Rochester

I went from Lewisham, Gerry from St Pancras and we met on the platform at Rochester. He immediately started to inveigh against the station. 

'It's tawdry,' he declared. 

'Well, it's new,' I countered. 

By the time we got off the concourse and were trying to cross the main road to the tourist office he was fulminating, 

'Where's the pedestrian crossing? What if we had children or a buggy?'  I shivered. Their absence was one thing for which I was grateful.  The tourist information officer defused his wrath by replying mildly that lots of people had complained about the absence of a crossing but there was nothing she could do about it. She deflected further discussion by handed him a complaints form, then recommended visiting the castle, warning us it was a ruin, in case we thought the place would be stuffed with oriental carpets and French ormolu clocks.

We explored the high street, mostly local shops interspersed with mandatory estate agents and I looked at property prices. Gerry filmed pigeons shredding a lump of bread by tossing it. We wondered why they didn't hold it with their feet and peck instead. Tempted by the hill, we climbed to the higher reaches and were rewarded with sweeping river views. Reclaimed land, covered by housing and a park, separate the steep hillside and castle from the river, still a respectable width after the encroachment. The stone balustrade from the old bridge had been transplanted and is now the embankment wall. Two new bridges accommodate road and rail links to Strood on the opposite bank.  A parade of white motor boats, nose to tail like a traffic jam, spoke of affluence. Thirty five minutes from St Pancras, Rochester is commutable and not moribund like Margate.

The Coopers Arms menu enticed us for lunch. We had scarcely crossed the threshold before the barmaid said hello and smiled broadly. A good start, I thought.  Gerry couldn't resist the Kent sausages and mash, while I succumbed to the Brie, bacon and cranberry baguette and a naughty glass of Shiraz. It was delicious. We lounged, amused by the twee placemats offering an embroidered history of the oldest pub in Kent, doubtless one of many making that claim.

At the cathedral entrance, a churchy woman roused herself from a puzzle book.

'Have you visited us before,' she intoned.

'Not for a while,' I equivocated, hoping to deter the lecture she was about to commence.  The place comprised two buildings, one several centuries older than the other, she explained. I've never really seen the appeal of cathedrals and when she announced proudly that there would be a concert at the weekend I wondered why they didn't simply demolish the place and build a decent concert hall instead.

We skirted the castle grounds and wandered back to the high street. Gerry gravitated to one of the many second-hand bookshops.

'Might as well give up selling books, make more money on these,' muttered the proprietor.

'Bric-à-brac?' I queried. He looked disapproving. Clearly he positioned himself differently in the market. He waved towards several large wooden cutouts of historic racing cars, complete with racing drivers' profiles.

 'Just sold these, he'll be taking them to Beaulieu next week for the event and sell them for £100 each.' He didn't seem to begrudge his customer scooping the profit.

'Be getting rid of these art books next week. Most'll go on the skip.' I was surprised. 

'No one wants them now, except the biographies. If it's not on the telly, they're not interested.' 

'So the new Dickens series must be boosting trade,' I said, catching on. 

'Hasn't made any difference.'  He stomped off. 

Being on a 'wenture' we were permitted cake, so in deference to the faux Dickens heritage we headed for Peggotty's Parlour cafe. The place was deserted; Miss Havisham's cafe would have been more apt a name, but we were assured they'd just recovered from a lunch time rush. Gerry ordered tea for two and we each selected a portion of carrot cake, massive lumps which could have sustained us all weekend. I poured the tea, tipping the pot periodically as I'd seen my father do. Gerry explained that was only necessary for loose tea leaves and I realised this was an example of behavioural skeuomorphism.

I'd planned to take the return train to St Pancras with Gerry, but on learning that the javelin trains don't accept freedom passes, I decided to go back via Lewisham. These days, a tenner is worth saving.

© David Thompson 2016

City Beach

Before daytime, patches of mist linger over the river. Only orange lamps and their squiggly reflections pierce the pervasive greys. The water breathes in and out, stroking the shore. 

'You can't be half-pregnant,' is a popular bizspeak aphorism and to be both day and night is just as impossible, so the liminal states, dawn and twilight, are treasured for their mystery and transience. The intertidal reach is analogous, neither sea nor land, and equally ephemeral. Twice a day land is dreamed; twice a day it is drowned by insistent tides.  Their clockwork regularity is out of phase with the clock; high tide accompanies breakfast one day, then lunchtime, then supper.  Perhaps life would be more harmonious, lived as it is in proximity to the sea, if we observed the rhythm it implores. Some days the barrier is closed and the moon's pull defeated. Then the beach dries, deprived of moisture, small cracks appear: temporary desiccation. Lugworms crouch in their burrows and gulls strut indignantly, baffled by the famine.

The sweet scent of seaweed exhaled from green-slimed rocks is a reminder that this river estuary is the coast, a finger of ocean penetrating the city. There are fish, and therefore fishermen. Spaced at fifty metre intervals, just beyond calling distance, they slump on canvas chairs, glowering mutely at the water.

'Caught much, mate?'

The response is unintelligible. The purpose is not catching, it's being. Fishing Zen.

The beach seethes with maritime detritus discarded as liberally as space junk. Plastic packaging, wooden spars, rusting cans. Shards of glass recall hopeful bottles tossed overboard; fragments of brick, now as porous as sponges, remember lost edifices; a bald tyre nudges the sand teasingly, unwilling to strand.

After the storm, denuded branches prickle the beach: wreckage from an upstream tree felled by the wind. Unaccountably a battered Punch and Judy stall is deposited, its grotesque figures brackish and fading. Bruising waves have scoured the beach, shifting mud and rocks to reveal metal tracks, extinct conduits for launching vessels from the pounding shipyards, now erased from all but memory. A girl in a red jacket laboriously scrapes letters in the scant sand with a stick, a cryptic message to the encircling buildings and the planes above. Her father throws a ball and a dog bounds into the shallows to fetch it. Children paddle raucously. Beyond in the deep channel, the dog-like head of a seal surfaces, scans the horizon and is hauled under, like a periscope.

As the light fades, the children are rounded up, shivering under thin towels. Colour seeps away until all is suffused in blue and deepens to indigo. By evening, the river belongs to garish party boats, the flashing lights and pulsing beat a substitute for the forgotten industrial clamour of Docklands. Later an ominous heron flaps silently while the orange lamps guard the night.

© David Thompson 2016

Giraffes

'Don't pull that face, if the wind changes direction you'll stay like that.' 

My mother was not superstitious but would happily engage any tool at her disposal for a colourful admonishment.  I didn't believe the threat, but the saying reflects the widely held notion that the environment can mould nature.  The idea that giraffes developed long necks as a result of their parents stretching to reach leaves on high branches was advocated by Lamarck who preceded Darwin.  Experiments have established that this is not how evolution works.  The impact of the environment is restricted to favouring or disadvantaging mutations which have arisen at random, not generating them in the first place.

In the 1930s, the Soviet agronomist Lysenko increased wheat yields by exposing seeds to high humidity and low temperature.  Crucially he claimed that this treatment would also improve the plants' descendants; in other words, that acquired characteristics could be inherited, just as Lamarck had suggested.  His work appealed to the communist party who were desperate to maximise grain production.  Eventually his theories were the only ones permitted.  All over the eastern bloc and in China Lysenkoism became the orthodoxy; geneticists who challenged it were silenced, imprisoned or executed.  But Lysenko's experimental data were faked and by the 1960s his ideas had been largely discredited.  As a biochemistry undergraduate in the 1970s, I was taught that the notion that the environment could influence genetics was preposterous. 

In a strange reversal, modern molecular biology has shown that DNA can indeed be modified by environmental factors.  So although you can't change the genes you're born with, those genes can be altered.  These modifications don't affect the content of the DNA, they simply change the way in which the information is expressed, for example causing some sections to be ignored.  It's a bit like clicking the 'save for later' option at the Amazon checkout: the request is still there but dormant so the delivery centre knows not to act upon it.  Even more significantly, in some cases, the changes wrought by the environment can be passed to offspring; the study of this phenomenon is the infant science of epigenetics.  A project which has been tracking a group of families since the early 1990s has shown that children of mothers who smoked in pregnancy carry DNA markers associated with their mothers' habit.

The implications are immense.  People know that their lifestyles can impact their own health and choose whether sacrificing a pleasure is justified by the benefits.  Dame Sally Davies apparently considers the increased cancer risk every time she fancies a glass of wine.  But such decisions might play out differently if the result is known to impact yet to be conceived children.  Possibly the progeny of feckless parents whose lifestyle has resulted in suboptimal DNA might seek redress in the Courts.  Perhaps couples will elect to have their families sooner so they can commence a life of debauchery without damaging their children's DNA, or maybe they will simply freeze their pristine eggs and sperm for later procreation.

© David Thompson 2016

Sickness

Sick in bed, time crawls. Normally I listen to the news once a day. Anchored in bed, more detached than usual from the rest of the world, ironically I have never been so familiar with current affairs. Hearing the news with every meal, I can map the progress of the items. Breakfast's headline has fallen to second place by lunch; at teatime it has slipped to a footnote; by the evening it has been jostled off the agenda.

My condition, sinusitis generating an agony disproportionate to the cause, a simple cold, invokes rituals honed over the years. Analgesics, steamy showers, inhalations, hot and cold compresses. None are efficacious, merely desperate distractions. I do not know what, if anything, is best to alleviate the pain. And this exemplifies the chasm which exists between me, the 'I' in charge of the flesh, and the flesh itself. The conflation of the person with the body it occupies, a shorthand to which we all subscribe daily, is revealed as false. I puzzle over how to relieve my body of its pain as fruitlessly as I would struggle to assist a cat or dog in distress, unable to communicate the source of its affliction.  Being trapped inside this body is at once the most intimate and most detached relationship, like sharing a prison cell with a stranger. Why has this spot on my arm appeared and what does it signify? No manufactured device is supplied with so little information about how to use and maintain it, yet my body can't be replaced or returned to factory settings.

If I were, magically, able to occupy a different body, how would that feel? More importantly, would it change me? We assume the body reflects the personality: physically attractive people are deemed desirable companions, and when this is erroneous, we are indignant. 'She looked so sweet, but she turned out to be spiteful.'  Yet despite that duality, or duplicity, being a threadbare staple of romantic fiction, we struggle to discard it, the evolutionary purpose it serves trumping even the most superficial examination.

Clothes are a different matter. It is the inner being which selects the outer garments, subject to the physical constraints imposed by the body; no amount of determination will thrust an XXL frame into M tee-shirt.  But rather than a true reflection of the soul, clothes merely reflect the extent to which individual taste is compromised by convention and fashion and limited by cost. Only those who are thoroughly disinhibited, very wealthy and completely immune to trends - a rare combination - can project themselves without distortion through their garb.

As the grip of the infection loosens and I am no longer shackled to pain induced torpor, I will once more assert my dominance over my body. Where knowledge fails, brute force will serve: I'm taking it to the gym.

© David Thompson 2016

Shipping

Surrounded by Monet's pictures of water lilies, experiencing a frogseye view of his garden at Giverny, I was at a Royal Academy exhibition, courtesy of an invention of fifty years ago: containerisation.

The quirky names of roads abutting Tower Hamlets council offices conjure the area's past: Nutmeg Lane, Rosemary Drive, Saffron Avenue.  All of London's exotic culinary needs, as well as wool, rubber, timber - in total a third of the UK's imports - once passed through the East End docks.  Appropriately, the Docklands museum is housed in a sugar warehouse; treading the very boards where sugar was stored, harvested by the slaves whose human traffic made London, Bristol and Liverpool wealthy, is always unsettling.

The packaging of imports reflected their variety: bales of jute, crates of tea, casks of chutney, boxes of fruit.  As anyone who has filled a supermarket carrier knows, different shapes and sizes are awkward to pack.  Space is wasted, contents spill.  How much more efficient if everything were the same, or, failing that, could be cloaked so as to appear the same.  Thus containerisation was born.  Anything, from computers to cars, could be placed inside identical metal boxes, which can be moved between ship and lorry with ease.  They could be stacked without detriment to their contents so economies of scale spawned ever larger vessels.  Hence new facilities were needed where land was cheap and specialist cranes could replace labouring stevedores.  Container terminals were constructed at Tilbury in the 1960s; within twenty years all of London's docks closed. For a decade, dereliction and unemployment were the legacy.  Famously, taxi drivers declined fares to the least savoury destinations.

Each evening I stroll around the Isle of Dogs.  The noisy, dirty, dangerous places where men queued each morning in the hope of a day's work are now peaceful and sanitised. The real estate is valued for its tranquillity; water views command a premium.  Many docks are populated with house boats, mainly converted Dutch barges, homes to those priced out of conventional accommodation.  Some are nature reserves, one a salt marsh, another a bird sanctuary hosting kingfishers, herons and dragonflies.  A sailing club in Millwall dock is the last tenuous maritime link.  One evening, a fellow novice remarked:

'I was here in the merchant navy.  We docked over there.  All along the quayside ships were unloading. It was cacophony.'

He was pointing towards a quiet waterside path planted with ornamental saplings and illuminated by decorative lamps.  Benches surrounded a tall, red-painted metal structure, more sculpture than machinery.  The surviving remnants of the industrial past are carefully curated: fossilised cranes, silent pumping stations, smokeless chimneys, objects which are venerated for the historical authenticity they bestow.

Behind, an apartment building was under construction.  It would be inhabited by asset managers or equity traders from the watchtowers of Canary Wharf.  The apartments would be sold through an estate agent, very likely the one which had, in the hope of being commissioned to market my Docklands flat, invited me to a private view at the Royal Academy.

© David Thompson 2016

Conference

Modern trains are too quiet. I don't mourn the clicketty-clack which characterised railways before the era of welded rails, but ecclesiastical silence has the disadvantage of making other passengers' conversation too intrusive.  (When Birmingham's Symphony Hall was inaugurated, the acoustics were widely acclaimed and it was only when audiences arrived that the drawback to perfect musical rendition was revealed: not only could every note played on the platform be distinguished so too could the minutest noise made anywhere else in the hall.)  At Reading, an elderly woman inserted herself into a seat at the next table and the other occupant, bearing a remarkable resemblance to Michael Portillo, immediately engaged her in conversation at a pitch just loud enough to be unignorable.  When a young man boarded the train and sat next to them I hoped that would inhibit the conversation. Unfortunately he joined in, regaling them with his excitement over starting a university course in Plymouth.  Indicating his luggage, to the consternation of his companions, he explained that he'd brought a sleeping bag as he anticipated being too drunk to find his room that evening.

At Newton Abbott station the local community transport had been detailed to meet delegates arriving from London. There was a short wait so I took a turn around a formal park enclosed by ample Victorian villas in seaside pastels.  Well-kept uniformly green grass spoke of generous feeding and military weed control; clearly the concept of managed meadows had not reached Newton Abbott despite its proximity to Totnes. The only other arrival to take advantage of the minibus was a friendly chap called Rob to whom I chatted and gave the benefit of my views on transition matters.

Seale-Haynes had been an agricultural college and the heritage was evident: bountiful kitchen gardens promised an excellent dinner. The main building, shrouded in crimson Virginia creeper and flying a tattered Union flag looked rather more patrician than its hundred years and reminded me of my school. The fabric of the building was genteelly dilapidated but inside it had the non-nonsense efficiency which must have characterised country houses requisitioned during the war.  The tall corridors made me shiver and I imagined severe schoolmasters, gowns billowing, bearing down on me.

The grounds were on a steep hillside and the worthy flavour imbuing the different activities was reminiscent of the Centre for Alternative Technology, now sadly in creditors' administration.  Near the raised beds, a woman informed me brightly that she'd found a fire pit and old oven; I thought of my days at Forest School Camp.  Perched on a grass margin, there was a colony of tents, next to a sign saying assembly point B which presumably related to one of the nearby buildings. Recent technology advances mean that tents are virtually self-erecting but these plainly belonged to a simpler era.  A couple was gallantly struggling with an enormous frame tent which I suspected hadn't left the loft in decades but now served to unequivocally establish their eco-credibility.

The reception procedure was a trifle ramshackle.
'Registration is at 6,' I was told, 'but you can use your room in the meantime.' They had decided to adopt a "no keys" policy for this event, she explained. How nice, I thought, obviously transitioners can be trusted not to abuse the sharing economy.  Then she added, 'So you should keep your valuables with you at all times.'  She waved in the general direction of a large two storey building and suggested I select a room, which seemed a startlingly relaxed approach to hotel management.  Upstairs there were several sparsely furnished, unnumbered bedrooms but judging by the scattering of clothes over beds and floors some were already taken.  I selected the larger of the two double rooms. The walls were painted a lurid orange: no money had been wasted on interior designers. There were no curtains at the windows but the views across a tufty lawn and the Devon countryside with the sea visible between two hills more than compensated.  There were two wardrobes; neither had coat hangers but after a moment's indignation I was comforted by the thought that this was presumably not the kind of event where sartorial elegance was at a premium.  No ironing required!  The shared bathroom, I noticed with relief, bucked the "no locks" rule but lacked either soap or shampoo.

I'd arrived early and since there was nothing to do but make a badge - which I did with bad grace, simply writing my name on a card and eschewing the ribbons which others were gaily attaching - I decided to take a stroll around the campus. I'd printed the colourful map which accompanied the registration email and as I tried to orient myself, I thought of the bumptious lad in the train and how he might be having much the same experience finding his way around unfamiliar surroundings with a mixture of excitement and anxiety.  More likely, he'd already fulfilled his primary ambition of getting ratted.

© David Thompson 2016

Bridges

At Crewe, the departure board indicated platform 8 but I couldn't see any platforms between 5 and 10. This reminded me of a New York hotel where one bank of elevators served floors one to seven and another fourteen to forty. When I asked the concierge about the missing numbers, he looked around stealthily.
'I'm not supposed to tell you,' he confided, 'but they're missing.'
I had visions of a gap in the building, the upper storeys mysteriously held in place by skyhooks.  'What do you mean,' I asked.
'The numbering goes straight from seven to fourteen to make the hotel seem higher,' he explained sheepishly.

A similar explanation for platform eight seemed unlikely but when I found it, the train appeared to be destined for Manchester, not Cardiff.  A porter explained that it had been going to Manchester but broke down so they brought it back to Crewe and it was now the Cardiff service.  This didn't sound very reassuring but several other passengers had more faith in the vagaries of the train network and were already aboard so I joined them.  Nothing happened at the appointed time for departure and we were informed that there was no crew, which, it being Crewe, I found mildly amusing. Gerry was there to meet me, forty minutes late, at Craven Arms, predictably fulminating at my choice of route, his implacable hatred of Virgin trains necessitating the Newport option, although as he always drives it's only a theoretical choice in his case anyway.                  

The overnight stop on our two day walk was at Bridges.  Accommodation was in a converted barn, two interconnected rooms one with twin beds, the other with bunks, with a bathroom serving both. The only decoration was a dark mural covering an entire wall of the twin room depicting demons. I elected for the bunks, regarding a modicum of privacy as recompense for a less comfortable bed; in the event, it was necessary to cover the mattress with a spare duvet to prevent laceration by the feral springs.

Dinner was acceptable pub food, an open fire and an unexpected visit from Gerry's acquaintance Val. When she'd gone, Bob and Gerry speculated about her new boyfriend, a subject of endless fascination despite limited content since neither knew who he was.  I'd brought my head torch; I rarely have the opportunity to use it and wasn't going to miss this one.  I sauntered up and down the deserted road a few times and wandered over to the stream whose crossing points give the hamlet its name. Sheltered by a stand of trees, I switched off the torch. For a few moments, the darkness seemed absolute, an experience which fascinates and terrifies the city dweller in equal measure.  After a few moments, stars materialised followed by the indistinct outlines of bushes. There were no cars.

Back in the barn, Gerry and Bob were getting ready for bed.  Bob went back to the bar and returned with a deep basket with a zipped cover containing our breakfast.
'I expect you'd call it a hamper,' Bob said to Gerry, gnomically.
'Why've you brought it in here,' Gerry demanded. Bob said he thought it would be cooler than in the overheated bar.
'We're supposed to have our breakfast in there,' we hooted, 'take it back!'
After a few minutes, there was a knock on the door. It was the barman returning the basket.
'I've brought your breakfast,' he said, 'you forgot to take it.'
Bob produced a pair of pink sneakers from his backpack.
'They're my wife's, our feet are the same size,'he said. There was a note of pride in his voice; dating apps take note, I thought.  Gerry poked fun at Bob's pyjamas and Bob poked fun at my electric toothbrush.  Bob and I were too sorry for Gerry to make fun of him.

It wasn't a restful night. The extra duvet overheated me and I was fearful of banging my head against the upper bunk if I sat up. In the morning, Bob claimed to have been disconcerted by the demons, although I thought Gerry's snoring more likely to be the problem.

© David Thompson 2016