The Groundwater Diaries

by Tim Bradford

  After popping my head round the door and giving a little wave, I turn right onto Hackney Road and walk down to St Leonards Church, Shoreditch. Shoreditch High Street isn’t a high street any more so much as a typical deathtrap French two-lane motorway transplanted, by some Euro trickery, to Central London. Actually, a typical deathtrap French two-lane motorway with two or three lap dancing clubs, to be precise. Maybe, somewhere down in central France, there is a strange little road in the middle of the countryside with butchers’ shops, pubs and ‘characters’ hanging around on street corners trying to sell stuff. I cross over the road and see some anti-globalization protesters – skinny blokes with happy smiles, wispy beards and dreadlocks flapping in the wind, heading off in a small posse on rickety bikes, perhaps imagining their confrontation with armed and heavily padded-up police with their riot shields as similar to the fights of the Britons and the Roman legions.

  There are people out on the streets, big policemen with uniforms and helmets. Are their penis hats an appropriation of the phallic maypole? Maybe they should go the whole hog and have ribbons put on. With little toy people flying around it. On Shoreditch High Street a crowd of policemen and women are piling into vans. There are police everywhere, standing around at the side of the road, laughing and joking. At the J18 protests of summer 2000, some Reclaim the Streets activists released water from a hydrant which erupted in a 40-foot fountain: ‘people sang and danced in the water of the walled-up Walbrook River … perhaps for the first time in 500 years, it bubbled up into the sun’.1 The Reclaim the Streets supporters claimed that the rivers of London were ‘commons’: they were once freely accessible for swimming, drinking and fishing, but were then effectively stolen from commoners, first by pollution from factories, and later by the enclosure of the rivers by private developers. I like this idea, and it ties in with my Special-Brew-fuelled visions of freeing the rivers, creating small urban biodiverse parkways in the middle of the city with signposted foot and bike trails. It depends on technological pathways being open to all. If we all had wired up laptops at home, the City might cease to be the maelstrom of activity it is today. Instead you’d get people doing the markets while sat at home or in the pub with their mates, or even sitting in the park.

  But this year there don’t seem to be any river warriors. The focus is elsewhere. Some big branch of McDonalds in the West End that has brought out a new way of packaging extruded poultry pieces is crying out to be trashed, perhaps. After a bit more hanging around the police all drive off, heading west.

  The tall buildings up ahead look like cliffs, and with Tower 42 (formerly the Nat West Tower) behind they form a deep river gorge or canyon. The City is money, and they need these big cock towers to convince others of their prowess – it’s like those lads who get themselves penis enlargements just to impress other blokes in the ‘locker room’. On the left is one of my (current) favourite areas of London. A huge building site which is a big new development at Norton Folgate – 201 Bishopsgate.

  It’ll eventually be yet another Massive Glass Structure but at the moment there’s nothing there except for this beautiful big sky. You don’t see big skies like that in the City any more. I treasure that sky. The City is a crazy place, its landscape always changing, as the old is pulled down and the new springs up. Circle of life. Death and rebirth. The jellied eel of existence. The skyscrapers might look great from a distance, say from a no. 43 bus high up on Archway Road, but not when you’re right next to them. In Wonderful London there are plates showing the latest modern buildings in the exciting new world after the Great War. It never changes. Underneath that big sky they found the skeleton of an Iberian-Roman princess in a stone coffin. I saw it on Meet the Ancestors, I think. The bit where they recreate their faces with clay – it always gets me. Sends a shiver down my spine. This whole area of mud will be offices crammed with people in a couple of years. But that’s not to say that we can’t celebrate the big sky over Norton Folgate for just a little while longer.

  I carry on to Scrutton Street, where there are some old shop fronts in a majestically Dickensian style. That’s not really a style, is it – Dickensian? Lots of wood and little windows. The streets are still deserted. I pass an office with a glowing desk like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. I follow the winding course of the stream, and looking back I can see the subtle dips in the landscape where the river would have been.

  Past the London Transport Police building and loudspeakers are going off, it’s like the end of a Bond flick, Dr No or Moonraker – the secret hideaway thing. Trucks are being moved around, vehicles are getting into position, blokes in uniforms are running around. Alongside Liverpool Street Station I turn right at a little clump of young trees. Test signs are up – veium exerci. It’s Latin, isn’t it? Maybe it’s some kind of Mithraic code.

  Past some patrol barriers, then I walk through Broadgate, past the skating rink in the middle. Look at an old map and you see how Bishopsgate’s and Broadgate’s street layouts have changed completely. They could do with market stalls round here – it’s all a bit too corporately slick. The river flows under what was Broadgate Station, which I remember was already dilapidated in the mid eighties. I liked the building. Liverpool Street Station used to be pretty depressing, dark and cavernous. They’ve done a pretty good job doing up that. A big group of police walks past, done up to the nines in all their padded gear, and I skirt into the darkness of the Broadgate catacombs to avoid them, then re-emerge behind the Espresso à la Carte Bar near the Liverpool Street modern-art sculpture that ‘looks like someone left a few slabs of steel out in the rain’ (angry anti-art critic). In WH Smith’s I am confronted by forests of men’s magazines with headless tits on the cover – a fat bloke with glasses is flicking through a love-making manual, maybe he’s going on a hot date tonight. I buy a film, then out and cross onto Blomfield Street, with the Savoy Tailors’ Guild on the right, then over another road and under an archway, left down Throgmorton Avenue. It’s shit for traffic but exciting for the walker that London was never built on a grid system.

  I worked in the City for a while when I first arrived in London. It was at SG Warburg. I met a systems bloke recently who also used to work there and we talked about old times. Or at least we attempted to. What did you do, he said. Filing. What, database? No, putting paper files in a filing cabinet and flirting with middle-aged West Indian ladies and young strapping bawdy Cockney girls. I remember Black Monday. Or was it Purple Tuesday? But I won’t forget the sight of the City boys sitting around shell-shocked.

  Near the Bank of England (the river flows right underneath it and can been seen from the vaults), I’m approached by a policeman, who stops me and says, ‘Can you tell me what’s in that bag?’

  ‘A notebook. A to Z. Water.’

  He asks me to empty the bag. Then he frowns and asks:

  ‘Why are you talking into a Dictaphone?’

  I’m liaising with the head of the protest movement who’s directing operations from his laptop in space.

  ‘I’m walking the course of an underground river.’

  ‘Really? That sounds interesting. Oh, I know all about them.’

  ‘Do you?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. You’re doing the Walbrook now.’

  ‘Do all police know about them then?’

  He went quiet, then smiled in a ‘Move along sonny, God-I-love-the-Masons’ sort of way.

  ‘Sorry about that, but it was the Dictaphone – for all I knew you could have been a terrorist.’

  I wave him off.

  I’m feeling pretty damn smug about my one-man protest against Capitalism and Stuff when I hit a snag. I’m walking past Austin Reed and I see a nice summer cotton suit in the window that I really like. I go in and take a closer look. A young bloke is in charge. ‘Oh it’s sir’s colour isn’t it would you like to try a pair of shoes on?’ He takes the shoes from a dummy. God, capitalism is great. I almost go for it, then realize I never wear suits. Back out again, past Mansion House, the stock m
arket and Poultry. I used 197 to be fascinated by the Gothic fripperies of the tall, wedge-shaped Victorian Mappin & Webb building at no. 1 Poultry. They – blokes in yellow hard hats – knocked it down and built the clever-clever new no. 1 Poultry. Lots of people I know reckon it’s great and architects-like-it-so-it-must-be-good but although it is an expression of the times, I think it’s a vacuous confection of shit. It smells of evil.

  Still, that’s the history of the City, and you can’t get too attached to the old buildings. And something good came out of it. Archaeologists were allowed to dig extensively under the site in the nineties before the new No.1 was built.

  Archaeologist’s voiceover: Meandering silt-filled palaeo-channels associated with the Walbrook and its tributaries were located and sampled at various points across the site. The western side of the stream valley was cut by small streams fed by natural springs, with tributary streams to the north and south-west creating a raised gravel ‘spur’ which extended part way across the site towards the main channel of the Walbrook.2

  Through Bucklersbury Passage, which would have had houses along it in Roman times (there’s a mosaic in the Museum of London that was dug up here), now a shopping arcade, past St Stephens Walbrook church – the vicar here formed the Samaritans and there’s a glass case outside with the first ever help-line telephone from the fifties – where the Walbrook flows under the vaults. The Temple of Mithras was right here. Now there’s a Mithras wine bar and a Slug and Lettuce pub.

  Now I head straight down to the end of Walbrook. On Cannon Street is a pub with little round olde world windows, called Cannons. I take a picture and log it onto the tape. Then I’m stopped by two policeman, one a typical straight-backed Big Cop, the other a wry-looking burly Scots bloke. They ask what I said about the pub. I tell them about the rivers.

  ‘So are you saying that it’s a kind of guide for pissheads to go in and out of pubs while walking along rivers?’

  ‘Er, yes, pretty much.’

  ‘Hmm. sounds pretty good,’ says the Scotsman.

  But Big Cop isn’t satisfied and wants to hear what I’ve said on the tape, so I play it back, but go too far and it’s the bit about me going on about Samaritans and suicide and despair. They look at each other then search my bag. The Scotsman starts going on about ley lines.

  ‘What have ley lines got to do with it?’ I asked, intrigued.

  ‘Well, the drunkards, they’d go down the leylines I suppose.’

  Bloody hell. How did they know all this stuff? They knew about the rivers and, like the first cop, were very excited. I thought back to my earlier theory abut Masons controlling the powers of the underground wells and streams. Maybe there is an underground network of policemen in little rowing boats. It might sound a bit Flann O’Brien, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

  The PCs disappear and I walk about 20 yards, blathering into my tape recorder in an ironic way about police oppression when I’m stopped for a third time, by a big red-faced officer of the law with a ’tache. He asks what I’m doing. I say I’m looking for the Walbrook because I’m doing a project on the Temple of Mithras.

  ‘Oh, its not here, it’s further down the street.’

  ‘Why did they move it?’

  He shrugs his shoulders. I ask him for proper directions and he forgets that he’d stopped me in the first place which is just as well because he’d want to hear the tape as well and either I’m banged up or in a few months’ time the police bring out a walks book of underground rivers and steal all the glory. The temple, or rather its foundations, are a couple of streets along in front of the Legal and General building, a little rectangle of Roman bricks with stones inside it and a little fence around. I’m about to take a picture when a little security guard appears and says I can’t. What do you mean I can’t? It’s a national monument, for God’s sake. There follows a heated discussion. Then two other guys come out and start discussing me and talking on two-way radios. This bloke wants to take a picture of the Temple of Mithras. What do you think? Eventually the little guy relents and says I can but I can’t take a picture of the office. Why the hell would I want to do that? I ask. The other security guard asks why I want to take a picture. Not only is it just a load of old stones but it’s a danger to Christianity.

  ‘They worshipped bulls, you know.’

  Then it’s back down the street and onto Dowgate Hill, where the Walbrook rushed along before finally reaching the Thames, then I finally reach the big river. I go to the Banker pub and over a pint or two of London Pride I watch on the TV as men in black uniforms hit little blokes with beards on the head in the West End. And I wonder to myself, can the sensitive (tanked up on Special Brew) walker feel anything while following the Walbrook route? Maybe. If you can ignore the paraphernalia of the City you can tune in to the different atmosphere in, say, Spitalfields, Houndsditch, Leadenhall Street and Fenchurch Street compared with Cannon Street, Cheapside and St Pauls. In The East End – Four Centuries of London Life, Alan Palmer puts forward the theory that, as early as the fifth century, the Walbrook was already a border, with the victorious but dull Saxons settling to the west of the River Walbrook, and the defeated crazy Romano-Britons (Celts) confined to the east. An earlier template for what would happen between the Saxons and the Vikings at the River Lea 300 years later. Some have suggested that Walbrook or Wallbrook comes from the fact that it flowed through the City wall. But more convincing I think is that Wal Brook means ‘stream of the British’ (or ‘foreigners’) in Old English.

  Barman: A likely story.

  Then I go outside with my beer and look down at the pebbled shore, and after three pints I get an idea of what this area might have been like centuries ago – stone foundations, water lapping gently against the shore. Here, between Cannon Street Rail Bridge and Southwark Bridge, were the lock gates of Walbrook Dock, which until recently led to the depot where domestic refuse was processed before being conveyed down river in barges. The depot has now been converted for container traffic. A few yards up river is a metal drain cover, which is all that can be seen of the Walbrook. Apart from the puddles.

  Film: Mithras the Movie

  The Romans. Temple of Mithras. Emperor trying to bring in Christianity. But maybe the Mithras worshippers are the goodies in this. They’d be played by Americans. Haughty Christian emperors would be played by Brits. Alan Rickman is Claudius (or whoever – cinema audiences won’t care). Reprising his Gladiator role, Russell Crowe is the kindly priest of Mithras who just wants world peace. Got a plan to oust the Romans and bring in a new order of New-Age-type Celts who’ll rule Britain fairly. He is double-crossed by jealous Celt who is double agent. Could be a cartoon – Mithras would be like the Genie. Maybe Robin Williams could be Crowe’s comedy sidekick. Voice of Mithras done by Woody Allen. Leads to Battle of Boudicca. Not accurate but, again, who cares?

  London Stories 9: Hidden Art Soundscapes in the Aura of Things

  * * *

  At the gallery behind Stoke Newington library, several earnest young people are attempting to show Stoke Newingtonites that sound art terrorism can be sexy. We are about to witness a happening. There are pictures by local artists on the four walls. In the middle of the room stands a man who looks like a young Tony Blair – slim, pale-faced, and with an earnest I-Want-To-Change-The-World-While-Listening-To-Genesis expression. On his right hand he has an electronic pad attached to biker gloves which is all wired up to a mixer and amplifier and various other little effects boxes. After he is finally happy that the device is connected properly, he walks over to the nearest picture and brushes the glove against it. Shards of ear-popping white noise come bursting through the speakers: Cchhhhoooooowwwwwoooeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeee wwwwwwwwwww. There are a few people with glasses sitting on chairs who grimace and nod politely. Then one of them gets up, opens an instrument case, pulls out a saxophone and jumps onto the stage. ‘Baa de lee beee yeee parrrpppp ee oowww rarrch honk blaaaaa!’ he wails, blowing his stuff like a real north Lon
don daddio. A middle-aged man with wild hair then walks up to a chair on the stage, sits down and shouts, ‘Bleee blman bok pooo dow nying!’

  I look around. People are trying to nod their heads in time to the music. But the music doesn’t have any time, so they look as though they’ve all got nervous twitches, or some strange illness where the patient suffers from permanently agreeing with everything.

  Glove Man walks further along the wall to a big abstract picture with a metal frame. His expression gets a bit more serious, then he brushes his glove along the frame. Schhhhhhffff fffffffffffffffffffzzzzzzzzzzzsssss sssssssss goes the white noise glove mix electronic box amp thing. Bla baaa paaaeaarrrp goes the sax. Nyang pow pop goes the man with the funny voice, sorry, sound art vocalist.

  Three lads come in wearing fancy Bermuda shorts and swigging from cans of Red Stripe. They are talking loudly to themselves and stand at the back of the hall. One of them murmurs, ‘This is shit,’ and the others laugh. But it’s a frightened laugh. They are left dumbstruck, unable to take the piss out of something that is beyond pisstake. A young guy with a quiff comes into the hall with a small case, opens it up, takes a trumpet out and starts bashing out some staccato phrases while the sax player packs away his gear. Then a magnificent Goth in a shimmery skirt plugs an electric violin into an amp and lets fly with some discordant screeching and scratching (imagine the violin bit from ‘The Devil Rides Down to Georgia’ played backwards at 16rpm and blended through a fuzzbox and local garage radio). Meanwhile, Glove Man has found a nice piece of hot water piping and eyes it up lasciviously (though in a cerebral way). He caresses the painted metal with his magic glove and a shimmering ‘sffffwwoooooaaaaaaooorrrgghhhhh Sssshhhhhhhhh’ fills the hall. ‘Zong tangà neeeek eek!’ replies the singer. ‘Paprp pep pip’ says the trumpeter, ‘Eeerooo wwneeeeooooeeeeeaaaa’ says Goth Violinist. The hall is beginning to empty. Now there are only four other people plus me, and they are all musicians. Then vocal man and trumpeter leave the stage, followed by Goth Violinist, so only Glove Man is left, earnestly wandering the walls of Stoke Newington’s Library Gallery looking for Hidden Art Soundscapes in the Aura of Things.