Consequences!

There's that old thing about a butterfly flapping its wing in Japan and causing a hurricane or similar extreme weather in California. Now they are saying that a dust storm in the Sahara is going to make pollution worse here in the UK. Perhaps not quite so far-fetched a possibility as the butterfly thing but it still sound a long way away. But it is a little ironic that just as the weather has turned very pleasant and people are wandering about in the sunshine and being really nice and friendly to one another, the weather bods start to tell us that over the next 24 hours we have to be extra careful about pollution. 

In the middle March it was a cloud of smog coming from Europe that was causing the problem. What a pity that is not the case now; the anti-Europe political parties would have a field day. Transport mix-ups led to my spending a fair amount of time walking about in the open air today so I hope the pollution problem has not set in too quickly. I had been doing some helpful sorting at my daughter's house and looked up the time of buses home. According to the timetable there was no bus or train for a good three quarters of an hour. So I set off walking along the bridle path. 

At a suitable halfway point I checked the timetables again. There was supposedly still no bus for going on for twenty minutes so I set off along the next stage of the bridle path. Within minutes I saw a bus sail past along the nearby main road. So it goes! Further along my route, I caught one of the local buses that go all around the houses, going once or twice round various out of the way housing estates. As we approached Uppermill I alighted, intending to pop into the Co-op while the bus went up the hill round another estate and then I planned to hop back on as it came through the village centre. No good! The queue in the Co-op was longer than expected and by the time I came out the little round-the-houses bus had gone. Consequently I ended up walking a little further than originally planned. 

In the radio news later, as well as telling us about pollution, they told us that Duchess of Cambridge has announces that her second child, due in a few weeks, will be born in the hospital where baby number one was born a couple of years ago. Well, I will sleep more easily in my bed now that I know that that is all under control. 

I suspect they include these titbits in the news as light relief from all the stuff about the election. News about babies gives many people a lovely warm glow, after all!