East of London the Thames broadens dramatically to a surreal waste of mud and sewage-coloured water lined with shipping-container dumps. Here, a row of expensive apartment blocks commands the view as if it were the Loire valley. At 11.30 on the morning of the Friday before last, anyone looking idly out of a window of one of these might have raised an astonished eyebrow. For in the water below, manoeuvring strenuously against an ebb tide and a Pentecostal wind to position her stern against a shipping buoy, was a beautiful, red-sailed, century-old Thames sailing barge. Crowding her deck, moreover, and enterprisingly clad in tweed and waxed cotton, some wearing ties, was a curious assembly of passengers. It would have taken a very wild guess to identify them as the Spectator Wine Club, but if told the guess was correct, our observer mightn’t have been too surprised.
If our observer made up in emotional intelligence for what he or she lacked in aesthetic sensibility, he or she might have perceived that although it was almost noon, none of them had yet had a drink.
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