Berliner Zeitung: London not really foggy

Saturday, December 23. 2006

According to German folklore, London's primary meteorlogical characteristic is fogginess. The recent rash of chaos at my personal number one most hated airport, Heathrow, has got the popular press going again on what seems to be a very stubborn misconception about the capital of what Germans think the English call "Merry Old England".

To its great credit today's Berliner Zeitung says:

"...schließlich befindet sich London in der Vorstellung vieler Mitteleuropäer drei Viertel des Jahres unter einer dichten Nebeldecke. Meist stimmt dieses Klischee gar nicht"

I have never been unable to find a plausible explanation why London should have such a foggy reputation. Mind you I've never really tried, but having been to or passed through London many times (without having actually lived there as such) it has never struck me as being any foggier than anywhere else. Maybe this is a legacy of Dickensian literature, or Sherlock Holmes (not that I've ever read much of either), or possibly the odd film or two (I vaguely recall fog and London featuring in a, or possibly the, Mary Poppins film). I also have a vague recollection of being told about "pea soupers", thick smog which occasionally blanketed London up until the 1950s or so. (Contrary the popular notion that these were caused by the smoke from the coal-fired stoves the Londoners used to use to cook their pea soup with, the actual cause was apparently traced to a large eel pie factory in the East End).

Can anyone from London maybe cast some more light onto this issue?

Posted by Mount Penguin in etc at 13:09 | Comments (7) | Trackbacks (0)

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Watcha cock! Cor blimey! Coulda knocked me daaaaaaairn wiv a fevver! 'Ow's your faaaaver?

OK, that's my London wisdom exhausted.

#1 BiB (Homepage) on 2006-12-27 02:36 (Reply)

Aha, that inspires another theory: maybe the fog was caused by excessive Cockney rhyming slang emitted by the Pearly Kings and Queens up the apples and pairs around Albert Square.

#1.1 MountPenguin (Homepage) on 2006-12-27 13:36 (Reply)

At a junk shop, I recently browsed through an East German school English textbook from the late 1960s. Between the indoctrination (which was all fairly truthful) about the unfairness of the capitalist world, the exploitation of the peoples´in the Empire, the land ownership and the housing situation, and the lack of real democracy in the workplace (note to teachers: don´t push these points too hard, or your class might think too far, ask questions and you´ll end up in a Stasi confined cell for months on end)...

there were a few pages on London, mentioning fog and smog. Perhaps the Germans just imagine the British, like they, still have some kind of industrial base, as opposed to shops and call centres?

#2 Daggi (Homepage) on 2006-12-28 12:43 (Reply)

It didn't feature, per chance, a certain Mr. Brown who was a dock worker or something and a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain? When I first got here I gave English lessons to a rather frugal East German lady, who wanted to learn from a book she had had in her possession for a long time. I remember cracking up upon reading one story which featured a character called "Penny Lane", and fortunately that ushered in the end of my English teaching career.

#2.1 MountPenguin (Homepage) on 2006-12-29 00:54 (Reply)

Well, basically, there used to be lots of coal fires, then coal-fired power stations and London is a basin, set round a river, blah blah blah it was all pollution. And a gamillion Cockneys died OF the air pollution some time in the 1950s or 1960s but it was (sort of) covered up and then they got rid of the coal-fired power stations along the Thames.

#3 Bowleserised (Homepage) on 2006-12-29 00:56 (Reply)

Came across this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_1952 in a comment on BiB's blog, which is what I think I heard about. Interestingly it says "Since London was known for its fog, there was no great panic at the time". Mind you it's Wikipedia, so that could be conjecture on the part of whoever wrote it.

#3.1 MountPenguin (Homepage) on 2006-12-29 01:02 (Reply)

That's the one.

#3.1.1 Bowleserised (Homepage) on 2006-12-30 13:23 (Reply)

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Mount Penguin is technically British, but has lived in Berlin for like yonks.

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