AND ANOTHER THING
Canaltopia, jigsaw dogs, missing cats and pseudo-intellectual graffiti
PAUL JOHNSON
Walking along a canal is to see the city undressed, in its underclothes as it were. When the canals were built in the second half of the 18th century, nobody would conceivably have done it for plea- sure. The workers did not walk at all, except of necessity to get from A to B. The upper and middle classes were beginning to ramble, but they did it in the Lake District, which had the right picturesque views and `stations' from which to admire them. Tow- paths were strictly for the bargees and their horses. Pubs would sometimes open a dingy back room for their use, but their smart façade was on the roadside. The only one I know actually put up to quench the thirst of the canal-diggers or navigators — the `navvies' — is The Shovel near Uxbridge, but that was a low joint in its heyday. Nobody cared what their factory or work- shop looked like `from t'canalside'.
So now, walking along the towpath, you can see industry at its most dishevelled: back-ends of machine-rooms which have never been repointed since they were built, dingy stores without a lick of paint, hut- ments redolent of dry rot, their windows last glazed before the Boer war, above all back yards in all sizes and conditions of decay, crowded with rusty engines, crum- bling heaps of tiles `which may come in handy one day', broken old statues and fall- en chimney-pots, rotting packing-cases and, everywhere, sturdy weeds, blackberry bush- es, nettles and even sunflowers thrusting up and adding a touch of nature.
Canals are not dead things — far from it. A short walk from my house in Bayswater and you are in the heart of what I call Canaltopia, teeming with its own peculiar life. Here are fishermen, not just boys with a pin on the end of a string but serious, well-provided men, with bags or hampers of elaborate hooks and baits. They evident- ly catch substantial fish to judge by the wide nets on poles they bring with them. One man last Saturday had a high-tech rod nearly 15 feet long, so he could trawl the far bank. Substantial investment has gone into this activity.
Then again, there must be sustenance in the Grand Union Canal because there is plenty of bird-life: mallards upending themselves to get it, then wagging their brilliant green heads in delight, a couple of majestic swans giving the waters a bit of class, and big, greedy Canada geese, who appear to be taking over every watering- hole in London. Along the towpath you meet that inveterate canalside denizen, the unaccompanied dog. These creatures, mostly mongrels of the rougher sort, are canine jigsaws, products of bizarre misce- genations: a terrier with a suspiciously grim Doberman mug, an Alsatian head attached to two pairs of basset-hound legs, a sort of failed Dalmatian. These dogs are the ani- mal unemployed of the canal, not so much looking for work as getting through the day. The cats are more purposeful, going about stealthy business but occasionally meeting trouble. A plaintive notice states: `Lost, a brown-and-grey tortoiseshell cat called Jessie, with a phosphorescent collar and a black magnet attachment'. The notice had evidently been there some time and had a despairing look about it. I ran my eye over the turbid waters and wondered how exactly they could have swallowed such a well-equipped cat.
This stretch of the canal runs under or near a gangling network of London's main arteries. Not far away Brunel the Younger began his great iron thrust to Plymouth, and overhead are the immense concrete canopies of the western motorways. It is quiet by the canal itself, but the murmur of traffic is continuous. Little bridges, too, remind you that the canal is a backwater to the boundless London ocean of money- making activity. The bridges are mostly plain, utilitarian affairs of girders and iron plates, designed by practical engineers on the backs of old envelopes. But I love them. So, evidently, does Westminster Council, `You remind me of my first wife!' because it keeps them freshly painted in satisfying colours: here, pink and grey;
there, blue and white; or one entirely in ter- racotta. Sometimes the big, bold bosses are picked out in gold.
Underneath the bridges there are shad- owy patches on this bright February day, where the graffiti-obsessives can work in secrecy and safety. They fancy canals as much as I do, and seem to come from a wide spectrum of the population, both sexes, all classes and ages. Obscenities are rare: the graffitiosi of Canaltopia are old- fashioned types, not aiming to shock but to inform, even to edify. They often strike a quasi-religious note. Last Saturday I was told: 'Coming Soon: the Total Destruction Krew'. Others are intended perhaps to pro- voke thought: `Lapis Lazuli is best'. But this had a touch of the pseudo-intellectual about it. If Prince Charles were to take to scrawling graffiti, he might come up with something similar. A few are reassuring. Under one of the darker bridges, in a more juvenile scrawl, one read: `I love my auntie'. Well, so I should think.
A walk along the canal is not specially productive of major aesthetic experiences. I came across only one church likely to impress John Betjeman or the great Gavin Stamp. But that indeed was a fine one, with a grand, high Victorian nave and a tall tower and steeple banded in red and white, the whole dedicated to that glamorous and yet enigmatic and obscure lady, St Mary Magdalen. For the most part, however, Canaltopia is for aimless musing, the mind scarcely ticking over, the spirit at rest, unless occasionally jerked into warm nos- talgia by a reminder of the past: a forgotten advertisement for Bisto, the carcase of a T- model Ford. As I walk, all is peaceful bliss. Then, suddenly, a sinister sign: a smart lady, her shiny brown leather coat tightly belted round the middle, like an earwig, with a PC artificial-fur hat and bright blue Persian boots, walking her borzoi — no unaccompanied jigsaw dog he. What has happened? Almost imperceptibly, I have walked through the terrain vague of Canal- topia proper and have struck the outskirts of Little Venice. No more back yards but barges with all mod-cons and satellite dish- es, voluptuous garden centres, new post- modernist flats, sumptuously painted mid- Victorian terraces and gentrification everywhere. The walk is over; time to head for home.
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