Yesterday's weird weather over London and much of the UK - the skies turned an eerie yellow early afternoon, it went quite dark for several hours, and the sun was fetching shade of vermilion - was apparently due to a load of dirt, smoke and Saharan sand being sucked up into the atmosphere by the actions of Hurricane Ophelia.
Of course, that isn't quite how some people wanted to interpret it, and the inevitable "social meejah frenzy" was whipped up by the press - phrases such as "apocalypse", "the end of the world" and "Nibiru" were being bandied about, just about overtaking the words "me", "Taylor Swift in a kebab shop" and "Trump" as topics of conversation by teatime.
Well, if you want an apocalyptic vision, what could be better than that 1950s Cold War-Sci-Fi mastwerwork of paranoia The Day The Earth Stood Still? And who better to present this classic than the "Tired Old Queen" himself, Steve Hayes?
Red skies over London
It was wonderful. I enjoyed it peacefully by myself first thing in the morning and marvelled. The crazy talk only took off once it hit the south east!
ReplyDeleteSx
That's Londonium, for ya! Jx
DeleteHad it been the apocalypse, I think the skies would have been that way all over the world, not just the UK. Here in Cleveland it was gray and cloudy. Depressing perhaps, but hardly the end of the world (indeed, it's sunny today.)
ReplyDeleteCleveland - isn't that the place where the river caught fire? I imagine conversations at that moment in time might have followed a similar pattern...Jx
DeleteThe Rust Belt in general can seem a bit apocalyptic.
Delete...and yet it's so romantically named. Jx
DeleteIt was most peculiar, and very impressive from my office which is the only tall building for miles about. I just wanted to get out and about and experience it properly, but it turns out dust from the Sahara tastes strangely like stewed cabbage, so it wasn't as much fun as you'd expect! xx
ReplyDeleteHere in North London, perhaps we are immune to a general "off-cabbagey" smell; I did not notice any such thing in the air... Jx
Delete