Why we shouldn’t turn our drizzly isles into tropics
THE dawn chorus is most pronounced at the moment. Every day this week I have been woken around 5am by the chaffinches, wrens, coal tits and robins trying to outdo one another in bombastic operetta.
But there is another bird, arriving a few hours later, that has proved the most unwelcome sound: the tell-tale squawk of the ring-necked parakeet.
This thuggish emerald green interloper has already taken over the garden of a friend living closer to the centre of London than me – and driven away resident songbirds from their territories in the process. Now its red eyes seem fixed on my back garden.
Various stories abound as to how a bird of paradise ended up colonising grimy London, but my favourite is that a flock escaped from Pinewood Studios during the filming of The
African Queen in 1951. Strange things happen when we try to conjure tropical conditions on this Atlantic island, but the lessons of history have not been learned.
This week news has emerged from Hollywood that the British film industry is proving a more attractive proposition as they can shoot here, basking in the warm glow of tax breaks and simply edit out rubbish weather.
Various producers and directors say they now use CGI technology to “shoot around” any unwanted weather and make a drizzly day in Margate look like Monaco in high season.
Well I for one am most against it. We should be proud of our capricious climate – this weekend is no different with widespread thundery showers forecast – rather than edit it out.
I refer the producers to the denouement of a classic British film
Four Weddings and a Funeral, when Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell declare their love standing in a torrential downpour. “Is it still raining?” MacDowell asks her lover, “I hadn’t noticed.”