“A foggy day, in London town, had me low, had me down …”

A Foggy Day lyrics © Ira Gershwin Music, Nokawi Music, Frankie G. Songs, Chappell & Co., Inc.

I was thinking of that Gershwin tune the other day, as I looked out the window. It was a foggy day in Lunenburg – I could barely see the near shore of the harbour let alone the other side. The air was heavy with mist, moisture clinging to your clothes. Not a particularly inspiring day for a walk.

And yet … the grey soft light brings out the softness of the colours of the houses. The heavy air dampens sound. It’s charming, in its way, and I like it as long as it doesn’t last for days.

So I headed out to the beach for a walk in the fog. There was a steady surge of small swells breaking, and the gulls would swoop out of the dimmed sky like wraiths. Plovers darted in the shallows and danced their way along the beach just keeping ahead of me as I walked. Clumps of seaweed marked the tide-line. I couldn’t see the headlands at either end of the beach from the car park, and they slowly loomed out of the mist as I walked the full length of the beach.

Fog can be lovely. And fog can be frustrating. You want clarity, to see what’s in front of you. Fog can be chilling and bite through to your bones – you want sunshine and warmth.

And fog can be mental and physical as well as meteorological. Sometimes we have that heaviness of spirit that we think of as being mentally fogged. And sometimes, there’s the longer term mental fog that comes with age or illness, the dimming of the light as our brain functions slow down.

But burning through, even then, there are still days when the sun shines in, the fog lifts. Those are the days to cherish.

“For suddenly, I saw you there, and through foggy London town, the sun was shining, everywhere” …

A Foggy Day lyrics © Ira Gershwin Music, Nokawi Music, Frankie G. Songs, Chappell & Co., Inc.