Down by the River

All summer long, war has been raging on the river, the backdrop to long sunny mornings, where the bird population guard their chicks, and wait for you to drop them largesse, brown bread, white bread, they don’t care.

The river has also been the backdrop to war waged on us, all of us.

In London on the 7th July, outside London, it doesn’t make a difference – we have all been hurt.

It started slowly – the first report said no more than a loud bang had been heard on the Liverpool rail line. That was around half past nine.

By 12 midday, the world had changed

I came online to some very frightened emails and messages – one in particular from some one who had just woken up in the States, and didn’t know if I was safe.

I work in an Oxford college, stone towers, climbing ivy, green velvet lawns, the lot. I sat at my desk, looking out on the quad, thinking about being alive.


Photogrpah: Iffley Lock, early morning

Down by the river, we have been counting the cost – the mallard hen had produced a brood of 15 bundles of fluff.
The lock -keeper tells me that a magpie had taken out four of the chicks, we both regret the murderous magpie.

“The geese have done well” I remind the lock-keeper, thinking of the daily parade of proud geese parents escorting their young down the river, hissing like kettles at anything that comes near their babies.

The keeper agrees, although ‘they had lost quite a few chicks,have the geese.’

The weeping willow bends down to the river and the geese honk loudly to each other.

Life goes on for them – next year they will be back with a new brood. I look forward to that.