View from my bedroom window on waking this morning. Not a bad start to the day

‘Fret’ is one of those interesting words with a number of very different meanings. There are the familiar definitions: to worry, both in terms of being worried, but also to ‘worry’ something else, the way a dog might worry a flock of sheep; the metal strips inlaid across the neck of certain types of stringed musical instruments; to adorn or form a pattern on, hence fretwork: the carving or cutting of panels of wood into elaborate shapes. But fret can also mean to eat, fray or corrode; agitate or ripple; an ornamental network (apparently, especially a medieval metallic or jewelled net for a woman’s headdress)…

And today I was reminded of a further meaning of the word as I headed out for a walk. The skies outside my window were a clear and piercing blue, but as I descended to the sea front, only about a mile away, the fog thickened until it enveloped everything in a white refractive glare. You see ‘fret’ is also the name for a particular kind of sea mist, one that Brighton is prone to during the spring and summer. It even has its own local name: the Shoreham Fret.

I’m sorry the word isn’t used much these days in this context, because the sound of the name is so perfect, encompassing the notion all at once of worrying the land, adorning it with tendrils of mist that curl across the ground, fraying the edges of things and dissolving all boundaries.

I wrote this a few years ago, but it still seems to fit, even if today wasn’t a January day:

The January rain came down in sheets fine enough to drift and cling to every surface; persistent enough to penetrate even your bones. The sky, a thick blanket of leaking cloud, was so dark that throughout the day the street lights had stayed on, the drizzle swirling in front of them like effervescence in a murky pint of bitter. Outside, the tarmac hissed with passing car tyres. The throb of an idling vehicle rattled my studio windows, making me stop painting. I looked out.
Facing me was the top of a double decker bus, its glass translucent, running with condensation. The sodden occupants only vaguely visible within, save for a shoulder or arm pressed through the veil of precipitating steam and fog breath.

One of the rear panes showed some sign of activity as a fingertip became visible from the other side, travelling across the surface to make an arc headed by a pink dot. The dot vanished only to reappear in a different part of the glass and form another line, a puncture, a zig zag. Each time a new mark was made, not only more of the image came into being but more of its author. A crude face appeared, evanescently painted onto the glass dripping droplets and runs. The drawing itself disclosed the bored countenance of a drenched adolescent, finally revealed, as, with a wipe of his now visible hand, the picture was obliterated and the bus moved off.