Day: October 4, 2014

London Thames crossings by bicycle – Day 1

On Wednesday I took the day off to try the first part of this challenge, described in loving detail here.
An attempt to catch the Thames Clipper to move ourselves to the start failed (one day I will work out how this service works) so as recommended we caught the train from Waterloo down to Teddington, a pretty place I’d never visited. From there, once over the footbridge, it is a gravelly path by the river to the second and most interesting crossing by foot ferry ‘on demand’ meaning you shout across to the boatman when you want him.
Then its Richmond bridge. I had forgotten how beautiful Richmond is. As recommended we had coffee and Portuguese cakes in Tide Tables Cafe

The guide says the clientele is made up of young mothers telling eachother how gifted their child is. And believe it or not, that’s exactly right. The next bridge is Twickenham
then the enjoyable Richmond Lock Footbridge (by the way the sun is shining)
Kew and Chiswick are unremarkable
but there are some lovely river fronting cottages on the way.
Barnes railway bridge follows next which is fun and we are moving into rowing territory on the river, with boathouses first on the north bank and then at Putney on the south, both very un-London.
Then after a not very exciting lunch at The Old Ship, we crossed Hammersmith bridge, using the footpath to avoid the narrow lanes and wide busses
Our last crossing for the day was Putney Bridge. I’d never been along the south bank between Hammersmith and Putney. It reminded me of Cambridge. Next Wednesday is our Day 2. The plan is to start at the opposite end which is the Tilbury-Gravesend Ferry – a long way out. The plan is to save the Central London bridges for a quieter Sunday.

Gone Girl

This acclaimed film adaptation of an already acclaimed book of the same name is billed as a tense plot-twisting success. We watch a marriage go stale and the wife fake her own disappearance in a meticulously planned attempt to frame her husband (whom she has grown to hate) for her murder. In the book the story is told by unreliable witnesses and the film takes this approach but with rather a jolting split about two thirds in when we see the story from Amy Dunne’s devastating angle. Amy is the product, literally, of her parents’ media manipulations and works of fiction based on her girlhood so it it plausible that she is revealed as a psychopath who blurs reality and play-acting, or rather knows only too well the difference. The film is a nice, but rather obvious, critique of the effect of American media fantasy about marriage, motherhood, etc. But for me the central scene of Amy’s blood soaked murder of a creepy male lover in mid-orgasm seemed to refer to a deeply misogynistic fantasy about women. It made me try to think of all the other plots in which women kill their lovers in the act of making love. The only one that comes to mind is the very different in mood, Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. But there must be others. A review of Gone Girl is here.