The Groundwater Diaries: Trials, Tributaries and Tall Stories from Beneath the Streets of London. Tim Bradford
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7. Our landlord asked how he could meet ‘young ladies’.
8. We got burgled three times.
9. The pubs were full of fat blokes.
They were great days.
I wrote to The Guinness Book of Records explaining my project to travel along London’s streams and rivers and how it would work well on global TV – me racing along with Norris McWhirter by my side being pulled along in a boat on wheels by a car and reciting historical facts about the rivers and their uses. (Cue punk thrash version of the Record Breakers theme tune).
In a bit of a downer mood I went out one night to meet my friend Stevey P. at a North London Short Story Workshop meeting. This group had been going on and off (mostly off) for about six years and now had only two members, me and Stevey. How we lost all the others I can’t quite remember. I think Stevey slept with one of them and the other was his brother. His story was the first chapter in a mad London-based Dickensian sci-fi novel. My stories, on the other hand, were going nowhere. I couldn’t concentrate on finishing any of them. My latest effort, Run, Carla Djarango, Run Like the Wind, consisted of three paragraphs of East Midlands magical realist bollocks. Stevey smiled patiently. He would have put his arm round me if he’d been the tactile sort, but instead he lit up a fag, narrowed his eyes and asked ‘Pint?’
Five minutes later he read my half page short story then said, after taking a sip of his Guinness, ‘Hmmm, it’s got potential.’ We both laughed. I then moaned on about rivers. He told me he had an idea. Great, I thought. What is it? A boat. Why don’t you build a boat? Then dress up in nineteenth-century gear and get pulled around London. What a crazy idea. Thanks for nothing.
Stevey agreed to come out on a river walk in Walthamstow, where he lives. There was a river that runs very close to his house which I presumed must be the Ching.
‘That’s not a river,’ said Stevey, a bit startled.
‘It is.’
‘It can’t be.’
‘What is it if it isn’t a river?’
‘It’s a, a drainage ditch or something. A drain with some water in it.’
‘No, I think it’s a river.’
He started to gabble. ‘No one told me about rivers when I bought my flat. Rivers flood and cause damage. That’s a ditch, not a river. What happens if there’s a really big flood? It’ll ruin my hall.’
To add to his paranoia, soon afterwards Stevey got a leaflet though the door from the Environment Agency informing him he lived in a flood plain and offering some useful survival tactics. This was actually the River Lea flood plain but he seemed convinced that it must be referring to the small river (‘drainage ditch!’) next to his house. He began to fantasize about his street becoming like Venice. Fortunately he lived on the first floor. ‘But what about the post?’
Now here’s a factoid bit for all the research fiends and librarians out there (sounds of skinny blokes with thick specs sitting up suddenly and concentrating). I’d first seen a map containing the Ching in my old second-hand book and, looking at its location in relation to the Hackney Brook, had presumed it was in Walthamstow. But when I looked on my A to Z to check the course of Stevey’s mystery river, I noticed that the Ching actually flowed south-west from Epping Forest and entered the Lea in south Chingford. It didn’t really spend much time in Walthamstow, apart from flowing under the dog track. So Stevey’s river wasn’t the Ching after all.
(Scene: A gang of resentful-looking researchers, looking dead hard, hang around outside a library waiting to beat me up.)
The trouble with SAD is that I get tired of people smiling and being positive at this time of year. Fortunately some new research has recently come to my aid. Apparently you’ve got more chance of being happy if you’re pessimistic. This is because you have lowered expectations, so everything is a bonus. This corresponds with my own world view, what I’d term optimistic pessimism. In this, you go out there with a healthy can-do attitude while accepting that it’ll probably all end in tears.
I also don’t like fun. Or, should I say ‘FUN!’ Fun! is overrated. What I mean is, I don’t like looking for fun! If fun! suddenly appears on my doorstep, that’s great, I’ll invite it in for a cup of tea. If a large candyfloss helterskelter funfair circus run by speedfreak laughing Zippo circus clowns sets up on our street, I’m happy. But the idea of going out and actively searching for fun! leaves me cold. I’d like to say I blame Thatcher – after all, I blame her for most things that are wrong in this country, or with me – but we have got the idea that ‘fun! is our right’ from the Americans. It’s that thing about the ‘pursuit of happiness’ which manifests itself as a need for fun! It’s a waste of time. It’s only in fleeting moments that you’ll ever actually experience happiness. Fun! is happiness with forced laughter, usually while dressed up.
I spent a bit of time in the States a few years ago and I used to feel really tense around happy people. Or at least people who seemed concerned at making the rest of the world think they were happy. Those ‘I’m so pleased to meet you that I’m smiling, look, you make me feel good so you must be a special person’ people. You can always spot them because they pepper their conversation with words they’ve nicked from New Age therapy-style literature. Tim, you look sad, Let Art Heal You. Tim, come into our Love Sanctuary. That kind of thing.
And yet, I realized that I was only going to be able to continue this rivers project if I got myself into a more positive state of mind. So I jotted down a few ideas to get me started.
The Groundwater Diaries self-help guide
This short course aims to turn you from a normal person (possibly even a well-adjusted one, but who cares about that?) into someone who is an incredibly annoying positive person who never gets down about anything. People will run from you in the street when they see you.
For example, being positive isn’t just about thinking, ‘Yeah I can do that. I reckon,’ it’s also about showing the world who’s boss, that you can do anything and that you’ve also got a very loud voice (possibly with a sort of American accent creeping in at the edges). Most self-help books work on the inner person (god how pathetic is that!?), putting over the idea that positive vibes will spill out from you into your universe in a kind of George Harrison sitar big beard huggy sort of way.
The techniques and exercises outlined here work in an opposite direction, making you look absurdly positive on the outside until finally, when you’re head of IBM or you’ve won the Eurovision song contest three years in a row, you start to believe it yourself.
But as most psychology experts will tell you, ‘We take Access or Visa.’ OK, that’s the first thing they tell you. The second thing is that everything is bullshit and pretending. People like to be fooled by others who seem more assured than they are.
Positive Exercises
Get yourself a new name
Ditch your old name that your parents gave you and grab a bright shiny positive new one. Here’s some examples: Dong Powerlamp, Jemma Zii, Zak Backkaboo, Pandora Lightshower, Dalrymp Supercharger. These are positive and say something about you. If you don’t want to go the whole way, why not get into the craze of Power Initials. John Smith becomes John Z. Smith, Ethel Jones become S. Ethel M. Jones. See? Hmm.
Affirmative thumbs
Put your arms straight out in front of you and stick your thumbs up. Hold this position for thirty minutes while holding you mouth in a large wide grin. You can use Affirmative Thumbs™ at work if you are getting hassle from your boss. Half an hour of Affirmative Thumbs™ and he’ll be happy to give you a pay rise. Possibly.
Power Smile
Sit with your arms by your sides. Take a deep breath.