Unseeing for beginners

I’ve just finished reading a rather interesting novel. I have a reading list as long as my arm (though admittedly, I don’t have very long arms and I’m not including my collarbone or hand in that estimate), so it’s quite nice to actually read something simply for enjoyment. I miss doing that.

The book in question was The City and the City by China Mieville. This is a slightly bizarro novel that’s rather hard to categorise. Inevitably, it’s shelved under ‘Fantasy,’ because China Mieville is a fantasy author and therefore is not allowed to write in any other genre. But it’s not really fantastical. It’s set in a fictional place, true, but so was Hard Times. Beyond that, though, there’s no magic and no monsters – like the Gormenghast trilogy, it seems to be counted as fantasy whether it deserves it or not. Meanwhile, Salman Rushdie includes magic and demons and ghosts but is not fantasy. Go figure.

The book is set in two fictional city-states – the vaguely East European Beszel (which should be written with accents) and the vaguely Middle Eastern Ul Qoma. These cities are very different, culturally and economically. Beszel is in a slump, while Ul Qoma is an up-and-coming power. Beszel enjoys a friendly relationship with the USA, while Ul Qoma is blockaded. Ul Qomans and Besz wear different clothes, use different alphabets, eat different food, speak different languages, even the way they walk and gesture differs between the two cities. And to be in the wrong city without a permit will bring down the wrath of Breach, a sinister and mysterious police force – if you’ve breached, there is no measure that is not in their power to use against you.

But here’s where things get weird – Ul Qoma and Beszel occupy the same space. Certain areas belong to one city, and others to the other. Weirder still, there are areas of “crosshatching,” belonging to both cities. The boundaries between the two nations are purely psychological, with citizens of one being trained from birth to ignore or “unsee” the people, buildings and traffic of the other, with Breach maintaining the mental division by force.

The story revolves around a person found dead in Beszel, but apparently killed in Ul Qoma. And apparently no breach has taken place. Inspector Borlu of the Extreme Crime Squad investigates, and discovers that something very, very strange is going on. I won’t spoil the ending, but suffice it to say that, like so much that Mieville writes, this one will mess with your head.

Now, you may be wondering why I’m talking about this book when it has almost nothing to do with London. It’s not set in London, it’s not even set in a place inspired by London (unlike most of Mieville’s other fantasy). The reason I think it’s appropriate is that, while it’s not a story applicable specifically to London, it’s one that’s applicable to the urban condition as a whole.

The concept of two different nations whose boundaries exist purely in your mind is, on the face of it, freaky-deaky. But think about the concept of “unseeing.” Think about it next time you walk through the city. Think about all the things around you that you simply ignore because they don’t concern you. On an obvious level, derelict buildings. Shops you don’t use. Streets you walk past but not along. How about the stuff you ignore on a cultural level? I don’t use the mosque. I pay no attention to the R&B night posters. I walk straight past the Polish delicatessens. The council estates might as well not exist. There’s no reason I should bear these things especially in mind, but equally, there’s no reason why I should be ignoring them. How can I consider myself citywise when there’s so much of the city, even within areas I know, about which I’m ignorant?

The concept of a hidden world that we ignore or don’t see is nothing new in fiction. Works like Mieville’s own King Rat, Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and hell, even Harry Potter use hidden corners of London as secret places. Yet The City and the City is, as far as I’m aware (tell me if I’m wrong) the first to actually suggest that there’s nothing magical going on there. And in that regard, it suggests that the responsibility to see or unsee is entirely our own. What aren’t we seeing? What are we being told to ignore?

In future, if anyone asks me what psychogeography is, I think I’ll just hand them a copy of this book and tell them to ask me again in a week.

Ghosts of the Northern Line

I love Halloween, probably because it allows me to combine my perverse fascination with the macabre with my love of high camp. It’s funny, I was never really bothered about it when I was small. Anyway, that in mind, there’s a certain theme to the blentries this week.

I thought it would be nice to talk about something spooky. Britain is apparently the most haunted country in the world, and London makes up a significant proportion of that. And if we’re talking about hauntings and London, the subject of the Underground is never far behind. With its long and complex history, its hundreds of miles of tunnels (not all of which are accounted for, so a former London Transport worker tells me) and the fact that it’s, you know, under the ground, it’s inevitable that spooky stories would arise around it.

I’m going to largely limit myself to the Northern Line for now, simply because there are so very many ghosts on the entire system that I’d be here all night if I attempted to catalogue them all, and I appreciate how busy you are.

The most southerly sighting was at Stockwell, and took the form of an elderly workman spotted by a trainee. This gent was apparently quite sociable, having a brief conversation with the trainee who saw him. Indeed, were it not for the fact that no maintenance was due on that stretch of tunnel, the man might never have been noticed. It was surmised that he was the ghost of someone killed in the 1950s.

You might think Kennington was troublesome enough without spooks, but drivers with empty trains waiting in the tunnel for clearance to come into the station proper have reported the sound of doors on the train opening and closing, as if there’s someone walking up the train – approaching the cab…

Elephant and Castle might be the most haunted station on the network. Maybe this is because one of the tunnels on the Bakerloo Line cuts through a plague pit. Whatever reason, there have been numerous eerie occurances here. The most common was the sound of running footsteps along the platforms and up the stairs when the station was supposedly deserted apart from staff. Doors would open and shut, and a porter named Mr Horton refused to go back there after one night shift when he was alone in the break room and heard someone approaching and knocking on the door. He opened up to find the corridor deserted. A familiar ghost consists of a woman who gets on the train, walks towards the front and then disappears. This ghost supposedly haunts the last train on the Bakerloo Line, but I include it for completeness’ sake. I should also mention one seen by commuters seated alone in the carriage who, upon looking in the opposite window, are startled to see a woman sitting next to them.

The Northern Line ticket hall at Bank was built in the crypt of the church of St Mary Woolnoth, which may go some way to explaining the oppressive feeling of terror experienced by commuters there, often accompanied by a foul stench. Down on the platforms, a figure known as the Black Nun has been sighted. This ghost has also been seen in and around the Bank of England, and is named Sarah Whitehead. Her brother was executed for forgery in 1811, following which Sarah went mad with grief.

Oppressive feelings have also been reported at Embankment, in a staff-only tunnel known as “Page’s Walk”. Unexplained gusts of wind and the sounds of doors opening and closing are heard.

At Moorgate, in the mid-1970s, workers in the Northern City Line tunnels (then part of the Northern Line, now National Rail) spoke of a man in blue overalls who would approach them. As he came closer, a look of unspeakable horror would appear on his face, and he would vanish into the tunnel wall. Some paranormal enthusiasts have suggested that seeing this ghost might have been the cause of the 1975 tube crash in that part of the station, the true cause of which is unknown to this day. Others have suggested that the haint may have been a premonition of the disaster.

At King’s Cross, in the entrance tunnel, a rather modern spectre has been seen – a woman in jeans, crying piteously. The most likely event to have caused such a spirit to become manifest would have been the fire in the Underground station in 1987, in which 31 people lost their lives.

Possibly one like this.

At East Finchley, on the sidings near the station, a ghostly steam train of the Great Northern Railway has been sighted, a relic of the days before the line was run by London Underground.

Highgate, in addition to the Northern Line station that is still very much in use, has an abandoned station  that was to form part of an extensive expansion project for the line, a project known as the Northern Heights. The plan was abandoned, as was the station, but the buildings remain. This ruined station is situated in a deep cutting, and is described by author W. B. Herbert as having “an emotive, eerie atmosphere.” Local residents have reported the sound of trains in the cutting, and visitors to the ruins describe a feeling of being watched.

Last train, anyone?

This bacon smells funny

Well, I finished reading that book, Black Swine in the Sewers of Hampstead. I was disappointed to discover that actually, it had almost no mention of said black swine. This cannot be allowed to stand, since it actually sounds like a hell of a good story.

The book does briefly mention said hogs in the form of an editorial from the Daily Telegraph. from 10 October 1859. I shall quote the relevant part of said editorial, because I rather like it.

This London is an amalgam of worlds within worlds, and the occurrences of every day convince us that there is not one of these worlds but has its special mysteries and its generic crimes. Exaggeration and ridicule often attach to the vastness of London, and the ignorance of its penetralia common to us who dwell therein. It has been said that beasts of chase still roam in the verdant fastnesses of Grosvenor Square, that there are undiscovered patches of primaeval forest in Hyde Park and that Hampstead sewers shelter a monstrous breed of black swine, which have propagated and run wild among the slimy feculence, and whose ferocious snouts will one day up-root Highgate archway, while they make Holloway intolerable with their grunting.

The pigs in question started out as an urban legend – Henry Mayhew discusses the story in London Labour and the London Poor.

The story runs that a sow in young by some accident got down the sewer through an opening and, wandering away from the spot, littered and reared her offspring in the drain, feeding on the offal and garbage washed into it continuously. Here, it is alleged, the breed multiplied exceedingly, and have become almost as ferocious as they are numerous.

This pig is not in a sewer, but you get the idea.

Spooky pigs are not unknown in British folklore – Yr. Humble Chronicler’s father, Shropshire-born, notes that there was a local legend in his village of a ghostly black pig haunting the churchyard, and a white one has supposedly been seen near Newbury in Berkshire. Perhaps the pigs of Hampstead are simply another version of this? Or perhaps, if we’re to be cynical, it has something to do with the fact that Mayhew’s flushermen would “generally take a drop of rum” before venturing into the sewers. Certainly there’s no evidence to back these pigs up other than hearsay. Sewer workers have reported frogs, ducks, terrapins and even snakes down there, but no pigs. The flushermen interviewed by Mayhew mention rats as big as “good-sized kittens.”

A sewer, London, yesterday.

The story seems to have been reasonably well-known in the mid-nineteenth century, but these cryptids have been largely forgotten in the present day. Leave it up to Neil Gaiman, then, to revive the legend in what might be the best-known work of London fantasy – Neverwhere. In this book, London possesses its own subterranean Labyrinth, and its own equivalent of the Minotaur. A character describes said beast thus:

“Now, they say that back before the fire and the plague there was a butcher lived down by the Fleet Ditch, had some poor creature he was going to fatten up for Christmas. (Some says it was a piglet, and some says it wusn’t, and there was some that wusn’t ever certain.) One night the beast runned away, ran into the Fleet Ditch, and vanished into the sewers. And it fed on sewage, and it grew, and it grew. And it got meaner, and nastier. They’d send in hunting parties after it, from time to time… Things like that, they’re too vicious to die. Too old and big and nasty.”

Given that the Fleet Ditch in question runs through Hampstead, and given that for much of its length it was bricked over and used as a sewer, I’d say we have a much-embellished version of the story of the black swine. The book, if you haven’t read it, is well worth grabbing – it’s basically a retelling of more-or-less every lost myth of London. The main character, significantly, is Richard Mayhew.

It’s a shame that, whatever else we may have in London’s vast network of sewers, storm drains and underground rivers, the black pigs of Hampstead are no longer believed in. Maybe the story was lowering property values in the area or something. No, if you want sewer monsters, I’m afraid you’ll have to take the alligators of New York and be done with it, Sunny Jim.

Oink.

Going home?

Going home, as in returning to the place where you grew up, tends to be a weirdly alienating experience. Almost melancholy, in its way. Everything is slightly uncanny, at once familiar and yet different. It’s a bit of an odd time to make this observation, given that it’s not like I never see my family, and in any case I only live about an hour and a half away by public transport (20 minutes by car – what the hell, Boris?). Perhaps it is the march of age that makes me so reflect, or perhaps it’s the fact that I forgot to mail myself the entry that was originally going to go here and needed to come up with something else in a hurry.

I grew up in Twickenham, you see. The first few months were lived in Baron’s Court in a flat overlooking the Underground line, which perhaps explains a lot about this blog. But the vast majority of my childhood was spent in that leafy suburb. Oddly enough, I’ve never been a rugby fan – to me, all a rugby match meant was that the buses weren’t running and it would be a bugger getting a train.

Eel Pie Island, back in the day

The thing I particularly noticed on returning today was how very swish it’s all become. Very gentrified. I remember when the waterfront at Twickenham was mostly notable for the derelict swimming baths that my mate Tim swore were inhabited by vampires. These have now gone – there was an uproar when it was suggested that they might be replaced with a shopping complex, but happily a garden now stands in their place (do gardens stand? I don’t know).

I was also pleased to note that the waterfront now boasts a sign concerning Eel Pie Island. The Island, less well known as Twickenham Ait, has a significant place in the history of British music, with artists as varied as the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Hawkwind, Black Sabbath and Long John Baldry among many others playing at the Hotel. If you speak Internet, Long John Baldry was the one responsible for the “PINGAS” meme. If you don’t, then don’t worry about it. These days, it’s the closest thing Twickenham has to a bohemian quarter. Well worth a look if you get the chance.

Twickenham, King Street. The bank is still there, virtually everything else has vanished or been rebuilt.

Also nearby is Twickenham Museum, which is a really excellent museum given that it’s basically two rooms in a house. That sounds really patronising, but it genuinely is worth a look if you have an interest in the West London suburbs. And the Mary Wallace Theatre, in what was once a soup kitchen, has some good (albeit amateur) stuff on. So gutted I just missed a production of Glengarry Glen Ross there.

During the day, York House Gardens are a pleasant place for a walk. If you’ve ever seen Alfie, the sanitarium scenes were actually filmed here. I’ve heard there was a remake of this film starring Jude Law, but this seems ridiculous and I think we should all agree that such a thing could not possibly have happened, maybe burning anyone who says otherwise. The area is very popular for filming, due to the proximity of Twickenham, Teddington and Shepperton Studios. Off the top of my head, two of the Beatles movies (Help! and A Hard Day’s Night) were filmed here, as were A Fish Called Wanda and The Krays. There have been many others.

The reason I was here was to celebrate the Bro’s birthday. We were dining at a little Italian restaurant called La Serenata. By not being called La Dolce Vita it instantly gains a couple of points in my book. The thing I like about this place is perhaps the thing that most people would hate about it – it’s a proper retro Italian place. Faux wooden beams, family-run, wax-encrusted wine bottles as candle holders. You know the drill. The food is robustly Anglo-Italian, the menu clearly dating from an era when people were just starting to get the hang of Italian food but weren’t yet familiar with concepts like “balsamic vinegar.” Some would call it unpretentious, others would call it basic. But what they do, they do well – I particularly recommend the steak in any of its forms. I’m told that it’s to die for in the brandy and dijon sauce. The only things that were rubbish were the chips, but this was one black mark on an otherwise superb meal. As I’m no foodie, you can take or leave my recommendation.

Alas, it rarely seems to get much custom – we were the only ones here tonight, and reviews of the place seem to be singularly lacking. It’s the sort of place that Gordon Ramsay would come to and totally revamp while exclaiming “Faaahk me!” as often as possible. But I like it.

The trouble with this diet is that when I actually do get an opportunity to indulge myself, I can’t do so quite as much as I used to. This three-course meal has left me feeling utterly bloated, and more than a little stretched. I guess you can never really go back.

Up and down the City Road

This entry may be a little brief, for which I apologise. I found myself on an unexpected evening out with Teachmaster D, the Catlady, Mistress Bitch and Mistress Bitch’s boyfriend, among others. It was a surprisingly eventful evening in which the Archies somehow became associated with Holocaust denial.

You bastards.

That being said, here is the entry for today, such as it is.

I’ve always been a bit sceptical about those people who claim there’s something mystical about wandering about the city. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice and all, but let’s not pretend it’s anything other than a pleasant way to fill a boring afternoon. Still, yesterday I had a trip out that did rather make me wonder.

You see, I set out with no particular goal in mind. It’s quite often how I roll on a boring weekend – jump on a train and see where I end up. As the train rolled into London Bridge, it occurred to me that it might be quite pleasant to head over to Islington and have a look down Camden Passage. Cass Art have a very large shop there, and I felt I could justify a visit.

While there, I remembered a thing I’d seen a couple of weeks ago on the walk described in the entry I tastefully titled ‘Canal Penetration.’ Opposite the towpath, I’d seen an old factory converted into offices, complete with what looked like an elderly crane. I have a strange fascination with old machinery, so I thought I’d see if I could get any closer, as I was in the area and all. I’d been meaning to.

I was therefore surprised to see that, as part of the Open House weekend, about which I’d entirely forgotten, the normally-closed-off wharf was open. It’s just weird to me that the one day I decide, randomly, to check this out on the offchance is the one day that I actually can check it out. No doubt the statisticians will tell me that actually there’s nothing weird about that, but boo.

I managed to get plenty of photos of the factory and the crane. The crane appears to have had its cabin replaced, judging by the neatness of the wood.

I was also quite interested to note that there is what looks like an abandoned railway on the wharfside. It’s a narrow gauge railway, as was once common in industry in Britain. A few old trucks had also survived and were dotted about the place.

I took many photos, most of which would be of interest only to nerds like me. But check out the picture on the left. A pillar of the factory goes straight through the railway track, suggesting to me that the line pre-dates the factory (or at least, that part of it).

The trucks have had their bodies replaced, so even if we assume they’re original, it’s hard to tell what they would have looked like during their working lives. However, they were very light to push over cobbles, and even with their original bodies I suspect they would not have been difficult to move on rails. Long story short, I don’t think this railway would ever have been locomotive worked, although I suspect it would once have been longer. Two tracks are in situ, one of which I suspect would have been a siding used for storage. Unfortunately, I’ve been able to find nothing on Google about this railway, and the rest of the area has been built over.

I had a quick shufti at the City Road Basin, seen on the right. This was once an important industrial site, built in 1820 (was this the date when our mystery railway appeared?) and the closest canal basin to the City. Despite its profitable location, like the rest of Britain’s canal system, it’s become more-or-less obsolete in recent years. There have been some residential developments, but even on a sunny Saturday afternoon, the place had an air of quiet loneliness about it.

The little boat on the left deserves some brief attention. It’s a Bantam tug. These were built in Brentford in the 1950s and 60s to push and pull barges on the canals. Several have been preserved and several more remain in service. Life is obviously slower on the waterways. Or they’re just pretty good tugboats.

As I turned on to City Road, the building on the right caught my eye. At first glance, it’s just your standard common-or-garden eyesore. It looks like an ancillary building for the tower block behind. Yet there were one or two things that made me wonder. For instance, it looks like there’s quite a large door that’s been boarded over at the front. And though it’s not entirely clear in this photo, there’s some architectural detail that seems a little fancy for the rough-and-ready architecture on display behind.

My suspicions were confirmed when I got home. This is, in fact, an abandoned Tube station, or as much as survives. It’s City Road, opened by the City and South London Railway in 1901. It lay between Angel and Old Street on what is now the Northern Line, City Branch. It was never a very popular station, and to be honest even today it’s not hard to see why. It’s only about 15-20 minutes gentle stroll from Angel to Old Street, and it’s not like there’s anything around here that really justifies a whole Tube station.

When rebuilding work was carried out on the stations of the C&SLR in the 1920s, the Company decided to cut their losses and simply shut the station down rather than waste money bringing it up to then-modern standards. Aside from being used as an air raid shelter, the station saw no further use after 1924. The only reason there’s anything above ground at all is because it was decided to convert the old lift shafts into ventilation shafts – what survives is the brickwork that once surrounded those shafts, the rest having been demolished. There are also remains at platform level, though I’ll own I’ve not seen them myself.

Honestly, this place is pretty good if you like your abandoned transport systems. If T. S. Eliot was an industrial archaeologist, he’d probably write a poem about it.

Further Reading

http://www.abandonedstations.org.uk/City_Road_station.html - An excellent feature showing the below-ground remains of City Road.

Canal Penetration

I do not appear to understand the concept of a short walk. This fact was brought home to me on Sunday. Having attended a wedding on Wednesday, I was feeling somewhat guilty at the Elvis-level calorie intake I had managed that day, and therefore had resolved to behave myself with a little more restraint. Sunday, I thought, would be an ideal day to get a little exercise. I thought it might be nice to do some more of the Regent’s Canal.

The Regent’s Canal, if you’re not familiar with it (though you may have some passing acquaintance with it if you’re a regular reader of this blog), is a waterway running from the Thames at Limehouse to the Grand Junction Canal at Paddington. The canal was opened in two sections – from Paddington to Camden in 1816 and Camden to Limehouse in 1820. In those days, before decent roads and railways, canals were the arteries of industry. The Grand Junction Canal was the quickest means of transporting goods in quantity from the industrial Midlands to London. The Regent’s Canal therefore served an important economic purpose, as it formed the final link between the Midlands and the Port of London and therefore the rest of the world. It survived the coming of the railways and the roads, but by the 1930s was largely obsolete.

Today, although there is a small amount of cargo, it’s primarily used for pleasure craft. The warehouses and factories that once lined its route have either been demolished or repurposed (most notably, one major interchange between rail and canal is now Camden Lock Market and the Stables). The towpath is a popular route with cyclists, walkers and idiots (yo).

My original intention was to only walk a short section of the canal, say Camden to King’s Cross or Islington. But I have this tendency, once I start walking, to keep on going far longer than is perhaps wise. As a result, I ended up walking all the way to Limehouse Basin. As I had previously walked from Camden to Paddington (hence the photos you have been seeing so far), I can now say that I have walked the full length of the canal.

From a psychogeographical point of view, what’s interesting about this walk is that it let me see familiar places from a different point of view. Of course, I’d seen the canal at Paddington, Regent’s Park, Camden, King’s Cross, St Pancras, Caledonian Road, Islington, Hackney and Limehouse before. Indeed, I’ve written about it in at least two of those locations in this very blog. But it had just been a landmark then, with no sort of context. I had some vague awareness that this stretch of canal was the same as that stretch of canal, but only as a theoretical thing. To experience the whole thing from a boat’s eye view, as it were, was rather novel. I think I’ve been enlightened in some way.

Anyway, I’ve waffled on for far too long already, given that this was supposed to be a photo-ey entry. I shall keep the prattle to a minimum from here on in, and instead continue to present my (usual crappy) photographs in geographical order from Paddington to Limehouse. Camden Lock is a notable omission here,  due to the fact that on neither of the walks presented here did I actually intend to document the entire canal.

One last point I would like to make is the range of contrast as you go along the river, from affluent Regent’s Park and Little Venice to the post-industrial landscape of the Docklands. I’ll shut up now. For now.

Sorry, me again. At this point on the walk, the canal cut through the hill at Islington, and I had to leave the towpath. Some explanation may be needed for the following photos.

I snapped this because I had walked along this road once before, a couple of years ago, desperately hungover. I was leaving the Barnsbury flat of a friend we shall simply call The Monster early one Sunday morning. I attracted disapproving looks from pious souls. Anyway, to end up here again was rather surprising.

I eventually reached Angel – you may recall that my first paid acting gig was near here. Despite my familiarity with the area, I wasn’t entirely sure how to get to the canal. Fortunately, this sign guided me. It may also explain some of the stranger sights coming up.

Isn’t this just the dearest little owl?

Spitalfields already? God be damned.

And Shoreditch! How we are honoured!

This is a nice thing to do with a block of council flats. Photographic portraits of local folk. It’s like Eastenders, only without the death and unimaginable horror.

Hackney. If you feel a chill down your spine, that is because we are but a stone’s throw from the Last Tuesday Society’s sinister museum.

A dilapidated narrowboat advocating the cleaning up of canals. This would be that famous bargees’ humour I’ve heard so much about.

Some sort of junction. Further investigation is required, I feel – especially as there’s something familiar about this canal here.

Lo the Isle of Dogs!

Herons are basically the easiest birds in the world to photograph. How I managed to make this one blurry enough to shame the most avid Bigfoot enthusiast is therefore beyond me.

I feel this toy boat has a story to tell.

We are so close, me hearties, I can practically taste that lime!

Is that not the viaduct of the London and Blackwall Railway?

It is! Limehouse! We made it! Long live, long live!

I say “we” made it, but mostly you just looked at photos. I didn’t want to make a big thing of this.

The Thames as the sun begins to set.

The Docklands Light Railway at Westferry. Everyone wants to get on the seats at the front of the train, but for a novel experience I recommend the seats at the back as you enter the tunnel for Bank. It’s like disappearing down a giant oesophagus.

 

Further Reading:

http://londonparticulars.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/talk-about-burning-your-bridges/ - An earlier entry focusing on a particular part of the Regent’s Canal.

Through the ruins

I’d like to take you on a voyage through time and space to this time a week ago when boredom and the vague desire to do a particular thing intersected, resulting in my finally getting around to visiting the revamped Museum of London.

Really, given the amount of time and effort I spend researching (if you can call it research) the history of London, this ought to be my favourite museum. Unfortunately, I have in recent years found it a little frustrating – there’s no denying that it has some very fine exhibits, but so many times I’ve dropped in on a whim only to discover that half the place is closed off.

Unlike the museums of South Kensington or the British Museum, the Museum of London is located on the edge of the old City. The City is, frankly, not the liveliest of places at weekends. On the left you see the Bank of England, practically deserted.

Rather than change trains for the sake of going one stop to St Paul’s, the closest stop to the Museum, I tend to get off at Bank. Bank is perhaps my least favourite Tube station, consisting as it does of seemingly miles of crowded pedestrian tunnels where the going is always slow and the temperature is always too hot for comfort. Like many similar stations, Bank was not originally intended as an interchange – rather, it happens to be a desirable place for a railway company to serve. The idea that passengers might want to change between Central, District, Circle, Northern and Waterloo and City Lines without ascending to street level was a bit of an afterthought, and the Docklands Light Railway even more so. I’m told that Bank Station is haunted – commuters and late-night staff have reported a strange and unearthly presence, a feeling of unease as if they are being watched. I suspect further investigation would reveal a piece of electrical equipment vibrating at a frequency of 17Hz to 19Hz, but then I’m no expert.

The area was more-or-less empty apart from a few bewildered-looking tourists. My trusty street atlas let me down, as several of the roads that in theory were quick routes to the Museum were in practice gated off. Roads like the one on the right. This is exactly the sort of thing that Woody Guthrie was complaining about. At this point, someone normally tells me to get an iPhone and I normally say “No thank you, I would far rather spend the money on opium and whores.”

Eventually, and somewhat unexpectedly, I came to Moorgate station. Had I known how close this was to the museum, I would most certainly have alighted here rather than Bank.

Instead, I climbed up to the highwalks of the Barbican. I don’t know why, given my hatred of Brutalist architecture, but there’s something I find strangely compelling about the Barbican Estate. It’s got a weird, retro-futuristic desolation about it. I think I’d like to make a film just so I could film something there. I’m not the only person who thinks it’s alright, as the whole place has been Grade II listed.

And yet, despite the absolutely 1960s/70s look of the place, you get odd little pockets of the ancient city peeping through. For instance, this section of the medieval City Walls that survives. There are a number of other medieval fortifications around here, not least of which is the section of wall outside the Museum of London itself. These were built, as you might imagine, on the old Roman walls.

I must admit that I’m a little loath to go into massive detail about the Museum itself, as I fear I would snap up about eight entries’ worth of information. However, the World City galleries were what I was here for, so I suppose I probably ought to talk a bit about those.

"People called Romans, they go, to the house?"

These galleries cover the city from the rebuilding in the aftermath of the Great Fire of London to the present day. This was when the city really took shape – indeed, I would go further and say that it’s really in the last 200 years that the city took on its modern form. This was when the Docklands appeared, when the city expanded to absorb Westminster, Kensington, Islington, Southwark and the suburbs, when industry brought people flooding in from the countryside and, in the second half of the twentieth century, when the city developed its modern ethnic makeup.

The new galleries are certainly impressive – large amounts of exhibition space are devoted to subjects such as pleasure gardens, fashion, ethnic and civil tensions and entertainment. The old star exhibits – the Victorian street scene and the frankly tasteless Lord Mayor’s carriage – are still there, and there’s even a gallery of London art from the 19th century to the present day. I was quite excited by the puppets of Andy Pandy and Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men, who I recall watching as a small child (lest you think this to be an anachronism, I should point out that I saw them on video). I also noted the same edition of The Alternative Guide to London as I own on display in the 1960s cabinets, which was cool.

After finishing up, I had a stroll in the direction of Spitalfields for no particular reason. I’ve not really explored this area – passed through several times, but never had a proper footle around.

Spitalfields Market looked interesting, so I headed in that direction. It’s a fine place for fashionable folk, I have no doubt, but I found it a little too glossy if you know what I mean. I like those markets that are a bit illogical. Still, worth bearing in mind if you’re looking for presents. I must confess to indulging my sweet tooth at a fudge stall, where I purchased some rather decadent chocolate chilli fudge. I was also rather tempted by the fudge containing marshmallows, but let’s not be silly here.

Late on a Sunday afternoon is perhaps not the best time to come upon Brick Lane Market, so perhaps it can be forgiven for not quite matching up to my expectations. But I couldn’t help noticing that much of what was on sale was identical to what I’d seen in Spitalfields Market less than half an hour previously. Come to think of it, quite a lot of it was identical to the stuff I’d seen in Camden the day before. This and the sheer volume of East End hipsters led me to head off in the direction of Shoreditch High Street. From there to Old Street and a Tube home.

I think I’ll finish where I started – in the deserted City. In the Museum of London, there’s a display made up of status updates, tweets etc. from Londoners’ social networking sites, and this one particularly struck home:

Saints or Sinners?

I’ve bitched about the recent developments in Portobello Road before, and today I took a bit of a stroll around the area – I had the day off, as I was returning from a wedding in Sussex, and so I decided to make the most of it. Above you can see the most notorious recent development in Portobello Road, namely the All Saints store.

You know what really bugs me about this store, apart from its location, its size, the fact that it’s a chain store and the fact that its construction has been allowed? It’s the fact that not only have they had the gall to replace the old market stalls, but they’ve tried to make it whimsical and olde-worlde. The three shop fronts you see in that picture – the black one, the maroon one and the green one – are all the same store. And they’ve filled the windows with antique sewing machines (BECAUSE IT IS A CLOTHES SHOP YOU SEE).

I hate these chains that try to look like the independent shops they drive out of business. Starbucks with its cafe society decor, Burger King with its American diner theme. It sort of feels like rich folks slumming it for fun.

Having said that, if All Saints had built a garish and out-of-place regular shopfront, I’d be complaining about how they haven’t even tried to be in keeping with the area.

Screw All Saints, is what I’m trying to say here.

Voyage Beyond the Suburbs

Now, a lot of people complain about London for various reasons.  They say it’s too crowded, it’s polluted, it’s unfriendly, it’s too big, blah blah blah. I think it’s therefore important that we address the flipside – namely the fact that outside of London is a terrifying place where awful things happen.

This was brought home to me yesterday, when I went to the wedding of a couple of very good friends in Slough. The reception was a remarkable event, involving copious quantities of food, alcohol and dancing. I could go on about it for ages, but I suspect anyone who would be interested in hearing was there anyway.

Slough's chav heritage is commemorated in this mural near the bus station.

So anyway, Slough. It’s a town that’s mostly famous for the fact that John Betjeman hated it, and for being the setting of The Office. Frankly it’s a place I’d be happy never to visit were it not for the fact that the aforementioned friends live there. The journey is never less than difficult.

The wedding itself was being held in Farnham Royal, an actually rather pleasant area of Slough with a distinctively villagey atmosphere. I knew the No. 74 bus went there, but looking at the timetable I could see that the No. 78 also went part of the way. As neither one listed Farnham Royal, when a 78 arrived I asked the driver if he was going there. Yes, he assured me. And so off we went. We didn’t pass through anywhere that looked like Farnham Royal and indeed, at one point we seemed to be going in the opposite direction. In Britwell I was told the bus had reached the end of its route. Confused, I asked the driver if we had gone past Farnham Royal. “Farnham Royal? I thought you said Farnham Road!” After eating him and taking two further bus trips, I somehow managed to get to the wedding venue in good time – I had figured that something was bound to go wrong.

The wedding went well despite some last-minute hiccups, and we even narrowly avoided the rain (har har take that, the elements). The reception was held at a golf club about a mile and a half from Taplow. I studied the route and the train timetables and figured out that if I left at about a quarter to midnight, I could get there in good time for the last train.

And then came the big mistake. You see, where I should have turned right out of the club, I turned left. And so instead of an easy stroll into town, I had a much longer walk into the middle of nowhere.

The road is shown left. Now, for me, being in the middle of nowhere is an alien concept. No street lights, cars rare, only light coming from my phone. I must have been walking for about two miles before I realised that something was badly wrong. I stopped outside an upmarket gated community, figuring that this would be a suitable landmark, and rang for a minicab. None of the minicab firms had any idea where I was. Shit.

Well, I thought, if I kept going, eventually I was bound to find something, right? I mean, roads always lead somewhere, right? I found myself more and more doubtful as I passed a farm and through a flood. At last, at long last, I came to a junction. Brilliant! A junction, with street signs. Try the cab firms again. No reception. Shit.

At that point, a police car pulled up. To be honest, a chap in a cream suit and Panama hat in the middle of nowhere at 2am is probably a criminal or a ghost, so it was perfectly reasonable. The chap driving asked me where I was going. After explaining as best I could, he told me that I was four miles from the nearest town, but said that if I didn’t mind sitting in front of the violent drunk he could drop me off at the service area. At that stage I would have sat in front of a madman with an electric drill just to get somewhere, so I gladly accepted.

I paused at the 24-hour Starbucks for a rest and to consider my next step. At that point, a drunken Scouser said hello and asked what was going on. And so I explained. He offered me a lift with his friends. There wasn’t room in the car, and frankly I don’t think any of us would have benefited, so I politely declined.

At that point, a minicab on its way home pulled in. I went up to the driver and asked if he was able to take me to the nearest station. He was seemingly confused by the question (remember, this man is of an industry that earlier couldn’t find a landmark that I found on Google Maps in ten seconds), but eventually decided that Slough was the one for me. Good old Slough.

The cabbages are coming now. The earth exhales.

After forking out £20 to get to the station, I discovered that it was now three hours until the first train. Damn. Damn. Damn. So what to do?  I simply didn’t have the energy to walk any further, or the money to pay for a taxi home. And at that point, things started getting really strange.

You see, a combination of sleep deprivation, physical exhaustion and alcohol can have some strange effects, and at this stage I started hallucinating. I was confused to note that several of the wedding guests were already there, before they resolved into items of platform furniture. Buildings began occupying weird positions, appearing in parts to be closer or further away than they actually were. At one point I nearly walked off the platform, believing the edge to be about a hundred yards away. And I was attacked by something like a lamprey.

Finally, a train arrived, and I fell into a blissful sleep until Ealing Broadway (for some reason, my subconscious always knows when to change trains and wakes me up accordingly) when I took the District Line and a bus home. At some point around this time the hiccups I’d had since midnight went.

What did I learn from this experience?

1. Do not be overconfident in your navigational abilities.

2. Be careful after drinking.

3. The lampreys are not your friends.

4. Seriously, fuck the countryside.

Now let us never speak of this again.

Okay, what?

Read this my droogs:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23853696-portobello-traders-lose-arcade-fight-as-council-gives-green-light-to-five-storey-retail-complex.do

If you couldn’t be bothered to read it, the big news is that the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea have given their approval for a massive redevelopment on the site of the Good Fairy market in Portobello Road. A five-storey retail and residential complex is, according to Kensington and Chelsea’s council, totally cool man. Nearly 34,000 members of the Save the Portobello Road Market group on Facebook would apparently disagree.

And rightly so. Lipka’s and Van’s, two other arcades, have been sold off already. The former is now a controversial branch of All Saints and the latter is going a similar route. The council are whining that technically this is perfectly legal and there’s nothing they can do – the sites were sold as retail, and they’re being used for retail by the new developers. The phrase “grow a pair” springs unbidden to my lips as the street tumbles towards genericism.

I mean, the problem with this must surely be obvious. Portobello Road is a tourist attraction. Have you never seen Bedknobs and Broomsticks, man? Have you never seen Notting Hill? Have you never read the Paddington Bear books? Shall I spell this out for you? If-Portobello-Road-loses-the-thing-that-makes-it-a-tourist-attraction-then-it-will-no-longer-be-a-tourist-attraction. Sure, people will visit – for all people complain about chain stores, someone’s obviously using them, otherwise they wouldn’t be chain stores in the first place. But what would be the point of specifically visiting Notting Hill? Why not go to Kensington High Street, or Oxford Street, or Westfield London, or Kingston? You could get the same thing there, and more of it. Meanwhile, a place that’s genuinely unique and interesting, with a character found nowhere else in London, will disappear. Not to mention the unemployment resulting from the closure of hundreds of antique stalls.

Frankly, though, I feel those who are against redevelopment are pissing in the wind. Because the Council simply don’t care. Why should they? Money talks. Redevelopers bring in money, character doesn’t. That’s why there’s no longer a market at Shepherd Market. That’s why Camden Passage is so crap these days. Portobello Road Market will disappear, replaced with rows of shiny plastic chain stores, perhaps with twee little plaques on the wall explaining that they were built on the site of historic Portobello Road Market.

Gah. This may be a little incomprehensible. I’m tired and cross. In short, a message to the Council: piss on your dreams.