Saturday 6 November
Day seven was pretty nondescript. It was a cold, rainy Saturday and whilst I had been contemplating joining the rest of the team out at the Global Day of Climate Action march, the weather was more than enough to put me off. But, despite having a perfectly fine desk in a perfectly comfy room at the flat, I was keen not to let a day of being allowed to mingle with the masses go to waste.
What I had completely forgotten, though, was that the media centre at COP26 was not in fact a normal office, but essentially a fancy gazebo built from metal constructs. When the wind howled through the centre, we were not safeguarded from its draughts. When the rain ramped up, it sounded similar to the aggression it would register were you in a conservatory, which noticeably scared a lot of the London-based media people around me.
A couple grabbed the arms of their colleagues as the top floor of the hub shook with the next gust. “Gosh, Winter is hitting hard,” one whispered at the desk to my left. “If this level of climate change isn’t enough to push for change, nothing will,” the other nodded back. I would have loved to inform them that actually this was nothing out of the ordinary, but when they both jumped as another howl struck the glorified tent, it didn’t seem like the time.
It was a day of reading and writing, and sadly very little celeb spotting. I did however indulge in one of the single best things about COP26: their raspberry Danish pastries – price not quoted because it was definitely not one of the best parts of the conference – which helped ease things along a little.
Sunday 7 November
Little to report as this was a rest day for all COP26 delegates. There were some protests happening, but nothing that I was covering. Again, a day of reading, writing, but this time sadly no Danish.
