Urban Water

In the first month of the new millennium, post-festive season lassitude hung in the air.  It was late afternoon and drizzling.  The estate agent looked up from a pile of papers.

‘There is one more you might be interested in,’ he said uncertainly. ‘It’s been empty for a while though.’

‘Great,’ I replied, ’that means I can view any time, right?’

‘Ye-es,’ he replied cautiously, glancing at his watch.

‘Like now,’ I suggested, brightly.

Weaving through unknown backstreets and catching glimpses of deserted docks I was soon disoriented.  We stopped at an unprepossessing block of flats, the estate agent entered the code and we took a battered lift to the top floor.  There were gashes on the front door.

‘Probably an attempted break in, the last tenants were drug dealers.’  

The flat was small and musty.  The bathroom looked like a 1970s stage set, everything was avocado.  An abandoned mug languished in the kitchen sink.  I was beginning to wish I’d taken the hint and declined to view the property.  Then we entered the lounge.  Projected on to the wide picture window was a panoramic view of the river, a glossy blackness stippled by raindrops and reflecting the lights of the Millennium Dome.   In the distance, the Thames Barrier proclaimed the estuary.

‘I’ll take it.’

The estate agent blinked.

‘Subject to agreeing the price,’ I added.

I have learned the rhythm of the Thames.  Tugs ply the river daily, hauling London’s waste in canary coloured containers.  On Saturdays kayaks from the local rowing club gather, urgent blue shards slicing the water.  Each month, a vast sand dredger with a Meccano superstructure discharges its cargo noisily.  Occasionally cruise ships visit, their cabins at eye level with my window, their passengers impatient for the London landmarks they have been promised and bewildered by this hinterland of decaying industry mingled with cookie-cutter apartment buildings.  Ark Royal sang her swan song here, a bevy of tugs in attendance.  Once, a pair of amphibious cars passed, looking frail and lost in the immensity of the river.

On still days, the river is a perfect mirror and the thickets of red cranes reshaping London’s skyline seem to stab the river bed.  When it’s blustery, the surface corrugates as though protecting the river’s inhabitants from the tumult above.  At twilight, when colour drains from the landscape and the tips of the Dome’s yellow towers are crowned with red lights, I sip a glass of wine and gaze contentedly from my eyrie. 

The Thames is clean now: there are plenty of fish and occasional seals, their dog-like heads surfacing for tantalising seconds.  Children play on the sandy foreshore.  In defiance of the byelaws, on summer evenings I swim.  It is placid and unexpectedly warm in the shallows.  Unconcerned by my presence, gulls alight nearby, huge in their proximity.  Semi-submerged, perspectives are altered.  It is the river that persists - forever in motion, yet forever the same - while the buildings alongside are revealed as impermanent and at the sufferance of the capricious water.  I drift on my back, looking up at the window from where I so often survey the river; a satisfying symmetry.  This immersion is a kind of covenant: now I am one with the river.

© David Thompson 2015