When you read this you may be clutching a hot water bottle or watching your smart meter whirl round like a dervish. Today in September as I write, the curtains on the south of the café are drawn tight, the windows everywhere in my street are a wide-open invitation to any impulsive cat-burglar in the neighbourhood, and I am wiping sweat from my stinging eyes. Thirty-two degrees. An Indian summer. How unexpected after that disappointing August. Though if you went on your holidays to southern Europe, you probably spent many hours inside teaching the kids to play cards, because it was forty-five degrees out there on the beautiful beach. Get this writing done. Where was I?

Brown rocks show where the glaciers retreat; it’s on telly. Maybe on TV, better. Get on. They warm up terrifyingly faster than the reflective ice that once covered them. It is happening faster. The faster it warms, the faster it will warm, the more inexorably the climate is changing so that islands disappear and deserts extend and whole populations of desperate people will soon have to flee to anywhere that still manages to grow food.

Excuse me, I couldn’t help overhearing you muttering over your laptop. Yes, it’s me. I recognised you. You haven’t lost weight in all these years, then! I do need to point out, Miss Clever, you know we used to call you Miss Clever Clogs? We have no glaciers in these latitudes. By and large, we don’t do hurricanes or tornadoes or volcanoes or earthquakes. Nowadays, anyway, so calm down.

You don’t really mean the immigration problem will get exponentially worse, please! Of course the Government will finally have to do something about it, yes, a bit more effectively than now. Well why don’t they just send them back? They are mostly nothing but economic migrants.

Why are you asking me to repeat that line Miss Mahon made us learn in Nature Study when we were in Form Two? Yes I do remember. Migration is the travelling about of birds animals, fish and people, to find better conditions for themselves and their young. Something like that. I did remember. So what has that got to do with all these people invading us because we are a soft touch? And anyway, it’s the people smugglers who are the real problem. Don’t you read the papers?

I mean, seriously, how am I supposed to do anything about all this stuff people keep telling me? Beggars putting up tents in shop doorways. I saw this one sitting on the pavement yesterday, with a cardboard sign saying HOMELESS, and believe it or not, I counted six bottles and cans of different drinks beside him. No, I’m not suggesting it was alcohol, it was all those fizzy drinks that are really fattening and bad for you. Six. People just shower stuff on them, ignorantly. Yes, they mean well, but it’s lack of education. Anyway, I can’t stop, Maisie’s asked me for a gelato. Eight pounds a portion, would you believe it? But it is organic.

Before I run, I will just say this. All this greening the country side, re-wilding, bringing tigers back to the Highlands or whatever it is they say. It’s nothing but fiddling while Rome burns. All that land they’re covering in daisies and buttercups could be growing crops that would turn into bio-fuel. There! Norman had a tree planted in our front garden when we went to Japan in 2016, he’s very eco-minded. Like me.

But you can’t cover the place in trees, now can you? And acres and acres of barley and wheat in Scotland just goes for whisky. It’s a disgrace. We don’t even drink spirits, our doctor was a bit solemn with us last year. Now all that alcohol grain could be turning into aviation fuel so even you could not tut-tut at me for popping down to South Africa every winter. Don’t interrupt, let me finish. I will have my say for once.

You can’t turn the clock back. No. Freedom is a human right.

I asked you not to interrupt, specially with silly questions. Don’t ask me what a right is. Everyone knows what a right is. It’s something you want. I have my rights, like I said, a right to freedom of speech, and a peaceful life. And quite frankly, I wish the news programmes would stop harping on about all the bad unpeaceful news. My milk comes in a cardboard pack now, but there’s not a single headline about how that saves plastic. And you can see the silliness of all these rules if you stop to think. What are young people supposed to do with pizza boxes when they eat in the street? Giant waste bins? Or are you saying they must stop eating? I despair sometimes. Why do I despair? You do keep cross-questioning me.

I despair because it is all getting away from me, so I don’t feel I’m in control, not really. Ukraine, Iran, Congo, Afghanistan. I turn the news off, I really do. And all that plastic waste in the sea and on every tropical beach. And what you were on about with the glaciers. Then there’s all this advice about getting your superfoods while I know there’s millions of people starving and drinking dirty water. And this humid heat, I hate it, and Norman says it’ll be worse for longer next year. And you say every year. Well it troubles me. So what am I supposed to do about it? Shoot myself?

You sit there telling me to keep complaining, and put up solar panels, and pick up litter. Gandhi? Now what’s Mahatma Gandhi got to do with it? I see, he’s an example of just sticking to your idea, and living it.

But when everyone else blasts on like there is no threat, like there’s no tomorrow? Or like there is a tomorrow with a nice growth economy making some of us very comfortable. And I mean even Jesus said, The poor are always with us, or something. There has to be poverty, Norman says, it’s part of the economic growth model.

Well I’m not Gandhi, walking round in a dhoti spinning yarn. Though today I could do with a bikini or something. All you’ve done is depress me thoroughly.

Well now I can see you trained to be a therapist, making me blame myself for everything. But everything frightens me if I let it.

OK, it’s me, I have depressed myself by spelling out all this. And I know I sometimes sort of shout loudly to convince myself of things, like all that about using grain for bio-fuel. Though maybe for a year or two? No.

There is a lot to be depressed about, though, you have to admit it. Maybe there is just a lot more threat in the world now than people ever knew before. You talk about man-eating dinosaurs? Metal weapons? Disease scourges? Hordes descending from the hills? Yes, I can see there have always been terrifying threats, and it seems to me that when they were obvious enough, people did unite in the face of them. Like in the second world war. The war effort, they called it. My mother says how everyone, almost every single person, saved string and darned their socks, did fire-watching against incendiary bombs and grew vegetables and knitted woollens for the troops and did all manner of inconvenient things for the greater good.

So I do ask myself why are we still fiddling, while a huge part of the globe burns and another part floods? We should be doing something, I know. But I have to admit I do enjoy going to South Africa in the winter, and using plastic to keep food nice in the fridge.

Do you know, I wish I had not interrupted your writing a few minutes ago. You’ve started me questioning things. You’ve made me quite upset.