Love Sunshine

Looking on the bright side (thanks to the sun)

On Sunday a trip that had been planned for almost a year took place, or didn't take place (depending on how you look at it). The idea was to take a boat down river, from the centre of London to Gravesend in Kent. Thence to board a bus (a lovely old routemaster), to take us to the Kent Marshes to explore the terrain evoked so powerfully in the opening pages of Dickens's novel Great Expectations. In an earlier life I was a Dickensian, and so before I wrote about sun, sun, sun, it was Fog Everywhere. I wrote a chapter about the Marshes and Dickens's novel for a book called Common Ground: Around Britain in Thirty Writers. A pot of Arts Council money was secured for a jolly to let people experience what I had written about, 45 expectant people signed up, and turned up at St Katharine's dock with great expectations for a trip into Dickensian Kent. It was then that we learned the day we had chosen (about 3 months ago), was the day our dear mayor Boris the Berk, had chosen to clean the Thames Barrier. I don't think he was actually doing it himself. Going by his appearance, cleaning isn't the top of his list of priorities or skills. But of all days in the year this was the one he decided to close the barriers and prevent us visiting the Marshes, the whole point of our day out and the reason 45 people were standing on a jetty on a Sunday morning. The skipper offered to drive up and down the river a bit, and we duly agreed.

A disaster. Tantrums, demands for reimbursement, threats to sue the organisers, Boris, the Port of London Authority, Old Man River? Not a bit of it. For a start, if you know the novel, it's rather fitting. When Pip and Magwitch attempt to make it down river, so the returned convict can hop it away, they are apprehended. But that's a nice, academic distinction. What saved the day was the kind old sun, smiling on us all day long, setting the river a-sparkle with diamond dance, and polishing everything a good deal shinier than Boris's char-woman with her J-Cloth and Mr Sheen up on his lousy Barrier. Balls to his Barrier. We had a rare old time soaking up the sun, knocking back the gin, and seeing the Thames, London, England, Creation at their finest.

For the summer, like the 5.55 train from Burgess Hill to Victoria has finally arrived. Late, ridiculously, shamefully late, but welcome nonetheless. It has been hanging around off and on for the last 13 days. 5 of them I spent in Spain, and I'd like to take the credit for kick starting the final burst of summer by selflessly leaving the country. Something that never fails to ensure the clouds clear, and usually follow me. I had planned to tell the woeful tale of leaving Gatwick through glorious blue to touch down in miserable grey Malaga nearly 2 weeks ago, but it would break your hearts or split your sides with laughter. Especially as I had fought tooth and nail to get my passport. The irony avalanched me prostrate in misery at the time. The airport security guards had to prise me off the tarmac as I wept and beat the floor in torment. But that is all rainwater under the bridge now. The sun has done his magic (both in Spain and back here), and saved what could have been a disaster, and for this he must be given full credit. What larks, old Sun. What larks.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Common-Ground-Around-Britain-Writers/dp/1904879934