armchairlawyer wrote: ↑Thu Sep 23, 2021 9:14 am It's quite busy on Riverside these days from before daybreak. People want to get their exercise done before the cops show up, usually around 6.45am. Even the Tai Chi crew do their thing in the morning twilight but with their plinky-plonky music turned down so as not to draw undue attention.
Slowly the combination of cops, the heat and sometimes the rain drive people away.
The river reversed flow a couple of months ago and is moving strongly now and the level has risen quite a bit. It's odd to see the sand cargo boats which used to move northwards at a snail's pace with their heavy loads, now they charge upstream at a rate of knots.

One by one the businesses close. Cheers has gone, Mekong Garden (corner 118) and La Tyvy (corner 144).
On the big block from 118 to 110, there is now nothing except for one forlorn looking Indian restaurant, then Oskars, and Riverhouse on the corner.
The Ukraine restaurant just beyond Riverhouse on 110 has closed.
As you look north, beyond the Night Market and the port, a massive column of concrete is rising slowly into the skies, replete with gigantic banners proclaiming something or other in dancing characters of red and white.

The only new businesses to open on Riverside recently are two 24/7 self-service banks. Not encouraging for employment levels, unless you are a security guard.

As the heat cools, people return to the promenade. Individual cops on motos gaze at them without enthusiasm but only the officious ones buzz up and down, berating them through loudhailers.
Then slowly you can begin to hear the staccato delivery of a powerful PA system and a pick-up truck comes into view with red and blue flashing lights atop. It moves at a steady pace in a northerly direction. Parked cars and motos are swept aside before its relentless path and the tireless speaker imparts the vital message of the terrible perils of walking, talking and exercising on the Riverside. Reluctantly, the populace drift away from the river. On one particularly pleasant early weekend evening, the strollers felt inclined to simply ignore the berating machine and so ultimately a team of white hazmat-suited figures arrived and dispersed eagerly around the promenade. The people were quickly convinced by this and it became deserted.

As darkness descends, the cops reduce in number, only to return around 9pm in a fleet of motos. They disembark with their epaulets doing rapid flashes of blue and red. They like to take photos of each other with the beautiful shimmering river at their backs, its water reflecting the multitude of lights from the other side.
And yet, quietude is not complete. The party boats emerge and ply up and down the river with piercing music, as if existing in some parallel universe where the relentless plague and its awful consequences are blissfully absent.

Then, as midnight doesn’t strike, even the boats return to their unknown homes.
Soon it will be time for the early athletes to arrive.