Fog Turned into Smog (1950's)
In the early 1950's we had one of the foggiest days I can remember, it was still air with a complete blanket of fog across the whole country. In them days and particularly in November/ December time, heating and cooking in the houses and cottages was all done with coal, and from what I remember in our small village all the fires lit in a morning around the same time with a plume of dark smoke emitting from every chimney pot.
On this one morning, (though it lasted from the day before for three days) with no wind and thick fog, it kept the smoke down, it hung around all day and the next main stoking of the fires was around four o'clock, and another intense belching of smoke came from the chimneys.
This produced what was termed smog, and replicated in towns and cities all over the country, with factories and power stations adding to the situation.In London they were holding the Smithfield Fat Stock Show and two or three head of cattle died from the breathing in the polluted London air.
On this particular day we went to school on the local service bus, it crept and almost felt its way along the five miles to the school. Around lunch time the powers that be realised the fog/smog was not going to lift, and sent all us kids home from school. However the fog was so thick all the busses had been taken off the road and it was left for us to walk home.
As the school was situated on the opposite side of town to our village, we had to walk through the town centre. The main street is about forty feet wide including the footpaths either side, and when half way across the road (or if we had stopped in the centre of the road) you could not see any kerb or buildings, just thick smog.
There were six or seven of us, and in order to keep together and not get lost, we kept on talking and shouting to each other.It was only because we were familiar with the road that we found our way home, following the different land marks such as gates and hedges, foot paths and buildings, farms and cottages. It was even too dangerous to cycle. The roads closed down to all traffic, nothing moved at all.
That smog that year was the turning point when the government started to bring in the smokeless fuels that could be burnt in open fires, and in stoves for cooking, within a few years all built up areas and towns became smokeless. Now we only seem to get at most a thick mist, the fog of old used to come in like a blanket, in most hollows in the roads you would hit a thick wall of fog, shoot through it, and out the other side still going the same speed, then having more cars on the roads they began to pile up at high speed in multiple crashes the worst ones on the early motorways.
Most trains stopped running, the London Scotland main line runs through our farm, and the signal man, in foggy situations had a lengths man on call, with a button in the signal box and a wire to a bell in the mans bedroom to be able to call for assistance. On instruction from the signal man detonators were placed on the line (in pairs in case one failed) to tell the steam engine driver all clear, no detonator they had to stop. The railway line follows the land close to the river and fog always seemed to start in those low areas, so the railway signals were the first things hidden from the loco drivers.
In our present climate, where it seems we have global warming, I think it has something to do with the vast amount of oil and gas being extracted from the ground and burnt. Only sixty years ago I remember waking up in the morning with frost and ice on the inside of our bedroom window, and in the same house now where we used to burnt around three ton of coal a year plus logs, now it is heated with fourteen hundred gallon of heating oil.
With that sort of turn around in heating replicated in every house and offices in the land, heat is dispersed, or should I say leaked from doors and windows no matter how well insulated, to affect the country as a whole. Then there is the traffic on the roads probably increased a hundred fold, all contributing to the general rise in temperature
In cars we have windscreen heaters to keep them from misting up, and the heat given off around houses must have the same effect on the fog that we might otherwise have.
No wonder that our country has a rise in average temperatures, given the density of the population, and the amount of fuel burnt, out in Kansas USA it's the other way round, with lower than normal seasonal temperatures.
So who says its not man made.
Mothers Tea Cosy
Mother had a tea cosy, to keep the tea pot warm,
Used it for other things, that's not quite the norm,
It was all home knit, out of thick unravelled wool,
From warn out jumper unpicked, so curly was the wool.
On cold days she would ware it, outside in a storm,
Already warm and hot, from keeping tea pot warm,
Feeding hens or getting coal in, always pulled it on,
Hair stuck out the holes, where handle n spout were from.
Countryman
When the goose honks high, fair weather; when the goose honks low foul weather.
Proverb quotes