The mist....

The mist wanders like some slightly inebriated ghost across the water as the sun - what little there was - falls down in the sky. The water is still - unblemished by ripple or splash. Revealed is a new wonderland - there reflected in the mirrored surface.

Moon, stars, trees, birds, buildings. And around the corner - beyond the edges of your eyes? Maybe there we'll find naiaids, kelpies and the wonderful water dragon. This isn't just the world of imagination - it is the twilight world we glimpse just occasionally when we stop our mad parade, our obsession with numbers, with facts, with the stomping prose of business.

That world contains something of the truth we are missing. The reason we are unfulfilled, unsatisfied by the pleasures the modern world lays out on its counter.

Which is why we look at the South Pennine views - at Ogden Water - take a breath...and feel the strains and stresses of life tumble from our shoulders. We buy the wonder, the magic. Not with the currency of modern commerce but with an older currency. A currency of blessings, of tears, of touching hands. A money we can't see but know is there.

Pennies we can store up but can't spend - except when we stop, take in the view and soak up the magic.

...