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For several years, I've completed a Writing Challenge with many people all over the globe. We write something inspired by prompts for 21 days plus an introduction. This year, the prompts are about place, and I've chosen the River Porter in Sheffield.  Whilst the posts touch upon the river's history, they are also about what it means to me.  I'm not following the river in any order except that the first 10 posts are about the Porter Valley and the second 10 posts are about the Porter in the city.  I hope some readers will participate and I have a couple of challenges; see the paragraphs in bold towards the end.

Let’s make our way upriver to Forge Dam.  This is the first (or last) of the 20 dams on the River Porter.  It’s become a popular place, where you can eat carbs and ice cream and listen to children racketing around. 

It’s in a bit of a mess.  They recently got a firm to clear away the accumulated silt for squillions of pounds and they made a right mess of it.  It’s leaking yet again.  But for some reason, the fog of old age perhaps, I associate this dam with tranquillity and dragonflies.  What is it about dragonflies that is so awe-inspiring?

Any road, let’s sit on one of these benches by the dam and contemplate the nature of rivers. 

Heraclitus has a lot to answer for.  No man can step into the same river twice.  This is because it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man!  Heraclitus did not state any opinion about the relationship between women and rivers but I’m a man so let’s go with that.

I eat the same breakfast every day.  Does Heraclitus mean that I don’t eat the same breakfast every day?  Logically, if we lose track of the meaning of same, I can’t do anything twice!  Today I had x for breakfast and yesterday I had x for breakfast and the day before that I had …  You get the picture.  The word same saves us a whole lot of trouble.

But what about the river?  When I step in twice, even immediately, the water I stepped into the first time has sped away.  So, is the river its water?  Hmmm … 

A couple of years ago, for the first time I remember, the Porter flooded in Endcliffe Park.  If someone has asked, “Where has all this water come from?”  The reply would have to be “The Porter”.  So, in what sense is the water a part of the river?  It passes through, it’s on its way to the seaside.  The people in a charabanc to the seaside are not a part of it!

The river contains flowing water.  Its banks and bed are the same when I step in a second time. 

Ah, yes but is it the same river all the way down?  If I step into it at Forge and then at Endcliffe, is it the same river?  It’s the same in the same sense that I’m the same as the boy who sat here and watched the dragonflies.

When I step into the river, perhaps I dislodge a stone and so now it’s different.  You might as well say that if I move a current in my breakfast cereal, I’m eating a different breakfast.

Change is the very essence of things.  I suppose this is what Heraclitus was driving at. But when we ask about the life of the river we see it in the changes that have happened over time.  Whilst its course will be similar, the Porter will have travelled a different path 200 years ago (and then modified by human endeavour in many ways) and 1000 years ago.  But if we travelled back 1000 or more years, we might not know where we are immediately but we would be able to work out this strange river is the Porter, perhaps by another name.

Sitting here at Forge we have a long trek to the end of this river and its confluence with the River Sheaf.  But pause and ask what happens under platform 5 at Midland Station.  The water suddenly becomes a part of the River Sheaf.  Why doesn’t the Sheaf flow into the Porter?  What difference would it make?  Not a lot except I might be living in Porterfield. 

How might posts of this type be used for marketing?  Think about how you might use this post or a post like it to promote your business.  I add a few thoughts after each post, like this:

Sometimes your message is not a story.  However, you can still use storytelling techniques.  This post is mainly philosophical but notice what I do at the start.  I take you to a place and sit you down with the dragonflies.  (Don't worry about Forge, a future post offers more detail that I didn't know when I wrote this post.)  Whilst I write about rivers in general, the topic is really about what we mean by the word same.  The river is a metaphor and so is the breakfast cereal.  Note I return to the Porter at the end and so aim for completion. 

When making a sale too much emphasis on how you do what you do can be counter-productive,  Customers want to know you understand their problem and can help solve it.  They don't need to know how you solve their problem (unless they ask).  However, a post explaining some aspect of how you work may be helpful when marketing.  You may engage interest and help others understand your business so that they may refer third parties to you.

My other challenge is for Sheffielders.  Do you have anything to share about the Porter?  Your experiences along it, bits and pieces of history you've uncovered, folklore you've heard.  If you remember something, please share it in the comments.  (Or maybe you are more familiar with other rivers in Sheffield, you could share those too.)  Let's see what we can find out over the coming weeks.

This is the seventh of 21 stories about the Porter.  The last story was: The Wrath to Come.  The next is: Two Squashed Flies and a Bumblebee.

This is Forge Dam at the downstream end.  The path to the cafe (for carbs and ice cream) is by the white railings. 

This is where water flows out of the Dam.  It flows beneath the path in the picture above.

This is the upstream end of Forge Dam.  You can see the island in the middle of the dam.  The channel in the foreground is an attempt to deal with the silting.  The reason this dam is prone to silting is something I return to in a later post.