the fields thick-spread with nightsoil yielding acres
of sugar beet – distilled to alcohol,
sold to the French for brandy.
Today, all by itself, is a concrete barn –
so little to show for Campbell’s enterprise.
The river lies still, milky-green.
Above, the island rooks cackle from their nests;
air congests with the dank of leaf-mould,
gates are barricaded, stuck with signs that shout
This is a Multi-Hazardous Site. Keep Out.
Fallen Sallow
Cirrostratus has fingerprinted
the sky, smudging it pink,
and the call of a tawny owl quivers
from the graveyard
marking dusk.
Once again,
fallen sallow rotting,
leftover flies mithering the sill.
At this time of year you remember
the smaller arc of sun,
how its warmth will not reach you here
and how geese feed
spread in a line across the field
making their way slowly,
like a search party.
How did I ever think this would be OK?
Here we all are at the wedding party,
your sister has married my ex,
the one I left for you;
this winter’s afternoon they married
in that same riverside church, your sister
pale and gorgeous, Russell in his kilt.
His mother and his sisters are here,
downing rum punch in the lounge.
They seem to avoid me, possibly
because I was the one who slung
his bass guitar into the Thames.
That was before you and I were,
before London and Liverpool,
before Oxford and Monmouthshire.
But the last time I was in this house –
I can hardly speak – the last time,
was the day we buried you.
And I remember your father,
who had never bought your CDs,
breaking down in Tower Records.
And that day, your poor body,
the only thing the same, your hands.
Chopin Opus 49
I’m fifteen, back in a practice room
in Manchester’s grime, looking across the Irwell
to Salford to wastelands
longing for anyone to take me in their arms
and now all these years later I’m sitting
as my daughter plays that same Fantaisie in F minor
the saddest of keys that does something
to my breath every time,
the only key that always undoes me
and I’m with my mother after hours
of sick-bed Scrabble and the late sun comes out,
shines across the river now – this southern river –
and when I ask my mother if she is sad
she shrugs.
Contents List
9 Foreword by Pete Townshend
13Source
15 Lammas Land
17 To ye most desired and best of parents who
in honourable wedlock were blessed with issue
19 Coleshill in February
21 Brandy Island
23 Buscot
27 Kelmscott
29 The upper river after Christmas
31 The Singing Way
33 Sanctuary
35 The Weir at Benson
37 Coots Nesting
38 I breathe as though I’ve been submerged
and am coming up for air
41 Swan-upper
45 Moulsford to Cleeve
47 At Cleeve
49 Fallen Sallow
51 How did I ever think this would be OK?
52 Sometimes, in this glittering world
53 Whitehill
55 Chopin Opus 49
57 Old Songs
59 Somewhere I’m not a blow-in
61 Night Rain
63 Henley
65 He that Loveth
67 Lost in Locks
69 Watermarked
71 Marble Hill Park
75 Disappearance
79The Tideway
81 Beyond Greenwich
85 The Isle of Beauty
87 Homecoming
91 List of photographs
93 Biographical note
Related Reviews
Foreword by Pete Townshend:
The River Thames is the subject of many books. This one concentrates on a reflection from and on the part of the river Virginia knows best – the upper reaches. Slow moving, at least until there are floods, serene and full of secrets, this part of the river needs time and poetic concentration to be fully understood. Near the locks there are often weirs, that can rage in bad weather; even in the summer they are alive and engaging. Ozone rises like mist, intoxicates, and seems to stimulate creativity, and – later, like a hangover – a kind of enforced repose.
The people who work on the river, the locks and the flood plains around them, do become addicted to the peace and beauty of their place of work. They become distracted, and no doubt irritated sometimes, by the boaters who rush up and down from pub to pub in the summer. They might also become rather eccentric in quieter times, falling into a rhythm that is entirely driven by the river and the weather. Once they are in situ, they all find it hard to leave.
Virginia’s story here is about the river and the people who work on it, especially those who man the locks. She captures a view of the River Thames that I don’t believe has ever been nailed before: the glimpsed moments of the claustrophobic beauty of certain stretches that contrast with the open expanses of uplifting countryside offered by the meanderings through woodland and farmland.
This upper part of the river is managed, but in an entirely different way to the tidal stretches in the city. This is something Virginia investigates and experiences as a lock-keeper's assistant, and makes herself vulnerable in the most romantic way, working and writing and evoking everything she sees and feels as both a storyteller and poet, and as photographer.
Work your way slowly through this book, and you will be drawn to one day do the same on the river itself. Buy a boat, rent one, row one, but do it one day if you can. Or volunteer to work on a lock. There is magic to be found in the text and photographs here, and also in this beautiful rendering of what the river actually is. It is, of course, an ancient waterway that presents both challenge and invitation. Hurry. This may look as though it will never change. But it might. Please don’t wait……..
