My trainers are damp. There's a sort of cold wet feel to them. Yes, you're right, I got soaked. Yesterday I ventured out to find a certain seminar venue and with the weather looking like drizzly showers, I decided it might be wise to take a baseball cap with me. Oh, yes, and a rain resistance jacket. You never know. These survival items really should be made compulsory for everyone risking their lives in exploring the rainforests of Darkest Wiltshire.

It started drizzling not long after I set out. Nothing unexpected, so I carried on. Not to be outdone, the weather decided it was time for an all out effort. The heavens opened, as they say. It really did pour down.

Gradually I got more and more uncomfortable. My jacket was indeed rain resistant but not rainproof. Water was seeping through and I found myself with a soaking wet tee shirt under my weather protection. Raindrops collected off the brim of my sodden cap, my nose, and bizarrely, my right ear. Cold water was dripping past my genitals. You cannot even begin to understand how uncomfortable that can be. It was like being two months old all over again.

My clothes are still almost as soaked as they were yesterday afternoon. And my trainers are still damp. But this time, my mobile phone survived intact. At least the jacket kept something dry.

Space Or Bust

Stephen Hawking is in the news again. This time he's telling the world that we need to get off this planet and into space if we want to survive as a species, and that the next two hundred years will be crucial. Erm.... Really?

Firstly human beings aren't adapted for life in space. Our bodies are sensitive to the enviroment in such a way that we physically atrophy out there. I suppose he means we should seek out new M class worlds to dump our rubbish on, but that sort of Star Trek fantasy doesn't really work does it? The variety of planets even in our own system doesn't encourage the thought that we'll find another planet remotely suitable to stop and have sex. There's only a narrow range of enviroments we can realistically survive in.

His answer I suspect would be the old science fiction school of colonisation. The imagination runs riot with pictures of some happy family content in their stylish colony base, sat somewhere on a planet that would otherwise popison us in ten seconds flat. Some might argue we could change the enviroment. Terraform the world, and make more like home. So far, our attempts at changing the enviroment here on earth has resulted in the Toyota Prius. Not really a success is it? Be honest, is the Toyota Prius amphibious? Someone really didn't think it through, did they?

Which brings me back to Professor Hawkings optimistic Dan Dare future. To say that our future is guaranteed if we travel in space or last the next two hundred years is a little naive. Human beings are not guaranteed survival. We are a species adapted to a range of conditions present here on earth. It wouldn't take much to render mankind extinct, and we nearly ended up that way around one hundred thousand years ago. Some researchers believe the last few humans were eking out a living in South Africa back then.

What Professor Hawkings fails to address is that specialisation in biological terms can make survival easier, provided the correct conditions exist. If the enviroment changes, the specialised creatures are the first to volunteer for the fossil record. Modern technological civilisation is very comfy. Survival is usually without much effort. But as our global civilisation becomes increasingly complex and co-dependent, we increasngly risk a sudden disaster we can't cope with. What if our planet suffers a change we can't handle? It's happened before. Somehow, I doubt the Toyota Prius will save western civilisation, nor get us into space, nor save us from space aliens hell bent on destroying Mankind.

But hey, my father bought a second one. The earth feels safer already. Who needs spaceships going where no-one has gone before? Well... Me. It fills a vacant spot in my dreary afternoon television schedule.