Then and Now

[tamaranth]

Then	Now
Twelve trains to Central London every hour (+ DLR)	Two trains to Central London every hour
Five rooms	Seventeen rooms
Looking at the pretty colours of the evening smog	Watching the stars come out from the football pitch lawn
Scaly carnivore, singular	Furry carnivores, plural
Virgin phone signal	No Virgin phone signal (Vodafone connection real soon now)
Bored teenagers on mini-scooters / yelling at each other	Birdsong
2500 books	About 1000 books (the rest are in the loft or headed/heading for new shelves)
straggly pot-plants	verdant vegetation
a river running past	a river running past (rainy days only, end of the road)
pikey high-street chain stores	nice mix of independent shops and chains
Maritime Greenwich, 20 mins walk	Brighton (2 trains an hour)
tumuli	South Downs
Bookshops that stay open until 11	Amazon
muggings	strangers who say 'good morning' and smile

Comments

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Sounds like an overall improvement :-)

(And I think you were being very charitable about the 'river' at your old place...)

MC

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

It is so a river! It's the Ravensbourne, and it's tidal up to Brookmill Park (I surveyed it). So there!

[zoo-music-girl.livejournal.com]

I always thought that was the Quaggy River round the back of your flat. I love that name!

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

nah, the Quaggy joins the Ravensbourne at Lewisham station (which is probably a wonderfully rich archaeological site and shows signs of reverting to savagery most evenings). I was surprised at how far up it's tidal: you can walk through Brookmill Park and see the slack water where tide meets current, on a rising tide.

[zoo-music-girl.livejournal.com]

I had a look at a map after I posted and I can see where it joins. Amazing that it's tidal so far up from the sea and the Thames!

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

The Thames is so strongly tidal (and tidal further inland than it used to be -- now the tide goes as far as Teddington, but apparently only to Putney in Viking times) that I suspect most of its tributaries -- such as Deptford Creek, into which the Ravensbourne flows at Deptford Bridge -- are tidal simply by having Thames water forced into them. At a rough estimate, I'd say the Ravensbourne's tidal limit is about a mile to a mile and a half from the Thames -- and some of that's culverted, which forces the water further and faster in both directions.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

Although the proper name, IIRC, is the Kydbrooke.

[zoo-music-girl.livejournal.com]

Gosh, it's got a Wikipedia entry! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Quaggy

The article for the Ravensbourne river says the Quaggy is known as Kyd Brook for part of its route. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Ravensbourne

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

Good save on the punctuation!

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

The trouble is I have prejudices about rivers, mostly involving grassy banks, overhanging willows and ducklings. Which is silly, as of course I think of the Thames as a river, and by extension its tributaries.

Spent too long in rural Hampshire, I have...

MC