Open Your Eyes and Think of England

The fog is sneaky, it reaches up my coat sleeves and down my  collar. My socks are short so if my feet are somehow angled such that the fog can reach up past my ankles, it does that too. I wonder how is it that my pants are damp even though I finally got around to hemming them properly so they would not drag in the wet grass. Sunlight is visible only in a pale ribbon on the horizon, above and below it’s nothing but shades of gray.

The ferry from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay takes two hours because we’re going the long way. It’s something to do with currents or tides, I don’t totally understand the announcer’s muffled words.  We sit at a window watching islands appear and disappear in the mist; the couple in front of us reads through the automotive section of today’s paper remarking on the wonders of the Navigator and the Explorer, behind us, two ladies talk knitting and family gossip. I doze off and wake again maybe 20 minutes later, startled to find that I’d been so completely checked out.

When we drive into Victoria, the sun punches through the clouds, but the cold is still so biting that my face hurts unless I’m directly in the sunshine and protected from any kind of wind. I watch the street parade of punk style kids, a girl in a tartan miniskirt, her hair shaved off on both sides, another one in bright red slouch suede boots, boys in hoodies with gothic text across the back, cigarette leg jeans and black Converse high tops or Doc Martin’s. For a brief moment, I see England. The sky drops, the fog returns. We get in the car and I turn the heat on full blast.