Midwinter freezing fog

I got up this morning to freezing fog. The last two days have been impossibly perfect winter; sharp, brilliant sun in a dazzling cloudless sky, long shadows, sharp frosty air and utterly still. But this morning when I got up the light (what there was of it) was the strange, muffled subterranean hue that suggests that you have been snowed in.

The back door opened on to a petrified garden. Thick rimes of frost hung from every blade of grass, and in the immediate vicinity, silence. But London is never silent, and although not a thing seemed to stir the immense roar of a city waking could be heard over the roofs of the houses. It’s a strange sound, and one you are not normally aware of; there is always so much incidental noise. Not today, today the city sounded like an ocean, or a river about to burst its banks.

I love ice and fog. I love the delicate eerie beauty, the way it reduces the world to monochrome, the mystery of a familiar landscape become unfamiliar and shifting. I was drinking it all in when I heard a sharp tapping. A lone male blackbird foraging in next door’s garden was poking ineffectually at the icy ground. We rarely feed the birds; too many cats, squirrels and foxes in our neighbourhood. I decided that today had to be different and braved a metal fire escape thick with ice, carrying a kitchen chair down with me so that I could reach to put a tub of scraps (rice and potato) high on top of the washing line pole. As I climbed back up the treacherous steps, behind me I could hear the fluttering of wings as my guests arrived.

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