Fog. It's been a notorious and well-documented hazard in London life for hundreds of years, and some of the capital's most perceptive writers have understood only too well the havoc it can play with Sunday morning football. Charles Dickens, for instance, recalled the vivid scene that greeted him one wintry Sunday morning in 1873 when he arrived with great expectations for a game of Association Football at the newly opened Riverside Lands Stadium: "Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows…"

The view, or rather lack of it, was similar when the Logica players ambled into the Stade on Sunday for their home fixture with Welham Athletic. Emerging from the tunnel to warm up at their favoured Raynes Park End, it was impossible to make out the goal at the other end of the pitch. The Welham players were apparently already going through their pre-match routines, but a cunning white kit made them equally invisible in the murky morning mist.

Fears of postponement were high, but a lack of vision has never been a hindrance to worry the majority of referees, and our man in black duly gave the go-ahead. To be fair, the disparate black arts of good refereeing and predatory goalscoring are extremely difficult at the best of times. But both are rendered practically impossible in such unfavourable conditions, as has been well documented in some of English literature's finest tomes, and it was over these twin stumbling blocks that Logica blindly fell.

The casualty list could have been greater. It was initially feared that two of Logica's brightest young stars had been lost without trace in the thick South London fog when they failed to turn up at the ground. Already missing a sizable roster of talent that included (a morning suit familiarisation session), (flag lifting injury), (jet-lag), (a match of the marital kind) and ("without me!"), the last-minute loss of and was a further blow to Logica's hopes of three points. Fortunately, both were later discovered safe and (relatively) well - the midfielder had decided to move house since the squad was announced on Thursday, whilst the Sheffield striker was making far more frequent runs out of the box than usual.

Collectively, however, Logica did lose their way badly. Despite having claimed their biggest win of the season against the same opponents just over a month ago, the home side started nervously as much of the confidence and panache of that earlier victory seemed to have gone missing. In contrast, Welham remained unfazed by the freezing fog, and were two goals up inside 15 minutes.

First a long ball saw the Athletic left-winger cut the ball back inside before bumping into the Logica right-back, who had no chance of getting out of the way. Peering through the mist, the referee had no hesitation in pointing to the spot, and Welham's number 59, who revelled in the nickname of Shrek, clinically dispatched the spot kick into the corner [0-1]. Then, when Logica failed miserably to deal with a long throw, it was a Welham striker who reacted quickest to flick the loose ball home from a few yards out [0-2].

Slowly the Logica players began to thaw out ( excepted), and as the half progressed, their play likewise warmed up a bit. Indeed, but for the climatic impact on 's finishing, Logica should have been at least level by the interval. Some concerted pressure had the visitors penned in their own half, and a ball laid back to was crossed low into the danger area. It somehow passed straight through and his marker at the front stick, and the anticipating reacted quickly to stick out a boot. But from eight yards out, the ball really should have been nestling in the back of the net rather than rebounding back off a post.

Worse was to follow. The ever impressive was again the architect, turning to pick out the Logica striker in the penalty box with a perfect chip that looped over the last defender. Controlling the pass in some style, turned smartly before elegantly rolling the ball wide of the post from approximately four yards, with the keeper perhaps literally frozen to his line. Clearly the extremely poor visibility in this archetypal London pea-souper is the only explanation for missing such a chance, an opinion that Dickens would sympathetically concur with.

Perhaps based on his own amateur experiences, Chazzer (as he was known to his team-mates) produces an insightful lament on the complexities of the striker's art, and in particular the difficulty in taking one's chances ('chancery', as he termed it), in perhaps his finest literary work, Bleak House (1852). A match takes place in similarly treacherous conditions, and a presentable chance is spurned, at which one of the players exclaims: "O dear no! Miss!" But at once the reason is clear: "This is a London particular," explains the compassionate onlooker, the young gentleman christening such understandable profligacy as "a fog miss."

Despite facing such a seemingly unconquerable fate, Logica battled on gamely, their pressure earning a string of corners that led to frequent problems in the Athletic rearguard, but unfortunately no goal. again came closest, glancing another dangerous dead-ball just inches too high at the front stick. The same player wisely turned creator as the interval approached, receiving another pass from the same provider on the left wing and dancing around his man, but could only fire the awkwardly chipped pull-back over the bar.

If anything, Logica's approach play improved in the second half, but clear-cut chances were few and far between as more often than not the wrong option was selected – an over-elaborate pass when a shot was called for, or an ambitious effort on goal when a better placed colleague really demanded the ball. as creator, of course, was at the heart of Logica's best chance, gamely chasing a long ball into the channel with uncharacteristic pace, before deftly flicking it over the centre-half's head. Looking up, the aging striker again picked out a good run from , but the low pull-back was hit just a little too hard for the fit-again midfielder to hit cleanly.

As time marched on, Logica's genuine belief that they could recover something points-wise from such a poor start waned visibly, and the visitors looked increasingly threatening on the break. When mis-directed a headed clearance straight to an unmarked Welham forward, it took a brave and spectacular point-blank block from to save Logica going further behind.

The meteorological conditions conspired against Logica once more with fifteen minutes left. A pass into the box saw a Welham forward trying to take the ball in his stride, but knocking it too far forwards. However, there was some contact with the covering , and down went the Athlete as the ball hurtled over the bye-line. It seemed the Welham man had lost control of it, and there was no intent in 's tackle, but squinting through the mist, the man in black was again pointing to the spot even before the forward had hit the deck.

One could sympathise with the referee in such dramatic conditions, and again the perceptive insights of our greatest ever play writer was on hand to provide a consolatory precedent. The Bard himself was clearly a veteran of some Elizabethan ale-house bladder-ball league, and his famous play SuperMac Beth opens with three ageing figures in black discussing the "hubble, bubble, toil and trouble" of adjudicating in such conditions. Their wise collective conclusion could indeed have described this very incident in the Raynes Park mist: " calls ‘man on': Faire is foule and foule is faire, as hovers through the fogge and filthie ayre."

But in the best dramatic traditions of happy endings, justice was seen to be done when Shrek screwed his penalty kick wide, quite possibly exclaiming his ire "Out! Out! Damn spot-kick!" But the reprieve for Logica was short-lived. As they pushed players forward in a desperate search for a way back into the game, Welham countered simply and a neat pass forwards left an unmarked Shrek able steer past the exposed [0-3].

Thus Logica's woeful 100% home record continued unabated, with this their fourth straight defeat at the Stade temporarily at least stalling lofty ambitions of promotion. The pressure is on to halt the slide quickly, or, as Shakespeare himself would doubtless warn us, now will be the winter of our discontent.