Autumn commences in London when Arrum Island passes underneath Hammersmith Bridge

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Image generated by Craiyon
Crossposted to r/ImaginaryLondon

The remnants of the buffet were being haphazardly cleared away; the uneaten food decanted from the shiny paper plates and onto a single large, oval-shaped, cardboard platter with a scalloped rim; everything was draped in sheets of cling-film; one item carelessly piled on top of another, in readiness for being carried indoors; the papery skirts of the yellow table cloths flapping in the light breeze.

The garden party, that had previously crowded around the long trestle tables, had unanchored itself from the lawn terrace outside the vicarage, and dwindled into smaller groups. These were now slowly drifting apart from each other. Some were already encroaching upon the fringes of the graveyard as if carried there on invisible currents.

“It speaks poorly of our bonds of Christian fellowship when we can only unite in the presence of sausage rolls,” observed Jon Scaife.

I had a mouth full of one of the aforementioned sausage rolls, but managed a nod of affirmation.

“Has anybody seen the church key?” enquired the Reverend Dermot Poulter in the same raised Oxbridge tones that he had used to address his congregation earlier in the day. He meandered between us, holding an unopened bottle of beer down by his side. The brown glass was glazed with a weeping skin of condensation.

Everybody began to perfunctorily scan the area around themselves in search of the missing key. I saw the bank manager, Martin Goff, turn out a trouser pocket into one hand, as though he expected to find it there.

“He means the bottle opener,” said May Philpin quietly.

“Jon and I were just commenting on how unreasonably hot it is this summer,” I remarked.

“I think my mother would beg to differ,” she replied. “She always believed that Summer commenced on the 19th July.”

“The best part of the Summer has sailed past by then,” said Scaife, scornfully. “By the end of July you're pawing at the dregs.”

“Well her mother's - my grandmother's - birthday fell on the 19th,” said Philpin. “They always had a big family picnic on that day, so in her mind that was when Summer started.

Her observation gave me pause for thought: There are those formal dates that are decided on our behalf and are printed on calendars as a matter of course. Then there are our own private anniversaries that will often take precedence in our lives.

As far the Meteorological Service in the United Kingdom is concerned. Autumn begins every year on September 1st. Not so in parts of West London, where Autumn moves at its own sedate pace, marking its arrival in the city only when the floating island of Arrum has drifted between the stately pillars of Hammersmith Bridge, on its slow journey along the Thames and out to sea.

The island consists of leaves that fall from the outreaching boughs of the Chimney Fields Oak (now generally referred to as the Arrum Oak) that grows on the banks of the river, near to the village of Bampton, in Oxfordshire.

The leaves of this particular tree have an unusual profile that causes them to easily lock together like jigsaw pieces, initially forming mosaics that overtime will build into three-dimensional shapes.

By the time the leaves reach Windsor the smaller islands will have clumped together to form a single mass, that will have invariably acquired a resident heron. This is henceforth referred to as Arrum. At the point where an island is on the verge of joining with the North Sea, these migrant birds will return to shore, with many choosing to make their home on Ministry of Defence land at Foulness.

The tradition of associating the arrival of the island with Autumn can be traced to 1891, four years after Hammersmith Bridge was constructed. A local vicar and avid writer of hymns, named A. R. Rum, had observed the arrival of the leaf mass on previous occasions. On a whim, he left his parish, without informing anyone of his absence, and walked for days along the banks of the River Thames in search of the source. He returned home, nine days later, to find the pond outside his vicarage being dragged in a search for his body.

He wrote:

“In some years, the tree is a spendthrift, in other years it is a miser. Some occasions it will release its bounty early, other times later. Yet eventually Autumn will always come to the city.”

Hammersmith Bridge is one of a quartet of river crossings in London that mark the seasons: Spring cannot be said to have arrived in the Capital until the marsh daffodils have bloomed from the piers of Blackfriars Bridge. The herald of Summer is a beam of sunlight projecting through the dead centre of a stained glass sun in the northern tower of Tower Bridge. The frozen veins that creep like crooked icicles, across the surface of the Thames, from the cold stone pontoons of Waterloo Bridge, mark the beginning of winter in London.

Back at the garden party, Goff fished the 'Church key' from his other trouser pocket and handed it to the Reverend Poulter, who levered the cap off his beer bottle. A torrent of suds cascaded down the tilted neck of the bottle, over the tip of his black shoe, and into the long grass sprouting from the foot of an old gravestone.

~ Sam Redlark

~

Did you like this?

You did?

Do you want 188 pages written in a similar vein?

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I have written a book titled 'The Missionary Dune'

Rami has always been content to pass through life as spectator. Haunted by the memories of his failed relationship with the 173-year-old Olinda Munnoch, he wiles away his evenings watching his only friend reassemble ancient pottery shards in the basement of the British Museum.

His cloistered existence is turned upside-down by the enigmatic political dissident, Yusuf al-Makari, who offers him greater purpose. When the machinations of this enigmatic freedom fighter ushers both men into the presence of God, one of them will be chosen and the other will fall.

The Missionary Dune is a short novella with its foundations planted in the shifting sands of Magical realism and ideas.


You can purchase it from Amazon as an eBook for the Kindle, or anywhere in the world as a print on demand paperback, by clicking one of the following links or visiting your own nation's Amazon site.

TheMissionary Dune (UK)

TheMissionary Dune (US) 


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