'Old Isleworth'

On Sunday morning I was waiting to meet Robyn and for part of the time I had a walk around 'Old Isleworth'.

It's not looking so well these days;

Isleworth is a working class community and I was privileged to represent some of the people there, over the years. Since the 1980's of Margaret Thatcher, 'Old Isleworth' has been trying to drive out the poorer people - it's been getting much more of a problem recently.

This used to be 'Isleworth Coaches', a big employer;

It wasn't old and it wasn't particularly beautiful but it was a big employer and part of driving people away is getting rid of their jobs.

These perfectly good buildings had years of life left in them, as did the people who worked there but the problem is they were down by the riverbank and that makes them prime real estate.

As I was taking pictures three groups of people came up to me and asked if I'd worked there. The site plainly meant a lot to local people and the arrival of flats for rich people isn't at all welcome.

These days the cement and steel is recycled, which is more than you can say for the people.

Brentford and Isleworth were once river communities - effectively ports and docks with boat services too.

Nearly all of that has gone now - there are a few boatyards hanging on at Brentford. While at Isleworth there are a few working boats left;

But it won't be long before they are gone too - just like the Thames Lightermen (Cargo) and Watermen (passengers) I once knew.

The river bank still keeps a few secrets to tell you this was once a working river.....from the days before building materials were recycled;

And not far from the new luxury flats there's a big flow of water into the river - it's from Mogden, West London's major sewage works.

Here's the 'river' just before it joins The Thames;

I walked on to 'The London Apprentice', it's a pub near the nicest part of the river and still unspoilt. I wandered about on the bank but I wasn't feeling so well and started off back to my car.

At least the birds were getting fed;

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

Down at the river at Weybridge.

Tuesday afternoon, when my cold was starting, we drove down to Weybridge. We stopped at Weybridge Marina and had a walk along the riverbank, before we sat on one of the benches and watched the river flow by.

When I was working, I was often held up while they built this bridge but it's looking quite good now;

Quite formidable;

Then I saw a sign!

I needed that in my life, when parents, people generally, persuaded me to do something I should never have done I needed this sign to pop up in front of me;

That would have made things a lot easier.

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

Bizzarro world.

On Sunday we went for a walk, we both needed to get out. I was desperate to go somewhere I'd never been before but couldn't think of anywhere and I wasn't up to driving a long way.

In the end we walked along from Staines bridge but on the opposite bank of the river.

It was really weird - in all the years I've been here I'd never seen the places I knew from the other bank.

They looked completely different, smaller. And now I could see all the buildings close up that I'd only seen from across the water.

It was strange going through the bridges where we went fire spinning....in the day time.

It didn't help that everything was back to front.

Just before Bell Weir we passed the boatyard near Runnymede and I couldn't help taking a picture of a narrow boat, out of the water.

Then we walked passed an expensive hotel (I'm not giving them an advertisement here) and lots of people lazing away a Sunday afternoon.

They had deckchairs;

And you could hire a 'Tub Tug', a hot tub that was a boat;

I didn't fancy that one little bit - and it's a £120 an hour, so that isn't happening.

We made it all the way to the recreation ground at Runnymede - passing lots of buildings I see from the road but never saw nearby.

But by now I was tired and hurting. We had a sit by the river, enjoying the sun but where I'd parked we were limited to 2 hours and we had to get back.

I was hurting big time when we were back at the car but we walked about 3.7 miles which wasn't too bad.

Mind you, today I'm really paying for it.

Ouch!

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production.
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

Swan Upping on The Thames.

I'd always meant to catch a look at the ancient ceremony of 'swan-upping', which takes place on the River Thames every year in July but I never bothered until now.

Today, I had a wasps nest in the house to sort out and so we had to go into Staines to get some 'stuff'....

Then we drove down to the river with a couple of chairs and just sat in the sun, basking.

The ceremony started in the 12th century - when the then king gave himself a monopoly over eating swans. Every year the monarchs 'Swan-Marker' (really, I couldn't have made this up if I'd wanted to) goes on a procession up the river Thames, marking the queens swans.

Sometime around 1500, the ownership of the swans was shared with The Worshipful Company of Vintners and The Worshipful company of Dyers. These are two of The City of London's ancient Guilds, which once were trade bodies but are now dining clubs for bankers.

The 'Swan-uppers' are supposed to move upstream, dividing all the young swans they find between the queen, The Vintners and The Dyers.

So, we set up opposite a place where people feed swans, in between Staines and Penton Hook Lock.

There were plenty of swans around;

It was gloriously sunny - the first really sunny day of the summer.

We sweltered. 

And then we caught site of the first boat, you can't see it but the red flag is from 'The Vintners':

This is one of 'The Dyers' boats in blue - the captain is wearing a swans feather in his cap;

Here's one of the royal boats;

While this is 'The Royal Swan Marker', David Barber, in his full, gold braided finery;

Now I support the Thames Lightermen and Watermen, who represent a tradition going back a thousand years - they provided the ferries that got people from one riverbank to the other, the boats that took people up and down river and they moved all the goods that passed through The Pool of London.

But the 'swan uppers'?

I didn't see them count any swans or weigh and mark any cygnets either and where we were there were upwards of 50 or 100 birds wandering around.

So while it may be a quaint old ceremony, it really seems to be just an opportunity for a lot of silly old bankers to spend a week being rowed up river.

Hmmmmmh!

But it was nice stealing an hour or so to sit in the sun on the riverbank.

And no swans appeared to be hurt in the making of this Blog!

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)
Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

Perfect day.

We'd meant to do it since last September and it never worked out for us for one reason or another.

This time we got it right - we took a boat trip from Richmond to Kingston.

We parked up in my secret place, walked along the river bank in glorious sunshine and then our boat arrived.

Here it is, turning round;

It's just the most amazing feeling when things work out....when they usually don't.

This is the terrace at Richmond which we were leaving behind us;

It's so strange being used to views of places you've known all your life and suddenly you're looking at them from different angles.

We made good speed;

Here we're leaving Eel Pie Island at Twickenham behind us;

When we got to Kingston we walked along the river side until we found somewhere to eat our sandwiches.

It's the kind of town where young people come over for the nightlife, get drunk, fall in the river and drown. So this big block of water was a clever idea;

We went to the old guildhall where one of the Thames tributaries joins the river at the ancient 'Clattern bridge'. Just before that you can catch a glimpse of some very fine fish. I don't know what these are but they were at least a foot long;

I'm not exaggerating, really!

We had a look at 'The Coronation Stone' - it's where the ancient Kings of England were crowned, at least they were for about a hundred years starting in 900 AD.

I'm sure this is a 'Sarcen Stone' just like the ones we saw at Stonehenge or the one in Lambton Park in Hounslow.

I bet it was considered sacred a long time before 900.

Doesn't it remind you of 'The Stone' in the legend of King Arthour? The one King Arthur pulls the sword out of in the legend?

It's also how Kingston got it's name; 'Kings Town'.

We wandered around looking at the shops, we had a coffee and all too soon it was time to catch the boat to Richmond.

There were fishermen, elegant Cormorants, the weir and lock at Teddington and then suddenly we were back where we started at the end of a perfect day.

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)

Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

Stanley Spencer at Cookham.

On Friday we told ourselves it really was summer and because of that we headed out somewhere....anywhere.

As we drove along it was obvious the sun wasn't going to shine on us.

Robyn started shouting out increasingly improbable places we could go to as this dreariest of Augusts slouched to its end.

Then she had a really good idea.

Back in June when the sun had been shining, we went to Cookham one evening and we walked along the river meadows which were cracking from drought.

I was still using my walking frame because I was tired and we walked past the Stanley Spencer Gallery....it was closed.

In March 2014, I took a rare afternoon off - my Mum was in hospital and about to come out. My drugs had just kicked in and I went to Maidenhead on the strength of it and walked all the way along the river to Cookham and back....but the gallery was just closing as I got there.

So that's where we decided to go.

It's only a tiny gallery in a former chapel and it doesn't have his most famous pictures but it is in Cookham all the same and that matters.

And here he is;

Stanley was born and brought up here in a quiet little village by the side of the River Thames; all timber-framed houses and meadows.

While next door Maidenhead became a fashionable resort at the end of the 19th Century - Cookham stayed an agricultural dead end much longer.

Stanley didn't go to regular school and the village became his whole life - except when he went away to art school or, horrifically, when he was sent to Macedonia in the First World War.

He was introverted and eccentric and his world always revolved around his religion, his village and his painting. 

He mainly painted pictures depicting scenes from the scriptures, full of the people he had grown up with.

It was a tiny little view of the world.

So, his last uncompleted picture (it's in the gallery) is entitled; "Christ preaching at The Cookham Regatta".

He was eccentric - here's the old pram he used to carry his easel around the village on;

The sign was professionally printed and says;

"As he is anxious to complete his painting of the churchyard, Mr Stanley Spencer would be grateful if visitors would kindly avoid distracting his attentions from his work".

The little gallery is good even if it over represents his portraits and lacks the most famous works.

Cookham was never sure about Stanley - he didn't run away from painting nudity or dealing with sex in a puritanical era.

It's very hard to categorise him - he was described as a 'Post-impressionist' but really he was just Stanley Spencer.

My interest isn't in his religious paintings or his landscapes. It all starts for me in the Second World War when he became a controversial 'Official War Artist'.

Better still, he was sent to rough and tough Glasgow to paint shipbuilders working on the 'Home Front'.

He was photographed at the time standing in the middle of the fire and noise of a shipyard in his earnest spectacles and wearing a paint spattered suit, sketching furiously on a roll of toilet paper.

This was a time when working people didn't matter (even less than now, if that's possible) - Stanley who saw something in everybody created the finest workplace pictures ever painted.

So much so that Lithgow, the owner of the shipyard complained about the pictures and forced the fund to send another artist to do some more conventional pictures for him.

The gallery doesn't have anything other than a couple of sketches for the series but it does have this unrelated scene of mechanics which I snatched a picture of; 

I'm sorry about the quality - 'No Photography'.

Recently, there was an appeal to restore the shipbuilding series launched by Alex Fergusson the former Manchester United manager who worked in the yards himself and whose Father and Uncles were working there during the war.

Here's the house Stanley grew up in;

And I took this picture of his grave in the little churchyard back in June when the ground was cracking from drought.

Then we drove back to Maidenhead, walked along the river and spent a while sitting and eating ice cream.

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)

Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

Uxbridge's Millstreams and the Canal.

By now I was getting bored and I drove around to the other side of Uxbridge, parked up and had a walk through the water courses.

Uxbridge is a big town full of office blocks and shops but underneath (and I mean underneath) there's a network of streams, rivers and canals.

This is the heart of 'The Colne Valley' which ends up at Colnebrook, the River Colne by us and then at Staines Moor before it flows into the Thames.

Except it isn't one river, its a collection of streams that split and combine all over the place.

At Uxbridge there were once a series of Mills, most of which have been converted to offices or restaurants. Underneath, the streams still flow even if some go through pipes every so often.

I've even tried to follow them on a map or Google Earth and failed.

Some end up flowing into The Grand Union Canal which is where I ended up walking along the towpath.

Many of the narrowboats still have traditional designs like this fine lettering;

The canals were built in the 18th century, had a short spell before the railways came along and took most of their trade.

In the 1920's, the Grand Union was created by merging several canal companies into one in an attempt to get big enough to compete and modernise.

The main branch is from London to Birmingham but this is the Oxford branch which runs through Slough and Uxbridge on its way to Town.

I stood a while on the bridge by the lock, watching the water squeezing through the lockgates;

The guy in the blue boat wasn't too sure of himself. As he left the lock he collided with the boat on his right then bounced back hitting the wall of the lock before colliding with the lock gate as he emerged.

Meanwhile he forgot about his partner who had been struggling the lock gates for him so he had to reverse into the bank which involved another collision so that he could get her back on board. She wasn't too happy about it.

Of course, I wouldn't be any better myself but it was very funny.

I like the idea of these lost streams, just as I like following the course of London's many lost rivers; The Fleet, The Tyburn, The River Moselle, The River Westbourne (Westbourne Grove!), Stanford Brook, meanwhile in South London which I don't know so well there is The River Effra (Effra Road).

Most ended up in underground drains, some are in pipes which you sometimes see when you are travelling on the Tube, under a bridge or you hear them bubbling under metal grates in the road.

Sometimes, you just see the damp in the walls of a building!

In medieval times they were important water courses, used for drinking water, sewerage or a way to catch a boat.
Life went on around them or was about getting over them without getting wet.

Now they usually end up as a drain coming out of a wall in the Thames Embankment.

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)

Home: helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

Cookham.

We had a grouchy day - Robyn can't travel anywhere until her visa appeal is dealt with and me?

Well I can't really travel.

And after a day of not really doing anything we were getting frustrated and so we went out in the long June evening.

The plan was to park in Eton and walk over the bridge to Windsor for a wander around the town - except when we got there everybody else had the same idea and we couldn't park.

We ended up at Cookham; a little village on The Thames just upstream from Maidenhead.

Everywhere is very dry - when I was screaming with pain in hospital it was the sunniest April for decades (official!) and there hasn't been a lot of rain since then.

I'm not complaining.

But the grass is....and the farmers. When I went down to Ankerwycke I hoped to get a picture of the hay before it was cut but there was hardly any and in one field the cattle had been let in because the farmer had given up altogether.

There was a bit of grass down by the river;

And the Thames was nice - the ducklings were enjoying it;

The problem is I'm still not well enough to do things and summer is short.

This weekend though, we have a big adventure planned.

A really foolish, foolish adventure. A big one.

You've never done this!

And no, I'm not going to tell you what it is except that a year ago Midsummer's Night was very special for us so this has got to be even better.

While we were down by the river, we saw this;

It was the makings of a rainbow even there was no rain.

The sun was defracting through the crystals of a thin, thin cloud high up in the atmosphere.

And then we walked through the churchyard and the wooden framed houses of Cookham and back to the car.

It will be a shame when June has gone.

Neil Harris
(a don't stop till you drop production)

Home:  helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com

Contact me:  neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

Brass bands and Mayflies at The Lammas.

After a wonderful trip to the seaside on Saturday, Sunday was back to the usual grind.

We have a 'cancer garden' - the grass is waste high because I've been too ill to cut it.

Sunday morning I got out the mower - it burnt out. I only bought it halfway through last summer, We hardly used it - all I can say is don't buy Flymo it's a rubbish make. the small print told me I shouldn't have been using it on 'long grass'.

I believe the young folk would say WTF. Needless to say I won't be buying Flymo again.

Everything else seemd to be going wrong too and it was such a beautiful day which just made it worse.

In the end we went to Staines for a walk because we didn't want to waste the day.

As we got out of the car we heard music and just followed the noise.

Here's Robyn's picture of the bandstand at The Lammas;

We found a shady bench and just sat listening to The Cobham brass band.

It was delightful.

Around us children were playing, people played crazy golf and tennis and then a Mayfly landed on my leg;

Do you remember early May when I could hardly walk and we spent a Sunday afternoon by the river at The Lammas watching the Mayflies dancing?

They've grown since then.

Then a couple of weeks ago we were in Amersham and I posted a picture of fishermen's flies in a shop - there were Mayflies?

Here they are again. Take a look at the ones on the right hand side. I think the fly maker has got a few of them just right; 

 

 

It was a wonderful afternoon in the sun.

 

Oh and after yesterday I decided to go out and not use a walking frame. So, I walked with just a walking stick.

 

Isn't that great?

 

Neil Harris

 

Home:  helpmesortoutatpeters.blogspot.com

Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com

 

 



Water on the brain.

Sunday morning, while we waited for the shops in Staines to open, we went for a walk along the Thames at Penton Hook Lock.

It's a great bend in the river - in America it would be called an 'Oxbow' because it's so pronounced - it has a very narrow neck.

In the past, Staines was a point in the river where there was a sharp fall in ground level and the river broke up into a series of smaller streams and rapids. As a result it was a place where stone age man had a chance of fording the river.

The rapids must have covered quite a big area from Ash...ford (which is now Ashford) to Laleham which is where Penton Hook Lock is. When the Romans came they also forded the river at Staines and then built a series of bridges over the streams. As a result, they named Staines "Ad Pontes"...The Bridges.

Anyway, in the 19th century, the Victorians tamed the rapids at Staines and in the process built a lock and weir at Penton Hook Lock.

It's still quite a sight even when the river is low, as it was on Sunday.

It was also freezing cold with a wind that cut straight through you.

Neil Harris

(a don't stop till you drop production)

Home:  helpmesortoutstpeters.blogspot.com

Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com