Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness

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It was misty and cool when I woke up the other morning. Summer has turned now and we are in the first steps of creeping towards autumn.

As a kid in Malaysia, I used to read books set in England, describing mist and fog and it was really hard to imagine what that would be like. Until we went on a family holiday to Fraser’s Hill (as it was then called). Up in the blue-green hills, surrounded by thick jungle, the air was cool and fresh - as if the place were air-conditioned against the thick, heavy tropical heat of the lowlands. In the chalets where we stayed, the lawn had different, more delicate grass. There were bright rose bushes and exotic plants from cooler climes. In the mornings, the mist would sit damply over the hill. Everything seemed mysterious and spooky. I loved it.

The school I came to in England is on the south coast, facing the English Channel. On some winter days, the fog rolling in from the sea would white out the landscape for days on end. At intervals, the fog horn would sound, mournful and eery in the muffled stillness. The air would taste damp and salty and if you spent any time out in the fog, you would come in covered in dew.

My parents were in London in the late 1950s at the time when there were thick “peasoupers” - a combination of fog and pollution from coal fires. Traffic would grind to a halt and people would have to walk. But even walking was hazardous as they would not be able to identify any landmarks or see more than a foot in front of them. My parents describe how the fog would get inside their flats as well, no matter how much they tried to seal the windows and doors with rags. My mum said that even their undergarments would be stained yellow from the noxious “soup”!

I’m glad those days are gone! But I love autumn when the leaves start to turn golden and the air cools - just before it gets really miserably into winter. And on misty mornings, I always think of Keats’s Ode to Autumn:

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, 5
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease, 10
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.