“One Misty Moisty Morning —

when cloudy was the weather —“

 

That refrain ran through my head when I opened the front door this morning and saw the mist lying thick about our lane.

“One misty moisty morning, de dum de dum de dum” I thought, but couldn’t quite come up with the rest until I went back in the house and asked Mr. Google about it.

“One misty moisty morning/ when cloudy was the weather

I chanced to meet an old man clothed all in leather —“

It’s a Mother Goose nursery rhyme of which I’d forgotten all the rest except the first two lines. Turns out to be about an old leather-clad man who goes a-courting. (Yep, in the mist.) Mr. Google provided me with his whole story as rendered by British folk-rock  band Steeleye Span in an interminable folk-song rigmarole that you can find here if you’ve got the time and inclination and you like that sort of thing. (Sometimes I do.)

Anyway, there was no old man in or out of leather walking down our lane. Just a misty moisty morning fog lying low and making our lane uncharacteristically mysterious for a little while. And making the morning’s New York Times in its plastic sheath stand out in full orange brilliance in the grey misty moisty morning —

 

Which lasted perhaps an hour longer, and then the romance, like the fog, wore off, and the world and all of us in it went back about our usual business. Good morning, everyone!