Climate Change Lunch

Looking forward to 1pm. I do so enjoy our Climate Change Lunches.

We recognise that attitudes to Climate Change are not binary. There are people in  total denial, sure. And then there are the people who prod the tarmac on the drive suspiciously every morning, convinced that it may have melted in the night. But there is a whole spectrum in between, from "there's still hope" through to "feels a bit parky to me." And then there's the people who go for the totally counter-intuitive, and believe a new Ice Age is coming.

At a Climate Change Lunch, we project a series of scary statistics on the wall. The Believers greet each slide with groans and wails - while the Deniers argue the time scale is wrong, the measurement stations are in the wrong place, the graph is upside down, it's all a giant plot to install Al Gore and Polly Toynbee as a New World Government etc etc.

We have a guest speaker to tell us how doomed we are, we say the Global Warming Prayer ("Dear God, help us all") and then have lunch.

The meal is always something special. Today, for instance, we've asparagus, mange-tout, baby corn and birds-eye chillis flown in from Asia, Africa and South-America to ensure their freshness. But don't worry about the air-miles - we've planted a rose-bush in the cottage garden to offset it.

Our dessert has no air-miles at all. No, the lychees and bananas were grown in our very own electrically-powered hot-houses. I've got some daylight bulbs from the local "specialist" garden suppliers as well. I hate the middle of winter when you can't get a fresh, locally-grown pineapple.

And then afterwards, we'll be driving down to Luton Airport in the 4x4 motorcade to wave goodbye to our guest preacher, as she flies back to the States. The whole thing's very expensive, but I reckon it's worth it to save the planet.