This evening it’s all gone. Was that winter? In the words of Sir Saint Bob Geldorf: Is that it? I nearly blinked and missed it. At least I had an opportunity to dig out my Polish fur-lined boots. I have a wardrobe full of heavy winter gear purchased during my time in Poland, which thanks to climate change I may never get to wear again. Shame -- that rabbit fur chapka was so Dr Zhivago.
With global warming and all that, a real winter will become one of those things that old people will reminisce about, like free education and post offices. The young people will laugh scornfully and say we are making it up, as they gather round the Christmas Day barbecue in their shorts and sunglasses, with no concept of what “a cold snap” or “freezing fog” means. I will show them Harold’s old beige cardigan, and they will gather round in puzzlement, trying to figure out where the legs went.
But I remember the winter of 1963. I was a child, obviously, but I’m sure I remember patches of ice still hanging around in June from the late snows of April. We would toboggan down the slopes of our vast grounds, while Nanny Basia looked on fondly from the dacha, and afterwards we would grill kielbasy on the fire. Then Papa would take us on a ride around the estate on the big sled pulled by six white horses, while Tomek stayed home and read Mickiewicz, being too frail for the bitter cold of the Tatras in winter. The peasants would turn out to greet us, dressed in their best rags, and we would throw orange peel at them and laugh at their lack of fashion sense. Such happy times! When Papa defected to the West, leaving us all to fend for ourselves, the Party took everything back, and we survived by selling iron filings scavenged on the outskirts of Nowa Huta steelworks, until we were taken pity on by a defrocked Orthodox priest and got to England hidden in the props basket of a Russian ballet company.Once at Heathrow, we leaped the barriers shouting 
“Asylum! Asylum!” in our native tongue, and ran to join Papa in his palatial council house in Slough. However, I only have to hear the “Internationale” sung in Polish to feel the tears welling up, in remembrance of better days.
If you are Dutch, you should definitely see this film. And possibly make plans to leave the country. I can't imagine Belgium's going to be much safer, being as flat and low-lying. And if you are a polar bear ... oh dear. I can't even bring myself to tell you what's in store. Just don't bother taking out a mortgage.
UN report on climate change which was released last Friday, including some of the Commissioners, anti-fraud and admin Kommissar Siim Kallas entre autres, sending communications to their staff encouraging them to support the five minutes switch-off. Pity, then, that they did not see fit to switch off the lights of the Berlaymont, which sat there blazing away like an ocean liner blissfully unaware of the bloody great iceberg in front of it.
Scrumpy came over on Christmas Day for lunch and still hasn’t left, having taken up residence in my basement. He’s no trouble, and potters about looking after his plants. I don’t venture much into his lair, as it’s rather smoky and smells of old socks, but he pops upstairs quite a bit for meals, to use the internet, and to watch telly. And the bathroom, about once a fortnight. Apart from that, he’s quite good company really and a mine of information - he has taught me a lot about organic food, saving the rainforest, and where to get your mobile phone charged for free. His dreadlocks were looking a bit droopier than usual yesterday. It was coming up to a rather sad anniversary, he explained. Sid Vicious died of a drug overdose 28 years ago, on 2nd February 1979, aged 21, three months after having found his girlfriend Nancy Spungen dead in their hotel room, stabbed possibly by him, possibly by a third party – no-one will ever know. They had spent most of their idyll in filthy sheets shooting up heroin. Now it might not be your or my idea of a fine romance, but they were, apparently, deeply in love. He penned a bad but poignant posthumous poem to his beloved, which you may read on his entry in Wikipedia.
Sid’s death was about as dramatic as his short life. It is rumoured his mother (a former heroin addict herself) may have administered the fatal dose to her son. When Nancy’s mother refused to allow the lovers to be buried together, “Ma Vicious” as she is referred to, allegedly either (a) drunkenly knocked Sid's ashes over in the bar of Heathrow airport or (b) climbed over the cemetery wall where Nancy was buried and scattered them on her grave. As a last hurrah, Sid’s rendition of “My Way” was released just after his demise. He certainly did. Do it. His way.
Had he lived, Sid would have been 50 this year. I imagine he may have grown into a sort of British Serge Gainsbourg with time.
As a tribute to the ultimate rock ‘n roll icon of self-destruction, Scrumpy is holding a “Sid and Nancy Day” today, a bit like the Lennon-Ono bed-in, but not in the Amsterdam Hilton, and without the press. I am taking the place of Nancy. Apparently I don’t have to take heroin or get stabbed, it’s all very symbolic. I just have to leave yesterday’s make up on, not brush my hair, not wash, be hung over and slouch around all day in a dirty ragged old T-shirt. Which, as I am having a day off work today, is exactly what I was going to do anyway.
