Living on the Thames

Along with views of random fireworks and the random filming of Skyfall last weekend, living on the Thames brings many features past our windows. One of the them is wind… well, it is usually just a breeze really. But there is a noticeable difference when you are next to the Thames. I can only imagine the stench it must have carried when the Thames was the de facto sewer system before the engineering marvel that is the underground sewer system. Nowadays, the smell is just a hint of sea that comes with tidal brackish water. With the wind comes numerous birds: ducks, swans, geese, gulls and more. And of course all the boat traffic: ferries, barges, cruises, police boats, kayaks, and sculls.

Other interesting features also reveal themselves at low tide as there are numerous remnants of cobblestone that I fantasise as being from the days before the embankment. It seems embankments are common features in big cities. They create permanently dry land in places that nature tagged as a sometimes wet, sometimes dry. Now the entirety of the massive Thames is corralled by giant embankments. My beloved likens high tide to a full bathtub, and that is exactly what it looks like. But in times gone by, there were much less imposing solutions in place. Right out the flat window there is a lovely pattern of paving stones revealed at the lowest tide. These stones are not just an eye catching display of geometric patterns in a place you would not expect them. They also transform the muck of the river bed into a surface that allows the arrival and, what is more important, the departure of shoe and wheel. My imagination can muster a much less developed landscape that includes more naturally sloping features leading to the river’s edge. But when it tries to recapture the work taking place on or because of these more modest engineering solutions, my modern mind can only conjure vague romanticised background images from film sets. These workers are just a background loop running so that when the protagonist comes past it looks like we expect it to look. So they aren't doing much of anything at all.