Thomas’ idea to get down with the kids turns out not to be the G.O.A.T.
This heat has gone to my fellow residents’ heads. If only they had put air conditioning in their apartments like I did in our bedroom, all this probably would never have happened.
For a start our lovely retirement facility, Ash Lodge, was designed more on the basis of just in time than just in case. It is a model of efficient building, but clearly there was no economic rationale in the 2000s for designing it to deal with temperatures over 35°C.
Our local water company has had some technical problems so we are currently surviving on bottled water. I was a great supporter of bringing market discipline to the public sector but I never was totally convinced on water. Still they have very polite chat bots.
Last but not least, the schools are closing early as they are overheating and the children have decided our underground carpark makes a good cool playground for games involving a lot of shouting and screaming.
I had expected they might do something useful like hire a water cannon to get rid of the congregating children.
So I retreated to our beautifully cool bedroom, closed the curtains and settled into re-reading my treasured collected works of Hayek. Meanwhile Thomas, my lovely husband, persuaded Robena, our hippy herbalist, to join him in setting up a committee of the few residents with any energy left in the heat to discuss what to do as a community.
I had expected they might do something useful like hire a water cannon to get rid of the congregating children. But no, Thomas is always one for the bigger picture and according to him this is just the beginning. As a result, we now have goats in our garden.
Why goats you wonder. Well apparently, they are an incredibly resilient source of protein as they can eat anything. However the goats have yet to yield any significant amounts of milk, while most of the plants in our communal garden have been eaten and the goats have a very particular fragrance of their own. Even our more demented residents are beginning to get rebellious despite Thomas’ best efforts to explain his “bigger picture”.
The goat also appreciated the blossoms judging by the rate at which she munched through them.
It all came to a head on our solstice open day when traditionally all the residents invite their relatives. Normally the whole garden was available for this event, but now everyone was squashed into a small area surrounded by the wafting smell of goat. Then Rowena, returning blissed out from worshipping the rising sun with her Druid friends, managed to let a goat out. Greta, as this goat had been named, headed straight to the one patch of garden preserved, the Jubilee garden made up of red, white and blue flowers lovingly tendered by many of the now unhappy residents. The goat also appreciated the blossoms judging by the rate at which she munched through them.
At this, Margot’s rather neanderthalesque brother-in-law, Lenny, grabbed Greta the goat and a chart started shouting, “roast it, roast it”. (Margot lives in the Cedar wing of Ash Lodge and is quite a sweetheart. But she was married to some chap from Dalston whose wealth was of questionable provenance and who disappeared around about the time of the Brinks-Mat robbery). Anyway, Lenny’s ranting galvanised a mob to form and drag the goat to the front of the apartments where they slit its throat, grabbed whatever they could to make a fire and started roasting it to whoops and cries of “net zero stupid”.
It was soon after that shocking scene when Prinz Charlz, my old friend and alternative entrepreneur, dropped by to tell me about his latest enterprise. As ever he has unrivalled economic insight. He calls it protection bartering and reckons it could get really big as what he calls the “long emergency” unfolds. Under his scheme, Prinz Charlz and his mates will ensure the goats are safe if he gets a share of their milk and meat.
Seems like a great example of supply arising to meet demand, but Thomas is a bit uncomfortable with it. However after another goat ended up on the roasting spit, he realised it was a good deal. Prinz suggests maybe they could also develop a line in goats’ cheese.
