Frozen Prawns and Melting Icecaps

My environmental sins may send me to Hull

I bought some frozen tiger prawns from my local fishmongers on Tuesday. They didn’t look like much, but my goodness they made a superb pasta, and at about a tenth the Tesco price. Virtuous me, I thought as I stirred them into my wok, supporting my local small shopkeepers.

Unfortunately, the reason I was cooking the prawns was that one of my dinner guests was a card-carrying, cardy-wearing vegetarian. I thought I’d covered all my bases: I’d carefully separated my rubbish into the 37 different boxes and bags supplied by the council; I’d thought of excellent excuses for every lightbulb ("oh no, that one’s got a strange fitting – we simply couldn’t get an energy-saver to match it"); and I’d even turned down the thermostat, to give the house that mildly unwelcoming environment-friendly chill.

And so my guest was kind enough to inform me that if I’d chartered a private jet and flown to Padstow for fresh fish I couldn’t have left a bigger carbon footprint. I might as well be napalming a rainforest as eating frozen tiger prawns from the Indian ocean.

All very annoying, particularly as he’s probably right. I don’t really object too much to these long hot summers we’ve been having, but if the greenhouse effect gets bad enough to sink all the low-lying areas of London, you all know the consequences: the people who live on Highgate Hill will become EVEN SMUGGER, impossible though it may seem.

What we need is some kind of temperature compromise. If the sea comes that little bit closer – I don’t think anyone would much miss Essex, for example – I can go fishing myself. I quite fancy the idea of buying a little boat and netting prawns in the drowned streets of Romford, where natural evolutionary processes would have produced unique, Burberry-camouflaged crustacea. And if the weather in Britain gets that bit hotter, I can abandon my budget airline addiction, and just hop a train to the Hull riviera.

So we need to start thinking carefully about exactly how much carbon we should pump out to get the temperature and sea-level just right. I think if I get some loft insulation, but continue to eat these delicious prawns, I’ll be right on the money.

Haymarket Counts Down for Christmas

There’s a strange ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ effect happening at the Haymarket Theatre, where ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’ is being replaced by ‘Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks’. Reports of revivals for ‘Five Guys Named Moe’ and ‘Born on the Fourth of July’ are still to be confirmed.

Regent Feet and Oxford Brogues

Oxford Street and Regent Street will both be closed off to traffic on December 2nd for the first time ever. Christened VIP – Very Important Pedestrians – Day, the famous shopping district will host a number of events and entertainments throughout the course of the day.

Dirty Money

Advance sales for London’s theatrical adaptation of 1980s film classic ‘Dirty Dancing’ have reached 250,000 tickets (£11 million), breaking all previous records. Celebrities including Richard Branson and Vince Vaughn are set to attend the premiere at the Aldwych Theatre.

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