High Water (2)

A sequel, two days later. I take the river way again. In the meantime water has consumed our garden for the second time this year, but it’s still a long way from the house. In times like this something drives me to keep looking at the river, as though I can interrogate it about how much further it plans to rise: will we get away with it again, as we did in 2007 and in the first floods this year, in November?

I confess I’ve been in the pub for an hour while everyone else has been singing carols. I think I know from the start that I won’t get through, that the path will have gone under. Christchurch Meadows are going. The path on my side is a ribbon of stones. On my left is water threaded with trees’ shadows. On my right the buses are still weaving the colours on the sports field.

A bit of Donne comes imperfectly back to me – “if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as sure as if a promontory were” – maybe this is the promontory, St Paul’s Promontory turning slowly downstream, heading for drowned Doggerland, the ancient land bridge between England and the Continent.

It’s cold out here. At least walking gets me warm. I taste the moisture as I breathe. I lived near the River Wandle in London for a couple of years, and once walked its length. That walk confirmed something I’d noticed about the river since I first crossed it on Wandsworth High Street during a long commute to work: it had its own taste, a metal, working water flavour that moved in the air along its current. Tonight I can taste the Thames as it flows.

And my suspicions are right. I cross the bridge over Eastwyke Ditch, and the area in front of the boathouse is completely submerged. Should have put my wellies on. I don’t really fancy walking all the way back up to Folly Bridge and then back down fumy Abingdon Road. I wait for a moment, looking down at the Ditch, where moored, abandoned boats knock their lichens together as the water pours over and through them.

I remember that at the edge of the sunken sports field there’s a gate onto a more favoured cricket pitch, whose square hosts better-quality matches. This is at least partly because it tends stay above flood waters. On the far side of that field there’s a gate out onto the road. I reckon that’s the best way out.

The sports grounds probably don’t help with the flood. Water’s meant to run off them to keep them sound. And I suppose it’s been a few years since the river’s been dredged. But what they say on some news message boards – that evil EU legislation protecting all that silly wildlife from the dredgers is the cause of all the floods – is not quite right. To say the least.

The climate is changing, as is incontrovertibly shown by long-term phenological studies regarding the time of year when leaves start opening, or insects take wing. Taxonomic atlases chart, among other things, the northward advance of warm-weather species. As the climate changes we don’t necessarily get warmer all the time, but we do get more extreme weather, such as tremendous storms of rain in between extensive droughts. The land veers between inundation and desiccation.

Meanwhile farmers, on our behalf, grow the same crops in the same fields year after year, dousing the plants in fertiliser to replace the nutrients of the earth, and herbicide to kill other plants, whose roots might help hold the soil together. As a result the earth becomes sandy, crumbly, and in dry periods opens up into great cracks. These don’t close.

When it rains heavily water runs off the surface of the fields, and into the cracks. It doesn’t soak into the earth, but quickly finds its way into the rivers, streams, lakes. Its way is not impeded by the roots of hedges – which have been grubbed out, or are a thin green line around immense fields. The water pours through in torrents, taking nutrients with it.

In towns our gardens might do the job once done by fields – except that they are so often covered with concrete, tarmac, bricks, to receive cars or avoid the trouble of dealing with plants. Water runs right off these “grey gardens” into drains. The drains can’t cope when lots of rain comes, so the run-off goes into storm drains, which discharge directly into water bodies.

(Of course, this raises difficult questions about what we should do about this. Should we go organic, cutting the productivity of the soil in a time of global food shortage? Should legislation require the restoration of paved gardens to vegetation – maybe to grow vegetables? Should we aim for damage limitation rather than flood prevention?)

The gate onto the sports field is the best way out. The land rises half a metre, as on my right the lights of the road take over the shapes of any objects. I press on toward the road. Strange walking. My eyes are filled with colours, movement, but I am walking blind – the grass underfoot, which I can feel through my shoes – is completely hidden. Ahead of me, the cricket pavilion’s bulk is completely surrounded by yellow light from the road. The sports field shimmers on my right, while on my left the low ground that protects the luckier square has also revealed itself to be a rippling reflection of the urban colour scheme.

I step cautiously round the sight screen and rollers, just discernible as I approach. The texture of the ground changes, stony, tarmac. I stop for a moment, listening to the traffic, and wondering if at the water’s lip there’s a lapping. Any photographer worth his or her salt would be out here tonight, with long exposure and flash. I frame a few shots – the bare trees’ structure against the water’s light, the white birds moving smoothly from shadow into colour and back again, the bus stopped on the road and its double always seeming to move apart, but always together.

I still walk blind. I trust the tarmac not suddenly to crumble away. The view of the water disappears and I climb a slight slope to the gate onto the road. One last obstacle – it’s locked and chained, and though only waist high topped with spikes. I wonder briefly about CCTV, but longer about whether I can get over this gate. Not many footholds.

One toe in the A-frame strut between the bars. Another, a bit higher up. Now it’s strain, strain my knee as high as I can to get it onto the gate top between the spikes. It doesn’t seem possible, but I know I can force my leg to do it. It does. For a moment I stand on top of the gate, sway, jump onto the ordinary pavement. From there it’s easy home. I’ve escaped from the floods for now.