Philobiblon

Okay, I was horribly overtired (I am, I have decided, just a little too old to do all-nighters by which I write 4,000-word academic essays between 11pm and 5am….), but reading about the bulbs of Kew Gardens just about reduced me to tears this week:

At Kew Gardens, where they have been measuring plant blooming times since the 1950s, horticulturalists have been staggered by how early some varieties have arrived this month.
The first daffodils opened at Kew on 16 January, a week earlier than 2007, and 11 days earlier than the average for this decade for that type of the flower. Crocuses also set a record at the gardens, flowering on 24 January, 11 days ahead of the decade average….
Since the 1980s, plant blooming times have come forward at a steady pace, but according to Ms Bell, such a leap forward from year to year is “completely unprecedented”.

Okay, it is finally turning cold again in Britain – I am going to have to bring out the winter wardrobe that I shoved to the back of the cupboard about two weeks ago as “too hot” – but this is all scarey climate change stuff. (And this only demonstrates the ecological damage the unseasonal conditions are doing – all of those plants, insects –someone was telling me the other day they say a fly on the street, in London, in January, birds etc are going to suffer horribly from the variation.)

It would be nice to think it is not too late to avert catastrophe, but I’m finding it increasingly hard to believe.

But perhaps there won’t be any civilisation left for other reasons. Was reading today about how Times journalists are being told how to write by search engine optimalisation. Depressing.