The Groundwater Diaries

by Tim Bradford

  A downside is that there’s only so long you can run in one particular area. Then, if you’re an addict, you have to move on. It might be boredom, because the pollution is getting to you, or because all the locals, especially the attractive ones, laugh at you or, as was the case with me in south London, the problem of overtiredness due to the fact that you keep getting lost in the parks and commons. ‘Darling,’ you say in your best purringly seductive voice, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if we moved to a bigger house? And here’s a map of potential jogging routes, er, I mean properties.’ Another problem is that when I’m jogging, pubs often look heart-rendingly beautiful and I have often been tempted to stop my run there and then. OK I have stopped it there and then. But not very often. It was raining. What?

  Jogging may completely shag your knees and back over the long term, make you feel like a twat as you heave and puff your way past attractive sensible people, pollute your lungs from all the traffic fumes as well as send excess saliva to the brain, where it builds up in a big wedge, blocking out any sensible thinking patterns (been proved, honest). But it’s a glorious way to travel if you like looking at fat people’s arses.

  1 Counter’s Creek rises a few hundred yards to the east.

  14. The Suburban River Goddess at the Brent Cross Shopping Centre

  • The Brent – Hampstead to Brentford

  The Sweeney – Goddess – ha ha it’s the riverman – the Hollybush – Ada Maltz – Hendon – Brent Cross Shopping Centre – chocolate – Welsh Harp – Hanger Lane – golf is evil

  The Brent. Brent. What is it about that name? Perhaps something clapped out from the seventies, like a character from The Sweeney. Bent coppers. Rent books. Say it slowly over and over again for maximum effect. Brent. Brent. Brent. B … r … e … n … t. And, believe it or not, ‘Brent’ is not a mockney villain in some shit new Britflick crime caper or a crappy British Leyland family car (i.e. the Austin Brent). It turns out the Brent is a holy river – the pre-Celtic name comes from brigantia, meaning holy, or high, water. Its ultimate source is the Goddess Bridgit. It’s like the Ganges, except it runs through Neasden and has a load of golf courses on its route. Something in my head – a half-forgotten lyric by some post-punk feminist band, perhaps, or clever brainwashing by Miss Rylands, my attractive rad fem English teacher from the late seventies – tells me I must walk the goddess’s river.

  Most of the Brent is still on the surface, which immediately makes it less interesting (though this sits a bit uneasily with my desire to see some of the rivers unearthed). I’d been avoiding the river because a) it seems really long and b) goes through parts of London I hate – miles and miles of semi-detached houses full of people on Prozac with Haywain prints on the wall and an Astra in the driveway. But I shouldn’t let my prejudices get in the way of some nice exercise.

  I mentioned my rivers project to a friend. ‘Is there a deeper meaning?’ she asked. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your unconscious?’

  ‘Er, dunno.’

  ‘So I suppose you’ve heard about the hard-core feminist group who walk the lost rivers of London?’ My eyes did that cartoon thing and leapt out on stalks. ‘Eh? You’re having a laugh.’

  ‘No, really,’ she said, ‘a friend of mine, Mad Maureen, has been out with them. They see the rivers as being symbolic of female sexuality. They were buried by the Victorians, you see. And the Victorians repressed female sexuality.’

  This was it. My grail. My path was to find the hard-core feminist river walking group. At last, my life had meaning. I could meet them, have a rant about how feminist teachers and writers were to blame for me not getting shagged when I was a teenager, then I’d be sorted. I’d be able to walk away. So how can I get in touch with them? Er, you can’t. They’re quite secret. And I don’t think they like blokes.

  What a brilliant notion. Loads of feminists tramping around London knocking holes into the concrete and trying to free the rivers. Of course, finding them might prove difficult. But the search would be the thing. So … (strokes beard, Blofeld style, and arches eyebrows) the Hardcore London Feminist River Walkers were out there somewhere, walking over silent forgotten streams just like me. Perhaps I’d walked past them once or twice and not noticed. Those girls in Hackney Wick. The school kids on the Tyburn. Their motivation may have been different (men are evil, free the rivers), but their aim was the same as mine – to understand London, sex, history, politics and magic while getting out and about in the fresh air and having a beer or two. This was like the race for the South Pole, with the Hardcore London Feminist River Walkers as Roald Amundsen and me as Scott and Captain Oates.

  Actually, I was a feminist once. This East Midlands feminism (we were too far north for me to claim it as ‘feninism’) was a result of

  a) Being influenced by young, attractive feminist teachers. ‘So this is how the world works,’ I thought. It tied in with what many of the bands I was into at the time (late seventies/early eighties) were saying. Jon King, lead singer of Gang of Four, had explained in the NME that he wore big baggy shirts because they were androgynous and therefore non-sexist.

  b) A strategy for getting shags. Sensitive to feelings. I hear what you’re saying, baby. It was totally misguided. At sixteen I’d take a girl’s bra off at a party then put it back on again because I respected her feelings and wanted to empower her. With girls I really fancied I’d concentrated on what they had to say but then rather than falling at my feet they’d run off with older blokes with flash cars. At university in the mid eighties studying English and film, feminist critiques like the seminal Feminism and the Western: How Guns Are Evil Because They’re Phallic, Not Because They Kill People were all the rage. I also happened to be in a band called Simone de Beauvoir. Me (a student twat with a rubbish flat-top haircut) on guitar, a philosophy undergraduate with a quiff on bongoes and a big-lipped girl called Joolz singing. Simone de Beauvoir folded after one session when we realised we were not only shit but pretentious too.

  I can laugh at it all. It hasn’t served me too badly. Like all the men in my family, I’m a dreamer. All my big relationships have been with women who are strong, clever and opinionated. And I’ve learned not to put bras back on.

  The Brent’s source is on Hampstead Heath, further west from where the Fleet and Westbourne rise. Once again I come out of Hampstead tube dressed in 8th Army gear topped off with a T-shirt advertising Venezuelan beer. ‘Ha ha, it’s the river man!’ laugh the local shopkeepers and point at me. ‘Der – I’m lost already. Have you seen a river ha ha ha ha?’ Bouncing off the huge chest of a wealthy Hampsteadite walking her dog, like a pinball, I cross over the main road and go up Holly Hill, past the famous Hollybush pub on the right.

  Come come come and shout loudly

  in a music hall cockney accent

  down at the old Hollybush

  tra la la la la.

  Chase around the room

  Holding your lapels

  And grinning like

  A synchronized swimmer

  down at the old Hollybush

  tra la la la la.

  Ooh look

  Here comes the First World War

  Let’s wave our little flags

  And wade into storms of machine gun fire

  In the name of King and Country

  Tra la. Because we’re told to!

  down at the old Hollybush

  tra la.

  Then I head up Frognal Rise, past the house where Alfred Reynolds lived between 1980 and 1993. Just before he sorted out the Good Friday Agreement. What was he doing living in Hampstead when he was supposed to be Prime Minister of Ireland? Maybe running a little Café somewhere to earn extra dosh. From teashop to Taoiseach.

  No, please, don’t put the book down. I agree, that was terrible. It won’t happen again. Of course, that was Albert Reynolds. Alfred Reynolds was a Hungarian poet.

  Things they said:

  Alfred: Jesus remains a living figure reminding us of our humanity – the kingdom of
Heaven which is within us.

  Albert: If we were to have peace and stability on the island, the North of Ireland domestic market would go up by 100 per cent. The South of Ireland market – domestic market – would go up by 50 per cent. We could have a sharing of the overheads as to how to run the country and save us all money. How much money are we paying, as Irish taxpayers, to try and sustain the security position that we have? We’re actually paying four times more than the British taxpayers.

  There are some big houses here, five storeys – one each for parents, kids, nannies, agents and mistresses. Narrow gothic windows. Does Glenda Jackson live down here? I remember her in The Music Lovers and Women in Love and that thing with George Segal. I used to fancy her, mainly because I was on a one-man (boy) crusade to wangle staying up late to see some European film with a bit of nipple and Glenda never failed me. She was interesting looking rather than straightforwardly pretty. Whenever I’ve mentioned to people that I think early period Glenda was a sex goddess, they don’t understand. In fact, they laugh. They just didn’t watch the right films. I think Julie Christie lived round here as well. She was completely gorgeous but inaccessible. You imagined Glenda being a sixth former who you’d try and get a snog out of when you were thirteen.

  Hampstead is the centre of the so-called Chattering Classes who annoy the Daily Mail. Maybe the Daily Mail would rather nobody talked about any ideas. At Heath Road – named after Ted Heath, in fact the whole of Hampstead Heath is named after him, in gratitude for his defeating Labour in the 1970 election – I take a left then wander down a bit until I find the path up east to Jack Straw’s Castle, which is a high point on the Heath and nothing at all to do with a heavily guarded compound owned by the right-wing Labour politician. It’s a medieval term given to a high point from which you could see a long way. There’s one in Highbury as well where the peasants of the Revolt met up before being double-crossed and disembowelled by the establishment. Should’a done those negotiation skills evening classes.

  I come to a clearing and a little dried-up brook. Forest sounds – birds, humming, different squeaks and whistles. This is the start of the Brent, and I think it’s called Mutton Brook at this point, metamorphosing into the more goddess-friendly Silk Stream a mile or two down. Further on there’s thick brown water. Jumping from one bank to the other, I try to find a decent path, ducking and weaving through undergrowth and lots of holly. Things are rustling in the undergrowth, something running. Wild boar? Wildcats? Faeries? I get caught in a holly bush then push through some more bushes until the scene opens out and becomes quite marshy. I notice a piece of multicoloured rag hanging from a branch of the holly bush.

  Blessing of the Brat Bríde: During the day before Imbolc the woman of the house or women of the grove should take a small piece of cloth (larger if it is for the entire grove) and lay it on a bush outside. During the night, as the goddess roams to bless the houses of her followers, she will pass by, touching and blessing the cloth. Collect the cloth in the morning and tear it into small pieces. These pieces of cloth, individually called a Brat Bride (BRAHT BREEJ), should be distributed among the children and females of the household. The Brat Bride will give them protection throughout the year wherever they go. These pieces of cloth may be sewn into the clothes or jackets of the children to ensure that it won’t be lost.1

  Bushes. I don’t know if it’s significant but I went to an exhibition by an artist called Tracey Bush, who has created a limited-edition handmade book called The Lost Rivers of London, as well as doing lots of other idiosyncratic river-related projects, poring over old maps as inspiration for her illustrations. Her rivers are narrow bumps on home-made paper which look like pale veins and arteries. This exhibition – of limited-edition litmus paper books that had been dipped in Thames water then sealed in little polythene bags – was in Clerkenwell. I had a browse around the little gallery, looking at Tracey’s litmus books, then at some other stuff that was being exhibited – a load of models with toy snakes and lizards all stuck together. The model artist, a middle-aged beardy bloke, was holding court, explaining his work to an admiring crowd. I nabbed a glass of wine and ducked into a corner, where I got stuck in conversation with a nice and loquacious old duffer who was writing a history book about London and said he carried a can of hairspray around with him to ward off muggers.

  ‘You don’t know who I am, do you?’ he kept saying. It’s true, I didn’t. Possibly Sir Roy Strong, or Brian Sewell. He took out his can of hairspray to show me. It was the sort my mum used to use in the early eighties.2

  It’s good to be out in the wild. Of course, the shops of Hampstead High Street are only half a mile away. It’s more a state of mind. Nature reminds me of my grandmother. She wasn’t religious in the traditional sense of kneeling down in a tall old building before a man in a dress then taking a piece of rice paper in her mouth then drinking wine and pretending it was the blood of an omniscient deity’s son. Her religion was nature based. In fact, she believed in Mother Nature. The bounty of the goddess was everywhere in her small but beautiful garden. Don’t get me wrong, she wasn’t some kind of Edwardian hippy chick – she believed in hunting, hanging and flogging. She also believed that the people who put those hard plastic wrappings over the top of sauce bottles should ‘have their heads cut off’. But to see her scrabbling about outside, connecting with her plants – this old country girl kneeling before her goddess – was to see her at one with her universe. For Mother Nature was in everything – the tiny shoots, the beautiful flowers, the birds in the branches, her grandchildren as they told each other to ‘fuck off’ then kicked a ball through her greenhouse. After she died we scattered her ashes on her garden so she could continue her good work.

  I look up and the sun does that dapply thing behind trees like on pop videos. Someone should be singing about a skinny girl they used to know. In front of me is Leg of Mutton Pond, with sweet wrappers and paper tissue scattered around on the sandy paths. I walk through to Golders Hill park and the next section of ponds. There are benches next to the track inscribed with names of dead people.

  ‘In memory of Ettie Picard, who loved benches and parks.’

  ‘Cyril Horrocks, who loved this park.’

  (Maybe Cyril’s relatives phoned up the bench makers and said ‘he really loved the Sparks’ and they misheard.)

  ‘Ada Maltz 1921–1990 who spent many a happy summer’s day in this park with her family.’

  I sit down on Ada’s bench and try to imagine her in the park with her family. Fifty years ago, maybe, hanging around here with her kids. She’d have been thirty-six, my age, in 1957. Not that long ago. That generation had lived through the war, had cool fashions, a changing optimistic world, consensus politics and free jazz. What was Harold Macmillan’s famous phrase? ‘I say – let’s cook up some noise, Daddio!’

  Will I have my name on a bench one day? Yes, maybe a bench in an old boozer. I wouldn’t mind that: ‘Tim Bradford 1965 – 2095, who spent many a happy evening in this pub with his beer and his wrongheaded theories.’

  I’ve got a present from Ada, or rather her bench – some chewing gum is stuck to my leg. Down below is the water garden. On one side of a bridge is a dammed still pond with a light dusting of algae, below it are waterfalls with lush foliage, lilies and other water plants. The river comes cascading down then, at the edge of the pond, trickles down between two iron grilles and flows under the road – then right underneath a big detached Tudorbethan house. I ring the doorbell. No answer. Ring again. Then I hear movement in the garage and pop my head round. A skinny bloke with a moustache is moving stuff around.

  ‘Hi there, I was wondering if there’s a way through your house to follow the underground river?’

  ‘You what?’ He’s a gruff Geordie.

  ‘Is there a way through here? A river flows right underneath.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘An underground river.’

  ‘A river?’

  ‘It flows undergro
und, yes.’ I’m jabbing the A to Z now as if that will give my request some legitimacy.

  ‘Listen, mate, I don’t know the first thing you’re on about – I had enough trouble finding this place myself. Sorry.’ And he continues rummaging.

  A river guardian? One of Bridgit’s warriors? A garage box thief? Or a northern river enthusiast who doesn’t want to share his research?

  These roads have smart houses, semis, mock Tudor beams, shiny cars, nice lawns, a sense of the futility of existence. The melancholy of the suburbs. People doing gardens. Hedge trimming. Washing their cars. Swigging gin straight from the bottle through a funnel. Waiting to die.

  Over Finchley Road it’s suddenly very quiet. I can see the river valley to the left, but there’s no way through. When they built these housing estates and streets why didn’t they think that people would want to walk the river’s route? If you didn’t have an A to Z I’d say it would take years to get out of these parts of London, this semi-world. No shops. No pubs. Silence broken only by a lawnmower.

  Where is the goddess taking me?

  London is in conflict between the new urban chic of city living and the continued suburbanization along American lines3 – out-of-town neoclassical shopping centres with fake restaurants from around the world, big car parks, big roads, nice detached houses with big gardens, fat arses, lots of telly. Yet, are the suburbs all bad? A lot of English post-war culture has been created by suburbanites stranded in the cultural crossfire. David Bowie. Er, The Good Life. Terry and June. The feeling I get in the suburbs is the same feeling I get when walking around large department stores or shopping centres. My breathing gets shallow and I start to feel trapped. I used to be dragged around big shops in Bradford and Leeds by my mother and grandmother. The shops all smelt of groomed, perfumed women. Women’s voices. Women shopping. My shoulders would slump and my feet would drag.