Many years since I heard the word ‘spinney’. I remember it as a secret, hidden spot in the local park when we were growing up, known simply as The Spinney. It had a man-made waterfall, channelled through a wall built of cement sacks, stacked and allowed to settle in as sack-shaped bricks – you could even see the canvas of the bags that held the cement. It was in a low part of the park and it felt dangerous, to be ventured into only at the edges. I recall, or believe I do, an iron railing that you had to sneak through in places where it had been bent open.
And here we have another spinney-like island. I also like the metaphor to described this island: ‘as slender as a weaver’s shuttle’.
‘… a little later an island as slender as a weaver’s shuttle divided the current amidstream. A floating reed-fringed spinney, it looked like.’
Source: Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts (London: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 35
