I hesitate to write anything about the weather. It must be supremely boring to read about how much it is raining halfway around the world. But I must. Sorry. It is pouring here. Not very cold, but very, very wet. This afternoon my backyard was under water and when I nipped out to go to the shops, I got really frightened. The road outside my complex was flooded with at least 10cm (perhaps more) of water. Torrents of dirty rainwater were rushing out of the manholes and shooting a metre or two into the air. Even on the R44 that passes by my house it was impossible to drive next to another vehicle in the second lane, because the wake would wash over your car. For once, everyone was driving way below the speed limit. Strangely enough I must have caught a particularly heavy downpour, because 15 minutes later as I was driving back along the same road it was much clearer.

I am particularly sensitive to the rain, because I believe that this house was built on an Indian graveyard. Well, no. But the builders probably would not have minded building there. The gutters are fine but the downspouts are too long and the water is pumped into the soil.  Though I’m not sure if that makes much difference: the backyard does not slope down to the front, so a lot of water collects there. It is not good for the foundation or the walls. Moreover, the upstairs bathroom sill is weakish: it will probably collapse soon. There are already huge cracks on the inside, and both my neighbours’ sills have fallen down and had to be repaired. I don’t think the rain will make much difference to this problem, though.

I pondered the heavy rain today and I realized that, while somewhat inconvenient, it does not really put me off much. I could easily imagine that it would not sit well with people from other, hotter countries. In the same way that it is difficult for most South Africans to imagine that daily life could go on normally when there is a couple of feet of snow outside. But on it goes. As I said, it is merely inconvenient. The most serious effect of the weather on most people is probably the water supply and to some extent the food supply. Sure there are occasional flooding, but this affects only a small portion of the population.

So, it is strange to read that 250 children die in Peru because of cold weather, or that 374 people die in Australia because of a heat wave. These are probably the elderly, or people with heart conditions, or some such. A reminder that we have not mastered our environment as much as even the optimists believe. And ironic that our inability to protect people against the weather goes side by side with our ability to affect the climate (allegedly).

I’m not a climate change believer or non-believer. From a distance it seems that the battle is not over, and that the scientists, politicians, and general troublemakers (on both sides) are still sorting out whether it is a fact or not. If it is true…hmm, I’m tired, so let me try to concentrate and be precise…if it is true that (a) the climate is changing, then I wonder what we should do about it. And if it is true that (b) humans are responsible, we should perhaps desist from making things worse. But it seems that the damage (if it exists) has been done and the best we can do is to try to live through it. Apart from hurricanes washing Eastern American houses into the Atlantic, I have not seen much activity. Rising sea-levels will probably not happen overnight, but I’m puzzled by the absence of any hints that it is happening.

I guess that climate change won’t exterminate us, but it could make a big difference to human civilization. Could the human race survive without Twitter and Facebook? (Probably very well, thank you.) But suppose we had to hightail it to higher ground without any electronics whatsoever? Modern medicine? I wonder if our nuclear reactors are climate-change-proof. This makes me want to read some post-apocalyptic fiction, and of course Wikipedia has a page for it. I notice that I have read some of these books: Day of the Triffids, The Stand, and On the beach.

Whoa! Getting a little too depressing. I had better go to bed.