by Tim Bradford
The Tao – tai chi – reiki – acupuncture – Chingford – everything rotting away – The Hound of the Baskervilles – trendy scouts – Chingford Town FC – Sainsbury’s – concrete overcoat – a smelly omen
To conduct one’s life according to underground rivers,
is to conduct one’s life without rationality,
to realize that madness within oneself
which is of benefit to no one.
sort of from the Tao te Ching
So, this time I was finally going to walk the real River Ching. Most of it can be seen still flowing on the A to Z, though I needed to look on the net for maps of Epping Forest to find its source.1 Many towns in Britain are named after rivers, and some rivers are named after the towns. The Ching is a back formation from the town of Chingford, meaning ‘crossing of the river where people would discuss the Tao te Ching and other related eastern philosophies’: in former times Eastender/Essex types were very spiritual. Rather than going to Chingford Library and churning through the usual local history pamphlets, I decided to research at a couple of New Agey places in north London. I would learn to understand the underground rivers of energy – chi – that flowed through my own body, the better to understand London itself. Maybe the city itself has some kind of chi all of its own. First, though, I had another go at dowsing – this time without the aid of extra-strong lager. While still sceptical, I had the gut feeling that it worked. But how? Was it to do with the life force, chi, electromagnetic currents, quantum gravity, or tiny Raquel Welch clones in miniaturized submarines floating through my bloodstream? When I closed my eyes, I could see patterns. Could these be the energy channels given off by the underground rivers?
I went to a healer called the Barefoot Doctor, a skinhead with a nice flat in West Hampstead, who pushed and pressed my belly and talked in a nice soft voice and somehow got me talking about women. I also did his tai-chi class for a while. It’s top-class self-defence. Someone throws a punch, but rather than shouting in a loud drunken voice, ‘You fuckin’ wanker, I‘ll ‘ave you!’ then swinging and missing, you respond really slowly, standing on one leg and making a bird’s beak shape with your hands – but somehow the space-time continuum (yeah yeah, like in Back to the Future) gets affected or something and to your attacker you seem to be moving at lightning speed. The main point of it, as far as I could see, was that by learning to use my chi I would have got my potential assailant to buy me a pint long before he had any thoughts of beating me to a pulp. But I had to give it up. I didn’t have enough time to become a Taoist warrior and pick up my daughter from the childminder too. So I bought the Doctor’s video instead, but became paranoid that the woman across the road was watching me and having a good old laugh.
But, now, I have created my own tai-chi move. Chi Sandwich – Drunk Man Dowses. Here’s some diagrams of how my system might work. It’s a fighting tool, the drunk stuff, enabling you to wave your arms around a lot and make noise while urinating on your opponent and making a dowsing rod shape with your fingers. Go forward and live in peace and tranquility in a tidy space. Find lots of water.
Next, I went to a reiki therapist in Hackney. Reiki is a Japanese healing thing in which the therapist puts her hands close to your body and taps into the chi. I went up some rickety stairs and lay down on a trolley in a tiny old room, while the hippy girl set up some crystals then waved her arms around for half an hour.
‘I can see a spirit figure coming out of your body.’
Uh-oh. Hippy shit. Or was this the extensive fee I was about to part with?
‘It’s a small person, quite mischievous. It looks like a leprechaun.’
‘What is it doing?’ I asked.
‘Just sitting there smiling. Now it’s gone.’
‘Do you often see spirits?’ I said.
‘Not that often. But that was very vivid. Does it say anything to you?’
I told her that I once drove around Ireland in a Kerouacian adventure with a felt leprechaun toy, then hummed the little tune it sang when you pressed its belly. She nodded seriously.
‘You are like a coiled spring,’ she said. ‘There’s a lot of energy inside you trying to get out.’ Psychologically-and-emotionally-buried-stuff-underground-rivers-what’s-that-all-about-then-eh?-palm-slapping-moment-of-enlightenment! Fucking great. I walked home from the session thinking about the clutter inside me that I am always trying to get out. And it’s a physical thing too. I do keep lots of clutter – mostly bits of paper with ideas and drawings that are manifestations of the inside clutter made physical. My study is like a part of my mind. I also put this down to the fact that my grandad’s family house was bombed in the Second World War and all the family documents – papers, photos, memorabilia, the lot went up in flames. Some of the more obscure family members have thus disappeared from our memories. So I feel that it’s my job to keep all the crap that others might throw away. After this, though, I bought a book on how to tidy your room. Normal people wouldn’t need a book about that, but I do. It’s now in a big pile of books in a corner of the room surrounded by a wall of paper.
My final adventure into the realms of rivers of energy was at the Stoke Newington Alternative Health Centre. I have always had moles on my arms. But I’d only recently noticed a delta symbol made up of four small moles (see earlier chapter): was there something wrong with my (does rabbit ears with fingers) energy pathways? Maybe acupuncture would sort it out. The acupuncturist asked me a few questions about myself and my diet, then I lay down and she stuck some needles in my legs. Suddenly a wave of relaxation and elation washed over me. ‘Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream’ she said. It sounded as if there was a clothes peg on her nose. Then I dozed off and dreamt about football. Twenty minutes later I handed over the dosh and floated home.
A couple of days after the snooze therapy, I dozed off and all of a sudden I was about to achieve enlightenment. I was being told that the way I see things is only a small part of what there is to see. My body can see things, my whole being can ‘see’ things. Not seeing just through your eyes but seeing or experiencing through every particle of your being. Unfortunately the explanation never got finished because I suddenly woke up before I could fully take it all in. It seemed jumbled. Is that it? God comes to you in your dreams and talks like a New Age guru. Awake, all I can think of is something about belly-button fluff and a theory of the universe – it all grows from nothing. And pebbles. We are all pebbles.
In Search of the Ching: a Journey in Haikus
From Chingford Station
I walk fast to Whitehall Plain
to find the Ching’s source.
In Epping Forest
black ground is soft underfoot.
I am all alone.
Tree split by big wind
looks like a huge dead dragon.
Water trickles by.
River is black smudge.
Two small planes fly overhead.
World War II fighters?
Rotting nuts and seeds:
A bag of high-class muesli
scattered on the floor.
Hear the birds chatter.
Feel the forest’s energy.
Seems like I’m floating.
Swarms of butterflies
Then a field of dragonflies,
Meadows of crickets.
I pick up a large stick
And take it for a staff.
It pushes the ground.
Hedges and long grass
by the winding sandy path.
Crunch of my footsteps.
A milkshake bottle
Stuffed with a packet of crisps
Lies next to the ditch.
In the Dark Ages
The Saxons sailed up the Thames
And along the Lea.
Then up Hackney Brook
Hacka and his mates got off.
The rest carried on.
Then they reached the Ching
and sailed as far as they could
&nb
sp; towards the Ching’s source.
They cut the boat up
and rebuilt it much smaller
for the little Saxons.
When river ran out,
In high-pitched voices they said,
‘Hey, let’s found Essex.’
I have dropped my map.
Oh shit – when did that happen?
Still, I won’t get lost.
My loose change jingles.
My stick thuds against the path
Feet trudging along.
Sound of plane engine.
Crickets cheeping near the path
Merges into one.
Jingle trudge thud cheep
Jingle trudge thud cheep jingle
Trudge thud cheep jingle.
Trudge thud cheep jingle
Trudge thud cheep jingle trudge thud
Cheep jingle trudge thud.
Nyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaoooouuugggghhhhhhh. (That was a plane.)
Jingle trudge thud cheep jingle
trudge thud cheep jingle.
Some teen Scouts in shorts
(mostly sixteen-year-old girls)
Appear on the path.
It’s Brigitte Bardot!
Not how I remember Scouts.
Almost looks like fun.
(Ahhh – ‘Cubs do your best!’
‘We will do our best!’ we’d chant
In Dalek voices.)
A fatal mistake.
Concentration affected
I take the wrong path.
Smell of strong horse shit.
I should have brought my compass.
I go back. More tracks.
Er, that can’t be right.
I use the sun for bearings.
Fuck this, where am I?
Flies buzzing round me
Then I see the Scouts again.
Is this the right way?
I have to turn round
Past the Scouts, having a laugh.
‘Ha ha mate, you’re lost!’
I pretend I’m fine
Looking at stuff. But they know
I’m a lost fuckwit.
After half an hour
at last it’s Connaught Water.
I sit down. Thank fuck.
Then I cross the road.
The path follows the river.
Smell of rotting leaves.
What’s this? Stone buttons.
What are they? Burial mounds?
Or boundary stones?
On top of a mound
A sign says ‘hole 6, par 5’.
It’s Woodford Golf Course.
Chingford Town FC
Play on a pitch to the left.
That’s a funny tale.
(Back in the forties
The club formed and bought a field
At the edge of town.
Unfortunately,
The Ching ran in a big ditch
Straight through the middle.
The club pulled down trees,
moved the river eighty yards,
and laid a new pitch.)
Now I’m at a road
Crappy stores, flats, car showrooms,
And a sandwich shop.
Chicken mayonnaise
Has been in the sun too long
But I’m so hungry.
Down a forest glade,
river to my left, steep banks
Some kids climbing trees.
At a lake, two blokes
Talk about supermarkets.
(They don’t like Asda.)
A Daily Mail
Lies charred black in a sewer.
Ritual slaughter?
A girl with huge breasts
Walks along the road, bouncing.
Traffic slows to look.
Tippex graffiti
Love poems, all signed by ‘Sean’.
A well-brought-up kid.
At a big sports field
Sainsbury’s shopping trolleys
Lie in the river.
Walthamstow Dog Track
And then Charlie Chan’s night club.
The river winds on.
But the path has gone.
Sainsbury’s is up ahead.
The Ching disappears.
Inside Sainsbury’s
I ask ‘Is the river here?’
A speccy bloke grunts.
‘No – have a nice day.’
(It’s customer services)
‘But…’ ‘Have a nice day!’
Which way to go now?
Then a stocky old woman
asks if I need help.
‘Where is the river?’
‘In a concrete overcoat.’
New road. New estate.
I walk up a bank
To the North Circular Road
Maelstrom of traffic.
I feel for the Ching
Encased beneath the tarmac
In this bleak wasteland.
Gasholders, pylons,
Small factories, reservoirs
And too many cars.
Then I find the Lea.
The piped Ching flows in somewhere
Near the moored old boat.
There’s a nice little omen on my doorstep. It’s big, brown and smelly. I’d say it was dogshit but it seems a bit too big and hard for that. On closer inspection I decide it’s human. Someone is trying to freak me out – either the fast-talking Geordie fish sellers, the Yugoslavian refugees, the Hardcore Feminist River Walkers, the Masons, the yellow hats, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Unemployed Homeless Jiffy Cloth Sellers, the bloke from Virgin, the Arsenal FC historian, or, most likely of all, the ghost of Dr Johnson somehow manifesting itself in the physical world just long enough to crap in my front garden.
Film idea: The Chingford Town Story
A football team moving the course of the River Ching? Could be a film. This is a remake of Burden of Dreams (about the making of Werner Herzog’s film Fitzcarraldo in which he recreates the moving of an old paddle steamer over a hill in the Amazonian jungle). An arty European director is doing some heavy black-and-white film about Chingford. So he has to recreate the moving of the Ching and decides to dig up Chingford Golf Course. But he can’t locate Chingford so travels all over north and east London, with a big film crew, digging up golf courses. There’s a big Blazing-Saddles-style scrap at the end between the film crowd and some hard golf-club types.
Directed by Guy Richie
Starring:
Jean Luc Godard as the arty director;
Vinnie Jones as himself playing a footballer;
Pele as himself playing another footballer;
Gwyneth Paltrow as herself playing a young Essex Girl;
Steven Seagal as a golf club member.
London Stories 18: The Eighties were Shit But Free-Jazz Pool Was Great
* * *
In the exciting and heady days of late summer 1988 when we were all so punch drunk from nearly a decade of Thatcherism and our anger had knackered us out, the most exciting thing most of us could remember for ages was when pub opening hours changed to allow all-day drinking (clever Tory plot – keep them pissed and quiet). And when I say ‘us’ I mean me and my friends who didn’t have what society would call ‘proper’ jobs.
Y’see, in the eighties (cue heavy synth bass. Elephant-crashing synth drums. Synth power chords. An army of blokes with gelled mullets marching over the horizon, frowning), the Yuppies had all the ‘proper’ jobs. Though what many people don’t know was that the Yuppies were actually a subtle guerrilla marketing campaign by the anarchist punk group Crass. They were trying to show how shallow everyone would become through free-market capitalism. Unfortunately for Crass, people seemed to like it. I think it was the big mobile phones that got them hooked.
When I first came down to London it seemed that everybody else in the city was in on some big money-making secret. They all had loud voices, shiny suits, smart flats in Clapham and Battersea and, of course, mobile phones th
e size of cake tins.
Anyway, once the Great And Beautiful All Day Drinking was introduced, me and my ‘resting between jobs’ friends would go round the corner to the Lorne Arms, our local boozer in Walthamstow for beer and pool. The pub was always quiet and we’d get slowly and deliciously drunk, whilst whacking balls into pockets (or not, in my case), talking about women we fancied and testing each others’ pop-music knowledge. Although some were good pool players whatever, most of us were ONLY any good when we were plastered. Our games thus became infamous in the Lorne, for we introduced free-jazz pool playing.
‘What am I? Am I yellow?’
‘No, I’m yellow.’
‘But you’ve only got two balls left.’
‘That’s because I’ve potted them all, Tim.’
‘When was that then?’
‘While you were standing there staring into space.’
Then, with about seven pints of Guinness inside me, I’d go up to the table and start thrashing the pool balls anywhere in a spontaneously improvised manner, without caring where they ended up. It was remarkably effective. Your subconscious takes over, and you can hold a conversation or, say, operate heavy machinery while still playing top quality pool. And, of course, as soon as you concentrate, you’re fucked. It’s great for lulling a more naturally gifted opponent into a false sense of security.