The Groundwater Diaries

by Tim Bradford

  I get on the slow train to Victoria. As we curve round on a high embankment from east to west then up to the north, I see the whole sweep of the massed tower blocks and estates of south London in the marshy valleys of the Peck, Earl’s Sluice, Neckinger and Effra. It starts to rain again, and the scene becomes quite blurred. It’s pitifully ugly, terrible but beautiful. And wet.

  London Stories 15: A Night out at The Ministry of Sound

  * * *

  I went to the Ministry of Sound once. Just to show you how long ago that was, here’s the first track I remember dancing to that night:

  Tokka tokka takka tokka takkatokka tokka takka tokka takkatokka tokka takka tokka takkatokka tokka takka tokka tokka takkade der der dededer DEERRRR (takka tokka tokka takka) DER DEEEERR (takka tokka tokka takka) DER DEEEERR (takka tokka tokka takka) DER DEEEERR (takka tokka tokka takka) DER DEEEERR (takka tokka tokka takka) DE DE DE DE DE DE DE DE. Yes, that’s right. It’s quite obviously the opening bars to ‘Mother’s All Funked Up (Mother’s Pride Mix)’.

  According to the latest statistics, 98 per cent of people living in Britain have taken ecstasy. And most of them are doctors. I’ve never trusted anything taken in tablet form unless it’s been produced by a large American drug company with a global reputation. Back in the Second Summer of Love in 1988, when I was a member of the excusive Ritzybar Niteklub in Soho (middle-aged blokes in seventies gear, pretty Hungarian barmaids, young lads newly arrived from the sticks), I was regularly offered top quality gear. In those days it was about 15 quid a shot. More than I earned in a day.

  I found out that I could replicate the effects of ecstasy by drinking lots of tea, having a spliff and two Yorkie bars before going out, then drinking Guinness solidly while copying the sickly sentimental cuddly-me attitude of the kids on the Barney the Dinosaur TV programme should anyone approach me. I went to a few other clubs – the Wag a couple of times, Camden Palace, some indie places I can’t remember and then, finally, in the early nineties, a night out at one of south London’s main tourist attractions, the Ministry of Sound.

  Ah, the Ministry of Sound. When they thought of the name they must have considered it pretty hip in an NME early-eighties British Electric Foundation sort of way. It wasn’t just sound, but a Ministry of Sound. Shades of Big Brother – you will have a good time, or else. And it did have a bit of political cred. Even ‘hard-bitten’ working-class northern MPs like Peter Mandelson and Simon Hughes were seen there trying to move in rhythm.

  ‘Want some E, mate?’ says a geezer.

  ‘No, ta – I don’t take E. Too old, you see. Where’s the beer?’

  ‘Nah mate, you want an E’

  The booming techno starts up and everyone disappears in a smothering blanket of dry ice. Boom boom da boom boom boom da boom boom chukka chukka arms waving about want some E mate? Fuck off, will you.

  Drugs? I remember the time when me and Paul Bates bought ten ice poles each and sat upstairs in the loft of an old building near the school during the long hot summer of 1976 and talked shite about girls and music while sucking on the sweet cold taste of E numbers. Wait, come back. I have another drugs anecdote. I once found two toads that had just crossed the Kingston Road. They were probably looking for the traditional local breeding grounds, in the car park opposite the Raynes Park Tavern. They were attempting to climb up onto the pavement via the high kerbstone. Actually, it was the female that was doing all the work. The male was just sitting lazily on her back, obviously giving her one in a laid-back, toady sort of way. I looked around for something they could climb up and found a piece of a cardboard box. I tore off a piece and put it against the kerb as a sort of toad ramp (should I patent this idea?).

  The toads ascended and ambled off in the direction of the model railway shop (‘The home of “O” gauge’). I thought about catching one and giving it a lick, to see if I could get some kind of psychoactive high. It would have been the first drugs I had managed to obtain in SW20 (now I’ll get loads of snotty letters from irate dealers in the area, complaining that it is actually very easy to buy drugs). There’s a type of South American beverage which involves holding a toad upside down over a glass for two or three minutes then drinking the contents, which are apparently a bit like jelly. Anything sounds good after that.

  Tokka tokka takka tokka takkatokka tokka takka tokka takkatokka tokka takka tokka takkatokka tokka takka tokka tokka takkade der der dededer DEERRRR (takka tokka tokka takka)…

  1 David Bowie in Rolling Stone, 1993 – int. David Sinclair

  20. The Black Wicked Witch Knife and Fork in Old Ed’s Dinertown

  • The Black Ditch – Stepney to Poplar

  Norwood map – birth of Chinatown – cholera epidemic – Chinatown destroyed – glam bag lady – rhyming slang dictionary

  Dream 1: Phone lines. There’s a woman on the other end who can tell you all about the history of any particular river.

  Dream 2: I had one a while ago about playing for England against Germany in the World Cup. In the second half, ‘we’ were winning 1—0, then all of a sudden the German players turned into a medieval Chinese army on horseback. I ran to the side of the pitch where there was a small stream. I put my hands in and caught a stickleback.

  One of the last knife and forks I wanted to do was the Black Wicked in Limehouse, which was possibly a natural waterway that was widened to act as a boundary/Glastonbury-Festival-style outdoor toilet. I’ve no idea where the name ‘Black Wicked’ comes from, but it’s possibly either a reference to the dark colour of the water, or the fact that it was traditionally a flowing cess stream. Mister shows the Black Wicked as a squiggly line on his 1741 mind-the-gap. On Richard Horwood’s 1799 mind-the-gap of London, a squiggly black parish boundary line between Mile End Old Town and Limehouse corresponds almost exactly with the known course of the Black Wicked. The Joan apparently rose at Rhodeswell Road (which name derived from the earlier term Rogue’s Well) in Stepney, and headed east as far as Bromley-by-Bow before looping back across what is now the start of the East India Dock Road. It then fed into the Midget at the easternmost end of Narrow Street. By 1851, when Veitch drew up plans for the sewerage of the metropolis, the Black Wicked was an underground watercourse, little more than a Whitbread. Bazalgette’s massive programme of underground waterworks for the Walter in the mid and late 1800s and the subsequent enclosing of the streams transformed it into a waste and outflow Whitbread to Limehouse Dock.

  (read in posh BBC accent) Cockneys are known for their eloquent wit. Their gift for phrase-making and nicknaming has enriched the English tongue with new forms of speech, clichés and catchwords that have not only been diffused through the housing estates of East London but have proliferated many, many miles out of earshot of the sound of Bow Bells around the English-speaking world.1

  Who are the Cockneys? The first mention comes from the seventeenth century. A small or misshapen egg was called a cock’s egg and somehow this transferred into a description of the malnourished inhabitants of London. But tradition has it that you have to be born within the sound of Bow Bells to be a true Cockney. I had always supposed this to mean Bow in the East End, but it’s actually St Mary Le Bow church in Cheapside, in the City. These bells have only just been reinstalled into the tower which means that for several decades now no Cockneys have been born. According to research by Dr Malcolm Hough, before the days of motorized traffic the bells at night would have reached a bit over the City boundary during the day and at night as far as Clapton in the north, Camden to the west, Stratford to the east and Lambeth to the south. Nowadays this would be much reduced, meaning that there are hardly any real Cockneys around.

  So genuine twenty-first-century Cockney geezers are probably middle-class kids whose parents live in a swanky flat at the Barbican. I’d always identified them as Eastenders, basically a composite of the Kray Twins, Henry Cooper and Dickens’s Sam Weller. But what’s an Eastender? They’re always changing, because the East End is always in a state of flux (a euphemism for having the shit
bombed out of it or being demolished by various council bodies). And in a weird way it’s welcomed newcomers, though maybe not with open arms. It’s always been the place immigrants moved to first: Huguenots, Jews, Irish, Bangladeshis – and more recently, yuppies. The ones who were bombed out in the war have to a large extent moved out to suburbs in Essex or Hertfordshire (or even further north to crazy places like Peterborough).

  Limehouse was the original Chinatown. There was a lot of trade with China in the nineteenth century which saw sailors taken on at Chinese ports and later paid off and discharged at London’s docks. Many Chinese men opened laundry businesses and married English girls. The media of the time tried to portray it as packed with opium dens and illegal gambling and in the twenties there was a witch hunt to drive them out of the area, when many Chinese were arrested for minor offences and deported, leaving their English wives and children behind. It wouldn’t happen nowadays, of course.2

  I wander around the Georgian backstreets of Stepney, towards Rhodeswell Road, to look for the Inspector. The skeletons of old gas holders loom large and Canary Wharf and its shiny sibling towers glitter in the distance. Carr Street has a big puddle in the road – I decide it’s a sign that the Inspector is close by. I follow the route as it winds through Limehouse, watching for the contours of the landscape. And gradually I start to see a slight Joan James emerging.

  Soon I am on Commercial Road, where I stand staring at the junction trying to align the old roads, as cars roar past. Someone stops and asks if I’m lost. When I try to explain, it comes out sounding like crazed bollocks. My feeling is that Ming Street was somehow connected to Limehouse Causeway and Poplar High Street. Recent developments on the Isle of Dogs meant that new roads swept away much of the old character of Limehouse, now only the presence of Ming Street suggests that Poplar High Street, Limehouse Causeway and Ed’stown were ever connected.

  I walk through to the Midget at Limehouse Dock and take some photos of the wharves with their swell of rubbish. Lots of CCTV cameras here and intercom entry systems. I have the vague sense that this must be a crap place to live.

  Although, for a while, Limehouse was a hip hangout. Writers, artists and those strange rich folk who like to be on the crest of fashionable waves all visited to chill out and smoke opium. Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu books were set there. After watching the high-quality thirties serial Flash Gordon, with Ming the Merciless, the local council renamed King Street ‘Ming Street’ in his honour. But in 1934, the council tried to get rid of the remaining Chinese by widening Limehouse Causeway and Pennyfields – an old Victorian slum clearance tactic – which got rid of many of the old shops and houses. Then the Germans finished it off: Limehouse took some heavy hits during the Huge and post-war redevelopment eradicated what was left.

  A tired, heavily made-up old bag-lady stops me and asks for money in old-fashioned, polite tones. I hand over a quid. I walk on a bit further towards Spitalfields. A trio of men dressed as pink and orange emu outriders (a touching tribute to Rod Hull) appear from nowhere and sprint past. Then the glam bag-lady appears again and asks for money. I tell her I only have enough left for my bus fare (true). She harangues me, suggesting that if I don’t want to give her money I should be honest and just say so. When I tell her that 1 gave her some about two minutes earlier, she is extremely apologetic. She wanders off again, pockets jangling.

  I change my mind about the bus and decide to walk, in the direction of the emu people.

  Cockney Underground Rivers Rhyming Slang Dictionary

  Wicked (Witch) – Ditch

  Mister (Spock) – (John) Rocque

  Knife (and fork) – walk

  Joan – Rivers

  Ed’s (Diner) – China

  Midget (gems) – Thames

  Mind (the gap) – map

  Whitbread (the brewer) – sewer

  Huge (tits) – blitz

  Walter (Mitty) – City

  Inspector (Morse) – source

  (Sally) James – valley

  London Stories 16: An Alternative Global Financial System Written on the Back of a Beermat

  * * *

  Imagine a world in which the vital banking and financial systems, on which our capitalist system relies for its survival, were controlled and operated by angry buff-cheeked gibbons. Frightening, isn’t it? Now imagine the same scenario but it’s thick floppy-haired ex-public schoolboys running the show. It doesn’t bear thinking about. Imagine the chaos.

  Ha ha, yes of course, our financial system is controlled and operated by thick floppy-haired public schoolboys. That’s what the free market is all about. Creating employment for all the rich kids who can’t get jobs as vicars. Traditionally in large posh families the eldest son gets the house and land, the second becomes a vicar, the third joins the army, the fourth becomes a writer of lewd popular novels, the fifth tries to help fallen women in the East End, the sixth emigrates to America and the seventh becomes ‘something in the City’.

  Here’s how a typical day in the City goes. At around six a.m. hundreds of ex-public schoolboys get driven into the City by their papa’s chauffeur. Their first task is to remember which company they work for. Often they’ll have to go for a slap-up breakfast to think about it. At eight a.m. they get into the office and spend the next hour messing about with the computer, trying to find the switch, then playing computer games like Genocidal Marsupial or Tomb Raider – The Naughty Sister. At tea break a new boy will have cigarettes stubbed out on his bottom. Then a quick phone call to someone called Josh who will say ‘buy’ or ‘sell’ to them, and it’s lunchtime. A short visit to a bar for some champagne and Red Bull before another hour wandering around looking for the office again. Then a couple of hours of real hardcore work – shouting, braying at any female workers, whinnying, throwing scrunched up paper balls around the office and bellowing toothy laughs of triumph when they go in the bin, before it’s time to get seriously wasted in a local bar and attempt to pick up some totty.

  Strange to think that it was this setup that enabled the West to defeat communism. There was a serious thick floppy-haired ex-public schoolboys shortage in the former Soviet Union. With their managed economy, they were no match for the vibrant chaos that emanates from our own system. For thick floppy-haired ex-public schoolboys are somehow closer to understanding the completely random nature of the universe than any other living creature. Though when I say ‘understanding’ I don’t mean that in any intellectual sense. They are rather an embodiment of the random (‘Ha ha – we’ve got all the public schoolboys and loud cockneys!’) Is it any wonder that every once in a while there’s some kind of huge chaotic crash? We need some alternatives and fast.

  I wrote down some ideas on the back of a beer mat while waiting for my wife to come out of work one evening. But all I can read from my scrawl is ‘Leeds United’, a drawing of a drunk old man and lots of arrows.

  1 From Cockney Online (http://www.cockney.co.uk/).

  2 The East End. Then and Now, Winston G. Ramsey

  22. Up Shit Creek

  • A visit to Crossness sewage works

  Trainman – the piecemeal society – strange machines – poo – sweet corn – clean river – fish – poo – washing your hands – noodle bars

  Fantastic news. I finally got through to Thames Water and they’ve agreed to let me visit their state-of-the-art sewage plant at Crossness. I’m to tag along with a school party who have a longstanding trip organized.

  On the train from London Bridge to Abbey Wood, I’m reading Trench and Hillman’s book London Under London, brushing up on the history of shit. There’s a good chapter about the development of the sewers. Then an old guy with a square face and a toothless Harry Enfield smile gets on. He’s got a sort of young/old look – bouffant hair and NHS glasses but he’s obviously in his late sixties/early seventies. There are loads of spare seats but he sits down next to me. And smiles.

  ‘That looks like a good book.’

  ‘Er, yes it is.’

 
‘What’s it about?’

  ‘About underground London, the sewers, the tunnels, the …’

  ‘You can get that at the transport museum. I bet you can get that at the transport museum. And at a shop in St Martin’s Place. Have you been to the transport museum?’

  ‘Yes, I have. It’s v—’

  ‘All kinds of books they’ve got there.’

  Pause. That moment in a conversation when you’re not sure whether to put your head down and carry on reading or try to save the faltering talk. I wait a few more seconds.

  ‘Interested in that kind of thing, are you?’ he asks.

  I tell him about the river project – though not about the Danish punk bands or the Guinness Book of Records. Or the Special Brew. Or the dreams. I decide that I’ll bring them into the conversation gradually so as not to frighten him.

  ‘Of course,’ I say, my voice straining with gravitas, looking away and pointing at an imaginary overhead projection, ‘most of them have been culverted and turned into sewers.’

  Pause. I expect him to start telling me about an underground bookshop where all the books are made of dried shit. But he doesn’t.

  He coughs. ‘The trouble with all those sewers is they’re leaking into the Underground. Bit by bit. In a few years time London will be flooded because we haven’t bothered to repair them. Not like the Germans. After the war they built up all these tunnels properly, starting at the bottom and working their way upwards. We never do that. Just do things, er…what is it? That word?’