Fog

The words were written in pencil on a piece of paper placed on top of the body.

Whatever about another portentious Scandanavian fictional detection opening, the weather today made you expect some nasty business to be lurking in the fog. Just thirty metre visibility as cold and humid air sat, glued to the hill. I know the distance because I paced it after the dog leapt out in front of an oncoming car that had no lights and was traveling so fast that it emerged from the white curtain in the same instant it was upon us. We heard it coming yet had no sense of its direction, the noise scattered off stony walls that bound either side of the road. The dog spun on the lead and helicopter like, ended up at my feet as I caught a sheepish wave of apology or gratitude from the mindless driver. Not that any of us haven't done the same in the mundanity of our own lives.

The bluebells on Roches Hill are fading into the growing bracken, now fully 18 inches taller in just two weeks. The blue tinge beneath the fog was eerie yet somehow painterly, if that's a word.

Gus, the dog and I traipsed down to the beach and spent about 30 minutes walking in the rounded beach rubble before heading back up into the fog of low lying cloud. We passed the old and tiny Church of St. Leinin (often written like the Russian who was no saint), in use for 800 years until the seventeenth century when it fell into a disrepair that infers some sense of antiquity and grace to Killiney - Cill Iníon Léinin - church of the daughters of Leinin.

It was a long day for me that started in west London initially with a drive to Redhill in Surrey to collect bread from our favorite Chalk Hills Bakery, then past East Grinstead to collect the car with its new windscreen, disks and tyres from Munich Legends. We then drove from Crowborough to Holyhead arriving one hour late having lost an hour and a half behind some bad 'incidents' including a vehicle fire on the M6 near Stoke. So we missed the Jonathan Swift fast ferry at 1715 and had to rebook onto the Ulysses at 240 am. We found a hotel room (the kind that supplies both room key and TV remote at reception), grabbing a Sri Lankan influenced dinner at Mala's, all in Holyhead, before catching three hours sleep. Then, out the fire escape by prior arrangement since all doors are locked at 1am, we emerged to drive past a brace of ambulances arriving at a drunken melee where folk were still fighting on the streets. We were the last to board the ferry not because we were late but because there were so few cars on this the biggest ferry in Europe. Eventually, we emerged bleary eyed in Dublin at 615. An easy crossing made awkward only by the hour.

My knees were sore after the 440 mile drive, I was short sleep but thought it a good idea to walk in a vague simulation of the Three Peaks which happens this day week. This is my last blog until then and I'm sure it will be a few days after the event when I compose and publish the last blog of all. Custard pies and air the ticket raffle are the last events before we set off. An amazing milestone of £13,000 was reached this week and who knows, maybe we'll reach £15,000 with donations from the readers of this blog, if there are any.

It was James Ellroy who wrote about shooting up by TV light in American Tabloid.