How hot is hot enough?

Stop Global Warming!, originally uploaded by Abri_Beluga.

My partner and I rarely agree on an ideal temperature. I'm sure that if nuclear proliferation turned nasty and we saw the incandescent wave of flesh-melting fission rolling towards us his last words would be something like "... at last! Where's my speedo?"

I'm partial to more temperate climes and so the global warming issue is one that I try to keep abreast of. A colleague of mine has been trying to convince me that upstanding members of the scientific community have debunked the 'myth' of global warming and that what we're experiencing is a temporary anomaly - the global equivalent of stepping out in a sweater when in fact a vest would have done nicely. This sort of contrariness resembles the infamous medical wisdom of Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, amongst others.

I'm inclined to believe that human beings are at fault - we are impatient innovators. So many ideas take hold before the consequences can be perceived. Lead pipes witnessed the birth of modern plumbing and poisoned it. Chlorofluorocarbons kept our food cold and germ-free as it dissolved our fragile atmospheric sunblock. There are more of us than ever before, more of us with cars, computers and our ungainly, contemptible 'carbon footprints'.

It may just be my Baptist upbringing speaking, but I think it's more convenient to assume that you screwed up, intentionally or not, pay your tithes (now called 'green tax') for absolution and then make a doomed but noble attempt at self rehabiliation. The worst that could happen is that a few excess trees are planted. Oh, the horror.

90s hair

90s hair, originally uploaded by david.stockwell.

To misquote Oscar Wilde, if you can't be a work of art, you should shave one into your head. My stylist seems to have taken inspiration from The L'Oréal Studio Line logos of the early 90s (What frigid heart is not warmed by the memory of those naive, synthesised jingles in the spirit of "Jane Seymour Set Two / Is Something New / Spray it on / Dry hair and your style will / Stay there").

In London, home of the Mercurochrome Mohawk, my 'fro went largely unremarked upon, except at work where I won the weekly Homer Simpson-inspired "Doh" award. I shudder to think what lengths I might have to go to stop traffic in this controversy-proof metropolis.

I do wonder these days if I'm a little bit past the age where these gestures tip over from art to anachronism. I always assumed I'd be the little old lady in the purple coat and red hat, so really this is all just practice for when I'm good-and-proper-eccentric.

Even my parents, who weathered all sorts of rebellious antics from The Tatoo Incident through to dying my eyelashes, have begun to see the lighter side of my precociousness - and they live in Pretoria, a city where the word Satanist is applied to everything not directly endorsed by the co-conspiring Dutch Reformed church and their public relations unit, the powerful tuck-shop mothers association.

Perhaps it is time to lay down the shears and my personal battle with conservativeness and apply my attention-seeking to more appropriate causes... I'm sure there's a cause out there that needs me... something that demands intelligence, philanthropy and oddly matched socks.