Fire Smoke & Shorts

As always, it's the fault of the USA & Canada!  

We are sitting here once again suffering the backlash from their forest fires.  We already suffer from their left over hurricanes bringing high winds and teeming rain, and now they are trying to smoke us out.  

Huge area of Canada and some in the US are burning away.  Some no doubt, started deliberately by wee boys looking for a laugh.  Vast acres burn, smoke obliterates the sky, choking people in houses and flats, especially the old and sick.  With poor health provision in the USA because of the greed of the medical and insurance world many are suffering without and are open to breathing difficulties cause by such smoke.   Several hundred fires are burning at the moment, various sizes, some under control, others appear to be being left to themselves.  Smoke is hitting both Canada and US States causing problems.    

High above the UK the smoke does give interesting sunsets in some areas, though normal cloud is blocking even that today.  Last night our sunset was bright but slightly dimmed by high smoke.  This was alongside some clown near here burning grass and green rubbish nearby and allowing his fire smoke to reach me as I lay attempting sleep.  Of course it could be someone's house was on fire but there you go.

The weather has become somewhat greyish today.  Cloud cover alongside that smoke has taken the edge of the day.  Add to that what the weathermen call 'a stiff breeze,' and I find my north facing penthouse somewhat cool.  Outside, in spite of the cloud and wind, men walk about in shorts and T-shirts.  The Englishman's desire to get into shorts even if the temperature is low amazes me.  

When I was a lad no-one wore shorts, that was for kids, and if shorts were worn it was on a rare foreign holiday in the sun.  Certainly not on the street.  In England the shorts fetish has always been noticeable.  Why?  I've known postmen who wear them all the year round, winter and summer, clearly they have a fetish or are just mental, possibly both.  

Now young men following fashion, and young men dare not follow fashion, wearing shorts because fashion dictates this is one thing.  However, fat, balding, aged men in similarly aged football shirts from a previous era with similar shorts, sometimes shorts that once fitted, are not the same thing.  This is not fashion, unless everyone in your street dresses this badly, or possibly this is the fashion for the 'Reform' voter while throwing bricks through windows to remove those nasty foreigners who take their jobs.  The jobs that is they cannot get because of all the criminal convictions they have and the foreigners do not have.   If only they had heard of 'Levi's' or their mass produced cheap brothers.