Category: Write Up

WALKING THE THAMES TO LONDON #9-#13
Raising Funds for the Trussell Trust
In association with the cyclists’ group from The Prince Albert
Wallingford to Cholsey
Sunday March the 15th

Beware the Ides of March – but I’m a long way from the tidal reach of the Thames – Wallingford Castle – High Street – Thames Street – St Leonards – a glimpse of the Chilterns in the distance – Littlestoke Ferry – the Papist Way – Ferry Lane – Cholsey – 5 miles.

Springtime on the Thames

When is spring not a spring?

When Edward Thomas went in pursuit of spring,
When spring’s advance was slower,
Compared with today’s two miles an hour,
In that so-called Golden Age before the Great War,
He hadn’t endured biblical floods,
And a seeming apocalyptic pandemic,
A pandemic that has arrived in this country
After a forty-year post-Thatcherite zeitgeist,
A zeitgeist that foregrounds charity,
And emphasizes individualism,
Rather than welfare state collectivism.

And the consequence of this zeitgeist?
Panic buying, hoarding, selfishness,
And a consequent diminution
In charitable donations,
Thereby indicating the fragile
Efficacy of charity …

The Guardian 11th March, Robert Booth, Social affairs correspondent:

‘Food banks in Britain are running out of staples including milk and cereal as a result of panic-buying and are urging shoppers to think twice before hoarding as donations fall in the coronavirus outbreak.’

Patrick Butler, Social policy editor:

‘Mental health charities and the Royal College of Psychiatrists have called for an independent inquiry into the deaths of vulnerable people who were reliant on welfare benefits.’ There has been ’69 cases of suicide linked to benefit issues in the last six years’.

How will Universal Credit/Universal Cruelty,
And the five-week wait help in this crisis?
When the Department for Work and Pensions
Reply to criticisms
Highlighted by the death of Errol Graham,
Who starved to death,
Has this sentence within:
‘We always seek to learn lessons where we can’.
‘Where we can’ …

WALKING THE THAMES TO LONDON #10
Raising Funds for the Trussell Trust
In association with the cyclists’ group from The Prince Albert
Tuesday 17th March Cholsey to Tilehurst 12 miles
Sunrise 6.08 Sunset 18.08
Carbon count: 414.24
Pre-industrial base: 280
Safe level: 350

I posted this today on to the Global Walking Artists Network:

Hello there

As some of you know I have been walking the Thames from source towards London to raise funds for the Trussell Trust and food banks but the public health crisis requires a change of approach. Please see below if you are interested in how I am going to rethink and de-walk:

I’ve reached the conclusion that individual, family and public health considerations mean that I will now walk the Thames in a virtual/pretend way.

How will I do this?

By laying out the route-map for the day and by measuring the required distance on my phone. I will walk within my home and within my immediate locality, but far from the madding crowd: 19 corvids rather the COVID-19, as it were.

By using imagination and memory rather than observation.
By following my usual practice of blending reflections on topographical, historical, and contemporary contexts, with the Trussell Trust and food banks always in focus.

I’ve now reached Wallingford in the real world and have also done London bits towards the end, but if anyone wants to join me in a pretend section for the duration, let me know. I’m ‘doing’ Wallingford to Cholsey and then on to Tilehust today btw …

Best wishes,

Stuart

Walking to work, walking at work,
Walking home, walking at home,
Up and down the apples and pears,
Walking to the allotments,
Digging the allotment plot,
Up the wooden hills to Bedfordshire,
Takes me all the way to Tilehurst,
In a manner and manor of speaking,
Imagining some of the following:

Littlestoke ferry point – Cholsey Marsh – Offlands Farm – Moulsford – Ferry Lane – The Beetle and Wedge – Cleeve Lock – Goring Lock – Streatley Church – Goring (ancient ford and meeting point of the Icknield Way and the Ridgeway) – Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s GWR bridge – Gatehampton Ferry Cottage – Hartslock Farm – Whitchurch – The Greyhound – Whitchurch Mill – Church Cottages – the Toll House – Whitchurch Bridge – Pangbourne – Mapledurham (Mapledurham House as in The Forsyte Saga and the inspiration for Toad Hall in The Wind in the Willows) – 78 and a half miles to London – Purley – Kentwood Deep – Tilehurst.

BBC Football Gossip:

‘With the Premier League currently suspended, Liverpool players, staff and fans have stepped in to offer support and donate cash to a foodbank, which relies on donations on match days. (Liverpool FC)’

WALKING THE THAMES TO LONDON #11
Raising Funds for the Trussell Trust
In association with the cyclists’ group from The Prince Albert
Tilehurst to Shiplake 10 miles
Thursday March 26th
Sunrise 5.48 Sunset 18.24
Carbon count: 414.34
Pre-industrial base: 280
Safe level: 350

Along the virtual towpath; imaginary Chiltern hills; half-remembered GWR line; signage: ‘Welcome to Reading’; ‘Thames Side Promenade’; remember Oscar Wilde on his release from Reading Gaol, May 1897: ‘Oh Beautiful World!’; more bridges over these troubled times: Caversham Bridge; Reading Bridge; on to Caversham Lock (down); King’s Meadow; the conjoining of the Kennet and the Thames (Kennet, my brother’s ‘House’ at school); Horseshoe Bridge (bring us luck, please); Sonning Lock (down); Sonning Bridge (How I loved Sonning Cutting on the train as a child!); Jerome K. Jerome on Sonning:’ It is the most fairy-like nook on the whole river … more like a stage-village than one built of bricks and mortar. Every house is smothered in roses … bursting forth in clouds of dainty splendour’; Shiplake Lock (down); onomatopoeic Lashbrook; Lower Shiplake; The Baskerville Arms; Shiplake.

Chief Executive of the Trussell Trust, Emma Revie:

‘We welcome the extra financial support announced, particularly the £500m hardship fund for local councils, which can play a key role in anchoring us all from poverty.

But as coronavirus unfolds, more people could need this safety net than ever before – especially those who aren’t eligible for sick pay or have unstable jobs. For many of these people the five-week wait for a first Universal Credit payment could cause real hardship, despite measures announced in today’s Budget. We know the five-week wait is already pushing people to food banks, trapping many in debt and making issues with housing, ill health, disability and domestic abuse worse …

As more people look likely to move onto Universal Credit as a result of the outbreak, the most effective way to help would be to end the five-week wait for a first Universal Credit payment by giving people grants, rather than loans that have to be paid back further down the line. We can prevent more people being locked into poverty as the outbreak develops by ending the wait now.’

The Trussell Trust’s #5WeeksTooLong campaign is calling for an end to the 5+ week wait for Universal Credit.

About the Trussell Trust:

• We’re here to end the need for food banks in UK.
• We support a UK-wide network of more than 1,200 food bank centres and together we provide emergency food and support to people locked in poverty, and campaign for change to end the need for food banks in the UK.
• Our most recent figures for the number of emergency food supplies provided by our network: https://www.trusselltrust.org/news-and-blog/latest-stats/
• You can read more about our work at trusselltrust.org

WALKING THE THAMES TO LONDON #12
Raising Funds for the Trussell Trust
In association with the cyclists’ group from The Prince Albert
Shiplake to Marlow 11 miles
Tuesday March 31st
Sunrise 6.37 Sunset 19.32
Carbon count: 415.68
Pre-industrial base: 280
Safe level: 350

Bolney Ferry – Marsh Lock (down) – Mill Lane – Mill Meadows – The Angel on the Bridge – Henley Bridge – Remenham Church – Temple Island – Hambledon Lock (down) – Hamledon Weir – Aston Ferry – Ferry Lane – The Flowerpot – Medmenham – Medmenham Abbey (the Hellfire Club) – Frogmill – Danesfield – Hurley Lock (down) – Hurley – the Olde Bell – Temple footbridge – Temple Lock (down) – Temple Island – Bisham Abbey – Bisham Church – Marlow – where Mary Shelley completed Frankenstein and Percy Shelley penned A Proposal for putting Parliamentary Reform to the Vote (which included a proposal for annual parliaments – the one point of the Chartists’ eventual Six Points that didn’t become into eventual actuality).

‘Time and again over the past decade, food banks across the UK – aided by a generous public who have donated time, food and money – have stepped up to protect people on the lowest incomes in our communities. But with the spread of coronavirus we all now face an unprecedented challenge and uncertain future. It is possible that food banks will face increased demand as people lose income, at the same time as food donations drop or staff and volunteers are unavailable, due to measures rightly put in place to slow the spread of infection. All of this comes when food banks are already dealing with a record level of need for emergency food.

We’re working with our network on how best to support people as the situation unfolds. Wherever possible, food banks will continue to provide the lifeline of emergency food to people unable to afford the essentials and we encourage the public to continue donating after checking with their local food bank what items are most needed.

We welcome the Department for Work and Pensions’ measures that will not penalise or sanction people for self-isolating, but we ask our government to go further and consider additional measures they could take to ensure everyone has enough money for essentials at this challenging time. Ending the five week wait for a first Universal Credit payment would be one such measure that could help significantly.’

Chief Executive of the Trussell Trust, Emma Revie:

That note from Emma Revie is from two weeks ago; I am reading The Guardian at the moment on March 30 2020. Here’s a few snippets from Rebecca Smithers’ report today: ‘The supermarket chain Morrisons is to distribute £10m worth of food to the UK’s food banks during the corona virus outbreak … The UK’s food banks have been struggling to meet demand at a time when the number of volunteers, typically older people, has slumped because of self-isolation. It is estimated that the outbreak of Covid-19 has led to a 40% reduction in donations to community foodbanks …’

WALKING THE THAMES TO LONDON #13
Raising Funds for the Trussell Trust
In association with the cyclists’ group from The Prince Albert
Friday 3 April Marlow to Windsor 14 miles
Sunrise 6.30 Sunset 1937 Carbon count: 415.68

Marlow Bridge – Seven Corner Alley – All Saints Church – St Peter Street – Two Brewers – Marlow Lock (down) – Marlow Mill – Quarry Wood – Winter Hill – Spade Oak Ferry Cottage – Spade Oak Farm – Bourne End – Cock Marsh – Cookham Bridge – Cookham churchyard – Holy Trinity – Churchgate – Tarry Stone – The Bell and Dragon Inn – Royal Exchange – Stanley Spencer memorial gallery in the restored Methodist church – four channels downstream from Cookham Bridge – My Lady Ferry – Cliveden – Boulter’s Lock (down) – Ray Mill Island – Maidenhead Bridge and Brunel and Turner – Bray Lock (down) – Summerleaze Bridge – Dorney – Thames Field – Dorney Court – Oakley Court – St Mary Magdalene – Boveney – Boveney Lock (down) – Etonian bathing place – Brocas Meadow – Windsor Castle (partly built of Cotswold stone brought down the Thames) – The Waterman’s Arms – Eton High Street – Windsor.

He has been voted the second greatest ever Englishman (sic) in a Sunday Times poll:

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a special constable during the Bristol Riots of 1831 when “he was heard to complain that his fellow constables did not hit the rioters hard enough”.

A few years later, we find him surveying a different line where he had, it seems, an ambiguous attitude towards the lower orders and bodily harm – 131 navvies were taken to Bath hospital between September 1839 and June 1841 with serious injuries: ” I think it a small number considering the heavy work and the amount of powder used. I am afraid that it does not show the whole extent of accidents in that district.”

Indeed, it doesn’t. Over 100 navvies were killed in the subterranean depths of gunpowdered Box Tunnel.

A hundred years after the GWR was commenced, Bertolt Brecht wrote this poem –

Questions From a Worker Who Reads

Who built Thebes of the 7 gates
?
In the books you will read
the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps
of rock ?

And Babylon, many times
demolished,
Who raised it up so many times
?

In what houses of gold
glittering Lima did its builders
live ?
Where, the evening that the
Great Wall of China was
finished, did the masons go?

Great Rome is full of triumphal
arches.
Who erected them ?

Over whom did the Caesars
triumph ?
Had Byzantium, much praised
in song, only palaces for its
inhabitants ?

Even in fabled Atlantis, the
night that the ocean engulfed
it,

The drowning still cried out for
their slaves.

The young Alexander
conquered India.
Was he alone ?

Caesar defeated the Gauls.
Did he not even have a cook
with him ?

Philip of Spain wept when his
armada went down.
Was he the only one to weep ?

Frederick the 2nd won the 7
Years War.
Who else won it ?

Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the
victors ?

Every 10 years a great man.
Who paid the bill ?

So many reports.

So many questions.

Dear Stuart Butler

Thank you for your kind donation of 50.00.

With your help we are committed to providing emergency food and support to people in crisis. The food banks distributed over 1.6 million three-day emergency food supplies last year and even before the current crisis were seeing an increase in demand.

As the Coronavirus outbreak develops, more people than ever are needing our help. The teams are working tirelessly to ensure that food banks are able to remain open and have the necessary stocks to respond to this crisis.
We have been overwhelmed by the generosity of so many people. Your support means we can respond to the changing situation and continue to provide this vital lifeline.

You will appreciate that in the current climate we are having to adapt to working in different ways, with most staff working from home. Please do accept this email as an official thank you as we are unable to send postal acknowledgements at this time. If you need a written receipt please email supportercare@trusselltrust.org.

If you would like to hear more about our work and how you’re helping us fight hunger in the UK, why not sign up to our e-newsletter? Or if you’d like to find out more about what we do, including our latest campaign actions, please visit our website.

Thank you for helping to create a future without food banks.

The Trussell Trust team