When I awoke yesterday, I was a little worried. It was too quiet. High tide currently coincides with sunrise and, no, not sunset, but evening, peaking at about 10pm.
What does this mean?
It means that the mornings and evenings get rather bumpy. The river bus is starting up and down the river at about 5.30am and when the tide is already high enough for my boat to have been picked up by the water instead of still sitting in the mud, the waves get going and it’s noisy, because of the boat bumping into the pontoon and the ropes screeching alongside it. And it’s not just my boat, it’s all boats on the pontoon.
The same happens again in the evening and it can be annoying, especially after 8pm, when I prefer to enjoy my quiet time. The faster the boats are the bumpier it gets.
Yesterday, though, none of that was the case. It was completely and utterly quiet when I woke at 7am.
I considered the following: the tides had abruptly changed and I was completely off in my calculations. The Thames barrier had been closed and no water was getting through at all, so no tides either. The moon had fallen out of the sky.
So I got up to check. I peeked out of the window, noticed that the boat was indeed not sitting in the mud anymore and that it looked rather soupy outside. Well, that explained that.
Once I left the boat to go to work, I could see that I could, in fact, hardly see anything. Hence the view of this photo. It was a grey and murky world. Beautiful.
I’ve never seen the Thames so quiet.
Instead of taking the bus, I walked to the tube station. The thick fog just gives the world a completely different atmosphere, one I find fascinating.
Like the night wraps a blanket around the world, the fog gives you the impression that the world has almost completely disappeared and only the island you’re moving in still exists. Every now and then ghostly chimeras poke out of the mists, barely recognizable as cranes or parts of buildings.
I loved it and wished I had my camera with me to make better images, but I was also on my way to my day job, so that was not much of an option.
One day it will be.
2clouds 