I have lived in many different parts of Britain and I keep in touch with friends who live all over the place. But when they ask me, "What is it like living in London?" I don't know where to start.
If they go to London, they go to Kings Cross or Paddington or Victoria, then on to Oxford Street, Piccadilly, Leicester Square, or the museums in South Ken. But most of London is not like that. Where I live, in a one way street in Walthamstow, I step out of my house and cross the road without looking, because I know that if a vehicle was coming, I would hear it. There is no congestion here. I was in Crouch End the other day, and Barnet the week before. Both are really small towns about the same size as Wooten Bassett, with a main street and a war memorial and a branch of the British Legion. Most of the people who live there don't go to central London any more frequently than theatregoers from Bradford.
I'll tell you what I did this morning. I left the house at five to nine, crossed over Blackhorse Lane, along to the green sign which said "Public Footpath." Three minutes. Another three minutes walking between the factories, incidentally with people still working in them (we could not possibly fund the "recovery" if lots of people were not still working, which they do in Walthamstow).
So, six minutes from home and I am in a green lane by the River Lee Flood Relief Channel. It carries the surface water from large parts of north London down to the Thames, often empty or in Summer with just a trickle of water down the middle, but today nearly full and flowing fast. Loads of blackberries on either side, not now because it is December, but when they were ripe, a gargantuan feast, and because hardly anyone walks along there, so the blacberries ripen and grow luscious and juicy and in summer I gorgeously breakfast on them. There are some very prestigious houses, with solar panels and balconies set high, with views across the reservoirs, so long established that they are lakes, teeming with wildfowl and fish. There are some smaller houses, more modest, with gardens near the path. There is a line in "The Lady's Not For Burning" by Christopher Fry about a "black and frosted rosebud preserved since last October, surviving in December." Well this morning I saw a rose bush with yellow roses in full and magnificent bloom, on the 7th December 2009. Global warming, or global warming? I ask you.
After a while the path leads you to a signpost; to the right 2 miles to Walthamstow Town Centre (who wants to go there?) or left 0 miles to Tottenham Marshes. Just a bit of open space where you see rabbits and sometimes birds of prey hovering, then skimming down to scoop up an unfortunate mouse. It used to be a lot more wild, but now the Council has laid a neat gravel path and some persons in vehicles have constructed a circular dirt track round the open ground where the birds of prey used to hunt. The birds probably don't care about the vehicles and still hunt anyway, at different times of the year. Anyway, last Thursday morning there were no vehicles, and no birds of prey. All was quiet as I walked across the marsh.
Over the bridge to cross the old River Lee, then up to the tow path by the River Lee Navigation, constructed in the eighteenth century when the old river became no longer navigable. Willow trees over the water and herons. I can't say the herons were fishing. They were catching no fish, but they were stately, still, looking into the water. If they saw a fish I had no doubt they would catch it. There used to be a pub on the Navigation called the Narrow Boat, now closed, near Tottenham Lock. You entered it from the towpath through the garden. So if you were coming out of the pub, back to the towpath, you would also come through the garden, which I did once, fairly full of cider, and out through the gateway I found myself confronted, one foot in front of me, by a heron. Do you know they are four and a half feet high? It stood before me and looked me in the eye, then turned disdainfully away and flapped its wings, total wingspan at least six feet, across to the other bank, where it settled, stood and stared at me again. Contempt. I had disturbed it. I totally understood.
My mobile phone rang. Should have switched it off. It was Dorothee from the film company. Yes that's how she spells it, with a double ee and yes, OAP though I am, I have a part as an extra in a film. "Norman, you've told me you will be able to be dressed in a dark suit, and I said we would provide the dog collar if we decide you need to be a vicar." "Yes, I certainly can't provide my own. I don't even have a dog any more, he died." "Well, we may not want you to be a vicar. Just in case, could you also manage a white shirt and a respectable tie?" "How about a regimental tie?" "Oh, that would be wonderful Norman."
I have no regimental tie, having never belonged to a regiment, but I have supported the Lifeboats for many years, and I was in a bar once, wearing the RNLI 175th Anniversary Tie, and a man said to me, "Ah ha, I see you were in the Tank Corps." "No," said I, "the RNLI." "Oh my gosh, a lifeboatman." "No," said I, " a supporter and fundraiser, not a lifeboatman." I suppose if you are as old as me, some people are aware that you might possibly have been anything they can imagine. So that's the tie I will wear, in this film which is called "Bad Night for the Blues." I thought it was about music, but when I read the script I realised it was about trouble at a Conservative Club Christmas Party. So I either play the part of a Conservative regimental tie wearing gent, or a vicar. I will report later. I have been an extra in a film before. You usually spend a lot of time sitting around waiting to be called. I shall take a book to read. I once played a football fan with a striped scarf and one of those rattles they had in the sixties which made a lot of wooden noise. I think the film was called "Rattle of a Simple Man."
So, over the bridge and along the towpath by the willows. One cyclist passes me and a lone jogger in sagging black tights with little shorts above them. If you came this way in Summer, you might get mown down by hordes of cyclists, but not today. Today lots of swans, in families. Last year's cygnets are nearly as big as their parents now. You can only tell that they're cygnets by their colour, which is dull light brown but just beginning to be mottled and streaked with white. Humans start brown and become white, so evidently we have something in common, except swans go white in year two. Did you know swans live a long time? Aldous Huxley wrote a book called "After Many a Summer" and I think that's a quote from W Shakespeare - "after many a summer dies the swan."
Anyway, I walk on along the towpath in the sunshine. Lots of narrowboats and some houseboats, with buckets of coal, little windmill generators, bicycles and plants growing in window boxes on the roof. One had a box of soil growing cabbages. In summer you see them with lettuces and tomatoes. Some have little mock Tudor mullioned bay windows. Through the windows you can see the breakfast dishes piled up by the sink. Life is lived in these boats. Sometimes, because the River Lee Navigation is wide enough, you see huge barges converted into roomy houseboats. I saw one this morning, Gerontius from Wigan. I wonder how long it took them to get here from Wigan. A slightly smaller one Francis of Oak from Rochester, and Lincolnshire Poacher from Braunstone.
"The Lee Valley Canoe and Cycle Hire Centre" used to be a pub called The Waterside. We used to sit out on the riverside terrace, eating steak and salad and feeding the very well fed fish which congregated there among the swans and ducks, all competing for the scraps of food thrown in by the diners. Fishing was not allowed, but on the opposite bank we often saw anglers catching nothing.
Across Stonebridge Lock and on to the opposite bank and onward towards Tottenham Hale. As we get nearer to Ferry Lane at Tottenham, not one but two huge Thames Sailing Barges. The scale marked on the bow tells you they only draw two and a half feet in the water. One looks brand new but they are traditionally built, with tall masts and furled brown tarpaulin sails, no leisure cabins but proper working holds. They are moored alongside a timber yard so presumably still actively working, taking timber down to the Olympic site perhaps.
Up the cobbled slope at Tottenham Lock, ridged to stop the horses hooves from slipping in the days when they used horses to pull the barges down to Limehouse Basin and the Thames. So, along Ferry Lane past a very nice pub called the Ferry Boat (excellent food) and on to Blackhorse Lane and home. I looked at my watch. It was ten o'clock. I had been walking for over an hour and it was time for breakfast. Just another day for a pensioner who enjoys living in peaceful rural London.
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