If I was Prime Minister

The main trouble with this country - with the world, actually, is the fact that nobody asks me when they make the big decisions.

For instance, we have now hit January and all my friends in Australia, are currently frolicking in their swimming pools, lying on the beach, having barbeques and generally enjoying their extended summer holidays. (As I said in my last post, I am not at all jealous).

Everybody knows that January and February are the worst possible months in England. However mild it may have been in December, one can bet one's last pound that the temperture will drop several degrees came January. Everybody gets sick, so that the whole of life is lived to a backdrop of sneezing and coughing and snorting and wheezing, like some sort of Lutoslawski symphony and people walk around with drooping, glaze-eyed stares. It is still pitch dark in the mornings and the roads are filmed with a thin coating of treacherous ice. It's not much fun, but of course, being British, we have to torture ourselves further. We rush back to work as soon as the New Year is over, rush back to the gyms, there are calls put out for "dry January" and everybody becomes obsessed with their diets.

Now here is my solution to the problem. Henceforth, I suggest that we all stockpile sticky toffee pudding and red wine - and yes, maybe the occasional lettuce leaf - and turn January into Hibernation Month. This is how it would work. We would all stay at home, sleep, read, eat. On nice crisp days like this morning, we would take our dogs for walks to keep fittish, (because of course we would all have dogs in a world governed by me) and then we would marvel at the glint and sparkle of the frost on the grass, wonder at the bare branches of the trees, washed clean and golden in the low winter sunlight. Then we would go home and drink red wine and eat hot sticky pudding.

In Spring we would all emerge, with the blossom, fresh and rested, raring to bloom anew. Productivity would surely go up as a nation, we would all be filled with generosity and kindness of spirit towards our fellow man. "Bomb Syria? No, let's invite them to tea instead." 

I'm sure the world would be a better place.