Limehouse Reach
"So, it's a long good-bye to Limehouse Reach/And a last good-bye to you/A fella's a fool to die for love, Which I don't mean to do/ There's girls as sharp in every port From here to Cal-la-o"
I walked Rochester’s Riverside Walk between Doust Way and Cory’s Creek. Less than a mile long it was closed down shortly after its initial opening when all the railings were nicked overnight.
Eventually it will be engulfed in new housing but now it wears the air of indecision.
Looking across Limehouse reach I watch oystercatchers mob a crow above a barge that has lost the fight against entropy and is blurring the space between identity and landscape. Shedding off the pain of individualism and merging with Medway.
A wild eyed man walks past talking to himself. These days the adroit schitzophrenic just needs to get equipped with a Bluetooth headset and lose himself among a thousand estate agents with gelled hair and fat purple ties.
Perhaps it’s better to be feared than to be despised.
I have not lost my appetite for this project – indeed I have been seeing more connections and making the odd discovery as the time ebbs slowly by – but it is the ebbing of time that is the problem. The lunar pull on the time and tide* is strong and the weather draws me outdoors and further from my keyboard.
I was slightly geed up when I discovered that someone (John Toland) actually read this tripe – and will endeavour to put more up soon.
*The origin of the phrase “Time and tide wait for no man” is uncertain, although it’s clear that the phrase is ancient and that it predates modern English. The earliest known record is from St. Marher, 1225: “And te tide and te time þat tu iboren were, schal beon iblescet.”
A version in modern English – “the tide abides for, tarrieth for no man, stays no man, tide nor time tarrieth no man” evolved into the present day version.
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