The dust that fell to Earth...

It's quiz time again. Can you guess where in the universe this is to be found?

I awoke this morning to find my car covered in dust from another world. Not an outer space type world, although it did resemble another universe as it lay on the black bonnet of my old Mazda 6, but a desert world. The Sahara desert to be precise.

It’s not the first time I’ve got up to Sahara dust, it happens every once in a while. It wasn’t just me either. The poor old prime minister’s car was also covered in fine dust outside No 10 after overnight showers, so we at least have something in common.

Poor old London too, air pollution reached level 10 - danger, danger - on Tuesday and the Met Office advised people with lung problems to avoid strenuous exercise, even healthy adults were told to take it easy outdoors. I better find my smog mask quickly.

How incredible to think that Saharan dust can be lifted by twenty mile an hour winds, reaching altitudes so that it can be carried thousands of miles around the world. Caught in rain droplets in the clouds, it falls to the ground when it rains, the water evaporates, and a thin layer of dust is left behind.

I wonder what’s in that dust; are there tiny fragments of mummy wrapping, silt from the Nile, camel droppings from nomadic caravans, nonexistent palm dust from oasis mirages? Maybe there are even tiny flakes of the binding of Encyclopaedia Britannica’s carried by Bob and Bing on the road to Morocco - who knows?

Tiny particles of the past of another continent smearing the surface of my car. It makes such a pleasant and romantic change from Welsh mud.

I wonder when the frogs and fish will begin to fall?