Editorial
By Peter Fortune
The Landscape Special Interest Group Committee recently made a change to our policy about the Newsletter. We will continue to publish 8 editions a year, one in every month except February, April, August and December. However the Editions will be published on the 7th of the month with the copy deadline 14 days before to the publication date.
They say that an English summer is 4 warm days and a thunderstorm. Well this year in the South East of England it has been characterised by heavily overcast skys with poor light and a lot of rain! What’s more relatives who live in the North West report that things have been less conducive to getting out and about there. The European forecasts predict even worse weather with very cool temperatures in the North and of course dangerous heatwaves in the South. A friend living in Bavaria reports temperatures in the low teens when typically they would be in the mid twenties. Italy and Greece have had record high and dangerous temperatures along with wild and hard to control fires. Is this the future globally warmed world that we will have to get used to?
Garden Flowers © Peter Fortune
If it is, it will change the art of landscape photography considerably! We might have to get used to flat grey skys or bright blue (boring?) ones accompanied by dangerously hot temperatures. Add to this the impact on most of the third world will be so huge as to completely overwhelm the aid budgets given by the richer nations and extend the rush of people to the more temperate and richer parts of the world. The other problem brought about by global warming is rising sea levels which would cause many low lying counties like Bangladesh and the Seychelles to be completely submerged as well as most of the world’s cities including for example London, Paris, Berlin, New York, LA, Miami, Rio, Johannesburg, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
Those of our members who enjoy cityscapes may have to re-think their interests. All of this gloom and doom may be a couple of decades away in its universal impact but it seems unlikely that the world is not going to do enough to do any more than slow the impact down!
Time piece in St. Alban's Abbey © Peter Fortune
On a more to current note, this month we have an article by David Travis on the Circles that we should all be considering joining, the next Committee Member Profile on Viv Cotton, an article by Donald Stewart and Janet Lowe on a workshop to Linlithgow and Peel, an article by Ian Morris on Piers and Lighthouses, an article by Suzy Braye and Philip Swiers on Swaledale, as well all the usual features.
My birthday is in early August and when I was a boy in the 1950’s the August Bank Holiday was the first Monday in August. I was always pleased when it fell on my birthday. It was changed to the last Monday in August on the advice of the Met Office because statistically the first two weeks in September had more sunshine (not necessarily higher temperatures) than the first two weeks in August. Let us hope this year the change is worthwhile!
Peter Fortune, RPS Landscape Group Newsletter Editor.
Header Image: Rowers Passing Temple Island © Peter Fortune
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