A Touch Of Thames

The River, That Is
If you are not native to The Allotment of Eden then you can be forgiven for not being aware of the River Thames, but only just.  It features prominently in Dickens, after all, and that horrid old piker Shakespeare probably drivels on about it, too, except I hate him too much to bother checking.  The Thames (inexplicably known to some as "Old Father Thames" because what aspects of age or maleness does it possess?) is of note because it flows through the Modern Sodom (a.k.a. London).  It ends in a great big estuary and has the Thames Barrier to prevent flooding.  Art?

So you sea

     This thing is a damned nuisance, to be honest, as it would require quite a bit of fudging to flood London when the ice caps get melted by alien invaders - but enough of my screenplay of "The Kraken Wakes".
     Anyway, on with the river theme -


The River Fleet
This would be filed under "The Secret Rivers of London", which is an evocative title if ever there was one.  It's mentioned in Christopher Fowler's "Bryant & May - The Water Room" and also in Doctor Who's reconstruction of "The Talons of Weng Chiang".  The name "river" is a bit of a misnomer, as it conjures up images of babbling brooks and cool clear water - not so!  Not so at all.  For it's traverse of London the Fleet was more akin to an open sewer than anything else - animal carcases, offal and nightsoil* were emptied into it from one end to the Thames.

Not for paddling in

     Over time the whole river was enclosed and eventually canalised into a sewer that now empties into the Thames.  At low tide and in wet weather it can be seen draining into the Thames at the exit at Blackfriars Bridge.

A day's outing for some ...

     The source of the Fleet is Hampstead Heath and a couple of ponds, which remained unsullied by industry and pollution - it's hard to float a dead pig in 1" of water - and still do.  These ponds are still quite picturesque.  Art?

Well nourished by rain, doubtless

     You are probably ahead of me here, and I hesitate to draw a parallel between poisonous filth being flung forth to pollute the world, but the Fleet river does give it's name to - Fleet Street.  Which is almost dipping my long, mis-shapen toes in the waters of Politics, so we shall move on -

    Oh, I feel so British!  What next?  Aha!  let us whiz off to the Thames Estuary.  But first we must follow the usual BOOJUM! practice of going off at a tangent - 

A Man With Two Or Three Strings To His Bow
I am talking of Will Hay, British character actor of the Thirties and Forties, who is hilarious on-screen.  If you get a chance to see "The Goose Steps Out", do so.  Or any of his other films - "The Ghost of St. Michaels" or "Oh Mister Porter!".  Art?

Magnificent in his seediness

     He usually played a bumbling incompetent who had somehow assumed a position of authority, and was revealed to be an utter fraud, although you always felt sympathy for his sheer ineptness.
     "So what?" I hear you quibble.  "Hurry up, "Polite Interceptors" is on soon."
     Pausing only to inform you that it's actually "POLICE" Interceptors - although they do maintain a certain air of politeness (at least while the cameras are on) - I shall expound.
     He had a second career as an amateur astronomer, although when a British amateur astronomer describes themselves thus, it simply means that they don't have a Master's in Astrophysics, and their technical conversations would leave you or I rather perplexed.  Art?

Will and his 6" refractor 1932

     Will was the first to discover the Great White Spot on Saturn, and he was bessie mates with the head of the British Astronomical Society.  So there.  In private life off-screen he was a very reserved and serious person, probably thinking about problems with declension and parallel seconds of arc.  He kept his astronomical career entirely separate from his acting, too.
     That's two strings - the third was aviation.  Yes, he could fly - well, if he was at the controls of an aircraft, I don't mean to imply he could do the Clark Kent kind of thing.  In fact he gave lessons to Amy Johnson.

Asteroid 3125 Hay.  Yes, named after Will.

     Oh, and he was fluent in three languages as well.  So,  his screen persona was about as far from him in reality as it's possible to get.

Goodness gracious!  We're already over the word count, and haven't even got near the Thames Estuary.  Well, later.  Oh - 

Finally -
Can't resist having a last word.

A Chinese single-wheeled cycle

     I can't help feeling that the Chinese may have built this, but Philp K. Dick invented it.

     Thank you and goodnight**!


*  Go look it up, I'm not detailing it
**  Don't quibble.  It's night somewhere in the world.