Day 119: White Out

Proper fog on the drive to Heathrow.  Pockets of complete whiteout - hairy moments of sudden awareness that I'm hurtling along in a tin can and I CAN'T SEE, trusting that the road will reveal itself as I go.  It does, and fortunately there are no unexpected obstacles.  On a similarly foggy day when I was nine, I broke my arm.  A very long wait in casualty because the fog had led to a multiple pile-up on the M20.  The casualites were wheeled past me - I still remember a man draped in a blood-soaked sheet, moaning and groaning.  It terrified me.  So I don't take fog lightly when I'm driving. 

But I do when I'm walking.  Which isn't always sensible - particularly if you are left standing in the middle of a field in the Peak District, clutching a walking guide written by a local Reverend, that tells you chummily to 'head for the stile and the clump of trees'.  And all you can see is white.  Like the Anthony Gormley cloud chamber that I visited in 2007.  Limited numbers of strangers looming towards each other, giggling and embarrassed, in a glass box of 'cloud'. 

I had a great time at this exhibition.  Not just the cloud chamber, but also the 'Orifice' series (Anthony's inked-up 'holes' kissing paper - anatomical potato prints).  Julia and I play 'Guess The Orifice', with pretend earnestness.    'Penis or Anus?  Anus?  Yes, course.  Ahh, The Anus.  This speaks to me.  I find its shy imprint deeply moving.'  We snigger like fifteen-year olds.

And then the glorious moment when a tourist knocks one of the iron spillikins out of this (see above), and it clatters to the floor.  Everybody keeps conspiratorially silent as he shoves it back, in random panic.  Shhhh...  Don't tell Anthony... 

What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over. 

True in many situations.  Just not on a motorway...