Dirty old town.

[reddragdiva]

"Fuck fresh air; I'm only happy when my lungs are filled with London smog. It's comforting and makes me feel like I'm at home." — glitchdrei

May I just second, third and fourth that.

Comments

[steer.livejournal.com]

rosamicula keeps on about the need for fresh air. I point out in vain that' it's all just air and it's all been about for the same amount of time just some of it colder or a different colour than other bits but no bits are intrinsically fresher.

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

If your air is a different colour, I don't want to breathe it :)

[steer.livejournal.com]

Oh tush -- so squeamish.

[reddragdiva]

London air is very healthy, on account of how few germs can survive in it.

[redshira.livejournal.com]

Like the River Ankh, yes?

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Or any other form of life, come to that. Of course, whether you are healthy is not its problem.

[ravenevermore.livejournal.com]

There's nothing i like more after a long day out in London than returning home and cleaning bits of it out of my nose.

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

See, there's the thing. London doesn't blacken my snot.
(I tend to sneeze my head off on the way home, though.)

[inulro.livejournal.com]

Nor mine. Nor do I sneeze on the way home. I really do have iron lungs.

[lpetersson.livejournal.com]

I like visiting the country/sea-side, but really I want the air that gave London it's wonderful nickname 'The Big Smoke'.

[karen2205]

I just don't get this - my nose is happy in London and sneezes lots elsewhere. And I don't get black snot either.

[reddragdiva]

That would be what made me want to move from Melbourne to London. Melbourne has farmland on three sides. In London I'm only under continuous plant bukkake assault for six months of the year.

[tintintin.livejournal.com]

Being a West Country Boy, I do occasionally have yearnings for the sweet, clear air of my native land. Then it tends to pass. I live on the edge of Ally Pally park anyway; it's about as good as London air gets.

However, if London types joined me back in Glos, they'd probably be the respiratory equivalent of John Carter in Edgar Rice Burroughs' MARS novels - used to Earth's stronger gravity, when he travels to Mars, he is like unto an uber-athletic demigod thanks to the lesser gravitational force of the red planet. So, these types with lungs toughened and made efficient by filtering out shite would thrive in the tasty O2 of the West.

[reddragdiva]

"the sweet, clear air of my native land."

That would be Perth. Given the choice of Perth or smog, I pick smog EVERY time.

[m0rbid-princess.livejournal.com]

I live on the edge of Ally Pally park anyway;

You can't live far from me, then - I live close to Ally Pally too...

[tintintin.livejournal.com]

Just off Priory Road at the foot of Muswell Hill, me...

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Um. Given the sorts I used to see in the local boozer, Gloucestershire's in Zone Seven and there's some wierd Tube-based motorail service that disgorges BMWs by the score from a station hidden near Banbury on Friday afternoons. (At other times of the week, it's hidden near Cirencester)

Mind, I defy anyone w/o lungs of brass to stand downwind of a combine harvester munching through a field of barley and breathe in that fine combination of diesel, dust and chaff. Yer average hay feveroid would be poking its lungs back in with a stick from where they'd managed to cough them right out.

Damn. Now I'm missing the smells of hypoid, fungicide and damp earth. A pox on that there Londons that just smells of dogshit, brake linings and discarded kebab.

[tintintin.livejournal.com]

Heh, yes, the rose-tinted effect did make me leave out the fact that I used to live downwind of the largest military airbase in Western Europe, RAF Fairford... During the bombardments of Kosovo and Afghanistan, cruise-missile-laden B52s were flying out every 30 mins, 24 hours a day. You could *taste* the kerosene in the air.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Don't stand downwind from a combine harvester, you might get run over.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

The 'duffers' telegram from 'Swallows & Amazons' always works well in such situations.

[mangosteen]

s/London/Manhattan/, but it works out the same.

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

Yes, and if they do ban smoking in public places the flavour just wont be the same.

[themadcatlady.livejournal.com]

Shame that sort of stuff made me ill all the time.... and I really do not miss it. Clean sea breeze rules. :)