This stretch of water and land reclaimed from a vast gasworks for housing/schools beyond the O2 dome was backdrop to the successful launch of The Observances on 16 April 2015. As one guest of the evening noted in his blog, the tide was flowing fast between the clanking barges that carry containers full of London’s litter away down the Thames (while literature drifts the other way, we hope, into the city, bookshops!, memory).