Forgive me for mentioning winds this week, but there's been an even colder one blowing across the Arctic, driven by an emptiness that is cutting the region's creatures to the quick.
For – and here one almost cannot bear to say the words – the BBC's Frozen Planet has finished. The camera crew has packed up and that nice man with the haunting voice is no more!
The result for wildlife has been more devastating than any effect of climate change. Some of the Arctic's finest luvvies simply do not know what to do with themselves. It's the same in the Antarctic. Two extremes of Polar despair.
One of the Orcas whose nose we saw protruding from a hole in the ice – we'll call him Julian – is almost desperate and was blubbing into his blubber this week. ulian was nominated for a Bafta after his work in Life in the Freezer, and was hoping for some sort of permanent contract after Frozen Planet. But so far, nothing, not even any advertising work.
The walruses are in despair too. Who can blame them after they hammed-up those tusk-to-tusk duels for the cameras so superbly? "David just thinks he can use us and then cast us aside. It's not right," said Adrian, a four-year-old male who once read for Lear at the National. "I think he's got a bit too pleased with himself, if you ask me-.Did I tell you Rafe Fiennes took a picture of me once from a cruise ship?"
He raises a gnarled flipper to brush away his whiskers, before slithering off across the ice, muttering "Blow winds, rage-I am a walrus more sinn'd against than sinning."
All these dear, sensitive creatures are wondering if they'll ever work again. Yes, there may be the odd thing for a cable channel, but where will their life be without David and the BBC?
The answer, surely, is for some sort of X-Factor-style tour for all these stars. One can see it now. The Emperor Penguins waddle out on to the stage at the T in the Park and gaze out at the sea of faces; suddenly, 20,000 youngsters have their arms straight down by their sides, hands out at right angles, and are doing their own version of the Emperor strut in response. It's the Penguin pogo and soon beats plankton, sorry, planking, as the latest You Tube sensation. What about it, David?
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