When you never quite lose that love of the River

Now I miss the river, which given that I never lived that far away from it is not surprising. 

In the park, 1907

Like many I saw its transformation from working waterway to a river bordered by new developments that seemed to reach to the sky.

I don’t have a rosy nostalgic view of the Thames.  For those who worked on and lived by it, the river was a hard and at times capricious companion.

But sitting on the concrete wall across the road from the Cutty Sark pub on a warm summer’s evening was magic.

As dusk turned to night the conversations around us were interrupted by the occasional banging together of the moored barges caught in the wake of a passing pleasure craft.

And over the water you could just catch the noise of a party going on with snatches of music which were lost as the vessel disappeared into the dark.

Looking out across the river, 1907

Even now that smell of ozone takes me right back to games on the beech outside the Tower of London in the shadow of Tower Bridge and that stretch of sand in front of the Naval College.

These combine with more grown up ones of sitting watching the traffic in the dinner hour during the time I worked for Glenvilles Food near the tunnel.

Leaving me only to remember the moment, me, Jimmy O’Donnell and John Cox sank in the oozy, oily Thames mud, just beyond the steps that led down from the foot tunnel at Greenwich.

It was sometime around 1959 and we had the long walk home and the thought of the difficult set of explanations needed to cover the ruined shoes and socks.  To my eternal shame I blamed the other two, something which got me off the hook but which the passage of time has never let me apologise for.

So that just leaves me to comment on the picture dated 1907.  We are in the gardens by the river on the noth side.

Location; the River Thames

Picture; the Embankment, North Woolwich Gardens, circa 1907 courtesy of Kritina Bedford from her book Woolwich Through Time, 2014