Chasing mist.

XXL

I wouldn’t normally get up at 8:30 on a Sunday morning but today, once I regained the ability to swallow after last night’s gin, wine and beer, I sat up and looked out the window. The day’s fresh light was bouncing back of the landscape in an orange hue and huge blankets of mist curled and coiled in the valley.

I pulled on the nearest thing to me- a pair of short shorts, and slipped into my flip-flops (can you tell I’ve barely unpacked since coming back from Turkey?). With sticky-up hair and boozy skin I wafted through the living room past my dad and out the house onto the soaking wet grass.

I hopped the fence and nipped into the field opposite the house. It was impossible to walk on the stubby stalks of wheat and my feet kept sliding off the soles of my flip-flops. In fact walking across the field was a bit like one of those bad dreams where you feel like you’re running through treacle; I could see the mist moving drifting away from the perfectly composed shape it was just in but I couldn’t catch up.

So I upped the ante and hobbled as quickly as I could. Two cyclists went past on the road and shouted down, “morning!”, “aye, aye”, I replied, out of breath. My buttons weren’t even done up on my shorts which coincidentally were the same colour as my ever paling legs. So it probably looked like I wasn’t wearing anything at all under my shirt. They didn’t bat an eye, though; you get plenty of naked mist chasers here on the Black Isle.

I was only slightly concerned that the farmer might spot me hanging around their field. But it would take a brave soul to approach a half naked man in a field at eight thirty in the morning, or at least someone just as odd.

Now that would be a rare sight; a flock of naked mist chasers.