Having been born in London after the industrial revolution their are some things i've missed out on.
The Bubonic plague for instance. Slavery is another, the Crusades could also be added to the list.
But every so often fate deals you a special hand and you get to experience what life would have been like had you been born in a bygone era.
Recently I moved to Moscow, and we are currently enjoying the hottest summer in Russia's history.
I use the word enjoying lightly because along with the sunshine came the bush, forest and peat bog fires, and the Smog.
Smog! That classic ailment for developing nations. I do hope it won't give me Cholera! In-fact it's more likely to give me malignant Lung Cancer.
I'm not a smoker. My whole of my life i’ve avoided smoking, even over here where it’s dirt cheap and a national hobby, but now I read that every time I spend a couple of hours outside i might as well have smoked TWO packets of cigarettes!
This turns going to work, posting letters , getting milk into a lifestyle choice - it's no longer just excessively boring. It does me physical damage....
This morning I saw a man in a cloud of smoke jogging next to River Mockba, I wonder if this guy knew his valiant effort to get in an early morning run was going to be rewarded with a tumor the size of a golf ball- mind you - I couldn't see if he was running from anyone.
The air in Moscow is 7 times more polluted than it was prior to the arrival of the hot, dense ,and pungent ash clouds that sticks you as you walk down the street, seeps through every window, door and crevice in a building, and is constantly trying to fool your brain into thinking people are celebrating Guy Fawks night at 5am on 4th August in city beyond the edge of Eastern Europe.
I know Guy Fawks was a bit of a rascal but that takes it too far.
So then I also found out the stuff that's burning at the moment are leafs, timber etc that could have been cleared years ago, so not only are my lungs being infested by filthy dirty smoke , but it's filthy dirty second hand smoke, i'm getting second hand smoke from a middle aged junkie who nobody has been arsed to pick up off the floor yet.
If this has told you anything, bygone era's sucked.
