Yesterday as most people will have spotted, the sun turned red in the middle of the day. It was quite spectacular in an apocryphal sort of way; you could just imagine medieval folks running for the church in a panic, thinking the world was about to end. But even for us more enlightened folk such phenomena can trigger a primitive response, like seeing an unexpectedly huge lorry looming: the primitive brain immediately kicks in and yells ‘Threat! Huge animal approaching!’ and it’s all you can do not to turn and run. Which reminds me: on last night’s ‘Unbelievable Truth’ it transpired that 40-something per cent of Americans believe that dinosaurs and humans were alive simultaneously.
Now that’s scary.
Anyway, the red sun (which, as the Daily Mail pointed out, was all Corbyn’s fault for being such an out-and-out Marxist) was a direct effect of storm Ophelia which apparently travelled East, gathered up some dust from the Sahara and flung it in our direction, thus making the sun appear red. I remember back in the ’80’s the same kind of thing happened when bits of the Sahara were lifted up, whirled half-way across the planet and deposited on people’s cars. Everyone woke up to find their windscreen had been sandblasted during the night.
It also reminds me of a sunset phenomenon a couple of years back where a full moon rising on one side of the earth coincided with a brilliant sunset on the other side. The result was a full orange disc in a black sky. It was most surreal.
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 