Large Fierce Mammal

2025 blew in over the shore with its own version of the vapours, alleging worldwide envelopment in mystery obscurants portending doom, and offering me an invitation, if not an outright demand, to give the situation a sniff of my own.

At first, I was inspired to recall the intro to this episode of Get Smart …

Being from the seaport town of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, I am no stranger to fog in all its wondrous varieties. Over the years I have found opportunities to curse, endure, ignore, and exploit it where opportunities arose, and from this experience I feel secure in the assertion that I can speak well beyond “entry level”.

Let this stand as your introduction to what will be an LFM treatment of these latest events as reported by news stations, owners of video surveillance cameras, people wondering why the control tower at Heathrow is sometimes really hard to see, and the pundits of Tiktok. Are they real? Imagined? Misinterpreted? Anything more than cries for relevance from people who have never had their eyes off a screen, or even actually been outdoors, long enough to know what passes for “normal” under the sky and what doesn’t? Let’s sally forth and find out!

Until we return to commence setting teeth to the matter, here’s Adam Cooke to sing us out, with lyrics for those who don’t speak Nova Scotian. As one point of note, while I am a Man from Lunenburg, I am not THE one spoken of in this toe tapping ditty by the late and lamented Jim Bennett.

Thick o’ Fog

By Jim Bennett

There was a man from Lunenburg whose wife was very plain
Her face could stop an eight-day clock, a trolley, or a train.
Of all the girls in Lunenburg he thought he’d picked the belle,
But the morning they were married, it was kinda hard to tell ….

In the fog, the thick o’ fog,
This North Atlantic weather isn’t fit for man nor dog.
Through the murky mists that blind us
And the vapours that enwind us,
Come and see us, if you can find us, in the fog.

Now, a mountain climber started out one dark and dismal day,
To climb atop the mountain out by old St. Margaret’s Bay,
The weather made it hard to know just where he ought to stop,
And he went and climbed a hundred feet above the mountain top ….

In the fog, the thick o’ fog,
This North Atlantic weather isn’t fit for man nor dog.
Through the murky mists that blind us
And the vapours that enwind us,
Come and see us, if you can find us, in the fog.

Now, Captain Billy Corkum of the tugboat Dainty Bess,
Was asked to give assistance to a schooner in distress.
He threw a line and dragged for home
But when the fog did thin,
He saw that it was Sambro Island he was towin’ in ….

In the fog, the thick o’ fog,
This North Atlantic weather isn’t fit for man nor dog.
Through the murky mists that blind us
And the vapours that enwind us,
Come and see us, if you can find us, in the fog.

Now, an outhouse beats a lighthouse as a navigation aid,
Or so says Skipper Tanner of the Aspotogan Maid,
And when the weather’s grim he’s got a point there, I suppose:
You can always find your way back home by following your nose …

In the fog, the thick o’ fog,
This North Atlantic weather isn’t fit for man nor dog.
Through the murky mists that blind us
And the vapours that enwind us,
Come and see us, if you can find us, in the fog.