Imagine, for a moment, that you are a bird \u2013 perhaps a sparrow, a sand martin or a spoonbill. You\u2019ve just arrived in Britain on your annual migration from Africa. As it\u2019s now officially \u201cBritish Summer Time\u201d(BST), you quite reasonably assume that the sun will shining, the new-born lambs happily gambolling in the hills and the human population has, with relief, cast off its heavy scarves, hats and coats. What do you find instead? A country still shivering in the throes of\u00a0 winter \u2013 in marked contrast to the same period last year, which was the warmest since 1957.<\/p>\n
The UK Meteorological Office has (reports the \u201cDaily Mail\u201d) \u201cextended its \u2018Cold Weather Alert Service\u2019 (which usually finishes at the end of March) by an additional two weeks because of the unrelenting bad weather\u201d and (notes \u201cThe Guardian\u201d) predicted \u201cbelow-average temperatures and possible snow until late April\u201d. The Guardian (along with most of the UK media) has published Met Office statistics indicating that March 2013 was \u201cthe joint-fourth coldest\u201d the country has experienced since 1910, with an average of 2.5 degrees centigrade and that the worst was in 1962 (1.9C). It was also \u201cdull\u201d, complained the Daily Mail.\u00a0 \u201cA normal March day would usually see 3 \u00be hours of sunshine whereas this year we saw only a little over 2 hours per day\u201d.<\/p>\n
So what should you (still in your role as a bird) do and where should you go? Possibly, follow the example of other avian species who \u2013 as the RSPB (Royal Society For The Protection Of Birds) has pointed out \u2013 have been forced to search for food in urban gardens because of the harsh conditions in the countryside. The birds, of course, are not the only ones who have suffered: Sheep farmers in many parts of the UK (especially in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, Cumbria and the Pennines) have had to dig into deep, freezing snow in a too often forlorn & desperate attempt to rescue thousands of their new-born lambs. At the Hall Hill Farm in Lanchester, County Durham, those lambs that have managed to survive have been provided with \u201cknitted woollen jumpers to help keep them alive for their first few days of life\u201d.<\/p>\n
For many farmers, the situation could have a \u201cdevastating financial impact\u201d. With this in mind, the supermarket chain Waitrose informed the Guardian\u00a0 that it \u201cwould be delivering special macs (light plastic biodegradable & recyclable coats)\u201d to protect the lambs belonging to farmers with whom it works in Wales and the West Country. The same newspaper also revealed on March 28th<\/sup> that \u2013 due to the \u201clate blooming of popular flowers this year\u201d \u2013 the retailer John Lewis is \u201cstocking fake daffodils for the first time and has also started selling artificial bluebells\u201d. According to the \u201cObserver\u201d journalist Simon Neville (in his column on March 24th<\/sup>), John Lewis \u201c which should now be selling the latest spring fashions, said glove sales were up 40% last week on a year ago and the sales of heaters were up 172%. Instead of sandals and summer vests, they are selling winter boots and thermal underwear\u201d. Furthermore, that the cold weather was likely to adversely affect DIY (Do It Yourself) stores and garden centres, with \u201cHomebase\u201d already announcing that sales are down by 2.8%.<\/p>\n A survey conducted by ITV News Anglia has reached a similar conclusion. David Rayner, Chairman of \u201cScotsdales\u201d, near Cambridge, told them that plant sales were \u201c74% down in March\u201d and that people are currently \u201c just not interested in gardening\u201d. \u201cGood Friday\u201d, declared Terry Rayner, owner of \u201cTerwin Seeds\u201d near Bury St Edmunds \u201cis traditionally the time to plant potatoes\u201d. But not this year: \u201cIt could be another two or three weeks before they go in\u201d. Although gardeners customarily \u201csow crops like carrots, beetroot and lettuce by mid-March\u201d,\u00a0 they are unable to do so while the ground remains \u201ctoo cold and hard\u201d. William Dyson, the curator of the Great Comp Garden in Sevenoaks, Kent, takes an altogether different view. He anticipates that the Spring (when it finally appears) will be \u201cAmazing & colourful\u2026All the plants that flower between March & May will come out together: Magnolia, Narcissus, Tulips, Azaleas, Rhododendrons\u201d.<\/p>\n Until that happens, one option available to you (as a bird or a person) is to head back down south for a month or so. By doing so, you\u2019ll be emulating the stampede to get out of the country that occurred during the festive weekend: \u201cEaster Exit: Record numbers flee frozen Britain to find the sun\u201d proclaimed the London Evening Standard on 27th<\/sup> March. Likewise the headline in the Guardian the next day: \u201cOK, that\u2019s it\u2026we\u2019re out of here! Fed-up Britons flee the cold\u2026\u201d The Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) estimated that 1.7 million people in Britain would go abroad for Easter compared to 1.5 million in 2012, with Spain as the preferred destination and Egypt & Tunisia \u201calso top choices\u201d. Online bookings with TUI Travel (owners of Thomson and First Choice) \u201c to resorts such as Fuerteventura in the Canaries, Greece and Tunisia increased from 2012 by 73%, 45% and 37% respectively\u201d.<\/p>\n So why exactly has it been such a long, tough winter? \u201cDaily Mail Online\u201d and the Huffington Post\u2019s Clare Nasir both attribute much of the responsibility to the fact that the \u201cjet stream\u201d (which \u201cnormally brings milder weather\u201d) has been pushed to an unusually southerly location and is currently flowing round the north of Africa\u201d. Climate Change campaigners agree with them \u2013 but insist that it\u2019s because \u201cGlobal warming melts the ice and warms the sea which changes the jet stream\u2026which controls northern weather\u201d. The \u201cSocio-Economics History Blog\u201d fiercely contests that view, on the basis that \u201cFour out of the last five winters have been colder than average\u201d. Astrophysicist Piers Corbyn has asserted that \u201cBy any measure, world temperature is declining\u201d. The assessment of\u00a0 \u201cThe Economist\u201d (in its March 30th<\/sup>-April 5th<\/sup> edition), under the caption of \u201cApocalypse Perhaps a Little Later\u201d is that \u201cTemperatures have not really risen over the past ten years\u201d. The argument rages on\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Imagine, for a moment, that you are a bird \u2013 perhaps a sparrow, a sand martin or a spoonbill. You\u2019ve just arrived in Britain on your annual migration from Africa. As it\u2019s now officially \u201cBritish Summer Time\u201d(BST), you quite reasonably assume that the sun will shining, the new-born lambs happily gambolling in the hills and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":629,"href":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions\/629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/colindgordon.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}