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Walking (not falling)
Jun. 11th, 2002 11:22 pmWorking at home today, fixing up a course on developing for smart devices. But you can only spend so many hours editing powerpoint slides before you go insane, so I'm off for an evening walk. The nearest approximation to the countryside around here is Regent's Canal, so I decide to follow it down to the river. It's quiet by the canal: there's the occasional cyclist, a few fishermen (God knows what they can possibly catch in there -- but maybe catching fish isn't the point), and a whole lot of exuberant coots chasing each other around in the water. The flashy canalside offices and loft apartments peter out once you get away from Islington, and it's mostly industrial decay from there down to Limehouse. It feels like stepping out of London altogether.
Somewhere around Hoxton (I think -- you lose all sense of place by the canal) I catch sight of a building with a banner tied to it. The banner says "Rosemary Works". Advertising for alternative medicine? Slogan for a JobCentre ("Rosemary works, and so can you!")? Or is it some kind of factory, like a steel works but with rosemary -- but what the heck kind of industrial process has rosemary as a raw material? Have I stumbled on the place that makes all those vile scented things they sell in National Trust shops? I'll never know, of course, because that's Real London and this is the Canal, and you can't get there from here. Not without walking around lost for hours, anyway.
A mile or so further along, I'm into Hackney when I'm stopped by a tiny, frail-looking old woman with a strong accent. She's standing by a warehouse that's covered by some kind of creeping plant, and she wants to know if I can tell her what sort of plant it is. Of course, I have absolutely no idea; I only know about three varieties of plant and my best guess is that, since it's climbing up a building, it's probably ivy. It clearly isn't ivy, though, so I'm stumped. She looks a bit disappointed to have stopped such a useless passerby. "In Cyprus," she says, "we know the name of every kind of plant. But here in England, you have so many, nobody could know them all." We inspect the plant again, as if we might find the name written on a leaf. It has clusters of tiny green fruit. "I think," she adds, "it is grapes. I shall come back later to see how they grow." We say goodbye, and I can't help thinking that we would surely never have had this conversation a hundred yards away on a street in Hackney: normal London rules don't apply down here.
I round a corner, and Canary Wharf comes into sight, behind a pair of gasometers. Some attractive new flats have been built right next to them, and so they've gentrified the smaller, older gasometer by painting it magnolia. It looks ridiculous.
I duck out from under a bridge and come face to face with a brightly-coloured goose-sized bird. I stare at it, trying to guess what it might be -- great created grebe, I think (I'm only marginally better with birds than with plants). It ignores me. I walk a few steps and look again. It continues to ignore me. Eventually, I look up along the canal and see a whole group of people up ahead. I walk towards them and it eventually dawns on me that they're a film crew, and I've been in shot for about five minutes, most of which time I've spent in a sort of amateur mating dance with what I'll assume was a grebe. I hurry up, figuring they must all be wanting to chuck me in the canal by now, but luckily they aren't filming, they're just measuring and fiddling about. A woman I don't recognise is sitting on a bench staring into the middle distance and looking actorly, and a man I do recognise -- it's James Nesbit -- is hovering to one side waiting for the measuring to finish. In deference to the Law of Cinematic Cliche, he is indeed shorter than he looks on TV. I hurry on past and out of shot.
And so on down, past the splendid and practically unknown Victoria Park and round Limehouse Basin to the Thames, where there's a pub that serves Greene King IPA and I can sit and drink and stare out at the choppy water. Then back along the Thames Path, which might as well be called the Wapping High Street Path for all that you get to see of the Thames -- you have to duck in and out of all the yuppie warehouse conversions to get anywhere near the river. Eventually, though, I come through to a viewing platform just after Cinnabar Wharf, and I'm looking right at Tower Bridge, with Ken's Glass Testicle behind it and the London Eye in the background and, well, how could you possibly want to live anywhere else?
Somewhere around Hoxton (I think -- you lose all sense of place by the canal) I catch sight of a building with a banner tied to it. The banner says "Rosemary Works". Advertising for alternative medicine? Slogan for a JobCentre ("Rosemary works, and so can you!")? Or is it some kind of factory, like a steel works but with rosemary -- but what the heck kind of industrial process has rosemary as a raw material? Have I stumbled on the place that makes all those vile scented things they sell in National Trust shops? I'll never know, of course, because that's Real London and this is the Canal, and you can't get there from here. Not without walking around lost for hours, anyway.
A mile or so further along, I'm into Hackney when I'm stopped by a tiny, frail-looking old woman with a strong accent. She's standing by a warehouse that's covered by some kind of creeping plant, and she wants to know if I can tell her what sort of plant it is. Of course, I have absolutely no idea; I only know about three varieties of plant and my best guess is that, since it's climbing up a building, it's probably ivy. It clearly isn't ivy, though, so I'm stumped. She looks a bit disappointed to have stopped such a useless passerby. "In Cyprus," she says, "we know the name of every kind of plant. But here in England, you have so many, nobody could know them all." We inspect the plant again, as if we might find the name written on a leaf. It has clusters of tiny green fruit. "I think," she adds, "it is grapes. I shall come back later to see how they grow." We say goodbye, and I can't help thinking that we would surely never have had this conversation a hundred yards away on a street in Hackney: normal London rules don't apply down here.
I round a corner, and Canary Wharf comes into sight, behind a pair of gasometers. Some attractive new flats have been built right next to them, and so they've gentrified the smaller, older gasometer by painting it magnolia. It looks ridiculous.
I duck out from under a bridge and come face to face with a brightly-coloured goose-sized bird. I stare at it, trying to guess what it might be -- great created grebe, I think (I'm only marginally better with birds than with plants). It ignores me. I walk a few steps and look again. It continues to ignore me. Eventually, I look up along the canal and see a whole group of people up ahead. I walk towards them and it eventually dawns on me that they're a film crew, and I've been in shot for about five minutes, most of which time I've spent in a sort of amateur mating dance with what I'll assume was a grebe. I hurry up, figuring they must all be wanting to chuck me in the canal by now, but luckily they aren't filming, they're just measuring and fiddling about. A woman I don't recognise is sitting on a bench staring into the middle distance and looking actorly, and a man I do recognise -- it's James Nesbit -- is hovering to one side waiting for the measuring to finish. In deference to the Law of Cinematic Cliche, he is indeed shorter than he looks on TV. I hurry on past and out of shot.
And so on down, past the splendid and practically unknown Victoria Park and round Limehouse Basin to the Thames, where there's a pub that serves Greene King IPA and I can sit and drink and stare out at the choppy water. Then back along the Thames Path, which might as well be called the Wapping High Street Path for all that you get to see of the Thames -- you have to duck in and out of all the yuppie warehouse conversions to get anywhere near the river. Eventually, though, I come through to a viewing platform just after Cinnabar Wharf, and I'm looking right at Tower Bridge, with Ken's Glass Testicle behind it and the London Eye in the background and, well, how could you possibly want to live anywhere else?
