DIARY
VICKI WOODS Thatched cottages stand up pretty well to the exigencies of global warming, even after 300 years. Mine was built (as most were) long, low and narrow, and at a prop- er distance from the nearest flood-plain or water-meadow. It faces east, so its back is turned against the prevailing wind, and it weathers anything. Blow wind, come wrack, frost, hurricanes, brazen drought, blizzards, hailstorms — no problem. We enjoy a bit of weather out here in 'Jane Austen coun- try'. Not this year, though. For the first time since we moved here 20-odd years ago, the weather's really getting to me. I wake up in the morning like Mariana in the moated grange: I feel a-weary, a-weary, and would that I were dead (or at least inhabit- ing a nice converted warehouse in Hoxton or Clerkenwell, or wherever it is the fash- ionables are moving to now). Rain falls off a thatch in a thick, unbroken sheet like an iron curtain. Thatched cottages don't have guttering. Under my eaves there's nothing to attach a gutter to — just some wormy old oak beams at random intervals, and the packed and hollow ends of seven tonnes of wheat straw laid directly on top. A thatch is built in a gentle curve, like an upside-down boat, and the thatcher's aim — exactly like a boatbuilder's aim — is to build in just enough curve to ship water effectively (in fact Watership Down, two miles away, looks exactly like a giant thatched roof). This year, my thatch is shipping water like nobody's business. The straw sticks out for about a foot and a half, so I can avoid being hosed down by flattening myself against the wall and creeping along it like the old troll who lives behind the waterfall. But if I'm carrying shopping, or the log basket, or a pile of empties for the bottle bank in Kingsclere, God help me.
That Millennium Bug was weather, wasn't it? It was God in the machine, not computer glitches. This time last year I was in a constant fret about how to provision for the promised Y2K doomsday scenario. The pub Cassandras kept ticking off all the various horrors they'd read about in the Sunday papers. Power cuts, they said. Transport, they said. There'll be gridlock on the roads; trains won't run; petrol pumps won't work; supermarket shelves will stand empty; hospitals will overload. (Oh, how fanciful it all seems now, doesn't it?) I kept adding spare tins of beans and extra bog-roll to the Tesco list, and actually bought a new computer specially, on the assumption that a brand-new one would have enough sense in its chip to cope with turning 1-9-9-9 into 2-0-0-0. The man who sold it to me tapped his nose and said, 'You laid in plenty of water?"Water? No.' `Think about it,' he said. 'What's the most essential service there is? Water! The whole grid's been computerised now. And all those privatised water boards are run by tight-fisted businessmen worrying about their share options. You think they're ready for Y2K? Ha, ha, ha!' He told me he'd laid in 50 gallons of mineral water and bought four plastic rain barrels 'to flush the toilet'. I dithered around the soft-drinks section at Tesco for weeks afterwards, and finally made a panicky run to Jones the Shop on Boxing Day for two dozen litres of High- land Spring. (Which is still in the out- house.) It can't be just me who feels doomier now than at this time last year. All that Mil- lennium Bug hoo-hah was quite exciting, even if most people only half-believed it. Apocalyptic survival situations give you something to focus your energies on, like the Blitz. (Are we down-hearted? No! Who Do You Think You Are Kidding, Mister Hitler?) Whereas endless bloody dripping rain and no summer and travel to London taking three hours up and four down on an ordinary Tuesday just make me want to lie on the sofa reading yesterday's Telegraph until Geoff the postman squishes up the garden path in his chest-high waders to drop off the junk-mail. My neighbour the headhunter's wife rings up occasionally for a flood-watch. 'Don't try that low bit by Kitts's Farm on the Basingstoke road.' `Well, I hear the school bus is still stuck in the dip at Bishop's Green."Oh, God — so the ford will be impassable on the back road to the Swan,' etc., etc. We're very topographical. We need to be: she drives a Mercedes and I drive a new Volkswagen Beetle, both of which are horribly low on the ground. The other week she got water in her catalytic converter, whatever that might be. (About £300, she said it might be, not counting labour.) Iordered the Beetle in August from the Audi/VW garage near Tesco, a) because my husband said it was cute and would cheer me up; b) because my ten-year-old banger kept making howling noises when I drove round roundabouts and c) because I wanted a car that would last out another ten years. I got very impatient for it by September and kept ringing Brian to see if it was in yet. He said it was 'still shipping'. Eventually I asked him where the hell was it shipping from, and he said Mexico. But I thought Volkswagens were made in the Ruhr valley by technocratic and highly effi- cient Germans? 'No, no,' he said. 'In Mexi- co, ha ha. By Mexicans.' Nonetheless, it is very upcheering, even in the sheeting rain, and I'm sure I'd get out more if I didn't have to fret about wasting petrol.
Speaking of petrol, I keep hearing rumours about Jonathan Powell, who has been a loyal servant to Tony Blair for seven fat years. Some people think he might become our new ambassador in Washington because Tony will need to appoint a heavyweight to follow Sir Christopher Meyer (who has less than a year to go). Mr Powell has a network of Beltway politicoes who can keep Tony up to speed on the new president. Powell like Alastair Campbell — has the look of a man who's ready to bale out of Downing Street, and Washington is a very cosy mooring. Of course, his other alternative might be even cosier: he could simply head for a lucrative job in the City, with his shadowy friends in John Brown's entourage at BP. There's another poke in the eye for the People's Fuel Lobby.
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