Author: R J Adams

I try to walk every day, whatever the weather. Today was no exception. I live in the wilds of Brittany so it’s rare to meet anyone on my ambulatory excursions. I love to walk. It’s a time to allow the thoughts to have free rein. While appreciating the late autumn foliage still clinging to the trees, the mind is elsewhere, allowing thoughts to drift into consciousness. Halfway through my walk, I found myself weeping. It was raining lightly, so no one would have noticed even if there had been anyone around, which there wasn’t.

I realized I had been thinking about my late sister, who was killed in 1994 by some guy driving a skip wagon. He ran over her with his truck while she was waiting on her bicycle at a red traffic light in London. She died instantly. I was never able to find out what happened, or what the consequences of it were. I was living and  working at the marina I managed, and had to take care of my young daughter. I couldn’t rush to London to sort things out and there was no one I could leave my child with. My mother was in a state of hysteria and my father was just not good at dealing with that kind of thing. It was my sister’s ex-husband, the father of her daughter whom she had just taken to school that day, who went to fix everything and take care of the thirteen-year-old girl.

I  drove my parents and daughter to her funeral. My mother, always mentally fragile, was beside herself, and as a fanatical Christian, was totally disgusted because my sister had opted in her will for a Spiritualist funeral service. My mother was not slow to show her feelings and chastised Michael, my sister’s ex, for allowing such ‘evil  rites’ to take place.

Michael was a very nice guy, but my mother saw to it that he was never welcome at my parents’ house after that. He went back to his native Scotland, taking his daughter (my niece) with him. I never saw either of them again and since no one in the family had an address for them, I was never able to make contact.

I never mourned my mother. I had no feelings left for her. Whatever she may have thought of Michael, she no reason to abandon her grand-daughter. I didn’t go to her funeral. She died at the age of ninety, eighteen years after my sister’s passing.  The few times I’d received a letter from her, the envelope and the paper inside were completely covered with Bible verses and Christian hymn texts. I don’t know what the mailman must have thought.

So it all ended there.  Except for the memories. They don’t go away.

Which is why today, twenty-eight years later, I found myself weeping in the rain.

My chimney sweep came today to clean out the stovepipe of the pellet stove in the kitchen. He’s not just a chimney sweep, but a plumber and a heating engineer, also.

I see him at least once a year, unless I need some plumbing done in the meanwhile. He’s English but has lived in France for nearly twenty years.

He enjoys coming to me because he says, not only does he get a good cup of coffee, but he also gets my prophecies of what will happen in the world over the next twelve months.

“Well, go on, then,” he insisted, taking a swig of coffee, “what’s going to happen to us by this time next year?”

I grinned rather sheepishly. “Sorry,” I said, “there’s just too many variables.”

He looked mildly disappointed.

Not only do we have the war in Ukraine which is certainly going Ukraine’s way at present, but what will Putin do to change that? Tactical nuclear weapons are certainly on his table. He has already managed to put the biggest nuclear power station in Europe out of action and in a highly dangerous state.

Then there is Africa and the power struggles there likely to reach a flashpoint as crops die and water becomes ever scarcer.

In the United States it is perfectly possible Trump will become President again in 2024. Okay, that’s two years away, but will his tribe of faithful right-wing Republicans gain control of the House and Senate in November? Who can say at present? There do appear to be some flaws in the ranks, mainly due to the overturning of Rowe v Wade by the Supreme Court of Trump appointees, but nothing is certain there.

Right-wing politics is rearing it’s ugly head again in Italy. Does this mean a split in Europe? Italy’s right-wing have roared before to little effect, but we have an energy crisis on our hands and a possible winter of discontent, which can turn politics on its head, and there’s nothing the political right-wing enjoys more than public disquiet and possible rioting.

This week in Uzbekistan Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, Turkey’s Erdogan, and a rash of Iranian leaders are meeting in a ‘summit’ intended to show, (according to the Kremlin) an “alternative” to the Western world.

Over all of this hangs climate change: millions homeless in Pakistan after the worst floods in living memory; near continuous wildfires in the U.S. and the worst drought in living memory. “In living memory” is fast becoming such a norm that people hardly take notice any more.

Huge wildfires engulfed the south of France this year as the whole country suffered the worst drought “since records began,” which makes a change from “in living memory” but means much the same.

Bolsonaro’s Brazil has now brought the vast and glorious Amazon rain forest to its tipping point. This vast carbon sink, once one of the great lungs of the world, is now emitting more carbon dioxide than it is sequestering, as Bolsonaro and his brothers rape and pillage and murder, destroying habitat and habitation not only for the animals, birds and insects that rely on it, but also the indigenous human population who called it home.

The melt of the Greenland Ice Sheet will now raise sea levels by twenty-seven to thirty centimetres, inevitably, even if we reduced carbon emissions to zero tomorrow. Twenty-seven inches will devastate coastal areas of the world and make millions homeless. It is a very conservative estimate, because of course we will not reach net-zero carbon release tomorrow or next year, or in any foreseeable future.

These are just some of the bare bones of what is happening right now in the world we inhabit.

Given all these facts, and facts they are, I would be arrogant in the extreme to attempt to prophecy what was going to happen in the next three months, let alone a whole year ahead.

“Yes, but things are going well in Ukraine, aren’t they?”

At this moment my chimney sweep’s brush got lodged somewhere high up in the stovepipe, and the next ten minutes was given over to such heaving, sweating, and occasional swearing, that it was not necessary for me to answer him. Eventually, it was released and the job was done.

After he left, with a cheery, “See you next year, then,” I pondered on what I may have said to him had not his brush problem intervened. Are things going well in Ukraine? I doubted the thousands of dead civilians, the grieving relatives of those killed, the suffering of the many with permanent injuries, tortured, beaten, electrocuted, homeless, would be likely to have agreed with him.

Ukraine war: Hundreds of graves found in liberated Izyum city.

 

As the world becomes even more awash with plastic and the ocean creatures give up their lives to our pollution, at least one country is making an effort to do its part to curtail this human devastation of our world and our home.

Not only is France trialing a three year opt-in system for junk mail, (French residents have always had the ability to opt-out of junk mail)…

…but a whole raft of new laws have been introduced designed to outlaw single-use plastic for plates, utensils, coffee-cups, and single-use plastic bags and wrapping.

As the English language online French website, “The Local” today reported, many new laws are coming into force to curb the single-use of plastic.

They are:

Throwing away non-hazardous waste that can be recycled (eg. plastics, cardboard, green waste) is being gradually prohibited.

Aggressive advertising prohibited outside of sales, in an attempt to cut consumption. In reality France’s laws on sales and discounting are already pretty strict, but this further limits them.

New single-use plastic products are banned, whether they are entirely or just partly composed of plastic. This includes plates and cutlery, straws, stirrers, expanded polystyrene boxes (such as those used for take-aways or at fast food restaurants), lids used for take-away cups, plastic confetti and all objects made of oxo degradable plastic.

Distribution of free plastic bottles in companies or public events is prohibited.

Recycling containers have to be placed in supermarkets to allow customers to dispose of the packaging of their products.

The production and distribution of single-use plastic bags is prohibited.

Drinks served in a reusable cup presented by the customer must be sold at a cheaper price

Large businesses of more than 400 m2 have to provide reusable containers (free or paying)

Bulk retailers have to accept containers brought in by consumers

Distributing promotional gifts in mailboxes is prohibited

A network of drinking water fountains will be created in an attempt to cut the use of plastic bottles

A ban on plastic cups and Q-tips came into effect last year, thanks to a 2016 law on biodiversity, aimed at reducing the amount of plastic waste that ends up in the oceans.

Meanwhile, a ban on plastic wrapping for fruit and vegetables has been postponed for a year due to the pandemic.

From July, all restaurants will have to allow customers to bring their own containers for take-aways and doggy bags.

This is all part of a EU wide campaign to drastically cut the amount of plastic waste going to landfills or into the oceans, or dumped on the shores of other countries by unscrupulous so-called “recyclers.”

Plastic already invades our water supplies. It has been found on the tops of the highest mountains and in the deepest depths of the oceans. It is in our bodies as micro-plastics and no-one as yet can ascertain its long-term effects on our health.

2.5 billion single-use cups discarded every year in the UK alone?

France and the EU countries are making inroads into the problem of plastic waste and it’s time for other nations to follow suit, before it overwhelms us all.