haze

when I used to go to Polzeath in North Cornwall as a child, sometimes the Atlantic would be totally flat - barely a ripple of a wave, even as the ocean met the shore; a mirror of light on the surface of the water, as far to the horizon as the eye could see. . .
.
. . .my mother used to say it was "as calm as a mill pond", which I always thought was a beautiful phrase
.


but why doesn't one ever find a ripple on a mill pond?
does the wind not touch its surface, ever?

first thing this morning, the river was totally calm - there is no breeze; yesterday was scorching, by the early evening a heat haze had settled over the city - blending in around the edges above the West End with the fumes of the traffic and general smog that London still seems to be able to produce

as I write the tide is taking the waters downstream, east, and the only disturbance on the river's surface come from the eddies and currents around the foundations of the bridge; the occasional leaf floats past, reminding me that it is almost autumn and soon the trees will be bare

my mind drifts from watermills to windmills

via Camberwick Green and Trumpton. . .

and there is only one place where it rests, momentarily, on its journey elsewhere. . .
..

here is a box,
a musical box,
wound up
and ready to play,
this box can hide
a secret inside,
can you guess
what is in it
today?

13 comments:

Gordie said...

A mill pond is calm because it is very deep, and always full.

The first watermills were undershot, turned by the flow of the stream, and only worked when the mill-race was flowing. But if you build a millpond upstream of the mill, you can send water to the mill using sluices (the same sluices that were built to protect mill wheels from flooding) and operate your mill on more days a year.

I, Like The View said...

coooooooo

you're amazing


that* was better than googling the question. . .

maybe I should start calling you Jeeves? actually, that has the potential to be misinterpreted. . .

. . .so I'll just say a big THANK YOU

x

(*somehow, I'm not suprised that you know about depth and stillness and calm)
:-)

Gordie said...

It's a very empowering change to make - to go from protecting your little mill-wheel against the thought that too much water might rush down the river and break it, to having a huge and inexhaustible supply, that you can when you want it.

The other advantage of a mill-pond is that in an undershot mill, the water that falls off the paddles hits the stream just in front of the mill-wheel,and creates vortices that interfere with the energy of the current.

But if you direct the water over the top of the mill-wheel, all the focused energy of the current goes into the wheel, and all the splashing and chaos disappears downstream.

I, Like The View said...

you're writing brilliantly between the lines. . .

:-)

(oh, and if I recall, that's similarly why so many swimming records were broken this year at Beijing - cos the pool was deeper and wider than is usual for an Olympic pool - but I might have said that before - so the swimmers weren't slowed down by their own vorticecs)(oh, I know where I raised that before - chez toi, at the photo of the guy in his bizarre swimming togs)(or did you post that image for some other purpose. . .)

I, Like The View said...

I'm so glad I wrote what I was thinking about this morning. . .

. . .the idea of a mill-pond is quite fascinating

thank you for adding your thoughts

XXX

Mel said...

Wow. What a smart fella....

k....

I'm gonna ask himself and see how smart HE is about millstreams and wheels and things that run deep.

I'll look real smart if he doesn't know. LOL

I, Like The View said...

just give him a hug, not a hard time. . .

. . .I'm such a smuck, huh

:-)

Mel said...

Nah.....not a schmuck at all.

I know--even in moments of silliness--how graced I am....a bazillion times over....

Oh, but 'still waters run deep' makes so much sense at this moment!

I, Like The View said...

good

on both counts

(-:

Gordie said...

I got that Michael Phelps pic off Feral Mom's blog (y'know, one of those rude American ladies) and wasn't sure what to do with it. His pose reminded me of a crucifix, or James Dean in Giant, and he was covered entirely in latex, which made me think of condoms, and Batman. (Too many cultural reference points.)

Calm
Deep
Always full

I, Like The View said...

and there was me thinking it was because he had a hard on (or is that just my imagination?)

you didn't really have to do anything with it, did you. . .

;-O

(don't know how the comments appear on your screen, but this one is perfectly in line with The Kinks' final phrase: Now I'm not frightened of this world. . . And tho you're gone, you're with me every single day - which is a kind of solitude in itself, isn't it)

I, Like The View said...

calm, deep, always full

wonderous

Mel said...

Ack.....LOL Hardon's and little men in boats....
All this with minimal amounts of coffee this morning.....yikes...

No worries....I choked and coughed--no spitting happened. LOL