Illustration by Radio 23Tip By Malia WollanOn that gray morning, I sifted through
the mud with the author Lara Maiklem,
longtime enthusiast to my novice. In
her captivating book ‘‘Mudlarking,’’
Maiklem writes that it is ‘‘often the tini-
est of objects that tell the greatest sto-
ries.’’ She’s been coaxing stories out of
the mud for over 15 years; the river is
her intimate. We were the lone people
on the misty foreshore for an hour or so,
the Thames running alongside us, a thick,
gossipy, Eeyore of a friend. The metal
boughs of Southwark Bridge echoed with
the rumble of trains underground. The
rain drove down, unforgiving. Because
a large portion of the Thames is tidal,
the foreshore is only accessible twice a
day. Tidal charts are imperative — the
river is fast and deep — as is a permit to
mudlark, authorized by the Port of Lon-
don Authority. If you’re mudlarking in
the winter, you’ll need gloves (a warm
pair, and a latex pair on top of them),
thermals, waterproof clothes, rubber
boots and a fi nd bag. A hip fl ask and
hand warmers might not be a bad idea.
And you’ll need patience. The river is an
erratic mistress. She might deliver a gar-
net, a sheep’s thighbone, Tudor gold or a
hypodermic needle. Who knows?
We stood on a landscape of rubble,
oyster shells, ancient animal bones and
a crazy jigsaw of tile, the detritus of what
London ate and built for thousands of
years. Roman roof tiles, charred tiles that
withstood the Great Fire of London, tiles
unmoored by the Blitz — it was all there.
Walking nearer to the water, there were
hundreds of pins, bobbing in the murk
— pins that had swaddled 16th-centu-
ry babies, pins a Victorian dressmaker
would have used, pins that held a funeral
shroud. Near the pins, there was a minia-
ture dull sliver of gun gray, almost invis-
ible to the naked eye. Lara spied it fi rst,
generously pointing me in its direction.
It was a rose farthing from the time of
Charles I, used to pay a wherryman, then
dropped by drunken fi ngers. This was
the story I told myself about it. Was its
owner bound for a brothel, a playhouse,
a bear fi ght? I clutched it tightly and said
hello to the ghost of the person whose
palm it rested in, hundreds of years
before mine. The river had held it until
now, a muddy guardian.
There were pipe bowls and stems
in their shards. Shoe soles tripped out
of the mud, impossibly narrow and
perfectly preserved. I wondered about
their owners: one who may have stood
in the audience at Shakespeare’s Globe;
one a few hundred years later, who knew
the horror of the workhouse. So often we
rose-tint the past, but mudlarking throws
that nostalgia on its head. The river spits
history at us, forcing us to engage. It
holds the bones of convicts, who were
crammed inhumanely on prison barges
for crimes as petty as stealing bread. The
mud bears witness to the inherent injus-
tice in being born a human. Horror and
war have always existed. Plagues, pan-
demics, fi res and persecutions abound.
Tyrants reigned and murdered their
wives by churchly decree. Humans are
nothing if not consistent.
But for thousands of years, people
have also sought out the sun, sat by theside of the bridge and had a beer. They
made their family dinners, and I carry
the scraps of their plates home, to show
mine. They celebrated engagements,
marriages, births; they prayed to myriad
gods and longed for an answer. Lovers
engraved their names on tokens, the
tide carried them away; children tried
to catch wriggling elvers, dropping a
ha’penny as they slipped free. People
sang their songs, drank their tea, paid
to cross, whistled their tunes and wore
their Sunday best. They held secrets in
their hearts and sometimes threw them
into the river, lost in the peaty water,
until now. The great world continues
to spin, the river ebbs and fl ows. I am
one of many millions who has been here
before. And this, this simple truth, reas-
sures me.How to Donate
N95 Masks‘‘Giving a mask to a health care provider
on the front line has more potential for a
positive impact than wearing it around the
grocery store,’’ says Conrad Amenta, direc-
tor of policy and strategic initiatives at the
California Academy of Family Physicians,
which represents some 11,000 family doc-
tors. Many of them have recently said they
were running out of supplies and would
welcome donations of personal protective
equipment, including face shields, surgi-
cal gowns, nonlatex gloves, sanitizing gel
and especially respirator-type N95 masks.
‘‘Please don’t just go walking into a hospital
trying to drop them off ,’’ Amenta says.
If you have a lot of protective equip-
ment, try calling your state’s department
of public health fi rst. ‘‘They should knowwhere larger quantities are most needed
in your state,’’ Amenta says. If the state
does not respond, or you have fewer than
100 masks, look up your county or city
health department or your local hospital’s
website; many organizations have begun
posting how they’ll accept donations.
If no information is listed online, call.
If you know front-line medical workers
personally, you could text them directly to
arrange a drop-off , but priority should go
to those most likely to encounter patients
with Covid-19, such as E.R. workers. ‘‘If
the doctor you know happens to be a der-
matologist or something, your donation
won’t go as far,’’ Amenta says.
‘‘It doesn’t matter if the box is
opened,’’ he says. (Note that N95 masks
have an expiration date, which you
should mention; public health offi cials
have approved the use of some expired
masks.) Amenta has heard from biomed-
ical researchers who say they can poten-
tially donate tens of thousands of masks,
and from people off ering a few dozen left
over from purchases made during recent
wildfi re seasons.
When Amenta was setting up a donation
form online, he wasn’t sure how desper-
ate to be. So he asked one of the physician
leaders on the association’s board: ‘‘If I
have somebody who wants to stick a sin-
gle mask in an envelope to donate, is that
worth it?’’ The response he got surprised
Amenta. ‘‘The board member told me,
‘Absolutely, they should send it.’ ’’The river is an
erratic mistress.
She might
deliver a garnet,
a sheep’s
thighbone,
Tudor gold or
a hypodermic
needle.
Who knows?Sophie Dahl
is a British writer and
the author of fi ve
books, most recently
‘‘Madame Badobedah.’’