abendgules | synchronised sniffles

...that's my sweetie and me.
I've got a mild-to-medium head cold, and he's fighting it off, or at least trying to put it off till the weekend. His next big work engagement is next Tuesday, and the last thing he wants is to be sneezing on his clients.
Because Robert works from the living room, I can't even bewail the poor quality of daytime TV. I've read my latest whodunnit and am fresh out of sookie stackhouse books (6 down 3 to go, I think).
Knitting and scribing take up too much energy today.
I can't even revel in the beautifully clear and crisp spring days we've had.
I find it astonishing how good the weather has been during the flying ban, and can't help but wonder what effect ridding the skies of their biggest pollution-injectors for almost a week had on our local micro-climate.
London has had air pollution since people started burning wood for fire - it's just changed in qualty and quantity over centuries. Now that we don't have (local) coal-burning, and cars run on unleaded, it would be fascinating to know if removing the fuel burned by one plane a minute taking off (plus the cumulative effect of thousands of people travelling through Heathrow) made a measureable difference to air quality.
Yes, I know - the flight ban cost our economy squillions in lost labour, and untold aggravation for people ready to end their holidays. Frankly, I think it just shows how fragile the air travel & freight sector economy is - one weeks lost income is so damaging that some companies may not survive. I also have limited sympathy for folks 'trapped' in Tuscany, Crete, Spain or other holiday locations.
If you wanted to open a corner store and relied on constant trade, could not absorb unexpected losses, had to hit up the goverment for subsidies and tax breaks, and were only six weeks from bankruptcy all the time...your bank manager would laugh you out of the branch.