Despite two mobiles alert to every shiver of the cybersphere and even a crouching landline, in a McLuhanesque irony, we managed to miss four increasingly panicky early morning phone calls summoning us to a tentatively pre-arranged country walk. The seafood would be uneaten at Whitstable and the sea-blown track to Herne Bay unwalked that day. Instead a hastily reconvened group hastened to Richmond. Perhaps a symmetrical exchange: our lunch of oysters, formerly a food fit only for the dispossessed, now a gourmet's delight, would be replaced by artisan sandwiches affordable only to the well heeled.
The unheard shrillness of the phones was transmuted into an unignorable rant from an unhinged Christian on the train. Nothing a few anti-psychotics couldn't fix, muttered Sally. Aware of oblique glances from fellow passengers, I gave up the counter-harangue, the silence when she disembarked more piercing than her shrieks.
Transport for London skipped the geometry class, so the line from northeast London to west London is more an arc than a chord and lunch was overdue when we arrived. Here is a Boots, there a Costa. Richmond bustles with the same shoppers infesting the same high street chains as less prosperous suburbs, yet the social class temperature is discernibly a few degrees higher. Maybe the clue is in the name. We settled for a Pret and after a ritual examination of the familiar options, and ascertaining the absence of oysters, I selected chicken and avocado as usual.
In west London, riverside has always meant posh: look no further than Windsor. In the east, seething under a pall of westwind pollution, until recently riverside equalled grubby: shipping, tanning, brewing anything smelly or noisy. These unseen Dickensian wealth generators fermented the spoils of the colonies into the profits of the empire. Only recently, since the easterly current carried shipping to Tilbury and industry to China, has east London's riverside been sanitised and sanctified by the Midas touch of financial services.
West of Richmond, the river is a different creature. Houseboats replace barges with cargos of aggregate destined for office block foundations. Islands ornament the river, indiscriminately offering seclusion to old money and protection to young water fowl.
It is a sunny afternoon wedged between two days of unseasonal deluges and we meander, making the most of it. Four of us occupy that uncertain hinterland between work and retirement and discuss our strategies to beguile the time. Of the four 'g's which constitute conventional pastimes of the elderly (god, grandchildren, golf and gardening) I am aligned to none and have only limited inclination to a fifth, gym.
Pausing to contemplate an edifice much resembling a life size dolls' house on the opposite bank, our speculations concerning its name and purpose were interrupted by a young woman with a small child. She volunteered the mansion's history and recommended a tea shop on the other bank accessible via a ferry which we would soon encounter. Bye, said Mia as we left; the easy confidence of a Twickenham toddler.
In Basel a small wooden ferry, accommodating no more than a dozen passengers, traverses the Rhine by being attached to an overhead line and set at an angle to the current, the resultant force propelling it at a stately pace from shore to shore. Our Thames ferry eschewed such simple elegance. This clumsy craft, which might have been the product of a Year Eight metalworking class, was thrust gracelessly by an outboard. Halfway across, having scattered an armada of canoes, the gaffer, a cheerful weather-beaten woman, announced a problem. One of the gin palaces hosting a wedding was late departing and as it occupied the only available berth on the far bank, we were unable to moor. There were two alternatives: return to the other side or dawdle in the river. We opted for an extempore cruise and sat back to enjoy a brief excursion upstream to the consternation of the swans.
The next wedding party was waiting in the wings as we trooped over the gangplank, gauzy dresses contrasting with the dusty woodland path. An elderly relative, busting out of a hired morning suit, called to mind the "uncle shouting smut" in Whitsun Weddings. A sign directed us to the tea rooms past an exhibition celebrating the history of rugby, to which we were unified in our indifference. Tea time arrives early in these parts and by four o'clock only the runts of the cake litter remained. Our combined geometrical prowess exceeding that of TfL, we successfully divided two tarts into five pieces each, an accomplishment whose object was defeated when Donald announced he didn't want any.
Progress after tea became languid but was enlivened by a fracas near Teddington lock where a swarm of police collared a small man for some indeterminate misdemeanour. Help, police brutality, he bellowed, call me an ambulance! We were just off the path, screened by some bushes during this exchange nevertheless I resisted the temptation to respond: you're an ambulance. Later we heard him claim that he'd prepared for the day by making two sandwiches, although that seemed dubious grounds for clemency unless he was interviewing for a position at Pret.
Optimistic fishermen sunk in morose contemplation and aromatic mud give way to opulent boathouses in the fringes of Kingston. Houses are set back so far from the water as to barely qualify as riverside. Music-making fluted across the river from a grand house with a conservatory limpet surrounded by a lawn preened to a perfection almost as authentic as artificial turf.
Away from the river, Kingston indistinguishable from Tooting. Benson's, a department store as venerable as Lilley and Skinner, is marooned in a one way system and in thrall to John Lewis, leering opposite.
The GPS was engaged to locate the station, visible but inaccessible as Ballard's concrete island. On the train, we repacked our riverside selves and prepared for the onslaught of the city.
© David Thompson 2015
