Up early this morning to take Kelly to the airport. She is off to stay in Melbourne for a few days with some old girlfriends. I am not sure of their agenda exactly, but I do know her suitcase felt heavy with mischief.

Turns out we needn’t have set the alarm after all as the flight was cancelled due to the thick, almost phosphorescent fog that had set in overnight.

A later flight was soon allocated and Kelly decided that we may as well leave now anyway as it was going to be slow progress through this cotton soup. Besides, she could grab some airport breakfast and engage in a little pre-flight retail therapy.

Seems there is nothing like airport shops for convincing you that you need to buy stuff that you didn’t even know you needed when visiting regular shops.
I think its something to do some sort of sublimated existential fear that your plane might go down and you’ll be damned if you aren’t going to enjoy that expensive inflatable neck pillow, trashy novel, wireless headphones, pulp magazine and funky downwards-opening umbrella before it does.

With Kelly safely delivered to check-in her excess mischief, down some bacon & eggs and pick up a couple of new umbrellas, Juno and I were left with nothing to do but swing by a favourite coffee shop for a caffeine hit before going for lake walk.

The fog reluctantly melted into a spectacular morning.

“One day many years ago a man walked along and stood in the sound of the ocean on a cold sunless shore and said, “We need a voice to call across the water, to warn ships; I’ll make one. I’ll make a voice like all of time and all of the fog that ever was; I’ll make a voice that is like an empty bed beside you all night long, and like an empty house when you open the door, and like trees in autumn with no leaves.
A sound like the birds flying south, crying, and a sound like November wind and the sea on the hard, cold shore. I’ll make a sound that’s so alone that no one can miss it, that whoever hears it will weep in their souls, and hearths will seem warmer, and being inside will seem better to all who hear it in the distant towns.
I’ll make me a sound and an apparatus and they’ll call it a Fog Horn and whoever hears it will know the sadness of eternity and the briefness of life.” Ray Bradbury, The Fog Horn