San Franciscan – nay, Californian – fog is not like normal fog. Normal fog, British fog, hangs still in the air, thick and heavy and suffocating. It sidles in, threatening, like a lippy vandal just waiting for you to turn your back so he can key your car. It promises shipwrecks, slow, painful shipwreck that give you enough time to see the rocks but no means of avoiding them. It echoes to the sound of fog horns, warning the foolish away from the coast. It cloaks pairs of foglights on the motorway, forces you to navigate by following the side of the road, leaving you panicky when the painted lines or the cats eyes vanish. It turns old gnarled oaks into ghosts of the hanged and pylons into invading aliens.
British fog muffles. It is silent. Still. Stealthy.
Californian fog is not like British fog. It moves. At speed. It is fog with attitude, with purpose, with Things To Do. It's patchy fog, even when it's thick, even up close. It clots like blood, great tangles of it speeding across the countryside. It menaces. No matter how hot and sunny the day, Californian fog can race in from the sea and smother the city faster than you can change from your sarong into a nice warm pair of trousers. Californian fog is deceptive, untrustworthy, deceitful, duplicitous. It flows over the land and sea, a great flood of thick, textured moisture, suddenly hiding, suddenly revealing, giving you the merest glimpses of figures through the grey, figures that turn out to be the rocks that will break your limbs asunder. This is the fog of pirates, the fog of thieves, the fog of liars.
Californian fog echoes. But you never know if those echoes are real, or in your head.
The fog! The fog!
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Wow, Suw. You are good. Such lyrical images, and they move and breathe and express individual character. A multi-talented blogger with multi-talents. good.
Gosh! Thanks!
*blushes*
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