HUMAN THINGS, PLACES, AND FACES
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‘GRAND MOTHER IN HER NEST’
Crayford is a small town between Bexley and Dartford. I live here. This is the River Cray. Crayford is named after this river. The River Cray is a tributary of the River Darent which in turn is a tributary of the Thames. It rises in Priory Gardens in Orpington in the London Borough of Bromley, where rainwater permeates the chalk bedrock and forms a pond at the boundary between the chalk and impermeable clay. The River watches. In Crayford, the water and air is the same as it was one thousand years ago. It is the same water that fed mills and munitions factories and printing factories and fabric processing factories and ironworks and electrical parts manufacturers, now feeds just the Thames. At the boundary between the chalk// impermeable clay Mud that is almost mud. It then flows northwards past the industrial and residential area of St Mary Cray, through St Paul's Cray where there was once a paper mill, through Foots Cray, and enters the parkland of Foots Cray Meadows. Here it flows under the Five Arches bridge (which was built in 1781 as part of the designs for Foots Cray Meadows drawn up by Capability Brown) and past Loring Hall (c.1760), once the home of Lord Castlereagh, who committed suicide there in 1822.
There are fish in the water. There are feet in the water – wading. The trees that grow along the embankment are hundreds of years old. Every summer, their catkins drift like fresh snow from the river onto our gardens and linger on spider webs, gathering in the wind. These were the stories of old. It continues northwards through North Cray and Bexley, where there is a restored Gothic cold plunge bath house, built around 1766 as part of Vale Mascal Estate. It is then joined by the River Shuttle and then continues through the parkland of Hall Place, which was built for John Champneys in 1540. Piles of old cloth. Plastic burnt by the sun// burnt by kids. rope. Bricks. Toys from children who are no longer children. What stories could the Cray’s bed tell? It then turns east through Crayford and Barnes Cray before joining the Darent, which flows northwards into the River Thames between Crayford Marshes and Dartford Marshes. The villages through which it flows are collectively known as The Crays. From source to mouth the River Cray powered fourteen watermills. Ammonia // corrosive fish, dissolved from the inside.dead fish floating downstream on their backs foam/ sewage raw sewage, waste chemicals toxic waste mutated algae.
my body might be found floating – floating underneath the high street in my neighbour’s back garden. Adipocere is a wax-like organic substance formed by the anaerobic bacterial hydrolysis of fat in tissue, such as body fat in corpses. In its formation, putrefaction is replaced by a permanent firm cast of fatty tissues, internal organs, and the face. Saponified remains found in the River Cray. Washing soap, body is soap. A large Iron Age settlement was located at Crayford, as was the Noviomagus, a sizeable Roman fortification. The Domesday Book of 1086AD contains references to the Crays, Crayford and Bexley. I dreamt that an artist from Crayford came to give a lecture – his art about Crayford. I felt special – I lived there. In the dream, there was a net. a net that was not a fishing net / only spirits of fish remain. The River Cray demands offerings of ammonia // sewage // plastic // brick // asbestos // deadfish // chlorine // metalwaste // spit // dogshit // bleach // Bodies. A net in a dream that catches.
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