Earth Day

 I won’t do it. I refuse. I know, it’s really tempting. Those of us who love words are really struggling. We want to write about it but we mustn’t. 

He knew what he was doing. He also loves words. He knew that we’d want to write it. The words, being such nonsense but close enough to a well-known insult, to make us write them. He could see the newspaper headlines.

On Earth day, our Prime Minister chose to make a joke about ‘tree huggers’, firmly insulting the scientists and anyone who has half a brain cell, who believe that climate change is a real issue, that will make Coronavirus look like a walk in the park. He did it by not using the actual phrase but mixing his metaphors. Fluffy bunny brigade, is another insult he thought about using. 

He did say that it wasn’t just a problem for these people that he had made up but a problem for everyone. But then he made some incomprehensible noises and said the phrase again. If it weren’t impossible to believe, we might have thought that our Prime Minister was off his face on some new street drug. The other world leaders looked around and shook their heads. They looked embarrassed for us.

As I’ve started to write I’m wondering if it was such a bad thing. I think it was his way of letting his big business buddies know that he doesn’t take the problem seriously and so won’t be doing anything to affect their money making abilities but what if he knows that nobody ever reads climate change stuff? I don’t know why. Even I don’t read it and I’m interested. What if he knew that the only way to get people to know it was Earth Day was to make up an incomprehensible phrase that we’d all want to write about?

Now I’ve confused myself.

So, here goes. Bunny huggers of the world, it’s time to sit up and pay attention.

Get me a bunny!