Back in Bristol and the cats are in disgrace for weeing on the doormat and the temperature is minus something. The Mrs is not sympathetic and I am back in the garage at my desk wearing a thick coat, hugging my heater and still freezing. I suggested to the Mrs that the cats be forced to join me as punishment but she said that would be cruel. And so I suffer alone.
At the tobacconists the Daily Express warns of snowfall across the country and of freezing conditions. I point this out to the Mrs on my return but she thinks this is just right wing propaganda and I must continue to work in the garage.
The Daily Telegraph warns its readers who are elderly (i.e. nearly all of them) to wrap up warm. Up in Shipston in Warwickshire my deluded lefty step mother does not allow the Telegraph in the house and so my father must enjoy it only as a secret pleasure at the White Bear. The paper of choice for my step mother is, needless to say, the Guardian and so she is still preparing for global warming.
In case my father has not made it to the pub yet I have called him urging him to switch the heating on. The normal pattern is that it is not switched on – in order to fight global warming – with my parents trousering the non means tested winter fuel allowance to pay for another luxury cruise which of course does not cause global warming as a dose of warm air in Sheep Street Shipston would.
Not being utterly convinced about this global warming business and noting that there is already snow on the hills, the old man agrees that it might be prudent to turn up the heating a bit. As I tap away in the garage, while the urinating cats are rewarded for bad behaviour by being allowed to lie on the bed with the Mrs in a nice warm house, I think that I am somehow getting a bit of a raw deal.