On the Devonport High School Old Boys Association website one former pupil yesterday started a thread complaining about the Treasury-proposed sell-off of BW's property portfolio:
"...this government has no concept of what the countryside is all about (oh and are they oblivious to Little Venice in the heart of North London?).
Another old boy, John Yates, immediately responded with an interesting vignette of his days as a London policeman:
I don't know whether that was said tongue in cheek, Arthur, but if they are unaware of the Grand Canal [sic], they would be among very good company.
I was a bobby at Caledonian Road (and Kentish Town and King's Cross) in another very much earlier life and it was one of my favourite places to become unseen where I could sneak the odd durry and generally skive off without being found. Very peaceful and, in those days, very unspoilt.
I suppose it is very different today. Although it was only at the back of Kings Cross Railway Station and accessed through the coal yards, I was so surprised to discover that most of my peers at the nick were unaware of its existence.
This must have been pre-1972, when the Regent's Canal and its towpath were still officially off-limits to the public. Far from being 'undiscovered' now, there are even towpath rangers to marshall pedestrians and cyclists. John Yates' nostalgia describes a time when governments cared rather less about canals than they do now. The waterway he enjoyed was hardly used at all and headed for silted dereliction.
'Very unspoilt' is a common yet strange way of describing dereliction. What we really mean is 'a best kept secret' - i.e., we are glad it's not common knowledge. We can actually love hell-holes, provided we can have them to themselves. Or rather, to share them with only our most secret, bestest friends.
When I hear of someone's nostalgia for urban dereliction I think of Sir John Betjeman's poem Narcissus, a memoir of how he could get away from grown-ups and indulge in youthful homosexual fondness with 'my playmate Bobby':
For I know hide-and-seek's most secret places,
More than your sisters do, and you and I
Can scramble in and leave no traces,
Nothing above us but the twigs and sky,
Nothing below us but the leaf-mould chilly
Where we can warm and hug each other silly.
(Listen to Betjeman reading Narcissus here.)
Narcissism describes a love of being too alone. I don't think it's a good metaphor for what we should do with the waterways. Show me a quiet, peaceful backwater, and I'll show you Rolt's 'weedy stagnant ditch', one that doesn't welcome boats.
See also: The road to 2020 vision on the canals.
[Dear me, how my blog posts do ramble! Oh, oh, and thanks to Suzshi for confirming the Rolt quote]
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