"The Ice Age Is Coming"

The Clash - London Calling

Chorus:

The ice age is coming, the sun is zooming in

Engines stop running and the wheat is growing thin

A nuclear error, but I have no fear

London is drowning-and I live by the river

I was born in 1976. This The Clash song was first recorded in 1979. I was obviously too young to appreciate it but this band kept on playing on the radio until I started appreciating it and started to listen for the earliest songs. This one was recorded again in 1988, the year I turned twelve and was already chasing after punk songs. But I never payed much attention to its lyrics until recently. What really got my attention was that first phrase in the chorus; "The ice age is coming". This brought back my childhood memories, all through the eighties, when I'd have to listen to the news on the only television in the house, when scientists and governments were in a scare because the world was getting colder. The Ice Age was coming. Scientists were certain of it and were dishing out solutions.

Well, the Ice Age didn't come. And now they assure us global warming is coming and they have all the solutions.

Remember, Remember

Remember remember, the fifth of November is a line from the film "V for Vendetta" that always jumps to my mind whenever Guy Fawkes night is close by. And although I rather sympathize with the message of standing up to the "Man", I do not agree with Guy Fawkes' solution. Blowing up the Parliament, government and King with it, is in it self a fascist act: I don't agree with them, and so they must die. Not to say, of course, that it is an act of terrorism.

In this terrorism frightened era, it strikes me as very odd that the British culture should celebrate an act of terrorism, and a failed one as it is the case. But history and cultural memory will always play these tricks on the present. People remember only what they want.