ANOTHER YEAR HAS NEARLY RUN ITS COURSE. So why do I feel five years older? Like Dickens' John Jarndyce, I spend more and more time in the Growlery - the room I reserve for humphing and tutting and in which every sentence begins: "And another thing..."
     Surely it isn't just me? The world seems to be deteriorating even more quickly than I am. Have you read the 2015 report by the BSAC Sturminster Parva Branch Oceanographic Institute? Of course not. But if you had, it would probably have gone something like this...
     "The climate changes predicted at the turn of the century are already exacting their toll on the planet.
     "We now know that the flooding that devastated New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was the effect of Archimedes' Principle, as too many politicians in Washington buried their heads in the sand.
     "Yet sea levels continue to rise unchecked. Only last year, the branch expedition to the Maldives had to be abandoned after six futile weeks. We couldn't find them anywhere.
     "Mind you, this was partly due to a misunderstanding. Colin thought Arthur knew the marks but Arthur had jotted them down on a beer mat in the Cat & Hacksaw, then brought along the wrong mat. It turns out that they were the marks for Lincolnshire, which sank without trace last October. In any case, Arthur assumed that Big Dave would have his GPS - which he did, but the batteries were flat.
     "Natural disasters aside, global warming has brought a few benefits. Club Med has opened up on Baffin Island, for instance. Fish-farmers in the north-west of Scotland are now rearing ready-poached salmon. And with so many polar bears stranded on ice floes, the cost of shooting commercials for Fox's Glacier Mints has plummeted.
     "Scientists working on new energy sources have pioneered a process for harnessing the hot air produced at environmental summits. Even a relatively modest symposium can produce enough electricity to light a small town for a month. Such energy promises to be far cleaner, ecologically speaking, than that generated at Kyoto from pure bull****.
     "As debate becomes more heated, it is hoped that conventional power stations will be phased out entirely and replaced by a huge windbag in Hull.
     "Of course, the first victims of climate change are marine animals. Despite strict fishing quotas many species are in rapid, perhaps terminal, decline. Japan and Norway are between them still landing 15 cod per year for 'scientific research'. So the price of a small fish, medium chips and mushy peas has topped the £200 mark - marginally more than a litre of unleaded.
     "On the other hand, certain species are flourishing in the warmer conditions. Giant squid are so plentiful in British waters that they have been designated a hazard to shipping. Their tentacles are far too large for calamari, but they have been successfully fashioned into truck tyres - while the suckers enable SUVs to climb vertical rock faces.
     "Birds of Paradise, once found only in Indonesia, now fare better on Tyneside than their human counterparts. Nightclubbers who once queued virtually naked outdoors in January are now expiring in their hundreds from heatstroke.
     "Other species are adapting faster than had been thought possible. Squirrels have ceased to hibernate. Instead of burying their nuts for the winter, they use them as balls in a rodent version of Rugby League.
     "Old English sheepdogs have developed the ability to shave, and feral cats in Petticoat Lane Market have taken to exchanging their winter coats for sunglasses." Where is it all going to end?