Sugar (2)

There are two fish tanks in that hut in the ecology park. One big one for all the stuff that’s supposed to be there – like a showcase of what you can’t see in the ponds because it’s all murky – and a smaller one. The small one’s called the rogues’ gallery. That’s what the woman said. Serious. It’s for all the stuff that shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Stuff people throw in, or flush down the toilet cos they’re bored. Goldfish. Crabs. Turtles.

I don’t see why they can’t just live in the ponds with all the rest of the things, to be honest. Live and let live. Accommodate. Negotiate. Tolerate. Apparently it’s to do with natural balance. Food chains. Predators. You’ve got to feel sorry for them though, stuck in that tank, watching all the kids troop in and out. I held my face right up close to the glass last time I was there. I bet they think we’re ugly. I bet they watch us and think how weird we are, walking about on two stick legs, making all that noise.

We had a goldfish once. We bought it in a pet shop full of much more exciting things than goldfish. I wanted the puppy in the last cage. It had feet too big for its legs, ears too big for its head. Mum said we couldn’t have a dog like that in a place small as ours. It wouldn’t have minded a bit, I know that, but I’m not the one who gets to make the decisions in our family. That time, my brother was small enough to still be cute. He wanted a hamster, till he poked his finger through the wire and got himself bit. So it was a goldfish. We called it Sean; I can’t remember why. I remember when it died though. We made a boat out of one of those big match boxes, stuck a stick in for a mast and a triangle of a dishcloth for a sail. Whether I cried or not’s got nothing to do with you.

Beach

There’s a sign saying the footpath’s closed, but no-one to police it. It’s an empty part of the city; a lorry now and again, the driver perched high in his metal castle, his eye line way above your head, whistling.

The tide is neither here nor there. There’s no barrier, but I suspect they wish you wouldn’t walk amongst the treasures. Here at the top it’s all plastic colours. Bags hold onto their contents. Blue pot pourri – dyed husks that have forgotten their smell. A red strap that used to hold things together. Further in, the colours grey. Cracked glass. Feather soft ash. And down here by the shore, rusted up shapes, like tempura vegetables. A nail, a hook, the loop from a long rotted tarpaulin.

I prefer here to the tarmacked path, dissected in two, punctuated by red signs in anticipation of emergencies. Here, moss clings slick green to concrete corners. Cobble stones bridge the shore. Here, the water is closer. It’s just a step across to the stacks of windows on the far shore. But standing there, I wouldn’t feel the crunch and give of cracked ceramic and rusted metal and rock underneath my feet. Standing there, for too long, I would be asked to leave.

An image to go with Aoife's poem...

Cockle shells (outside the ecology park)

Beach Combing

The river is its own curator
judging art by weight alone.
Five sets of dentures carefully deposited
together to mock the random strangers
who once examined their toothless grins
in mysterious mirrors.

The man at the centre of a storm of coat hangers.
Other debris floating to the surface,
fossils a million years old, a bent kitchen knife,
a glass stopper from a bottle of acid,
plungers, spools, part of a ship’s pulley.
The language of industry.

The history of a small animal
digging its burrow
now forever trapped in solid rock.
The point of turning,
filling the space with sediment,
an absence made present.

The burial records
of an unknown vagrant who died
over three hundred years ago.
A stranger passing through
whose destination came out of parish funds.
Harsh beauty, how the land itself
marks layers of change. Every one of us
who tried to read our names in the water.

Reality sliced thinly,
the pieces that are missing.
The pirates who swung for three tides
knew what it was
to swim through time’s laughter.
A boat heading out to sea, a hidden warning,
a moment uncaptured.

First Workshop Wednesday 1st October

Please join us for the first of four free creative writing workshops on Wednesday 1st October. We'll be in cottage number 82, next to the Pilot Pub, 6.30pm start (finishing at 8.00pm).

Sugar

The name’s Sugar. And I don’t appreciate the jokes, so don’t bother. Someone like you living in a place like this – all that water. I’m not the dissolving type, that’s all I’ll say.

You’ll have seen the place I live, just off the shore. It’s a boat, except it’s not going anywhere. They don’t like us being here; figure they think the place spoils the view, but the fact is we own this bit of land, this rectangle on the bottom of the river where the sliced metal of the hull sits. We own it ‘in perpetuity’. It’s a word I like the sound of.

Wherever you stand you can hear the water. It’s like the river’s breathing. Sometimes I’ll sit, especially when it’s dark and you can see the buildings on the other side like a tapestry of lights, and I listen for words in the water. Wish. Kiss. Miss.

What do I love about the place, you ask. Why am I here, you ask. Because of the water. Because my eyes can stretch further than a wall or the block of a body in front of me. You’ve met people who live by the sea. Haven’t you noticed there’s a stillness at the centre of them? It is something to do with the distance. It is something to do with the sky.

Seamus Heaney - The Peninsula

I've just re-read Seamus Heaney's poem - The Peninsula, which is published in his collection, Door Into The Dark. He's writing about a very different peninsula - in rural Southern Ireland, but some of the lines resonated with me in relation to the Greenwich Peninsula:

"The sky is tall as over a runway,
The land without marks so you will not arrive"

The poem talks a lot about silence, about having nothing to say, or at least no way of saying it. It made me think about how alien the landscape on the west side of the Greenwich Peninsula is to me - how I struggle to find language to describe what I see there.

The end of the poem made me think about the 'in-betweeness' of the Greenwich Peninsula - geographically, and in terms of its massive regeneration programme - and the almost ethereal quality of the place:

"...now you will uncode all landscapes
By this: things founded clean on their own shapes,
Water and ground in their extremity."

Ragged Edges

Today myself and Sarah walked around the west side of the Peninsula. We cut along narrow lanes lined with barbed wire offering odd glimpses of an industrial wasteland in the middle of mutating into something habitable. I started to get a bit nervous as we approached two gigantic diggers emptying huge amounts of soil into a floating barge. There didn’t seem to be another human soul for miles and I was struck by how unusual it was that in the middle of London we could feel so alone. Of course, on closer inspection, the diggers had drivers inside them who patiently stopped their mammoth task to let us pass. When I got home, I wrote this poem…

Ragged Edges

As we pick our way across the huge concrete roundabout,
the sunshine shifts into grey spatterings of rain.
The wind rattles through the marshes,
as if the poltergeists of industrial contamination
were warning us away from barbed wire lanes,
the startling bleakness of gas girders
circling up into the sky.

The graffiti bunkers wink their loss of purpose,
gigantic cranes swing their arms
over the windmills of water.
The mouths of diggers eat into the landscape
with an obscene hunger
as the crumpled earth is fed to the river.

We reclaim ourselves from the murkiness of the Thames,
as if this were a city we could walk through when we’ve died,
the survival of rhubarb just another miracle
of what can be saved from the waste,
those moments of silence in the midst of the metropolis,
the surprise of overcoming isolation.

Where we can lose ourselves
in the architecture of the future
and the maps are fluid at high tide.

Almost an Island

The Oxford English Dictionary defines 'Peninsula' as "A piece of land that is almost an island, being nearly surrounded by water", hence the title of this project.
I had coffee with a friend who lives on the Peninsula last week. He told me that the 'Pen' bit comes from 'penumbra' meaning 'a partial shadow', the 'insula' means 'island'.
I'm wondering if other people find the meanings held in words less exciting than I do! I love the idea of a place being 'almost an island', able to hold the positive and negative elements associated with islands; and also the connection with a shadow, again something that has positive and negative connotations.
Walking around the West side of the Peninsula with Aoife today I was struck again by the contrast of that industrial landscape with the towers of Canary Wharf just across the water, and with the neat plastic models of what the East side of the Peninsula will become over the coming years. There is something magical about the Peninsula, I think - which is to do with the contrasts, with the light and with the fact it is nearly surrounded by water. I am looking forward to working there over the next couple of months.

Join in our free workshops and activities in October 2008

Drop-in workshops

Wednesdays 1, 8, 15 & 22 October

6.30pm–8pm

River Way Cottages, next to The Pilot Inn

Writers in residence Aoife Mannix and Sarah Butler are creating a soundscape that will represent the lives and stories of those connected with the Greenwich Peninsula. Come along to one or more of our creative writing workshops and be a part of this exciting exploration of what the Greenwich Peninsula means to you. Refreshments will be provided.
The workshops are free and no experience is necessary

Drop-in creative day for all the family

Monday 27 October

10.30am–4pm

Greenwich Millennium Village Visitor Centre, Maurer Court, Teal St (off John Harrison Way)

Join one of our word walks, starting at 11am and 2pm (each lasting approx 1 hour), or call in during the day to see the work we’ve already created – find out more about the Peninsula’s history – take part in our activities – have a cup of tea – tell us your stories of the area.
Free, no experience necessary

The work created as part of Almost An Island will be presented at a public event in November 2008. Keep an eye on the blog for details.