December 2013 - kingfisher

I saw a kingfisher on the creek today. I have never seen one anywhere before and have always longed to. It hadn't occured to me that I might see one here on Deptford Creek, but I guess the Ravensbourne is a fresh water flow when the tide is out, and the creek wall makes an excellent vantage point (and perhaps a nesting place) for the bird to watch for small fry in the shallow stream below.

I was trying and failing (as often you do) to point the bird out to Christina as it rested on a rusty rung in the wall about 100 yards down the creek from the front of the boat, when it made itself evident to us both by flying off with a flourish of blue, hovering about 6 feet above the water surface and then plunging like a dart into the river, coming up and flying off down-river with a silver tiddler in it's mouth. A little while later, I managed to spot it again in it's former spot, and its rusty breast, blue plumage and pointed beak are just identifiable in a closely cropped photograph that I showed off on the internet in the evening.

I am still struggling a bit to find fuel for my stove (a coal delivery organised by another creeksider is now due on Monday morning) I went over to St John's Vale to to take Colin Bodian up on his offer of some free eucalyptus wood from his garden. Colin is fairly regular these days at Come Down and Meet the Folks, and he puts on gigs at the Duke in Deptford; tonight folk rockers Galley Beggar are on, who I'd like to see, but I make my early excuses for not being likely to get along, with Christina staying on the boat again this evening.

Colin has compiled Deptford Days: Songs Around And About SE8, a short (100) run CD available from a few local outlets (Vinly Records in Tanners Hill, The Birds Nest pub are two of them). Having given him a Rockingbirds CD in thanks for the wood and an earlier favour, I unintentionally guilt tripped him into giving me a copy of his CD. Getting the fire going in the evening I enjoyed listening to it, which features 23 songs of SE8 theme or origin, performed by some of Deptford's well known and not so well known sons and daughters. Of the well known you have contributions from Squeeze (It's Not Cricket), Alternative TV (Fun City), Jools Holland (Deptford Broadway Boogie (but of course!)) and the original demo version of Sultans of Swing by you know who, which I remember hearing all those years ago on Charlie Gillett's Sunday radio show. Those aside, other high-points are The Deptford Dip, a Bonzoey 20's style jazz music hall number about the joys of swimming in the creek (no - I won't be trying this at home), a charabang singalong by the old girls at the Deepway Residential Home Reminiscence Group ("listen to Geraldo and Harry Roy, try to get closer to your favourite boy"), the Ian Dury/Go-Kart Mozart-esque Deptford Market by Men With Ven, and Shadow Ships of Deptford, a beautifully wrought rendition of a poem by Cicely Fox Smith by my friend Jason McNiff; it's one of the many great things that he's done, in my opinion.

If ghosts should walk in Deptford, and ships return once more
To every well-known mooring and old familiar shore,
A sight it were to see there, of all fine sights there be,
The shadowy ships of Deptford come crowding in from sea.

There are numerous other good ones too with lots of surprising takes and angles on the SE8 theme, the songs only occasionally slip into "things ain't what they used to be" cliche, and even when they do they usually have enough charm or panache to get away with it. Nice one Colin.