hanger, break off the ‘curvy bit’ and snap it in half, bending each piece at right angles. I then get two old pen cases to use as handles and da daaa I have dowsing rods! First off, the sitting room. I wander around and the rods are going crazy – there’s water everywhere. Or is it because I’m a bit pissed or walking over the house’s water pipes? I spend the next hour wandering around our road and the nearby streets, charting the areas above water, and noting down my findings on bits of crumpled-up paper. According to my calculations the river (whichever one) misses our house by about 10 feet and comes up the adjacent road then crosses over and runs under the pavement for a while before going underneath the houses and coming out again at the used car lot next to the White House pub. Back at the other end of the road I check out the Scut Line. It’s the start of a very steep hill heading towards Highbury Village. People who are pissed cant wolk up it gravity take sover superbrew legs. I am startinf to git a hedache or is it my riverline-seeuin 3rd eye? Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhh.
At the end of the month the heavens opened yet again, but this time they didn’t stop. Waterfalls of rain, thunder and lightning, dark grey skies. The local streets once more began to turn into small lakes and streams. Down on Blackstock Road where, according to the old book the Boarded (New) River and Hackney Brook crossed, ponds formed in the road. Around the country people were flooded out of their homes. And the London rivers seemed to be rising too.
The problem with burying rivers is that we can’t see, and know, what they’re doing. In times of heavy rain it’s not that the rivers themselves will burst – they are encased in concrete – but that the small springs and streams that would originally have flowed into them can’t get into the concrete culvert that the river has become and simply follow the old course, spreading out over the river’s flood plain. Four million people in London live on the flood plains of the lost rivers. One night in early November, Church Street was completely flooded at exactly the point where the New River used to cross over and head south towards Canonbury. The next morning, after more rain, there were huge floods in Clissold Park just where the Hackney Brook would have skirted around the ponds. At the end of Grazebrook Road, pockets of people wandered around in wellies, staring with disbelief at the expanding pool. We’ve got so cocooned in our soft, warm modern urban world that we’ve forgotten that nature is just outside the door. Some day these nineteenth-century shelters of bricks and mortar won’t be able to protect us any more.
One morning the tall smart-blazered Jehovah’s Witness appeared again at my front door and begged me to take a copy of the Watchtower.
‘See all this weather. It’s the end times. Just like the Bible says. Read this leaflet. Promise me you’ll read it.’
Film idea: The Hugh Myddleton Story
Adventure. Big budget/People dying. There’s a race on to see who can come up with the best idea. Myddleton wins but others try to sabotage his project. Love interest: she gets pinched by opposition but he wins her back at end. He also foils Gunpowder Plot and saves King. Not entirely accurate historically. Maybe played by Matt Damon. Shakespeare in there too. And the Spanish Armada. Maybe the fleet can only set sail when they’ve all had enough to drink. Triumphant music at end and high fives as Myddleton blows up Spanish ships. English all played by Americans, Spanish all played by posh English.
London Stories 1: The Dogpeople
The Dogpeople, mostly fat people in their fifties, congregate on the eastern side of Clissold Park, a good distance from the lesbian footballers and just slightly away from the pigeons (who they view as a rival gang. The pigeons ignore the Dogpeople and are more concerned with annoying the ducks.) The Dogpeople shout loudly at each other in high-pitched voices about flea powders and Pedigree Chum, as well as more risqué cries of ‘Johnny, Johnny! Come! Come!!’ A vague smell of urine wafts from their general direction. Various little rat-like dogs scamper around wearing the same kind of stupid sleeveless quilted jackets as their owners. I try to kick them as they run past, but they are always too quick for me. The dogs, that is. The Dogpeople are easy targets. Their bottoms – invariably covered in green corduroy – are so large and soft they wouldn’t feel a thing.
On our street lives one of the Dogpeople ringleaders. Her dog is a pedigree, called something like Chormingly St John Carezza Jane Birkin O’Reilly. They’ve nicknamed him Petrocelli. Every night she puts a bowl out for Petrocelli in her back yard, and he laps heavily at it. It sounds like some bad overdubbing from a Seventies European ‘adult movie’. One great idea I had for Mrs Dogperson was that they could fill their dogs with helium and fly them like kites. They could then do loads of great aerobatic tricks – catch the stick, flying bottom sniffing. It then occurred to me that I’d have to find a solution to the problem of dog shit dropping out of the sky at regular intervals. Perhaps some sort of municipal London version of the American Star Wars defence system. My brother has worked with lasers. He might be able to sort that. Or attach buckets to the dogs. Or put helium into their food so that the shit flies upwards as well. And before you ask, I have a grade C physics O Level.
When the Dogperson was ill I offered to walk Petrocelli through the park in the mornings on my way to the childminder’s, thinking I might be able to ingratiate myself with the Dogpeople. It worked. Suddenly lots of earthy types in wellies started saying hello to me and pointing at the dog. So I had loads of new mates. The downside was the dog shit. I began to smell of it. Mrs Dogperson gave me polythene bags to scoop his poop, but the stupid dog kept shitting far too much and I’d get it all over my hands. Then when I tried to put it into the special dog-shit bins they had a spring-loaded door so I’d get my hand caught and the pooh would ooze out though the plastic onto my skin. I was also pushing a pram, so it was like driving a car using two different-sized rudders. Petrocelli would always try and force the pram in front of oncoming traffic so he could have me all to himself. Eventually I had to withdraw my offer of help and let Mrs Dogperson fend for herself. I wanted to be able to bite my nails without fear of disease.
The authorities are getting wise to the Dogpeople Problem. Already, police helicopters hover for ages at night over Stoke Newington and Finsbury Park. There are various theories about this (drugs, crime, drug crime), but my guess is that they must contain highly trained police marksmen, who are paid a hefty bounty to take out Dogpeople using airguns. Next time you see a lone mutt running down the street and you smile at the absence of a big-arsed minder waddling behind, remember that it’s the taxpayers – you and me – who pay for the bullets.
1 Wasn’t Algae Scum a character in Rupert Bear? A Borstal Boy piglet.
3. Football, the Masons and the Military-Industrial Complex
• Hackney Brook – Holloway to the River Lea
Arsenal – the football conspiracy – Beowulf – the weather – the Masons – Record Breakers – Holloway Road – Joe Meek – Freemasons – Arsenal – PeterJohnnyMick – Clissold Park – Abney Park cemetery – Salvation Army – Hackney – Hackney Downs – tower blocks – Hackney Wick – Occam’s shaving brush
Want to hear something amazing? If you look at a map of the rivers of London then place the major football stadiums over the top of it you’ll see that most of them are on, or next to, the routes of waterways. Does that make you come out all goosepimply like it did me? Well, here’s the hard facts that’ll send you rushing for the bog: Wembley – the Brent; Spurs – the Moselle; Chelsea – Counters
