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

[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.