Climate Change

In common with many people, I tend to dress according to the prevailing weather. So when it's hot and sunny outside, I will wear lightweight trousers and a short-sleeved shirt. Conversely, if, like today, it's freezing and pissing it down, my clothes tend to reflect that fact by being heavier and thereby better able to afford protection against dampness and colder temperatures. Thinking about it, however, this is rather an arse-about-tit way of going about things.

Why should I have to modify my wardrobe to take account of the weather? Why, for a change, can't the weather alter itself to take account of what I'm wearing?

The fact that it doesn't is, in my opinion, due entirely to the pernicious influence of the Abrahamic, monotheist religions of Judaism, Christianity and, more latterly, Islam.

Back in Ancient times, when everyone had a pantheon of gods for each and every purpose, things were a lot more efficient, of course. If, for example, I was a Greek who'd bought a heavyweight, water-proof tunic which I wanted to wear that day in order to demonstrate my taste and sense of style, I'd simply pray to the relevant god in the morning and the requisite weather would be delivered within the hour. (Or failing that, inscribing "Ganymede is a cunt" on the back of the garment normally provoked the Greek rain god into sending a deluge.) Or if someone else wanted to show off his new, lightweight "breathable" cuirass, he'd pray to Helios and have the sun god shine rays upon him. And so on.

Given this state of affairs, it wasn't uncommon back then to see people within the same, small area, or even within the same room, tracked by their own personal rain clouds, sunbeams, blizzards, or whatever, all corresponding to whatever it was they were wearing. And, as an added bonus, it made the jobs of Ancient Greek meteorologists that much easier: In order to give a fairly accurate forecast, all they had to do was find out what the best-selling items in the Ancient Athenian equivalent of Top Shop were on any given day.

Unfortunately, all this changed with the advent of monotheism and the redundancy of multiple gods. The Ancients Israelites soon discovered that "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" also meant "Thou shalt have no other weather except a uniform, rather hot, arid climate." It made no difference if you bought snow boots and a kagool and prayed for a blizzard - nothing much happened, climatewise. (Unless you were an Arctic-dwelling Israelite. But, then again, you were still buggered if you then prayed for temperatures of 140 degrees.) Which is why desert dwellers all now wear much the same sort of garments and why Bedouin versions of magazines such as GQ and Vogue are all so dull and uninspiring. We now suffer from "one size fits all" climatic conditions to match our "one size fits all" god, with geography and season now being the only determining factors.

But do we have to put up with this? I don't. I shall become a Hindu. They have several thousand deities. Amongst them I should be able to find gods and goddesses who correspond to my each and every item of apparel, even unto my socks and condoms. Therefore "Kal ka din aap kay leay achha ho."