A flying visit... by sea

The North Sea... I reached Harwich at twenty past six yesterday morning. We were up on the ferry by about a quarter to nine, at which point I booked a cabin and tried to sleep... dozed... dreamed... work up and did some work. Ate apples and peanut butter and then thought that I needed to stretch my legs.

It took me a while to find a way onto the deck, but when I did... well, even before I got outside, just seeing the sea from the windows was exciting. The sea, the sea! (Isn't that the name of an Iris Murdoch novel? One I haven't read.) And outside, well, I cannot show you the pictures and video right now - you'll have to wait a day or so... but I realised that there was a wind farm in the sea! Far in the distance, the turbines spinning and I thought how very dystopian it looked. How... how I hadn't know that this was the case.... it seemed as if I were seeing a world of the future!

Wind power is of course "a good thing", but I wonder what the inevitable downside is? Tom, my traveling companion says that the flickering light caused by the spinning blades has a deleterious impact on the human psyche. So it's not great to live near them. I suppose that marine creatures are often more mobile. But maybe there are traumatised or at least anxiety ridden shrimps and anemones below the surface.

Also, there were so many ships! It was like a busy motorway! the black shapes receding into the distance. Astonishing the busy-ness and the range of human activity.

I sat out of the wind reading the excellent Wisdom of the Mythtellers by Sean Kane. As I sat there, I thought, oh, birds. then started in shock - all this prelinguistic - no words in thoughts. I looked up, registered four birds flying above and their calls. They were farmland birds - maybe redwings or fieldfares - not sea birds. They were migrating. The four of them, calling, over the deep dark sea.