I'm thoroughly enjoying all the panic about the smog, I must admit.
Such fun to peel back the layers of the hysterical reporting and find admissions in the small print that it's actually 'smog-like', not smog. Hm, yes - they admit, eventually - it is more of a natural weather phenomenon than the actual pollution, per se, as which they are billing it. If I were it, I'd sue for misrepresentation. And libel.
And isn't it helpful of them to warn us that breathing in dust particles may cause harm to people with respiratory difficulties, too - we'd never have worked that one out.
AND (second paragraph starting with and - if it was good enough for Steinbeck...) I love the fact that they all report it as if it's some strange new phenomenon.
The whole thing is utterly fabulous and an example of the journalists of this fine nation in their usual fine fettle, frothing at the mouth and whipping the general public into a frenzy of fear. Dust off your old bird 'flu masks, ladies and gents - your lives could depend on it. Or not.
When I was growing up in Belgium, we gleefully awaited the arrival of "la poussière du Sahara" - the brick red dust which would coat everyone's cars to some degree or another more years than not.
We were all somewhat awe-struck by this exotic, magical desert sand which was transported hundreds of miles across sea and land, high high high in the sky, and deposited, as light as feathers, on cars, windows, streets - anything which stayed still for long enough. In years when it didn't happen, we'd feel as swizzed as the years when it didn't snow at Christmas.
And yet (third time) here we all are, on the other side of a channel narrow enough to actually swim (although not for me - I'm more of a floating around on a lilo kind of bird), having a total panic attack about the whole wonderful thing. Which, although rare in this country, has happened here before, on numerous occasions.
Unfortunately, "Slightly Unusual But Entirely Explicable Weather Situation" doesn't make a great headline.
Here's what happens next.
When it rains, the raindrops will gather up the sand and dust on their way to the earth, and the dust will no longer be hanging around, ruining the atmosphere, like a drunken uncle at a wedding. Well, I hear drunken uncles at weddings are unpopular - personally, they're usually my favourite guests.
The papers will then herald the overnight disappearance of the terrifying return-to-the-pea-soupers-of-yesteryear smog as Most Mysterious. Sigh.
Meanwhile, whatever shall we do? If only we lived in a country where it rains occasionally! If only this were famously the most showery month of the whole year on our temperate, sceptred isle! Oh... hang on...
xxx
