The Groundwater Diaries

by Tim Bradford

  Tennis isn’t really a sport because blokes don’t talk about it in pubs. Nobody I know takes it seriously. I mean, what can you say? Andre Agassi had some nice shorts on today. Did you see Henman’s shot that went in? Didn’t Venus Williams do a good smash? It’s pointless. My only good memory of Wimbledon was when Pat Cash won in the eighties. At the end of the game he started climbing up though the crowd, up and up, and I thought to myself, my God he’s going to keep going, jump onto the roof of Centre Court and shout, ‘This is pointless!’ at the top of his voice then keep climbing, up and up, until he’s plucked out of the air by a waiting spaceship and whisked off to a more sensible planet.

  But he just kissed his parents.

  16b. Sorry to Keep You

  It’s time for my weekly session with the Thames Water switchboard. I’m asked for my account number as usual, then when I say I want to be put in touch with the Swindon office because I want to go down into the sewers, I’m put on hold. A Mozart track drones on. Then a voice appears.

  ’We are sorry to keep you. Your call is important to us – however, we are currently experiencing high call volumes. You are moving up the queue and your call will be answered as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience at this busy time.’

  Pause. Scratch arse. Look out of window.

  ‘We are sorry to keep you. Your call is important to us – however, we are currently experiencing high call volumes. You are moving up the queue and your call will be answered as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience at this busy time.’

  Pause. Pick nose.

  ‘We are sorry to keep you. Your call is important to us – however, we are currently experiencing high call volumes. You are moving up the queue and your call will be answered as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience at this busy time.’

  Pause. Stare off into space.

  ‘We are sorry to keep you. Your call is important to us – however, we are currently experiencing high call volumes. You are moving up the queue and your call will be answered as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience at this busy time.’

  Pause. After 20 minutes I finally get through but the woman I talk to can’t help me and I’m put back into the Mozart queue for another 20 minutes, then put through to operations. They can find the log of my letter arriving but that’s it. I’ll try and find out if anyone knows anything, says Operations Woman. She puts me back onto Mozart hold.

  17. The Tim Team

  • Falcon Brook from Tooting to Battersea

  The bastard TV people haven’t got back in touch about my river walks idea so I’m now doing my own TV history show, walking along the route of Falcon Brook dressed as a Celtic warrior and with an imaginary TV crew accompanying me. It’s the Tim Team.

  Dear

  A few months ago we met to discuss a possible TV project about walking the routes of London’s buried rivers. Seeing as I haven’t heard from you, I’ve gone ahead and written up one of the episodes. I hope you like it.

  Yours

  Tim Bradford

  Voiceover: One of the most famous Celtic finds in London is the Battersea Shield, which was found in the Thames, near Battersea. Experts believe a Celtic warrior was lying on the beach sunbathing and the shield floated away, all the way to the Wandsworth Museum, where it is now kept. I imagine that the Celtic warrior walked to the Thames from the sacred source of the Falcon Brook, so I plan to walk in his footsteps and, on the way, talk to local experts and enthusiasts, noting sites of historical interest.

  Celts wore baggy trousers and brightly coloured tunics. Their hair was bleached with lime and worn in a spiky, punk-like style. After much research effort I come up with a modern equivalent, some green combat trousers and a Hawaiian shirt (my black one with yellow and red flowers). The hair is perfect, thanks to the heat and sweat and the fact that I hardly ever wash it.

  Scene: I’m in Tooting trying to get through to Thames Water on my mobile. All I can hear is a pre-recorded message.

  ’We are sorry to keep you. Your call is important to us – however, we are currently experiencing high call volumes. You are moving up the queue and your call will be answered as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience at this busy time.’

  Scene: Me in a street looking around. I begin the walk on Tooting’s Furzedown Road, where the spring is located. Two women are sitting on a low wall. They are obviously pagan high priestesses guarding the sacred spring of the Falcon. One is Welsh, in her late forties, with red hair and big tits, the other in her sixties looks like a granny. They appear to be waiting for something. I strike a majestic pose and ask them to tell me where the sacred spring is located.

  Granny: Are you with the water board, love?

  Me: Ha ha no (glancing down at my magnificent Celtic outfit. I tell them about the river walking idea, and some stuff about Danish punk music.)

  Welsh bird: (getting quite excited) That’s a really good idea. It is. A really good idea. Oh, what a very interesting project!.

  Voiceover: I think maybe she fancies me.

  (I stand there, not so much majestic as smiling awkwardly and looking around.)

  Me: So … do you know where the spring is then?

  Welsh bird: The spring?

  Granny: What spring is that, dear?

  Voiceover: Come on, old woman, do I look stupid?

  Me: The start of the river is round here somewhere. Maybe underneath one of these houses.

  (I brandish my ancient map, the A to Z, with the Falcon scrawled on in blue biro, as if that will prove what I’m saying is true.)

  Welsh bird: Ooh, how interesting!

  Voiceover: Did she just wink at me?

  (I decide that the spring is most likely directly underneath where they are sitting, and tell them so. They both start giggling. I have a choice. To persevere and wangle out of them the whereabouts of the river’s source, inevitably entailing me having to snog the Welsh bird to get information, or leg it. I look around again, sniffing the air.)

  Me: I’d better be off.

  (They wave goodbye, the Welsh woman smiling and shouting, ‘It’s a really good idea!’)

  Scene: About 100 yards further on, I sit down next to a wise old woman on a bench and ask her if she knows anything about the buried Falcon Brook.

  Old woman: (In a rasping voice she quotes what must be an old local poem from the Tooting Myth Cycle. Ancient flute music plays in background.)

  There is an old river

  But it’s in Streatham.

  Not round here.

  No underground rivers

  Round here, love.

  Scene: I walk back towards Tooting Bec Road and cross over. The road next to the path is called Dr Johnson Avenue.

  Dr Johnson: (gravelly voice) Oh yes, I have shat in the Falcon Brook many a time. Think I had too many snipe for breakfast.

  Voiceover: On the right is Tooting Common. On the left is Tooting Graveney Common. There’s a stream called the Graveney that flows into the Wandle and a cricketer called Graveney who played for England.

  Scene: People lie around the edges of the common, flaking out. Kids are playing football and the adults are lying around in the sun with their shirts off. Dogs chase around. Bikes lie on their sides.

  Voiceover: Here we are at Elmbourne, its name suggesting elms by the river.

  Cut to: Picture of an elm tree

  Voiceover: Then onto Wimbourne Court, suggesting wimmin by the river.

  Cut to: Picture of women bathing in the river.

  Voiceover: … and Byrne Road, a derivation of bourne,

  Cut to: Picture of river

  Voiceover: or burn, some sacrificial offerings,

  Cut to: A bonfire.

  Voiceover: or after that floppy-haired Irish actor that was in The Usual Suspects. And you think all along it was him that set up the others. But by the end you have to watch it all again.

  Cut to: Picture of Gabriel Byrne in Usual Suspects publicity shot.

  Scene: Me walking
along boring road.

  Voiceover: At Cornford Grove there’s a tree that looks like Eddy Grant. Close-up to camera: There was a ford in the river here, nearby a grove of trees. They had lots of corn, enough for everyone. Great mountains of it.

  (Visual 3-D artist’s drawing of cornfields in style of TV football graphics)

  Voiceover: It was a perfect world. The leader of their little rural commune was an Eddy-Grant-like figure with dreadlocks. After we cross the main road, we reach Ravenslea Road, a field filled with London’s magical black birds. Perhaps guarding the corn. On the right is the Bedford Arms. I went to a few comedy nights there around a decade ago when comedy was at its height. It was what you did. You’d ‘have a laugh’: Fancy a pint or a laugh? Ooh, a laugh please.

  Scene: At Balham Station there are some interesting sculptures on the wall, of commuters in what looks like a pre-orgy scene. I take a photo. People start looking at me.

  Locals: Bloody hell there’s a sightseer in Balham. That is just too confusing. Kill him. Kill him.

  (Before the mob has a chance to gather, I am off again at speed, my camera safely tucked away.)

  Scene: Balham High Street and Chadwick’s Traditional Meat, Poultry and Game.

  Voiceover: Edwin Chadwick’s family were originally into public health and poor law application, but his sons went into the meat trade.

  Edwin: But what about the health of the poor?

  Little Edwin: Bugger that. I’ll do you ten sausages for sixpence, fayther.

  Edwin: (pause) Alright then – and throw in a few pounds of tripe as well.

  Scene: A launderette on the left, a video shop then the Las Vegas boutique, bringing forties-style purple and peach nylon threads back to the masses.

  Voiceover: The proprietors stand around outside, looking to drag customers in off the streets. World War Two is over, lads!

  (I’m crossing over the main road to Chestnut Grove.)

  Scene: Picture of what Falcon Brook would have looked like in the eighteenth century. Then cut to today’s scene – three late twenty-something sunburnt, topless blokes, with that layering of fat that follows quite quickly if men stop playing sport and carry on boozing, swagger out of the Balham Tup pub and waddle up the street. In the other direction, a green tractor trundles slowly down the centre of the road ‘controlled’ by a rather scared-looking unshaven bloke in a matching green polo shirt.

  Talking to camera: The river goes underneath a school so I have to go on a detour. (I turn right down Mayford Road and keep going.) The road follows the river exactly and runs along in a little valley here where the roads to the right and left go up.

  (At a crossroads. Lots of big Victorian houses)

  Voiceover: I’m now in the wide open spaces of Nightingale Lane, where I can see the river valley properly. This is where the two main branches of the Falcon Brook meet, the other coming from somewhere near Streatham (waves hand in general north-eastish direction).

  Talking to camera while walking: Now we’re on Hendrick Avenue. If you look up at the top of these big red Victorian houses here you can see strange Arts-and-Crafts-style coats of arms on little triangles at the front of their second-floor windows. Most have just an urn with grapes and leaves, but four have their own design. One has a cross with a circle on each square of it; one a diagonal line with a flower on each side; one the same except with Prince of Wales feathers one each side; one a St Andrew’s-style diagonal cross. What do they mean?

  Cut to: Image of big question mark.

  Voiceover: The London Basement Company is hard at work on one, and the soft moist clay churning out of their pump splatters into a big yellow skip.

  (I look to make sure there’s no one around then plunge my hand right in, squeezing it hard and bringing out a lump of Falcon Brook clay.)

  Talking to camera: It’s got a funny smell, perfumed, musky – actually it smells of sex.

  (The clay dries almost immediately on contact. I walk on, still sniffing my fingers.)

  Voiceover: The river runs in a perfect valley directly underneath Northcote Road to Clapham Junction. (Serious voice) This area has experienced severe and crippling gentrification over the last few years. Northcote Road used to boast a famous fruit and veg market but is now home only to ciabattas, sun-dried tomatoes and countless fancy restaurants. A good test is how long it takes to find a hardware shop. If it’s more than ten minutes’ walk, an area is beyond the point of no return. You end up using olives instead of screws. And here we are at Honeywell Road – perhaps there was a spring nearby.

  Scene: A smart woman climbs out of a sporty green BMW, all legs and tan and little black top. I go into a bookshop and ask about their local history section. They haven’t got much. I tell the owner about the Falcon Brook and she seems surprised.

  Heavily pregnant woman browsing in the bookshop: There’s a man on Bellevue Road near the common who sells old pictures on a Saturday and Sunday and he has some river stuff.

  Me: Great

  Heavily pregnant woman: Also, I overheard a conversation in a nearby estate agent that you shouldn’t buy in Belleville Road because it’s got a river underneath it.

  Me: Great! Thanks.

  Scene: I cross the road to the estate agent’s at the bottom of Belleville Road. The two women in the office look at each other, telepathically trying to work out the best strategy.

  Woman 1: Ooh no, we’ve never heard of Falcon Brook.

  Woman 2: Falcon Brook. No. No.

  Me: But it flows right underneath Northcote Road.

  Woman 1: Does it? Strange. We’ve never heard of it. Have we?

  Woman 2: No. What was it called again?

  Me: Falcon Brook.

  Woman 1: Sorry.

  Me: Well, I’ve seen it on old maps. And it’s mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.

  (They shake their heads. I make a ‘sad’ face. One of them takes pity on me.)

  Woman 2: (brightly) I have heard of Honey Brook and Alder Brook. And in hot summers we’ve had surveys that have come up with strange goings on underground … (She trails off as her colleague shoots her a look). But there’s nothing round here, oh no.

  Me: Where are Honey Brook and Alder Brook then?

  Woman 1: Oh, miles away. In Streatham.

  Me: So there’s never been a problem round here then?

  Woman 1: (looking at woman 2) Oh no. Not that we’ve heard of.

  Me: Hmm. A friend of mine who lives in a street parallel to Belleville has a basement which is constantly damp.

  (They look at each other embarrassedly and shrug. I give up, thank them and wave them goodbye.)

  Scene: St. Tropez-y perma-tan people are sitting outside a Pitcher and Piano. There are loads of offices and estate agents, antique shops, a Tai Chong Peking Cantonese takeaway, Seafare Fish bar, Signor fish with Italian guys sitting outside, Akash Tandoori. A big fat woman, like a tinker Earth Mother, sits outside the Kidney Trust charity shop on top of a pile of suitcases, tricycles, toys, clothes, books, holding a glass of wine in one hand, watching the world go by. She has a coloured hanky in her hair and slightly wonky lipstick. Deli organic Holy Drinker chrome stuff funky stuff Boiled Egg and Soldiers posh Café Wok Wok Chinese Gourmet Burger Kitchen Fiction Starbucks coffee All Bar One fruit and veg stalls Fine Line Buona Sera white building with veranda and conservatory Osteria Antica Bologna …

  Talking to camera: I once had Roman stew here, made to a 2000-year-old recipe, at least that’s what the chef said. Bloody good it was too.

  Scene: The camera pans past fishmongers, health food shops, the Glaister bistro, and a funky bar; people moving and shaking and eating and sipping and making light conversation in fashionable clothes.

  Voiceover: As we cross over Battersea Rise towards Clapham Junction it’s a different vibe. Gone is the hint of brown bread bohemia and it’s back to chain-stores: Woolworths, Boots, building societies, cheap jewellery shops, amusement arcades and Superdrug. The people are different, too. Fatter and a bit less pl
eased with themselves.

  Talking to camera: I’m now standing outside the Falcon pub near Clapham Junction station. A plaque on the wall says it was built in the late nineteenth century as a hotel but this can’t be right if the river is named after the pub. Or is the pub named after the river? Or are they both named after something else – a superhero called the Falcon, say?

  Cut to: Artist’s impression of a superhero called the Falcon

  Scene: I go in. It’s pretty empty. Round the other side of the square bar, two girls, already decked out in skimpy on-the-town finery at lunchtime, are necking cocktails and cackling like Sid James. An old bloke sits watching them, probably hoping that, once the cocktails take effect, his luck might be in. The quick-eyed barman watches me watching the old bloke watching the girls. I sort of hope that they’ll start watching the barman, a friendly guy with a ginger ’tache, then we’ll all be locked forever into some kind of watching embrace and the Twilight Zone theme music will suddenly start up at the back of the pub. But nothing doing.

  Me: (to barman) Excuse me, do you have an historical archive here that I could look at?

  Barman: (throws his head back and laughs like a hyena) Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA!

  Me: Er, or some old photos? And letters? Or, er, books?

  Barman: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA!

  (I look embarrassed and he calms down a bit.)

  Barman: (Eyes still watering) Sorry, no info like that – this is a pub – but there’s a library up the road on Lavender Hill. Would you like a drink?

  Voiceover: A drink. I feel like I ought to spend the afternoon drinking in here with the old bloke and the two girls and the barman, sit in space that has been occupied by drinkers for hundreds of years, look out onto the road where once would have flowed the stream. Maybe it would all make sense and history would unfold before my eyes. What should I do?