Fog

An elemental moment in time, with just the weather for company.

I’d driven to band at a crawl, but was glad I’d made the effort. First rehearsal back after the break, and, somewhat inevitably, “going to head straight home afterwards” turned into “maybe just a quick catch-up before tackling the drive home”.

For once, I stuck to my (modified) word, and it wasn’t long before I headed out of the firelit warmth of the village pub into the damp chill of the night.

There’s something about being out at night in thick fog that seems to awaken the senses. Mixing them up somehow, so you can smell the cold, hear the laden dampness in the air.

But when, as I walked down the street to the car, I happened to glance left through an open archway, it was as if the pavement, the buildings around me, faded into nothingness. There was just a tunnel of darkness, a passage through to the dank alleyway beyond, bathed in the cool light of the streetlamp.

The swirling, shifting forms of the fog seemed to have their own sentience in the diffuse glow. Water dripped from the saturated stones, echoing as it landed. The occasional leaf would shudder silently, as a droplet of heavy dew released its hold.

I breathed in the crisp, chill air; felt it settle and accumulate on my face; could almost touch it as I moved my ungloved hand through the stillness. There seemed to be no other movement, no other living being in that moment. Just me, the cold, and the fog.

The slow murmur of a passing car on the main road beyond snapped me back into the present; I can only have been standing there for a minute or so, but it had felt as though I had stepped out of time.

Heading back to the car, I felt somehow altered; more at one with the weather and the night somehow. I had a sense of peace as I joined a small cortège of other drivers and we wound our way slowly along the country road, each gaining some sense of security in the lights of the car ahead and the shield of the one behind.

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