Sowing the seed of phantasy

The news in this country is usually, how shall we say, domestic. If one checks the other new agencies across Europe they seem full of events of a more international flavour.
It's not that we don't show the events covered elsewhere, we do but somehow the flavour of the program is watered down by the injection of stories within our shores which are "domestic".
The news channels particularly the BBC is usually a combination act, two presenters a man and a woman and the aim seems to be to lighten the impact of the stories with a cheerful chemistry which is projected from the sofa, light hearted joshing would be a good description.


The producer assembles the stories and the presenters do their bit to give us a clear picture but today I smiled as they described the fog that has blanketed parts of the South.
Thick fog was the description as the camera viewed the street in some city or other. It seemed to me no more than a heavy mist but no doubt you who have been up and about, especially if you have been near a river or low lying land the mist would have been dense enough to be described as fog.
My memories of fog, real fog, go back to the "pea soupers" in the 1940s an 50s. Then the meteorological conditions were reinforced by the contamination of smoke from thousands of coal fires. The expression "I couldn't see my hand in front of my face" was a truism which we all experienced as we walked through the fog. You lost all sense of where you were or in which direction you were walking. Sound was deadened and it was an unreal experience to have to find a wall and fallow the wall feeling your way forward until the fog cleared enough for you to realise where you were.
Traffic was at a standstill fearing what was in front of them and some of the worst traffic accidents were due to fog where cars, proceeding down the motorway would suddenly enter a patch of fog. Fearing what was invisible ahead but knowing if you stopped that traffic behind would crash into the back of you, sometimes 30 or more cars concertinaed into each other as they entered the fog. I remember cycling home from work in the fog and reaching my turnoff from the main road into my suburb the cars following, plus a bus turned off with me and I had to stop and redirect them back to the main road.
Fogs were unpleasant. You could taste the atmosphere and caused many deaths through bronchial complications.
But today our cheerful, chirpy presenter is doing what the industry does best, sowing the seeds of phantasy !!!!