A Smoggy Day in Crapchester

How was the smog for you?  Did it reach level ten where you were? (It occurred to me that if it is, apparently, this easy for air pollution to reach the maximum of the scale used to measure it, perhaps it  is time to come up with a new scale?  Or at least revise the current one to go to level eleven).  I must admit that I was a trifle disappointed. When they announced that we were going to have these smog drifting across the country, I was expecting something like the London smog of the fifties - so thick that you wouldn't be able to see your hand in front of your face and other people reduced to vague shapes looming through the rolling vapours.  I think that I watched too many old films when I was a kid.  You know the sort I mean: those black and white melodramas, crime thrillers and horror flicks set in studio-bound versions of Victorian London or San Francisco, the streets smothered in artificial fog.  Anything could be lurking in that fog (and frequently was) - Jack the Ripper and other assorted murderers, bootleggers, body snatchers, even Egyptian mummys on murderous rampages. 

Consequently, the sight of thick fog has always given me a thrill.  Anything could happen when it descends.  Once familiar streets suddenly become dangerous thoroughfares full of mystery.  Sadly, all this latest smog brought was a hazy day, wheezing chests and stinging eyes.  Well, for some people.  Personally, I felt unaffected.  Indeed, I was so disappointed with the whole business that I did my best to worsen the smog - in the hope that it would thicken up and add some mystery to my boring day - by driving around aimlessly in my (diesel) car.  Sadly, it didn't work.  I could still drive around without my headlamps on and didn't find myself having to avoid Yeti or Sasquatches looming out of the fog into the middle of the road.  No mummys showed up, either.  So, next time they forecast smog, perhaps the authorities could do something to thicken it up, like getting those fossil-fuelled power stations to belch out some extra thick black smoke to add to the mix.  It would make my day.