Fog

I don't mind a little bit of fog.  It can be very atmospheric, especially if you are inside, drinking tea and eating toast and looking out at it.  It can be very atmospheric if you are properly rugged up and out walking in it (as long as it isn't too thick, of course, and there will be tea and toast when you get back home). It is not atmospheric if you are trying to drive along the motorway in it, though.  I don't much care for it then!

The fog we have at the moment is even more "atmospheric" than it usually is.  This fog also has quite high elements of British pollution from cars and industry trapped in it.  Furthermore, it has elements of pollution which have blown in from continental Europe just to add an extra element of excitement.  And then, to make it even more exciting still, we have dust mixed in with all that, which has blown in from the Sahara. Everything, but everything is covered in a fine film of dust!

Pollution levels around us aren't as high as they are in some parts of the country.  I have been looking at the UK Air pollution map this morning.  London and East Anglia are in the extremely high range. The central Midlands are in the high to very high range.  Tupton, however, is in the moderate range, as is Sheffield.  Better than it was yesterday, here.  And I have not been suffering from hay fever or asthma or any of the other pollution-based ailments that people around me have been suffering from. I haven't even particularly minded the dust.  It's not as though we had just had our car fully valeted before the dust hit.  Some people had and weren't exactly happy about it :-D

The air might not be especially polluted around here, but it is still very foggy.  As I said, I don't mind fog, especially when I am inside, armed with tea and toast, and looking out at it.  (I am inside looking out; I could have tea if I were minded, but toast might be a bit more difficult to arrange.)  However, you can have too much of a good thing.  It's been foggy for several days now.  A bit of sunshine wouldn't go amiss.



It's been Quite Exciting in Tupton lately, quite apart from the dusty, polluted air.  We noticed when we were coming back from the station on Monday that there was rather more traffic about than we usually find on the back roads around Grassmoor and Tupton.  It is true that QVR and Bridge Street are quite busy during peak hours.  Lots of drivers use it as a rat run up to the M1.  But there isn't usually a huge amount, and especially not at other times of the day.  There was on Monday. There was yesterday.  There were buses running outside our place. There was even the semi-express bus that runs between Chesterfield and Derby. There were traffic jams. It was all quite bizarre. So I looked up the local traffic alert - and Tupton was there, right at the very top, headlining the local alerts!!!!  There was a burst water main up by our roundabout and the main road was closed and traffic was being diverted right around, through Hasland and Grassmoor and through the back streets of Tupton.  I don't think some of those roads had seen that much traffic before, even if you added together every vehicle that had passed along them in the past decade.  It was a little inconvenient trying to cross our road, but it gave us some interesting things to look at from our lounge room. Marlo was practically glued to the window sill, when he was awake :-D

They've more or less opened up the main road again now. You can get from Chesterfield to Clay Cross, but not yet from Clay Cross to Chesterfield. Traffic levels are pretty much back to normal and the buses have gone. We'll have to find something else to watch.