I hired a car to drive from London to Essex (normally I would only use public transport or a bike) to get my bearings in South East Essex. I had some bad news the day before and must have been a strange (red-eyed) vision when I arrived to meet the Drage’s at 11am. Maurice and Sylvia Drage are Rochford residents; Maurice is part of the Rochford Historical Society and Sylvia is active in the Roach WI. I was there to see Maurice and to ask him about Rochford related stuff including; trade, craft, the reservoir, heraldic imagery and the whispering post. He told me a great story about a Blacksmith that used to store his metal-work in the stream that now feeds the reservoir. How, when people came to buy horse-shoes, he would find the right shoe-size in the stream. We talked about the installation of the train line from Southend to London - and its original function (which was to carry livestock). This is of course linked to the reservoir - as it was built to fill the steam-trains with water. I had imagined something completely different - that the trains were hoisted into the reservoir to cool down (this is the first example of many of my impracticable imaginings.)

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