The Groundwater Diaries: Trials, Tributaries and Tall Stories from Beneath the Streets of London. Tim Bradford
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the walk I’d done to my next-door neighbour. She was already beginning to sense that I was obsessive, as it’s all I ever talk about to her these days, and told me about a book that mentions the New River. A family friend had lent it to her years before. Would I like to have a look at it? Ha ha. Give me the book, old woman, I screamed, twitching, and nobody will get hurt. It’s a crumbling old volume on the history of Islington, printed in 1812. Inside is a pull-out map from the 1735 which shows not only the New River but also a ‘Boarded River’ not on any of my other maps. What is this? I re-read the chapter in Wonderful London on the lost rivers and searched the net. Up comes The Lost Rivers of London, by Nicholas Barton. A couple of days later I’m eagerly poring over its contents – a survey and histories of many of the lost rivers – including the map he’s included with the routes of various underground rivers. According to him, it’s not the New River flowing under my road, but something called Hackney Brook. This is confusing.
But then I remembered the can of strong lager in the old pump house. Could it have been a clue to the New River’s mystery, a key to a parallel world? Naturally, I decided that it was – mad pissed people can see the barriers that are hidden from the rest of us, that’s why they stick to the areas they know. Perhaps, if I got pissed on extra strong lager and wandered out into the street I too might see the invisible lines and obstacles opening up before me. I promptly went out and bought a selection of the strong lagers on sale in my local off-licence. Kestrel Super, Carlsberg Special Brew, Tennent’s Super and Skol Super Strength (they’d run out of Red Stripe SuperSlash).
‘Having a party, mate?’ asked the shopkeeper.
When John Lennon first took LSD he apparently did so while listening to a recording of passages from the Tibetan Book of the Dead translated by Timothy Leary, some of which ended up as lyrics in ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, the last track on Revolver. Looking for a more modern psychic map I decided to watch one of my daughter’s videos, The Adventures of Pingu.
Skol Super (‘A smooth tasting very strong lager’ – alc. 9.2% vol.) 7.30p.m.: Tastes salty, tar, roads, burnt treacle. The side of my head starts to pulsate almost straight away. After five or six sips I feel like I’ve had a few puffs of a high-quality spliff; I should stop now. But no, my need for scientific knowledge is too strong. Sounds are much louder. The radiator behind the settee suddenly comes on and I nearly jump out of my skin. I’m becoming superhumanly sensitive already. I feel that my powers are increasing. Like someone out of the X-Men – actually, that’s not a bad idea for a comic book series, a group of superheroes who are all pissheads.
Carlsberg Special Brew (‘Brewed since 1950, Carlsberg Special Brew is the original strong lager. By appointment to the Royal Danish Court’ – Blimey, must be hard work being a royal in Denmark – alc. 9.0% vol.) 9.30p.m.: Took ages to finish the first one. This has a dry-sweet taste and lighter colour with a damp forty-year-old carpet smell. Could possibly do with another couple of years to age properly. It sobers me up after the Skol. Pingu, on its fourth re-run, is getting a little bit boring. Fucking throbbing in my head. This feels like poison in my system.
Tennent’s Super (‘Very strong lager. Consumer Helpline 0345 112244. Calls charged at local rate’ – alc. 9.0% vol.) 10.20p.m.: Sweet, more like normal beer with a nice deep amber colour and a thick frothy head. A few swigs of this and I’m really starting to feel pissed. I can feel large areas of my brain closing down for the night. But which parts, that’s the question?
‘On a scale of 1–100, how much shite am I talking now?’ I ask my wife.
‘Well, it’s difficult to say. You regularly talk a lot of shite.’ (I look hurt.)
‘But, yeah, any more than normal?’
She doesn’t answer. A police car, siren blaring and lights flashing, zooms down our road. I quickly rush upstairs and search for a copy of The Golden Bough. I don’t have one – never have. I’m drunk. I phone the Tennent’s Super Consumer Helpline and leave a message about the dangers of living over groundwater.
Kestrel Super (‘Super strength lager – an award-winning lager of outstanding quality’ – alc. 9.02% vol.) 11.20p.m.: Smells of Belgian beer. Very complex taste, with strong malt notes, flowery like a real ale. I stroke my chin. I want to unbutton my itching head which feels like it’s covered in chicken wire yet strangely I feel very focused. I have also started talking to myself in hyperbabble while thinking I’m actually very nice looking. Actually.
I suddenly realize that we are in deep shit – the evil water spirits are everywhere. Maybe they’re nice, not evil. I think the house might be haunted. I’m doing lots of pissing and have bad gut rot. But I also feel clear headed. Then start to feel a bit sick. I go to the wardrobe, take out a coat 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.