It's fifty years since the great smog in London. I was a young stripling when the world disappeared into a grey green cloud. It was good fun, of course, because breathing thick, dirty, cold smoke 24/7 it did not bother me... I was at school, did not have to get to work on time, did not have to carry any shopping home, was neither too young nor too old and did not suffer from any illnesses except inexperience===Two separate incidents come to mind, one that happened to me, and one that happened to my father in law, Benny and his son Ivan.==== I was sitting in the passenger seat of my father's old Ford Popular, which was not as good as the Model A or T of fifty years earlier, nor as cheap, but was all we could afford. We had just driven round Marble Arch and were setting off home for Paddington, not far away, when the smog came down with a vengeance. My father was not a natural driver, he was a natural passenger who was much better off being driven than driving, so the first thing that happened was that we got lost. We ended up on Rotton Row, which is a wide tract of soft earth that runs alongside the Bayswater Road. Its purpose is to provide central Londoners who can afford horses, and troopers of the Household Cavalry, somewhere 'in town' to ride. We were out of place in our car, but, in my father's defence, I have to say that we just followed a line of traffic that got completely lost because of the smog. We drove along slowly (my father never drove any other way) and then the smog thickened and we lost the cars in front. In fact we lost everything except each other. We could not see the back seat, nor the end of the hood (which the Brits call the bonnet). I could only just see my father. There is no sound in a good going smog. It acts as a blanket. I could hear him breathing and then that disappeared too and so did he. I was alone. It was eery...and then there was a slow motion, genteel grinding of metal and I was thrown forward. We had run into the car in front...although I STILL could not see it. Then someone rear ended us.======= My father in law, Benny, had a similar experience. He was a passenger in a car driven by my brother in law, Ivan, when the smog found them. "Dad, take this torch (flashlight) and walk in front of the car so I can see where to go," said Ivan. Benny did as he was asked. I am told it only took a couple of minutes before they were both lost to each other... and Ivan ran into Benny, who had a short fuse and used to get red in the face when telling this story twenty years later.====Thinking back on it I realize this is my first inkling of the influence the weather can have on the health of human beings. 3400 people died in London, that year, as a direct result of the smog.