Rivers

W. and I are celebrants of rivers, and always feel the need to hail them. ‘The mighty Tyne!’, W. might say, and I might say ‘the mighty Plym!’ The sight of a river is always an occasion. So, of course, is the sea. ‘It’s the ozone’, says W. ‘it makes you feel good’.

It does, and the view of the sheet of the sea, just past Exeter. The whole sheet of the sea, viewed from the train, neat Plmouth Gin and ice in our plastic cups. ‘This is happiness’, says W. Of course, they’ll have to reroute the trains soon. They’re electrical and shortcircuit when the surf splashes over them. Sometimes the trains stop for hours, completely shortcircuited. ‘It’s the new trains’, says W., ‘they’re useless’.

W. says he’s felt ill nearly all his adult life. ‘When was the last time you felt well?’, I ask him. He can’t remember. ‘It’s been years’, he says suddenly. ‘Years!’ He used to go for great walks on the moors, he remembers. That’s when he last felt healthy: on his great weekend walks, when he would set off with no end in particular in view. He’d just walk, for miles, across the moors.

There’s nothing better, he says, than to climb up to the moors, and sea the blue strip of the sea in the distance. Are there really big cats up there, panthers and the like?, I ask him. He never saw any, he said. But his moor walks have long since finished. He lacks something, says W. There’s something missing in him. Why doesn’t he go on his great moor walks any more?, he muses, as we look out to sea.

It’s important to hail rivers, we both agree, but just as important to hail the sea, although we do not do so by name. We do not, for instance, hail the sea south of Edinburgh as the North Sea, or the sea south of Exeter as the Atlantic (‘is it the Atlantic?’, I ask W.) A simple, ‘the sea!’ is enough. Just as when we see the edge of the moor on our train journeys in Devon, we say ‘the moor!’

Ah, the moor! W. is feeling regretful again. He looks very young, I tell him, younger than me, even though he’s several years older. His life is full of regret, he says, and gets out his Spinoza. He’s going to read now, he tells me, and I’ll have to entertain myself.