My free Time Out travelcard has run out. This is the one thing I have been dreading since I left the magazine. No more cheeky one-stop tube hops, no more quick bus rides up the hill because I’m feeling lazy. I’ll even have to reacquaint myself with the actual cost of bus and tube fares, plebeian knowledge I have long disregarded. From now on, every journey on public transport has to be justified. My feet are in for a hell of a beating.
I was the same last time I was freelancer, when I first become heavily involved with the London bus. Time-rich and cash-poor, I could afford to take meandering bus trips across London rather than more expensive and direct journeys by tube, and came to appreciate the London bus in all its magnificence. A few years later, armed with a Time Out travelcard and newly installed as features writer, I attended a brainstorming meeting with the editor, who wanted some new ideas for the Big Smoke section. He picked up a copy of Time Out Manchester (a collectors’ item as it was the only issue they produced) and showed me a column called Bus Bingo, in which the writer took a random Mancunian bus every week. Nice concept, I said in one of those ‘monkey tennis’ moments familiar to any journalist, but how about I, er, take every bus in London in numerical order? And so a column was born.
It seemed popular. I don’t go to many parties, but when I did I was frequently introduced as ‘the bloke who was doing the buses for Time Out‘. And people would regale me with tales of terrible bus trips, or rhapsodise about their favourite routes. (Thinking about it, this could be one of the reasons why I don’t get invited to many parties.) People wrote to the mag saying they were collecting each column, or complaining if I gave a favoured bus an unfair review. Plus it got me out the office.
But all good things and all that. We got a new editor, who in our first meeting asked me how long the bus column would go on for. ‘Well,’ I told him, ‘there are at least 500 routes in London, and that’s before you consider night buses and the ones with number prefixs. And I’m only on No 60.’
He looked aghast, the facial expression of a man who had spent a decade taking taxis on an Emap expense account and fully endorsed the old Tory maxim that anybody who took the bus was a loser. He couldn’t understand why anybody would want to travel by bus, let alone write about it, let alone read about it.
The nail in the coffin came when I, perhaps inadvisably given the prevailing mood, commissioned a full-page piece interviewing three other people I had discovered who were also taking buses in numerical order, a pensioner, an artist and a blogger, who I dubbed ‘Buskateers’, a word that has inexplicably failed to make it into the Oxford English Dictionary.
And so the column was scrapped before I got a chance to fruitily ponder the 69, or settle scores on my old school route of the 127.
London wept, and then went back to reading about 50 Essential Hidden East London Cheap Eat Sex Markets For The Summer. And now I’m back on the buses, although not in numerical order and only if it is too far to walk.
(For more bus appreciation, these three pensioners are taking One Bus At A Time, while Ben at Route 1 To 499 pledges to take every bus in London, albeit in no particular order.)
I bought this book the other day. How could I not? Everything from the cover to the title to the name of the author screams ‘BUY ME!’, and so I did.
The Big Wave: The Day London Collapsed is, as you might have guessed, about a tsunami that destroys London. Here is a choice paragraph:
Somewhere twenty or so feet below us, under uncountable tons of debris, was the street we had once known as Haymarket; the grey hill to our right was largely the remains of Canada House; the ravine in front would be Sussex Place and beyond that – at the moment not visible – would be the National Gallery. The city we knew had been buried, the streets engulfed by debris, wiped out of existence. I stared at the grey and broken landscape attempting to absorb the scale of the disaster. It was too much. It was too big.
Hot stuff, huh?
And it got me thinking. Not about the danger of a seismic episode taking place ten miles off the Thames Estuary, sending shock waves through the city, felling major landmarks and preempting a giant tidal wave that turns the entire London basin into a corpse-riddled swamp, but about authors who love destroying London.
Will Self’s The Book Of Dave, Richard Jeffries’s After London and JG Ballard’s The Drowned World all take place in a London destroyed by flood (interestingly, Conrad Voss Bark’s The Big Wave is the only book I own that actually describes the flood taking place), and all are marked by a relish in seeing the city brought low. It’s all very Biblical.
‘The deserted and utterly extinct city of London was under his foot,’ writes Jeffries in After London, an almost unreadable Victorian novel. ‘He had penetrated into the midst of that dreadful place…’ We never find out what has destroyed London other than some sort of catastrophic flood, but Jeffries carefully draws an entirely new, almost medieval, world, which he clearly prefers to the Victorian one he has demolished. It’s a bit like John Christopher’s Prince In Waiting trilogy, only nowhere near as good.
Ballard’s dense and difficult 1963 novel The Drowned World is little better. Again, after catastrophic flooding, London has been replaced by a fetid swamp, something that Ballard seems remarkably sanguine about, as this spot of dialogue makes clear.
‘Do you know where we are, the name of this city?’ he asked.
‘Part of it used to be called London; not that it matters.’
Later, in the book’s most evocative passages, the characters walk through drained streets around Leicester Square. ‘Dying fish and marine plants expired in the centre of the roadways… they stood in the entrance to one of the huge cinemas, sea urchins and cucumbers flickering faintly across the tiled floor.’
Both these books were obvious influences for Self’s recent The Book Of Dave, which takes places on the island of Ham. This is Self’s name for the high-lying remains of Hampstead Heath, which overlook a London that has been replaced by a lagoon after, you guessed it, catastrophic flooding. Self doesn’t exhibit quite so much glee at the demise of London, although he draw a strong contrast between the idyllic, unquestioning life of those on Ham and the manic contemporary Londoners, brains overfilled with unnecessary knowledge, that we meet in flashback. One of them, the titular Dave, has been driven insane by the intensity of modern living.
So all three, in their different ways, present the London-free future as being preferable to the present. And if they are accurate predictions of the future, perhaps the following shouldn’t freak me out quite as much as it does.
London’s latest free newspaper will launch next month. Snipe is a fortnightly arts and listings newspaper that will be available in selected bars, restaurants, clubs and shops from May 15, with an initial print run of around 10,000 – although this is set to rise. The website launches on Friday April 15.
Don’t worry though, London Weekly it most certainly ain’t.
Snipe‘s founder, Darren Atwater, is a Canadian and small newspaper nut with considerable editorial experience in his native Vancouver. We met up a couple of months ago and he explained that he was basing Snipe on the free community papers that are available in most US cities. This is a concept that has always impressed me. These independent enterprises survive through classified and small-business advertising and at their best can be tremendous, vital local newspapers with a real grip on what is going on in their city. In some cases, they are the glue that holds a city’s diverse scenes together, with passion and knowledge of their subjects married to a genuinely independent and non-commercial spirit. Yes, websites can cover this sort of ground – see the excellent Londonist, for example – but there is still nothing better than print for making a real, concrete imprint on a city.
I have often wondered why London has never produced an answer to a paper like the Austin Chronicle, an essential alternative newspaper that is free, useful, cool, politically engaged, culturally confident, intelligent and easy t0 find. Atwater wondered the same, and then decided to do something about it.
London has had some terrible experience with free newspapers recently, but this is something different altogether, an enterprise that all London-based lovers of arts and newspapers should get behind.
Wikipedia and buses are two of my favourite things, so this pleases me greatly.
It is also far better than my previous appearance on Wiki, when I ‘used’ an entry about Longest Streets In London as the basis for a piece in Time Out. Somebody then ‘used’ my piece in Time Out as the official reference for an entry on Wiki about the Longest Streets In London, which was a classic example of why Wiki doesn’t always work, or at least it was until somebody deleted it.
If you appear somewhere on Wiki, please share it here.
One of the delights for me about the improving Evening Standard has been the return of old hand Andrew Martin, with his unorthodox but smart tales from the underground, now called Man On The Tube (and only intermittently available online).
This used to be called Tube Talk and was my favourite feature of the old ES magazine in the late-90s when that mag was a great supplement. Martin’s column was the chief influence behind my own bus column at Time Out, where I endeavoured to catch every London bus in numerical order and write about the journey each week.
Martin had this knack of finding fascinating weekly stories about the Tube (something Annie Mole has been doing for the last few years), and writing them up with wit and skill. He’s a fantastic writer and a real London enthusiast; it’s great to have him back.
‘Yoko One was one of the most boring artists I came across, but she had the ability to put people into a state of expectancy that didn’t always result in a satisfactory outcome. I went to a happening at Conway Hall. There were rows of seats all occupied with people, and she started at the front on the left and whispered something in somebody’s ear. They whispered the message in the ear of the person next to them and it went on person by person, row by row for 30 minutes, until it reached the last person at the back of the hall. Then that person went over to Yoko and whispered the message in her ear, and Yoko stood up and said “Thank you” and walked out.’
Plonked on a prominent corner site on Dulwich Road, just opposite Brockwell Lido, is La Garage. You can’t miss it. It’s the one with huge floor-to-ceiling windows through which you’ll see an antique bath filled with blue water.
Le Garage is Herne Hill’s newest art gallery. It’s the creation of Alice Bailey, a Canadian who bought the building in auction about three years ago (the name tells you what is used to be) and then started to think about what she was going to do with it. A friend suggested she turn the downstairs space into a gallery, so that’s what she did as soon as she’d finished rebuilding the upstairs and refurbishing it with things she found in junk shops (‘it’s kind of random,’ she says).
‘It was a total accident, I just thought they were great windows and I should put something in them,’ she says, so she did. Currently on display (until March 28) are paintings, photographs and the paint-filled bath by pseudonymous artist Mei Ziqian, and Alice already has three more shows lined up including a photographer, a shadow puppet play and an artist who does embroidered portraits of characters from ‘Coronation Street’. After that, she wants some street art, but is open to any ideas. Drop by if you have something to offer.
‘I want it to be organised but free and organic,’ she says. ‘There are a lot of artists who can’t get shows in London, although I know I’m a bit out of the way here in Herne Hill. A lot of people have already contacted me after seeing this and so far the work I’ve seen has been great. The photographer showing next is quite well-known, but she wants to do something different from what she usually does, and she doesn’t want to do it under her own name.’
The space is still not fully developed, and Alice is wondering how to use the back room and pondering about turning the garden into a cafe – inspired partly by Scootercaffe on Lower Marsh, where she lived previously. ‘It’s so nice living above your business,’ she says. ‘I really want it to be fun, because it’s a fun space, informal and friendly.’
Since reading this post by Rob Smyth in the Guardian, I’ve been thinking about some really depressing Chelsea matches I’ve witnessed. Because, why not? So here they are wrist-slashing reverse order.
6 First Divison play-off, 1988: Chelsea 1 Middlesbrough 0
The only Chelsea game that has made me cry. We were playing Second Division Middlesbrough for the right to play First Division football in 1988-89 (despite having been second in October) and were 2-0 down from the first leg. Gordon Durie gave us an early lead, but we lost on aggregate and the crowd rioted, as was the fashion at the time. The play-off system was changed shortly afterwards and Chelsea therefore became the only team to ever get relegated from the top flight through the play-offs, an honour we can place alongside being the first team to refuse to play in the European Cup and the first team to be created purely as a commercial means to fill an empty ground. It’s all history, you know.
5 Premier League, 1996: Coventry 1 Chelsea 0
A meaningless game, but typical pre-(and post-) Mourinho Chelsea. The week before we had tortured Middlesbrough 5-0 with a staggering performance of perpetual motion and effortless beauty, inspired by the man-god Ruud Gullit. Thousands of Chelsea fans made the trip to Cov for what we imagined would be a repeat performance from a vibrant, thrilling, all-conquering Chelsea. We flopped. Gullit made one sublime pass to Paul Furlong, who fell over. Same old Chelsea.
4 Champions League semi-final, 2009: Chelsea 1 Barcelona 1
Because it stank but also because we outplayed the best team in Europe with a performance that for many reasons will never be fully appreciated for its brilliance and intelligence. Only placed this low to reflect the contempt with which one should regard the rich man’s roulette that is the vile, venal, corrupt and corrupting Champions League.
3 Premier league, 1997: Chelsea 2 Arsenal 3
No, not the Kanu game. By then I was used to seeing Chelsea capsize against Arsenal, and in many ways it was an honour to witness such an extraordinary individual performance. Four times I’ve seen Chelsea take a 2-0 lead against Arsenal but not win the game; four times I’ve seen their full-backs belt last-minute howitzers past our hapless keepers. These memories of dominance and submission can never be erased. This game was a cracker and we looked like we were hanging on for a deserved point when Nigel Winterburn let rip in the 89th minute and scored the best goal of his life. It hurt. I mean, at least Kanu was a great player.
2 League Cup semi-final 2002: Spurs 5 Chelsea 1
It was once said that the only predictable thing about Chelsea was their unpredictability; later this was changed to the only predictable thing about Chelsea is that they will beat Spurs. Before this game, we hadn’t lost to Tottenham since 1990 when Lineker scored a last-minute winner at the Bridge. Since then we’d beaten them by every score from 6-1 to 1-0, and before this semi-final second leg were 2-1 up from the first leg. At White Hart Lane, we were smashed, humiliated, gutted, hung out to dry. The only redeeming features were that Spurs still managed to lose the final and later that season we went on to beat them 4-0, twice, in the same week that I, erm, got together with the delightful Ms GreatWen. Karma.
1 FA Cup quarter-final: Sunderland 2 Chelsea 1
This is the game that festers in the darkest place of my soul. It is the one moment when I considered renouncing my club and football in the conviction that I had been duped into backing a complete stinker, a club that would never come close to winning a trophy in my lifetime. This game is the reason that even now when I consider a potential cup draw, I always wish for the game that will hurt least to lose, rather than the one that will be most enjoyable to win. As a Chelsea fan, I live in constant fear because of games like this.
This was one of those seasons when all the good teams except a so-so Liverpool had been knocked out the cup. Chelsea were drawn against Second Division Sunderland and, stupidly, we felt we had a good chance of getting to the final, or at least the semis, for the first time since 1970.
In the first leg in London, we took the lead but tension mounted. At Chelsea in those days the crowd’s terror was so intense that they would actually turn off the scoreboard with ten minutes to go so nobody knew when the final whistle was coming. Imagine that!
On this occasion, it didn’t matter whether the scoreboard was on or off; everybody was terrified. Sunderland won a free kick, the Shed shat themselves, so did the players, the ball was knocked long, bounced around a bit and John Byrne scored. Replay.
But we could still do it. We went up to Sunderland and battered them, hit the bar, hit the post, their keeper stopped everything and they scored. Despair! Worse was to come. Dennis Wise equalised with five minutes to go. Hope! Then Sunderland won a last-minute corner in front of a delirious away end and a forgettable centre-back in red-and-white stripes hammered home an unstoppable header from about 300 yards out.
Watch this video and you can just hear in the background, somewhere in Sutton in fact, a small boy’s heart breaking in two.
That was it. The best chance Chelsea had of reaching a semi in my lifetime, and they’d blown it. Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United fans won’t get it, but every other football fan in the country knows what I mean when I say that in this exact moment, I was convinced I would never see Chelsea win a sausage. Not een half a sausage. Not the discarded package that the sausages came in.
And the memory of this match has never left me. It made the demon-blitzing FA Cup win in 1997 so exhilarating, but it’s still there, trapped in my heart, my throat, my guts, waiting to get me every time I’m considering taking any kind of success for granted.
And I think it’s the reason why Chelsea will never be a big club, at least not as long as my generation, who witnessed this sort of hope-decimating match with mundane regularity, goes to games.
We know how easy it is to fail, what disappointment really tastes like, how fruitless hope is, and we are terrified that we are just a couple of poor signings away from a return to the days of Andy Myers, Ian Porterfield and Gareth Hall. You can smell it in the crowd at the Bridge when Chelsea go 1-0 down against a crap team, or are leading 1-0 with minutes to go, or are taking part in a penalty shoot-out. Big clubs don’t have this fear, it’s not in their genes, but it’s very much a part of my Chelsea and I wouldn’t change it for the world.
I never had much interest in London’s subterranean bits until my Dad took me on a tour of Victoria station’s hidden depths. This was the late 80s, and he was then a contractor working for London Underground to improve station facilities. Together, with a big bunch of keys, we went to those parts of the station that commuters never see. Mysterious doors on platforms were opened to reveal networks of corridors filled with machinery or left damp and abandoned. In one room there was a massive well, dank, dark and dripping. Another had walls covered in thrillingly pornographic graffiti. And every now and then our adventure would end at a closed door, for which nobody had the key and everybody assumed was part of the government’s clandestine tunnels. Secrets within secrets! I was hooked.
Since then I have been under the skirts of the city a number of times. In the crypt of a convent at Marble Arch; in the vaults of the Bank of England; underneath Tower Bridge; in the deep-level Tube shelter at Chancery Lane, built for Blitz protection but later requisitioned by spooks; under Waterloo Station for immersive theatre that reminded me of ‘Doom’; in the Fleet sewer; in Henry VIII’s wine cellar under the Ministry of Defence; and in the old Holborn tramway tunnel under Kingsway. I’m like a ferret, if there’s a hole, I’m in it.*
This morning’s escapade took me – and every other underground/transport nerd in London – to Rotherhithe station for a very rare chance to see inside the first tunnel built under the Thames, indeed, the first underwater tunnel built anywhere in the world.
The Thames Tunnel was started in 1807, abandoned and then taken up again by Marc Brunel in 1823, who had invented a new form of tunnelling machine modelled on a woodworm. Brunel, accompanied by his son Isambard Kingdom, abandoned work again in 1828 after loss of life due to pollution and occasional inundations, but picked it up 1835, completing the tunnel in 1843. Marc died in 1849. Read a proper history here or here.
It remained a foot tunnel until the 1860s, when it was converted into a railway tunnel for the East London line, linking Rotherhithe and Wapping. This weekend, the tunnel reopened as a foot tunnel for what we were assured will be the very last time in its history, which is just the sort of hyperbole I like to hear on a Friday morning.
The tunnel is now pretty much indistinguishable from any other underground line. The only sense you get that you are heading under the river is that it is rather damp and chilly. Although most of the tunnel’s original brickwork has been concreted over, there are some areas where you can still the original bricks, beautiful but damaged.
Arches bisect the tunnel throughout its length. These were originally used as small shops, as the tunnel became the world’s first underwater shopping arcade. These spaces are tiny, and would have been cramped, dark, cold and damps places to work from. I imagine they are rather like those booth-cum-shops you get along Brixton’s Atlantic Road, where people flog phonecards and reggae from the stairwells of blocks of flats.
Here, though, you can get a sense of the detailing that distinguishes so much Victorian architecture.
And that was it, an entertaining diversion into the depths of history, made all the better for the fact that I happened to bump into fellow blogger Darryl of 853 for the first time and so got the chance to have a good natter about politics and football while walking through a landmark Victorian tunnel several metres beneath the Thames. (Darryl’s post is now up and Annie Mole is rounding up some of the London bloggers who have written about the tour.)
A coda: upon leaving Rotherhithe station, Darryl and I were accosted by a young man from the Southwark News, eager for eyewitness reports of this momentous occasion and then slightly disconcerted that he had somehow managed to approach a pair of freelance journalists masquerading as innocent bystanders. I suggested he choose an alternative career for me; crisp shop proprietor, perhaps?
*I would just like to point out that while I didn’t use the joke here about certain Premier League footballers, that doesn’t mean I didn’t think of it.
‘I walked back up the East India Road and caught a bus back to London. But then what, I asked myself, is London? To me, London is one thing; but to the inhabitants of Bermondsey, Wapping, Stepney and Poplar it is quite another. There are hundreds of London, all of them equally real to those who live in them.’
