression Belfry the black bat.

The Mustang Men were Wild tameless stallions with sports cars suntans and gold medallions , once they were war faced warriors now they're warfarin worries they part of the night time disco scene , now they're scared of cottage pie and cholesterol cream .

Greta has an almost impossible sales pitch she's to demand that the incredibly rich dumped that expensive pieces of kitsch , they fly to the cop out climate meetings in their lear jets and show not the slightest hesitation of any regrets, her gargantuan glitch is to try to move these people towards the green dream of a beggars itch, but these dinosaurs who block destiny's drawbridge are mega rich and have no intention of surrendering any of their Kardashian kitsch. To quote Churchill sardonically, , "Never was so much owed by so many to so few".

A birthday poem for NENO it's called Black Rod because for the first time in Britain's thousand year parliamentary history the position is now held by a women , this spiritual and temporal appointment of power is long overdue for a changing of the guard . The willow may look soft an gentle but inside lies her heart of oak .

The old post office Harrogate is located about a century behind Greenwich mean time, the pensioners there are disciplinarians by design if you slip out of sync or cross the red line then these old soldiers would quickly bark you back into the align.

A musing about many of my friends and relative's who should never have entered into a relationship due to their personalities and persuasions being completely different, fortunately we now have the internet and super computers to marry our sexual selections together .

William marwood's long drop solution brought about a revolution in the British Empires approach for delivering a more humane method of execution .

A poem about the complacency of our society, which is tantamount to exuding a kind of trendy triviality towards the forthcoming temperature rise of two degrees. You'd think we were talking about the arrival of a couple of cream teas, not the apocalyptic destruction of our species.