Passive Smoking

The Wee County has been smothered all day in smoke from huge factory fire in the Hillfoot's town of Alva.

This picture was taken around 6:30pm after the worst of it was past, but the whole of Clackmannanshire had a perceptible smoky haze to it as I drove home from work earlier. People along the Hillfoots villages were told to stay indoors and hold their breaths (or something along those lines)

It has to be one of most perfectly ironic fires ever though - the factory prints the filter tip papers for cigarettes! I mean, come on... is it just me, or isn't that just about the perfect definition of irony?

I'm sure it wasn't all that funny at the time they were evacuating the school though, and one guy that passed as I was taking this photo did say they got a bit of a fright as it looked at first as if it was the school that had went up. His parting comment made me smile though as he was glad at least it wasn't the nearby whisky bond that was in flames. And judging from the way he was slightly staggering and slurring his words he was a man that knew where his priorities lay. A man after my own heart.

Not sure also what's going to happen to the 180 locals that are employed there - hopefully it'll work out OK for all of them.