Crossing the Thames

The construction of three immense bone-white pylons puzzled me.  Each enclosed a double helical staircase but seemed unlikely to be a homage to DNA.  Finally I was about to appreciate their purpose.

'A return ticket, that'll be £9,' the attendant barked from a kiosk.  She looked at me narrowly. 'But you can't just go round and round, it's not the Circle Line.'

The Thames cable car serves no practical purpose.  Its capacity is less than a tenth of a tube train, nevertheless so few people wish to travel between the places it joins that it's mostly empty.  Cynics suggest that it is a manifestation of the conflation of political vanity and commercial opportunism facilitated by the neoliberal settlement, especially as it has, uniquely, gained entry for its sponsor, Emirates, on to the TfL map.

From the platform, a thick cable is visible in the perimeter slot of a large red wheel which turns continuously, sustaining the procession of pods high over the river.  There is something countercultural about leaping on to a vehicle that’s moving, albeit slowly; a small dog refused the challenge and was yanked into a pod moments before the doors snapped shut.  The pod casts off from the platform with a slight shudder, accelerates and rises towards the first pylon.  Inside the pod is reminiscent of a sedan chair with two bench seats, covered in counterfeit London Transport moquette, facing one another.  There is an infinitessimal jiggle as we cross the first pylon.  A gentle breeze sways the pod rhythmically.

The cable car is part of London’s eastward regeneration and the dominant impression from the glass capsule is of a vast building site.  The ziggurats of Canary Wharf are encircled by fields of mud being sculpted by battalions of diggers.  The O2, another self-aggrandising political folly, squats opposite like a collapsed soufflé.  The river itself is largely unpopulated; this historic east-west corridor is virtually abandoned while a tunnel is being expensively bored in parallel to house Crossrail.  A lone dove-grey navy ship steams up the river, passing a scatter of moored dinghies then slowing to turn into West India Dock.  A small tug loiters, waiting to nudge the larger vessel into a lock.

A plane rears up from London City Airport; almost immediately another lands and a third approaches as though they too are beads on a cable.  Adjacent is the derelict hulk of Spillers Millennium Mills, a reminder of the role of the docks in the importing and processing of foodstuffs and now being redeveloped as an incubator for start-ups.  In the distance, the Dagenham wind turbines rotate at a stately pace.  Framing the scene and indistinct in the fading light looms the shallow suburban crescent of Shooters Hill, topped by a defunct water tower.

Empty docks are lined with pairs of dark cranes, each mounted on four colossal legs, the protruding windows of their dusty cabins resembling insects' bulbous eyes.  Their jibs are raised: a parade of salutes to the clean and ordered world which has replaced the noise and clutter over which they reigned.  Now the cranes are anchored fast to the rails along which they once roamed freely, emasculated.

Back in my flat, I peer out of the window.  Attached to their slender ribbon the pods glow red in the distance, like a Christmas decoration strung across the river.

© David Thompson 2015