I should've known really, when Matthew and I got to the little path down to the river and it looked like this:
It was at that point that I realised it had actually gone quite dark. It was still fine because my imagination hadn't done anything weird yet. We headed up north again to take a little look at our Scandinavian houses. Halfway up the little stretch we've been walking these past couple of days, I heard a little rustling in the bushes ahead of us and at the same time Matthew slipped in some mud and fell down a little hole. I didn't scream or anything because it wasn't that scary, but you know when your brain lets you down and, even though you're a grown up, it starts imagining things coming out of the dark at you? Well, I'm 43 soon, and my brain still does that – it probably finds it funny. Two weeks ago, I couldn't get to sleep because I thought there was something under my bed. Idiot.
About seven hours after I'd helped Matthew out of the hole (it was ten minutes that felt like the better part of a day), we found the break in the shrubbery we were looking for and got the hell off that river bank as fast as we could while trying not to fall on broken glass and probably syringes. The trouble is, the path here comes out onto an enclosed bit of the cycle track that's even darker than the river. It's surrounded by tall and malevolent trees and I think it's a dogging site. I forgot about this when I decided to walk down here this evening.
We'd left it a bit late. But I wasn't deterred at all, because the novelty of our little walks hasn't warn off yet and I was just overjoyed at being outside after being in all day. So we bravely trotted down to the river. It was all going well, very pleasant indeed, with our little Scandinavian houses all lit up and doing their reflecting thing in the water, as usual (I can say 'as usual' now because I think three outings on consecutive days counts as a regular thing).
What will you do the day I don't take a photo of the Scandinavian houses, eh? You won't know what to do with yourselves!
But we didn't take our usual right to go past these houses today. No, we decided to go left first (I think it's south, actually). The river bank opens up and there's a really spectacular view of a couple of half-built office blocks and the ugly blue train bridge. Really stunning.
So we wandered along here for a bit, marvelling at the scaffolding and floodlights. We thought it was about time for our cup of tea then, but there was nowhere to sit so we headed back to a spot where we'd seen a nice big weathered bit of driftwood and had our cup of tea there. Everything was still fine. We sat for a good 20 minutes, listening to the birds that had stayed up late, trying to guess what they were. Matthew thought they were seagulls, but I thought they were either curlews or redshanks. Being resourceful with Google, we looked up these calls but still couldn't quite decide.
Here's what a curlew sounds like: https://www.british-birdsongs.uk/curlew/
Here's what a redshank sounds like: https://www.british-birdsongs.uk/redshank/
And here's what a yellow-legged gull sounds like: https://www.british-birdsongs.uk/yellow-legged-gull/
It was at that point that I realised it had actually gone quite dark. It was still fine because my imagination hadn't done anything weird yet. We headed up north again to take a little look at our Scandinavian houses. Halfway up the little stretch we've been walking these past couple of days, I heard a little rustling in the bushes ahead of us and at the same time Matthew slipped in some mud and fell down a little hole. I didn't scream or anything because it wasn't that scary, but you know when your brain lets you down and, even though you're a grown up, it starts imagining things coming out of the dark at you? Well, I'm 43 soon, and my brain still does that – it probably finds it funny. Two weeks ago, I couldn't get to sleep because I thought there was something under my bed. Idiot.
About seven hours after I'd helped Matthew out of the hole (it was ten minutes that felt like the better part of a day), we found the break in the shrubbery we were looking for and got the hell off that river bank as fast as we could while trying not to fall on broken glass and probably syringes. The trouble is, the path here comes out onto an enclosed bit of the cycle track that's even darker than the river. It's surrounded by tall and malevolent trees and I think it's a dogging site. I forgot about this when I decided to walk down here this evening.
The blurriness of this photo is due to the fact that I wasn't prepared to stand still to take it and risk the Blair Witch crawling out of the undergrowth and grabbing my ankles. It was probably a bit early in the evening for the doggers, but I didn't want to run into them either.
Against all the odds, we did make it back the 200 metres or so to the main road. But I tell you, I'm not going down that way after dark again.
Just in case you hadn't noticed today, there was a crescent moon.
We're going somewhere else tomorrow. Not sure where. James will be with us as he realised he did enjoy his bit of fresh air yesterday and regretted not coming with us today.
Until tomorrow, global readers.
WQ
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