Low life | 18 October 2018
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,