Has It Been Hot This Week?

From Wednesday (25/7/18) through to, well now I have been visiting my mothers.

As I think we all know by now my mothers live in Salisbury. That city in the South-West of England which is now globally famous due to the Skripal poisoning.

My mothers had actually arranged to go to the New Forest Agricultural Show with my sister. As such I really went down to join them and also spend time with my sister at the show. Which is a posh way of saying; "Getting drunk in a field while staring at horses."

That meant that while I travelled down to Salisbury I actually spent most of my time in neighbouring Hampshire. I certainly didn't get the chance to start my launch my long planned new business; "Novichok Walking Tours" in the style of London's "Murder Mile Tours."

The thing you have to remember about Salisbury is that it is a relatively small city. This Skripal story has been absolutely massive. Part of the reason I went down was to end complaints from my mothers that they get to see the people from CNN and China's CCTV News more than they get to see me.

Which ever network they're representing those journalists all seem to illustrate their stories with the same footage of a card shop with a red sign which is next to a small bridge. On one side of that bridge there is the city's main car park. On the other side of that bridge is the city centre itself. In order to get from the car park to the shops you have to cross the bridge.

Although the cordons have more or less gone now the decontamination area around that bridge has effectively cut the city in half. This has been going on for nearly five months now.

Therefore it is hard to overstate just how fed up with this everybody in Salisbury has gotten. So the challenge is really to talk about just anything else. Particularly if you have travelled in from a part of the World where this hasn't been dominating daily life for five months.

So you'll be surprised how little the topic actually came up while I was down there.

In fact the only time it got mentioned was when the national ITV News at Ten revealed the commercial waste bin where this perfume bottle was found. Recognising the bin in question and knowing how frequently it is emptied that would give the police a very narrow window of time to check if their Russian suspects were in proximity.

Aside from having to dodge roaming news crews, police sentries and dirty looks from pretty much everyone who recognised me I have to say that the trip was well worth it. Although I did have to relent and buy a broad brimmed hat even outdoors in the midday sun the weather was still a good 5C cooler than it was in London. 

17:30 on 27/7/18 (UK date).