Top Of The World

[poliphilo]

We started seeing gorse by the roadside. That could only mean one thing- sea breezes. Then we arrived at the top of the world and there, about ten miles away, at the edge of a shining plain, was the Irish sea.

I took pictures. but distant vistas never photograph well. It's all in your head- the romance of the pearl-grey mist. You can't capture it in pixels.

Over to the far right- at the corner of the frame as it were- stood a group of huge blocky buildings. Ailz said it was the nuclear power plant at Sellafield.

It used to be called Windscale. Then there was a big fuck-up (or several big fuck-ups- I forget the details) and they changed the name.

I don't know about nuclear power. I was reading an article by Lovelock, the Gaia man, and he was saying that nuclear power is the future, whether we like it or not. Wind farms are pretty to look at but they're not efficient. If we want to keep our civilisation going (do we?) it's nukes or nothing.

And it set me thinking how there can't be any progress without risk.

There were lots of skrikey birds at the top of the world. The black and white ones I tentatively identified as peewits and the ones with thin hooky beaks I identified as curlews. I guess they had nests nearby and didn't like it that we'd stopped the car and were looking about.

Rise and dive, flutter, flap, skrikety-skrike. "Bugger off, or I'll take your eye out!"

Comments

[aellia.livejournal.com]

I am really enjoying your descriptive writing...keep it coming my way!
I love this
"Rise and dive, flutter, flap, skrikety-skrike. "Bugger off, or I'll take your eye out!"

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

I'll do my best. :)

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Wind farms are pretty to look at...

Ah, so refreshing to hear someone say this! Most people gripe about them because they 'spoil' the view. You get massive NIMBY-based protests whenever a proposal is mooted to set some up in a particular area.

But I'm with you - I agree that they look pretty, like gigantic versions of the windmills some people put in their gardens. They are sleek and slim-lined and elegant. Plus, even if they're not perfectly efficient, each majestically rotating windmill represents one small reduction in the amount carbon being poured out into the atmosphere by fossil fuels. If that's not beautiful to look upon, I'd like to know what is.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I love windfarms. I think those giant windmills are extraordinarily beautiful. I go into raptures whenever I see one.

Why aren't they being sold to us as art?

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

It's a missed opportunity, isn't it? I'm sure all sorts of exciting effects could be achieved by painting them in interesting colours, although I recognise that that would be expensive.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'd just as soon look at a giant mill as at the Angel of the North. They're both amazing.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

I remember they took some old Pylons down near Yarmouth and people complianed because they were part of the landscape by then!

I bet Dutch and Suffolk Windmills were seen as ugly when they were built...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I expect they were.

We are upset by the unfamiliar. It's the whole modern art syndrome. But once we've familarised ourselves with a building/sculpture/industrial installation we start to love it.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Wind farms. What a whimsical term, very romantic and kind of...wistful.

It is a shame that it seems there can be no other *method* besides nuclear power. Solar power is iffy, windpower is iffy...what has humankind done to itself that the powers of nature can't be harnessed?


We have kingfishers and swallowtails at the cottage. Of course, that's freshwater...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't understand why wind and wave and solar power can't be harnessed to run the world, but if even Lovelock, the guru of green, says they're insufficient I guess I have to shrug and accept.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Then we arrived at the top of the world and there, about ten miles away, at the edge of a shining plain, was the Irish sea.


Who needs photographs when one can read such beautiful prose?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

It was an amazing place.

[sina-says.livejournal.com]

i had the same reaction to the windfarms i saw in southern california. like giant (it is hard to know how big they are till you're close) modern sculptures set into a background of green...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

We think old windmills (the Don Quixote kind) are marvellously picturesque. The only difference between those and these is scale and streamlining.