Philip Hoare writes of fog coming from the east (The mist that muffles yet inspires our art, 3 November). As a child growing up in a village near the Thames in Essex, I remember that the arrival of fog promised sprat suppers, when these little silver fish were floured, then fried and served with lemon or vinegar and bread and butter. Old people would eat them whole, heads, bones and tails. “You need a fog for sprats,” my mother insisted, and it was true that the two usually coincided, although surely this was an old fishwives’ tale? After she died, I read that when fogs descend and rob the North Sea of light, shoals of sprats rise to feed near the surface, making them easier prey. If this is true then fog has even more to commend it.
Michael Munt
Bredfield, Suffolk
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