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I woke up with flu this morning. Hot and cold sweats
and a feeling of nausea prevailed until I was forced
to walk to the pharmacy. The lady looked at me sympathetically,
handed me some ibuprofen and said "Ah, the weather's
changing." I think that's the reason for every
illness here. When it suddenly got quite chilly last
December and I had the sniffles, she said exactly the
same thing as she slipped me some Lemsip.
 I
suppose there's something quite comforting in the fact
that the weather's to blame, though. When I lived in
New York and found myself with the sniffles, it was
pretty much always because of that runny-nosed homeless
man who nudged me on the corner of Broadway. When I
lived in London and woke with a cough, it was clearly
all thanks to the pesky teen reprobate chucking used
tissues about and smoking cigarettes on the back of
the number 8 bus.
At least for us desert-dwellers, fooling ourselves
that we're living the cosmopolitan dream, there's never
anything incredibly ominous at the root of our minor
illnesses. And aside from the flash floods of a couple
of months back, at least we pretty much know what to
expect, most of the time.
We've all heard about the earthquake that happened
in England last week. It was the biggest the country's
experienced in 25 years and was totally unexpected.
I think a hairbrush fell off a mantelpiece somewhere
and a few pieces of china most definitely rattled in
places closer to the epicenter - a small town close
to my parent's home, called Market Rasen.
Mum wrote me an email after hearing what had happened
on the news and said she'd thought it was a lorry going
past. She woke up for about three minutes and then went
back to sleep, oblivious to the earth-shattering event
she had just witnessed. For a whole day, everyone had
something to talk about in a town where the only exciting
thing to have ever happened before, was when some bloke
who used to live there wrote some lyrics that went on
to be used by Michael Jackson.
Thankfully, no one was killed and only one person had
to wear a band-aid for a while as a result of this sudden
event. But wait! This week there's even more excitement
- winds of up to 80km an hour have been battering British
shores. Mother Nature's going crazy.
Just the other day, thirty unfortunate souls had to
be rescued from a beachfront caravan park, after crashing
waves flooded the site. Shocking. Coastguard rescue
officers were apparently called in to help. We probably
shouldn't say it was their own fault for booking a holiday
in a caravan park in the first place - but these things
are frightening, none-the-less. Imagine reclining on
your two by three foot floral patterned bench, gearing
up to watch some snooker on your black and white telly,
only to feel your deluxe three-berther being battered
by gale-force winds from all directions. Before you
know it, your Tetley tea's been spilled all over your
new Carrefour sleeping bag and there's a helicopter
hovering over the space where the port-a-loo used to
stand. These things never used to happen in Britain.
Global warming is quite possibly at fault and if this
is the case, it's probably only going to get worse.
The next English earthquake might even make a few dogs
bark or a slate fall off a roof. Last week a number
of US bound flights were diverted to Birmingham International
Airport because of the weather - a tragedy in itself.
It's not entirely clear how long they had to spend in
Birmingham (or if anyone got out unscathed) but elsewhere,
18 trees blew over. Terrible. It's just all going wrong.
The whole thing puts my flu into perspective, really.
As long as the changing weather in Dubai is bringing
me the shakes and not shaking up my entire apartment
and knocking my pot plants over (we don't have many
trees, where I live), I think I can deal with it.
Posted: 13 March 2008
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