I think Insulate Britain is hilarious. Although admittedly I rarely drive on the M25 and I’m not being mucked around at Cop26 in Glasgow now. Fifty years ago, when I was a little kid, there were public information films encouraging viewers to get their lofts and boilers lagged. You’d probably be hard pushed to find a single soul in Britain who doesn’t approve of loft insulation. “I fancied doubling my gas bill! So I ripped out all that fibreglass crap in my loft and chucked it in a skip!” These are not words any householder is likely to utter.
Loft insulation is like home baking or Carol Kirkwood or Strictly or a lovely autumn sunset: universally approved of. A jolly good thing. No need to get all steamed up trying to popularise it further, still less risk your life dodging irate motorists on the M25.
The peculiar mismatch between Insulate Britain’s gentle, homely goals and its barking-mad tactics are as if a nice bunch of well-meaning people started campaigning for something everybody agrees with — like, say, how they ought to rerun old episodes of Morse more often on the telly — by putting on Slipknot masks and burning down St Paul’s Cathedral. I see a middle-aged man in a beige pullover threatening to hurl himself off the Whispering Gallery if people don’t vehemently agree with the proposition that that Kevin Whately chap seems like a really nice bloke. Insulate Britain is like the hijacker in the Seventies who barged into the cockpit on an internal flight in the US. “Take me to Chicago,” he growled menacingly, pulling a gun on the crew. “But sir,” said the pilot after an embarrassed pause, “we’re already going to Chicago.”
Many issues are simply not controversial enough to require drastic protest. There’s just no need, because so many people already support the cause. All you’re ever going to do is turn some of them off by being such a nuisance. It’s as if a group of concerned citizens got together and decided that Kilner jars really ought to be in more widespread use, on account of being so sturdy and practical and airtight, and also they’re quite eco because you keep Kilner jars for ages, don’t you? That’s the whole point of a Kilner jar. And also because they look nice, up there on the shelf in the kitchen or pantry, if you’re lucky enough to have a pantry.
But instead of maybe getting a petition up, or writing to the local paper, or their MP, or perhaps holding an exhibition of all different types of Kilner jars through the ages (not that the design has varied much, I believe) and generally pursuing other inoffensive Kilner jar awareness-raising activities, the little group decides their case would be best served by kidnapping a leading Tupperware executive and threatening to blow her head off.
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It’s as if yoga adherents eager to promote their favoured exercise reckoned the best way was to burst into the local Pilates class and set about the bastards with pickaxe handles. Or if people who prefer cats to dogs started hunting down puppies with sawn-off shotguns. You get the idea. It’s all so utterly disproportionate.
I think I’ve made it by a whisker
November — and thus Movember — has crept up on me this year. I usually stop shaving my upper lip in mid-September, the long lead time being necessary to nurture any visible growth by around about now, and then something vaguely respectable by the end of the month. Two and a half months produces what most men can develop in a week; pathetic, I know, but at least it looks like I’m making the effort. This year everyone will just have to assume I’m in favour of testicular cancer.
Two other scenarios regarding my near-total absence of facial hair haunt me. One is being a farmer in Afghanistan whose village is overrun by the Taliban. “Grow a beard!” they command. “I’m trying, guys, honest,” I tell them when they come back to check months later. The other is being shipwrecked with a load of hirsute Mediterranean blokes, or perhaps the India cricket team, who always seem to have absolutely luxuriant bristles. After many months we’re rescued and hold a press conference. My companions have all got super-rugged mountaineer-style growth. I’ve got a scraggly goatee, like a 17-year-old. Everyone laughs.
I don’t suppose the first set-up is likely to play out. Nor the second, in all probability. Doesn’t stop me worrying, though.
Happy to come out of isolation
As a longstanding fan of my own company, I was encouraged to see the University of Reading study that found many of us actually enjoyed the extra solitude afforded by the early months of lockdown last year. Some respondents reported increased unhappiness brought about by lack of company; many, however, said they’d relished the extra time alone, associating it with positive feelings of competence and autonomy. Yay! Solitude gets a terrible press, so it’s good to hear the benefits of isolation talked up for once. Alone does not always equal lonely.
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Mind you, in my house, lockdown had the opposite effect on my space. From previously often being on my tod all day, cats apart, I spent much of March 2020 to September 2021 sharing living quarters with three other people, aka my family. How novel! I have to say I liked the change, much as those in the survey enjoyed the shift the other way around. Variety is the spice of life etc.
