The fret comes in off the sea without warning, a wall of cold white air that can drop visibility to arm's length in the time it takes to walk a pier. The east coast has a dozen names for it — fret, haar, roke — and a long memory of what it has taken.
This essay walks the harbour mouth in fog, with the bell sounding every thirty seconds, and considers what it means to navigate by sound in an age that has promised us we will always be able to see.
The lifeboat coxswain tells me the fret is the only weather that still frightens him, because it is the only weather that lies. Storms announce themselves. The fret arrives like a thought you didn't know you were having.