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Jan. 3rd, 2010 09:46 amWhen you close your eyes by the river, you can almost pretend you're at the sea.
There's a tang of salt in the air as the tide comes in, and the screams of the gulls that swarm along the banks, poaching bread from the passers by.
At low tide, it's mud that you smell. An overwhelming smell, a damp smell, of things gone by that now lie submerged and forgotten. At high tide, you can hear the lap of water against the concrete banks, as though you stood atop a harbour wall with the sea stretching out before you.
In the winter, the wind whips down the tow path, cutting into bare cheeks and hands as though you stood on a sea wall with all the North Sea as a run up. In the summer, there is the sun on your face and the shouting of children behind you, and you can imagine yourself standing above a beach.
And yet it is not the sea, however much you wish it. Confined to the city, you must walk along the bank of this narrow river and pretend it is greater, that you could not walk right across at low tide, your feed squelching deep into the river mud.
There's a tang of salt in the air as the tide comes in, and the screams of the gulls that swarm along the banks, poaching bread from the passers by.
At low tide, it's mud that you smell. An overwhelming smell, a damp smell, of things gone by that now lie submerged and forgotten. At high tide, you can hear the lap of water against the concrete banks, as though you stood atop a harbour wall with the sea stretching out before you.
In the winter, the wind whips down the tow path, cutting into bare cheeks and hands as though you stood on a sea wall with all the North Sea as a run up. In the summer, there is the sun on your face and the shouting of children behind you, and you can imagine yourself standing above a beach.
And yet it is not the sea, however much you wish it. Confined to the city, you must walk along the bank of this narrow river and pretend it is greater, that you could not walk right across at low tide, your feed squelching deep into the river mud.