The Time Bubble

It falls in every Christmas movie you've ever seen, is in every TV Christmas special and advert. It's all over Christmas cards. We sing songs about it and even spray fake stuff all over the windows. But as I approach my 47th Christmas, there is one burning and ever more desperate question on my lips. Where the **** is the snow? A ridiculously over optimistic Christmas card scene Quite honestly, I have never ever seen what I would class as a White Christmas. I don't know what you call a White Christmas but I don't agree with the bookies definition, which is a single snowflake falling on the roof of the weather centre in London on Christmas Day. Sorry, one snowflake does not a Snowman make. A few bits of left over grey slush by the side of the road from a snowfall a few days earlier also doesn't count. For me, a proper White Christmas, like the ones you get in the movies, happens when snow starts falling after it gets dark on Christmas Eve so you wake u...

When I launched The Time Bubble, I conducted an interview with myself via this blog to tell you all about the new book. This seemed to be well received, so I've decided to do something similar for my new book, Global Cooling . I thought perhaps it might come across as a little egotistical for me to conduct the interview myself, so I've asked my old friend, Gerald Mincen, to do the honours. Over to you, Gerald. Gerald: Good Morning. So, Global Cooling, what's this one all about, then? Jason: Hi Gerald. It's a story about unexpected climate change, plunging Britain into a devastating winter, and the characters' attempts to survive. Gerald: That's been done before, hasn't it? Like in that movie, The Day After Tomorrow? Jason: This isn't really like the Day After Tomorrow - that was a very sensational movie where things happened almost overnight and there was snow hundreds of feet deep. I like to think my scenario is a lot more realistic, as th...

So here we are, almost at the end of March and winter continues on with seemingly no end. How do we react to this? Well as a country, with a lot of general mumbling and grumbling, a lot of sensationalist headlines from the usual suspects in the media, lots of ill-informed opinion all round really. Yes, everyone has their own cliched opinions, or things they have overheard others saying that they repeat because they think it sounds clever. It's not just the weather this applies to - just the crap most people spout in general really - a kind of verbal plagiaristic diarrhoea - VPD I shall call it for short. Here's the fairly predictable front page of today's Express. The coldest March weekend for 50 years they will have us believe.  So - amongst all the hyperbole and VPD, what facts can be gleaned from all this? Because that's what I deal in - facts, numbers, statistics. Unlike most people. We all have a Great Aunt Gladys tucked away somewhere who reminisces on ...