VICTORIAN FOG

The weirdest thing happened yesterday. I went into Sainsbury’s under a crisp starlit sky, and came back out again in thick fog.

It was like Victorian London! Out of nowhere, swirling between the cars and the lampposts, making the bright orange ‘Sainsbury’s’ hover ethereally over the petrol station. I was half expecting a moustachioed policeman, or a horse and carriage, to emerge from the old-fashioned mist.

I texted the Intrepids:

“Pea-Souper!”

(They find it amusing when I make silly comparisons with the 1950s; of course, the coal-burning fires and factories of those days have long since stopped creating the thick green fog they used to call ‘pea-soupers’. There’ll never be fog quite like that again, so they tell me.)

I was so amazed by the sudden change in weather that I stopped open-mouthed outside the shop. In truth, I’d also forgotten where my car was, so I needed a while to get my bearings. I can blame the fog for that too: after all, it felt like a different day to the day I’d actually parked it.

Anyway, I drove home, with the little thrill of being legally entitled to use my front fog lamps.

Now, I live at the top of the hill, and Sainsbury’s is at the bottom. Of course, the fog that had descended, had settled like a blanket in the valley, and so halfway up the hill, it cleared up!

I just drove right out of the cloud! It was a bit misty at the top, but by no means as thick as it was at Sainsbury’s. In fact, by all accounts it had been localised around the supermarket, so it seemed. By the time I got home, the stars were bright and the air was clear. I got out of my car as my phone buzzed.

“Are you sure your eyes aren’t still blurry from the drops?” asked my Mum in a text.

Everyone’s a joker.