Around 2000, after I had been working in Australia for 6 months, several friends came to Sydney airport to see me off back to Britain. They all commiserated with me , having to return to such a dreadful place where it rained all the time and the sun never came out (to say nothing of the awful food). ‘Wait a moment’ I thought to myself ‘I love living there’.
That would have been the end of it, but then the flight was delayed for 9 bloody hours. So I sat in the lounge and pondered the question : “Which is the best location on Earth to live — geographically speaking?”
I tried to be objective and to list the most desirable features one by one. Six weeks later I had a very clear and surprising answer — Britain. What delayed me most was the matter of climate — which led to a fascinating detour into the subject of ‘Human Thermodynamics’ which I had to more or less invent for myself.
I was shocked by the answer. I had suspected that the final choice would alight on somewhere close to the Mediterranean, in Southern France perhaps, or Tuscany. Not so; it was clearly and unequivocally Britain, not even Ireland, and I have never had cause to change my mind since.
Of course we are talking entirely about geography here, not history, politics or culture — which are all far too subjective.
If you want to see why Britain is so preferred, and unique, take a look at:
https://mjdisney.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/britgeog.pdf
whilst Human Thermodynamics, and the choice of an optimum climate, has a post of its own elsewhere on this site
Tags: history, human thermodynamics, my books