London Fog

Came home last night and the fog was so thick it covered everything – even the grey mass of Hannibal House which sits on top of the Pink Elephant shopping mall was so wreathed in fog that I could barely make it out. I stood on the gangway drinking wine and looking out on it all – you don’t see many fogs like this in London anymore, and you get a sense of how this city must have looked up until the 50’s, when the last pea-souper blanketed the city. The fog hung about everything, making the whole city look like it was deep underwater – features like Big Ben, the dome of St. Paul’s looked like little yellow bumper lights far off in the distance. The fog muffled sound: the traffic in the roundabout seemed to churning through the bottom of the sea. The trees dripped water and each time someone came up the concrete gangway down below, their footsteps echoed up the terraces as if they were the only person in the city.