Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

Annoyances of a different type this time.

The media are doom-mongers aren't they? Walking home, there's the usual boards out for the Evening Standard: "Toxic cloud hits London tonight". Wow, not only do they have on the scene reporting, but they're also managing to report events before they happen (so when did they get bought out by Murdoch then?).

Oh, and toxic cloud? That's about as informative as BBC News's in depth feature on the contents of the smoke plume from the fuel depot fire. We were told that it contained pollutants such as carbon dioxide (gosh). We were told that it might contain carbon monoxide, which of course is toxic [mumbled] in high concentrations [/mumbled] (and C02 of course isn't. Hang on, isn't there some nasty stuff which causes hallucinations and death if it's in high enough concentrations? What's the word, I had it a moment ago, it'll come to me, oh, oxy-erm, oxy-something).

Heck, it's not that bad. They could have said the smoke plume "may contain" carbon dioxide, just like it may contain traces of peanut. BBC London doesn't really far much better, but at least they restrict their stupid comments to asking why people have built houses, roads, industrial estates or indeed fuel depots. Sorry, I'm taking it out of context, so I should in fairness add "in Hertfordshire" to all those questions. Although perhaps asking "why were houses built in Hertfordshire" is a fair question, I mean, they'll never sell as no-one sane would ever want to live there.

No doubt we'll now see calls for all fuel refinery and storage to happen hundreds of miles beyond where anyone lives. That and people lobbying the government to lower fuel taxation to avoid the economic consequences of shortage induced price rises (you’re not asking for subsidies are you? Does that go with Mercedes-driving capitalism? My God, next you’ll be demanding an end to taxation on aviation fuel so we can all enjoy cheaper flights to Bulgaria).

Oh, and as people in Holland apparently heard the blast, hands up if you did. Well, on Sunday the house shook I was woken by a loud rumbling. Admittedly this happens on most days, and when Eurostar goes past we have an added whooshing sound. So I think we can conclude I probably spelt through it. But then I've stuck myself to a blanket before with my own clotted blood as I managed to sleep through a nosebleed, so maybe I'm not the best sample.

And what's it say about my life that I first heard the news on Flickr, while looking at pictures taken from a tower in the City. I saw someone suggested it ought to be added to a group about the explosion, and wondered what explosion that was.

It probably says I was wasting time on Flickr instead of instead of slogging my guts out (hmm, slight cliché there; do they actually fall out if one slogs enough?). Whereas now I've discovered doom is fractionally less imminent than I thought it was, so I'm wasting time on Blogger.

Speaking of which, I ought to go and check if anyone's added any new comments to my photographs on Flickr (oh, and I'm still waiting for the really obvious one which no-one seems to have noticed yet).

Anyhoo,