Tony Benn (1925-2014)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tony Benn died last week.  The left-wing politician who became increasingly radical – or immature, according to Harold Wilson – passed away surround by his family in his Notting Hill home.   West London, hardly the hotbed of the working classes he was so eager to represent, but then Benn’s contradictions were at his very core.

Benn was, back when I started to understand politics a little better than simply left versus right, a man I immensely admired, but coming to write this I find myself struggling to articulate why.

Reading the obituaries to him over the weekend I am left little wiser.  His achievements as a politician were mediocre and probably would have been delivered by anyone else in post at the time: the opening of the post office tower, the establishment of pop music radio stations ending the pirate radio ships, championing Concorde (which was being built in this then constituency of Bristol).  Some of his more interesting and hard-line left ideas, such as issuing stamps without the Queen’s face, not only ended in failure but now seem tame.  In the sixties they were hardly incendiary either.  With hindsight, at least, they appear to have little more than a sense of mischief about them.   

By the time he developed his more militant attitude he was in opposition.  The early eighties battle to be deputy leader of Labour – which Benn again lost – was not only bloody and helped keep the party for a generation, but saw Benn be christened, by an over-excitable right-wing media, the most dangerous man in Britain.  In later life Benn used to joke that he achieved national treasure status by being rendered harmless by both old age and leaving parliament.  He was both right and wrong.  By the eighties he was pretty harmless too.  More is the pity.  He became a politician of greater conviction – bemoaning his own involvement in the sixties stand-down from socialism that saw Labour elected (usually only just) four times in two decades – but only after the opportunity to deliver had gone.

In his sort of retirement he traded on his image as a nice old man with a firebrand tucked inside.  The pipe, the incessant tea drinking, the standing up for things which should have been seen as unilaterally right – not invading Iraq, banning nuclear weapons, the NHS, trade unionism – but for the oddities of politics weren’t.  Somehow the most radical (former) politician in the country came across as a kindly uncle.  Albeit, one with an unusual range of pronunciation.  And, of course, he was a politician so there must have been an element of the bastard in him.  I quite liked the anecdote Andrew Rawnsley threw in his Observer column about a journalist interviewing Benn who didn’t like the way the conversation had gone and so wiped the tape, there and then, with a magnetic device he kept handy in his office.

I first read about Benn in a mammoth book my Dad had when I was a kid: A Chronicle of the Twentieth Century.  Despite being published in 1987 - and so far from complete - this enormous compendium reprinted important newspaper items for every month of the century.  I was obsessed by it and would read it again and again, focussing mainly on the bits I was more familiar with from school and comics (mainly various wars), but as those became over-familiar anything and everything that caught my eye.  July 1963 must have been a relatively slow month on the global scene for the book reprinted a slight article about Anthony Wedgewood Benn renouncing his hereditary title in order to serve in the House of Commons even though being in the House of Lords didn’t preclude you from being in government.  In fact not having to win an election seemed like an easy option to me.

Of course I didn’t fully understand the intricacies of the situation.  I didn’t know that Benn’s father, also a Labour politician, had only grudgingly ascended to the upper house himself; that the title may have been jettisoned but the Benn’s were never going to be destitute; that peers can’t hold the highest offices of the land, suggesting that blind ambition might have had a lot to do with it.  Okay, so I didn’t grasp all that, but I found the idea of giving up what I thought of privileges to be a common man and to devote yourself to the service of others on a point of principle to be wonderfully romantic.

In the late nineties I was at university in Sheffield and would drive between Birmingham and Yorkshire in a tired eighties bright red Fiat Panda.  Made of thin steel and sporting an ineffectual one litre engine taking it on the motorway felt like asking for an early grave and so I used to drive up the A roads passing through Benn’s later constituency of Chesterfield.  That fact is irrelevant.  It’s not as though I ever saw Benn, nearly ran him down at a zebra crossing or anything.  I imagine that he was, unfortunately, rarely there.  I bet he preferred the comforts of West London to the rain sodden spire twisted shopping centres of North Derbyshire. 

But it was at that still impressionable age (although you’d deny it, wouldn’t you?) around twenty that my ideals of socialism were beginning to form more fully.  I wasn’t active in student politics, much to my regret, but I did spend a lot of time thinking about these things.  About the big questions.  Thinking and debating them too late at night with my friends over another unnecessary beer. 

Tony Blair might have shared Benn’s initials and he may have been the first Labour leader to not only win three successive elections but to win with a significant majority, but there was no love lost between the two.  Blair being seen as the heir to Thatcher must have made Benn’s blood boil and up in Sheffield, as I experienced my first protest marches against the introduction of student fees, I couldn’t help but feel let down.  The first Labour government of my life and nothing was changing.

Even then, before Iraq, dodgy dossiers and a skin colour that stinks of money, Blair was coming across like a career politician.  He seemed like a man who would do – and say - anything to win.  He didn’t seem confined by an ideology or principles.  It didn’t seem like he gave a shit for anything other than being at the top.

Don’t get me wrong, as I’ve said before I think New Labourdid brilliant things for the country – certainly things the previous five years have reminded us are unlikely to be repeated under a Conservative government – but I can’t help wondering if the price was too high.  If that to get some things done, they have sold off what they stood for on too many fronts.  No wonder Benn resigned from Parliament to spend more time in politics.

Maybe that’s it: maybe that’s what I’ve always admired.  Benn was never afraid to lose if it meant having the fight that was right; he wouldn’t back down on the things he believed in, even if by not backing down he knew that he’d never have the opportunity to try and do them. 

Tony Benn then, aside from everything else, he was a man of principle.  I can only hope to be thought of in such a fashion.

 

Licence revoked

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Someone out there is pretending to be me.

Back in July, when we finally moved into our home, I sent my driver’s licence and V5 car registration documentation off the umpteenth time.  Since moving to London, this is my seventh address - including the couple of months we were homeless and I transferred it back to my parents’ house, and fourth from which editions of David Marston Writes have been sent out from.  Sorting out the DVLA is just another part of the standard routine for laying down roots, as much as sorting out the electric, gas and internet, figuring out where the nearest place to buy milk from is and what the closest pub has in terms of bitter on tap.  It’s just another chore to do, only this time it went a bit wrong.

Moving in meant we needed new furniture and fittings as we revert many of the modernisations made by the previous owners.  My fiancée is determined to restore the house’s character and so took to ebay with gusto looking for authentic thirties fixtures of fittings.  She quickly sourced a mantelpiece to go with the fireplace we were planning to put back into the lounge. 

‘It’s nearby,’ she said enthusiastically, ‘we can go and pick it up.’

‘How big is it?’ I asked.

The dimensions were almost exactly the same as the back of the car with the seats down.  Of course, this meant we could only be certain it could be manoeuvred around the various plastic fittings and other obstacles around the boot entrance by actually trying to fit it in.

Surprisingly it fit, although only just and at an awkward angle.  The wooden u was twisting slightly.  If the traffic was slow it might have caused a permanent warp or even snapped and so my fiancée opted to sit with her arms stretched behind her, supporting it in place.  All very uncomfortable, but not dangerous and it was only a short journey.

Out on the south circular, accelerating up the hill from the roundabout with the A20, the angle of the car shifts the mantelpiece.  The movement drops the weight onto my fiancée’s arms.  She squeals in pain.  I glance over to look at her.  Making sure she’s okay takes longer than I would normally have my eyes off the road for.  I look back too late.  The lights have just changed to red.  There are no pedestrians waiting to cross, the traffic from the side road is still stationary.  I dither for a second, worried about slamming the brakes on and hurting her further.  In that micro-moment, I’ve sailed through the red light and – quite rightly – incurred points and a fine due to the fixed camera.

I know what’s happened.  I am cross with myself for the hesitancy and incurring the fine, but I was completely in the wrong.  It’s only when the official notice arrives that I realise my driver’s licence hasn’t returned from the DVLA.  My V5 is back but not my licence.  I leave it a few more days, hoping each evening I return from work it’ll be on the mat.  It isn’t.

Eventually I ring them.  I was posted several weeks before, but clearly it hasn’t reached me.  They issue a new one, which does turn up and is immediately sent off to be marked with its crime, but this doesn’t answer the question of what happened to the first?

I assume that envelopes marked with the DVLA have some sort of value to them.  Identification papers, even if not a passport, must surely be worth something to the right person.  Most likely they were popped through the wrong letterbox, maybe next door while it was empty and then hovered up with all the pizza, nanny, roofing and estate agent leaflets into the recycling bin, but possibly not. 

 

In a week when the news around the missing Malaysian airlines flight is focussing on the two passengers using stolen passports, it seems intriguing to reflect on what someone could do with my identification.  Have they got their hair cut in a dishevelled spiky mess, bought themselves a pair of fake glasses and are currently masquerading as me?  What can a photo-id with your address on it get you?  The DVLA says it cancelled the serial number on the licence, but no-one actually checks those when you hire a vehicle.  They just glance at the likeness and ask how many points you’ve got.  I could be accumulating stolen Hertz cars around the country.  With a bit of creative fibbing to utility companies they could probably open a bank account in my name and drain the overdraft.

There comes a point where they could be more me than I am.

Alice Kendrick had been a detective for too long.  She’d spent too many nights in bad bars regretting the darkness in humanity which was they gave her cases like this.  She’d been spared the worst of the P&O bombings.  It hadn’t been her or anyone on her team who’d been pulling mangled bodies out the Dover docks, trying to distinguish burnt, twisted metal from torso remains.  She’d managed to avoid the crematorium smoke taste to the morning air, the grinding of the ferry’s skeleton breaking up in the tinted sea and the smell of doused fire lingering on the dawn. 

She may well have avoided the full sensory experience, but those who’d got the complete works also got to leave it behind.  Provided they could.  At least they had some sort of chance.  Alice Kendrick, though, had to look at the photos of four hundred bodies and twelve bodies every day until she managed to unpick what happened. 

The fact that this prospect didn’t fill her with dread was when she knew she’d been a detective too long.

She wished they still let you smoke in the workplace.

Dover hadn’t had an incident room large enough for her team’s needs so they’d commandeered the basement.  No natural light, a dank odour, stark concrete walls made it appropriately bleak.  They’d decorated, but only by tacking images of each and every victim to the wall.  A before and after shot to remind them that they’d been alive once.

She’d sent the rest of them back to their hotels.  It was late, not that you could tell in the windowless confines underneath the street.  They’d been working solid for almost three weeks, tracking down potential connections, trying to figure out who, the why would fall into place on its own.  The water had played havoc with any results they would normally have expected from forensics, ballistics and all the other scientific back-up modern policing received.  They were working in the past.

She’d sent the others back to the hotel, but she knew they’d be doing exactly the same thing as she was: thinking, unable to let it go.

Alice’s mobile rang.  The display said Hopkins, her number two.

‘What have you got, Paul?’

‘I think we’ve found something,’ he exhaled slowly.  Alice could picture his nervous hands toying with a pen, rolling it between his fingers in want of a cigarette.  ‘I’ve been going over the CCTV footage.  I’m looking at a guy boarding. I think he’s our man.  He’s nervous, keeps checking over his shoulder, adjusting his position in the seat.  No-one checks his car, but you can see the way it’s sitting on the suspension there’s something heavy on in the boot.’

‘So he just drove the bomb on board?’

‘Incredible, yeah, I think he did.’

‘Sometime simple works better than some over-complex conspiracy thriller plot.’  Alice paced the room, her fingers drifting across the photos tacked to the walls.  ‘Any leads on the car?’

‘Yeah, registration and licence documents are in the name of a David Marston.  Lives in Lewisham, London.’

‘Pick him up,’ she said.  ‘Let’s bring him in, find out what he knows.’      

Just a bad fiction thought. 

Nigel's imaginary day out

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday morning I sat at the table eating toast, drinking coffee and reading the Guardian, just like most weekends.  Amongst the more serious news of Russia’s covert invasion of the Ukraine, Nigel Farage pops up with his usual mindless tirade.  This time he’s focussing on people speaking English and how in, supposedly, large areas of the country it is no longer the dominant tongue.

Farage backs his theory up with an example of a recent train ride.  He caught a stopping train out of London Charing Cross, heading for the safety of the UKIP friendly parts of Kent.  It stopped at London Bridge, New Cross (pictured), Hither Green and it was only beyond Grove Park – zone four suburbia, non-London residents – that he could hear English being spoken on the train.  Although not explicitly said, the implication is, of course, that any English being spoken was drowned out by the cacophony of other languages being shouted in that way people from other countries are wont to do.  In other words, there were too many foreigners putting their feet on the seats and generally disrupting his peaceful journey.

Hello, Nigel. 

My name’s David.  I am a resident of Lewisham, through your train will certainly have passed because it’s one of the stops between New Cross and Hither Green and I think you’re wrong.

Here’s why:

I don’t deny that you may well have found yourself in a carriage with particularly loud group of, let’s say, Russian students living in Hither Green who, perhaps excited by their trip to the West End or concerned by the imminent invasion of a former Soviet republic, were quite loud.  Possibly shouting and cheering or even jeering depending on the nature of the conversation and drowning out any Shakespeare being recited. 

Or, you don’t say when your train was, but perhaps it was mid-morning and, as is often the case, the carriage was empty save for you and a Spanish woman talking on her mobile phone.  At Grove Park she got off and a couple of English speaking women with pushchairs got on and continued their conversation thus the sound of Anglo-Saxon words filled your ears once again and all was right in your world.  Both of these scenarios are perfectly possible and therefore your anecdote could be perfectly true, if not actually representative of a common reality.

And it is fair to say of Lewisham, as it is of the rest of London, that it is a multi-cultural place.  There are people from all walks of life, all skin tones, all dialects, all backgrounds here.   But when a significant proportion of the population is of Afro-Caribbean descent it is wrong to suggest that English can no longer be heard.  Indeed, one of those young Mums who got on the train at Grove Park is black, but her Grandparents came over in forty-nine and she’s as British and you or I, Nigel.

After breakfast and the paper I went, with my English-speaking fiancée and her English-speaking parents, who were visiting, to Brockley Market.  The nearest station is St John’s, Nigel which your train might not have actually stopped at, but it would certainly have passed through.  It’s just over the road and down the hill.  Brockley Market is artesian and earnest, shortlisted for the BBC’s food and farming awards, packed full of raw milk, fresh game, organic purple carrots, golden beets, Mediterranean flat breads and coffee so hip it rides a fixie and sports a beard.  The place rings out with English voices. 

Alas, most of the voices are received pronunciation, calling out after Florence as she toddles off, but that’s the crime of gentrification which isn’t something I want to get into here.   

On the way home, we pass through the park where local kids are playing organised football matches.  A whizz of multi-ethnic colour curls across the boggy grass, but I can’t hear anything other than English yells of “man on” and “cross it” coming from there.

Back on our street we sit in our house which we bought of a couple of Cypriot-Turkish descent who only ever spoke English as far as I know.  Even if they did speak Turkish to each other, she grew up four streets across so doesn’t she have more right be here than I do?  I only turned up in 2001 sporting a degree and middleclass pretentions to usurp the neighbourhood dynamic.  Up and down the streets there are people of different shades, different histories.  Some of them born in the UK, some of them not; some of them from London, some of them, like me, not.  But, I can’t hear any language drowning out any other here.

I have several friends living nearby.  Some of those are from New Zealand and one is American.  They don’t have English passports.  As I’m sure you’d be keen to stress, Nigel, your, UKIP’s, point with this ridiculous train story was to highlight immigration issues, not to be inherently racist, but they’re immigrants and they speak English.  So, do they not count in your sums?  Is a Southern hemisphere accent okay with you, but not someone speaking French? 

Nigel, I guess my survey is as scientific as yours – namely useless – and I clearly don’t agree with you, but at least I’m trying to understand your point. 

Can I ask you a question, Nigel?  When you’re in Brussels – sweating pure xenophobia in your role as an MEP - do you speak French to your English colleagues?  Do you conduct your mobile calls in Dutch?  Do you attempt to speak the local languages, or do you just carry on in English? 

I’m betting it’s the later, in which case: why should, for example, the two Polish roofers on your train, who are here legitimately for work, speak to each other in anything other than their own language?  Especially as they will speak English when buying their groceries, when talking to their clients, when going about their daily lives?  Do you know how to order coffee in Brussels without speaking English, Nigel?

Would you mind explaining the difference?  Would you mind explaining your inconsistencies?

And while you’re at it, could you try to explain why it’s a bad thing?  Spoken words are just a sequence of noises our vocal cords are spurting out.  Meaning, Nigel.  That’s the important bit.  And I think we all know what you really mean.  You’re just not willing to say it.  You’d like to keep a respectable disguise on until the next election, I know, but also, you saw what happened to the BNP last time out, so you’ll hide the truth for a little while longer, won’t you?

 

Ravensbourne

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of this happened.  Some of it didn't.

The other day I went to the sorting office in Lewisham.  We’d had one of those missed delivery cards that the postman seems to drop through the door automatically assuming we’ll be out mid-morning, mid-week.  This time we were both at work, but my fiancé often works from home and they still land on the mat.  Maybe the door bell doesn’t always work; maybe it’s just more efficient to decide that anything bigger than a bank statement isn’t going to fit anyway, so they might as well leave them back at base for lazy Amazon buyers to come and collect.

The card said there were two parcels waiting for us and it quoted both our names.  When I got there, however, it turned out there was one parcel each and because I wasn’t my fiancé and my driver’s licence, obviously, didn’t name her I couldn’t take her stuff too.  Irritated at having to make the same trip and endure the same queue on another morning, I took a more meandering walk home to calm down.

I started to follow a path I’d not noticed before, down by the side of the boarded up office complex.  The one with the seating area outside, right on the dual carriageway, which looks like it was trying to encourage lunchtime team eating together.  That’s probably why the business went under; people never like being encouraged to be chummy.  The path led down to the Ravensbourne River as it scuttles off under the station and towards the Thames.  I thought there might be a point where I could scramble up to the footbridge and then home, so followed it further, but rather than continuing along the water the path abruptly ran out.  

There, at the end, was a tent.  More than a tent, a whole campsite.  Someone was living under canvas just outside Lewisham town centre.  There was an upturned steel drum acting as a rainwater butte.  The white brushed ash demarking a fire.  Some clothes hanging from a bush, presumably drying in the morning sun and a rolled up tarp to the side suggesting some more extensive waterproofing had been in use recently.

My immediate thought was that the occupant was an Eastern European migrant worker, down on his luck.  I don’t know why I assumed that.  Possibly because, years before, I’d read something about some Estonian guys camping out in Suffolk waiting for casual labour or agricultural work to be offered.  Not enough money to afford anything else, not even to go home.

I turned to leave, not wanting to intrude when I heard the sound of the tent’s zipper being undone.

‘Hello,’ said a distinctly English voice, ‘fancy seeing you here.’

‘Crikey,’ I replied, ‘hello, George.’

I hadn’t seen George in about five years.  He’d been a regular in one of the pubs I’d worked in while doing my Masters.  He’d always seemed a well to-do chap, one of the ones who came in wearing a suit and tie on the way home from work, two pints of lager and then off to the wife, I assumed.  He wasn’t one of those who seemed more interested in self-destruction than dinner.  He didn’t drink himself stupid every night only to come back in the next day and complain that he just wasn’t appreciated at work, that he was long over-due a promotion, that it wasn’t fair when he couldn’t get on in life and yes, damn it, he would have another tequila chaser with his beer.  Of all the people to be sleeping rough by the Ravensbourne, I hadn’t expected it to be George.

‘Cup of tea?’ he offered.

I nodded and squatted down next to some nettles while he set up a small camping gas cooker.

The flame roared while we sat in silence.  It was surprisingly tranquil down by the river; the roar of the main road drowned out by the gentle flow of the water and the rustling of who knew what through the undergrowth. 

‘No milk,’ he apologised.

‘Thanks,’ I said.  The tea was hot and wet in that uniquely satisfying way.  ‘Black’s fine.  George, I, I don’t know what to say.’

‘You can ask, you know?  You can ask me why I’m living in a tent.’

‘Okay, why are you?’

‘When did we last see each other?  2008?’

‘Something like that.’

‘I lost my job.  The firm weren’t directly hit by the financial crisis, but we kind of got caught up in the ripple.  Everyone did, I guess, but we couldn’t keep our head above the water.  Ten years I’d been there just for statutory redundancy.  And then, well you know what it was like?  The money didn’t last.  I couldn’t find work.  I’m not that young anymore.’  He paused and slurped his tea.  ‘Madeline, well, she didn’t cope so well.  Seemed to think we had some sort of right to paid employment.  I tried to tell her, but you can guess how that conversation went.  I never expected her to leave, though.  That was something of a shock.’

I looked at George.  He didn’t, aside from the tent, look homeless.  He was clean shaven.  His clothes looked recently laundered.  In the porch of his tent there was a sealed, transparent plastic crate. Inside was at least a week’s worth of food: tins of tomatoes and tuna, bags of pasta, rice, a can coconut milk for God’s sake.

‘Strangely, the week after she’d scarpered I got an interview and then a job offer.  Less well paid than before.  A small accountancy firm in Lee, but better than nothing.  Nice people.  She should have waited.  Should have trusted me.  Still,’ he smiled, cheerfully, ‘that was her call.  The whole thing made me think hard about life, mind.  The decisions we make and how we’ve got to where we are.  And I realised that I’ve been going through it all, just letting things happen to me.  I’m not proactive enough.  I mean, I never intended to stay in London.  It just seemed like a bit of fun.  Something to do when you’re young.  I always wanted to move to the countryside, do something with the land.  I never wanted to work in an office at a computer all day, every day.’ 

He leaned back on the grassy bank and looked up to the sky.  The sun was surprisingly strong after the recent downpours.  George looked like he’d been missing it.  His skin wasn’t yet leathery like folks who’ve toiled outside all their days, but it did have a certain robustness to the edges.  He closed his eyes, as though concentrating on absorbing the rays.

‘But now, who’s going to risk moving to the country?  It took me over a year to get a job in London.  How long would it take in the middle of nowhere?  So I came up with a compromise.  About a year ago, I put the house on the market, sold it and moved here.  I kept my job, but I also get to be, I don’t know, more back to nature.’

‘That’s, that’s,’ I floundered.

‘Crazy?’  He looked at me, almost disappointed as though that’s what everyone says.

‘Brave,’ I countered, knowing full well it could mean the same thing.

‘Not really.  No-one knows I’m here.  The winter has been mild, if somewhat wet.  I guess that’s helped.’

‘What do you do about being paid?  Do you have a bank account?  I mean, there’s so many things that you need an address for.’

‘Sure, all that stuff’s registered with at my cousin’s place.  She lives in Charlton.  And when the rain got a bit too much over New Year, when the office was closed, I stayed with her a couple of days.  It was okay.  Like a short holiday.  But I was pleased to back here.’

‘Right,’ I said.  It was all I could think of.

‘Right,’ George agreed, looking into his empty mug.  ‘Time to go and catch the bus.’

‘Oh, okay,’ I handed him back my mug.  ‘Thanks for the tea.’

‘You’re welcome.  Pop round anytime.’

We both walked back to the street, he turning left, I right. 

A couple of days later I thought about going to see if he was still there, but part of me doesn’t want to know either way.

Here comes the flood (rivers of mud, baby)

Abandon all travel, tweeted Virgin trains.  It was the twenty-first century equivalent of yelling ‘abandon all hope’ while traipsing up and down a rain lashed high street where the only shops were the bookies, pound shops and discount off-licences and brandishing a sandwich board covered in deranged scrawling.

 

Almost five years ago I wrote options for an unfinished ending, a selection of short fictions suggesting various apocalyptic conclusions for humanity.  I was, at the time, somewhat pessimistic about life in general.  Aside from my own problems, it increasingly felt obvious that we’d broken the planet.  Which was a bit of a downer.  Five years later my own circumstances have significantly improved, but small problems are always going to be easier to fix.

In 2009 the one good thing about a potential incoming Tory government was their environmental position.  After a few years of power, however husky hugging Dace wants to get rid of all the Green Crap.  Vote blue, it seems, and you don’t get green, but a more suffocating pallor after all.  Just like it always was.  We, the electorate, have to do something about this.  I mean, come on:  Caroline Lucas, bless her, can’t save us all on her own.

The other weekend my fiancé and I were visiting our delightful friends on the outskirts of Oxford.  ‘Don’t forget your wellies,’ they texted.  Ah, how bad could it be?  My smug metropolitan dwelling self thought.  I don’t own wellington boots – haven’t for decades, for reasons that involve a mental nausea at so much rubber and blisters gained somewhere on the outskirts of Telford – but I assumed my hiking boots would suffice. 

Wrong.  On the walk into Oxford the waters which should have been in the river and instead were flowing over fields and paths and allotments came well above my ankles.  There were frogmen in places there were no right to be.  On the way back, early that evening, the water was running fast and closer to my knees.  The situation had become worse in the space of a couple of pints.  I avoided wet feet through an overly complicated system of wellie sharing – a practical example of the wolf, sheep, hay, boat riddle – and took friendships to a new level of intimacy.  Less than a week later the army were erecting barricades in our friends’ village.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Post-pub fording we were ensconced safely in our friends’ house and the conversation lingered on the falling misery outside.  Somehow it drifted into biblical Noah and his ark.  Clearly, we are not experiencing such a deluge, but the sense of being abandoned, either by God or Government, must be similar.  Although I am in no way thinking that the floods are God’s punishment on us for tolerating UKIP, many communities we do appear to be on their own.  This is serious.  No-one is going to gather us up two by two and lead us to safety.  Noah spent over a century collecting his animals and constructing his vast ark.  We don’t have that sort of time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was fiction; this is real.  Even when it doesn’t feel like it.  The appearance of sink holes across the country, big enough to swallow whole family cars or crack a house in two, have a fictitious air about them.  It’s like something out of Jules Verne where a hidden world under the earth’s crust is there for the exploration.  Surely any journey to the centre of the earth is only going to cause even more environmental mishap.  An expedition setting off from Suffolk could expect to generate air and water pollution, earthquakes, disruption to infrastructure and irreparable damage to the ecosystem.  Somebody actually undertaking such lunacy could only exist in fiction, couldn’t they? 

Oh, yeah: fracking. 

The world is changing and it will affect everyone.  Even in aloof London, where we might think it doesn’t make any difference it does.  The problems at the moment might be minor – a bit of damp coming through the newly decorated lounge walls, a seal on the guttering that needs replacing, the back gate swollen so that it needs to be hammered open and shut, maybe my bike would have stayed upright when that prat cut me up the other morning had the tarmac not been slick with rainwater – but forget all that: imagine the Thames flooding the city.  Then we’d have a heck of a lot more to worry about than the tube strike.

It’s not just rain (although there is a lot of it) and it’s not just now.  The summer of 2008 had a monsoon season, sweatingly hot punctuated with torrential short downpours.  That November it snowed in the South briefly and then more significantly the following February when the city ground to a halt because we forgot to salt the bus garages.  That summer there was more monsoon rain.  I remember meeting some friends in the Royal Festival Hall.  Originally it was only supposed to be a quick rendezvous, but as the rain tore down we kept getting more wine in, assuming it would stop at some point and we could go get some dinner.  It didn’t.  By the time we were booted out, it was still chucking it down.  I got home at midnight, tipsy and hungry to discover that so much rain had come through the extractor fan in my bathroom that an inch of water covered the floor.

Then it snowed again.  I think that was the winter my olive oil froze.

And on it goes.  Increasingly extreme weather attacks the country and we still keep getting in our cars, running our electronic devices twenty-four-seven, keeping our homes snug and warm despite the escalating heating bills.  I do it.  We all do and then the world fights back, like we’re some sort of disease and the weather is the planet’s immune system finally kicking in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The counter-argument is that this is nothing new.  That bad weather has always struck occasionally – like the when London last flooded in 1928 or the great Thames flooding of 1953 – but it feels more consistent.  Maybe it’s my guilt, but it feels more our fault.  As I grind my way along the Old Kent Road, the wind almost pushing my bike backwards, the cold rain lashing my face, it doesn’t feel unusual anymore.  I seem to spend more time commuting in the wet than any other state.  There are only short windows around May and October when the cycling is pleasant before winter is replaced by summer’s unpredictably clammy weather.

So, if we can’t save the world by going back, then we must adapt.  We must learn to live alongside it again.  We must change our ways so the antibodies cease to target us and concentrate on Nigel Lawson.  Part of that is around reducing our current and future environmental impact, but part of it is accepting we can no longer go back.  Climate change is unlikely to be reversible, so these shifts in weather patterns are here to stay.  Instead we must find ways to make existence plausible.  If that means choosing not to live on the pretty spot by the river, than that is, what we must do.  If it means owning a canoe and solar-powered ski mobile, then fine.  If it means being a bit more clever by life then we better give it a go.

Because what’s the alternative?

The cat sits by the back door and shouts at me.  Outside it is, of course, raining.  She wants to go out, but clearly doesn’t fancy getting wet.  As her god and master she appears to think I can do something about this.  I can’t stop it raining, but that doesn’t mean I, any or all of us, should, as Virgin Trains have suggested, simply give up and accept our fate.

You do it to yourself (and that’s what really hurts).

‘Look at this,’ the plasterer said thumping the exposed wall, only through his thick Greek accent it sounded more like “lukathees”. ‘Is fucking shit.’  He hit the wall with a mallet and large chunks of plaster fell to the ground, a fluster of dust settling in their wake.

Our plasterer, despite the way his language became increasingly colourful over the weeks, is a nice guy who clearly took pride in his work.  His despair was directed at what he considered more amateur attempts to create a smooth surface.

‘Lukathees, is noa way thas straight,’ he grumbled pointing at the place where the wall met the skirting board.  Perhaps it was perfect.  Perhaps it wasn’t absolutely bang-on.  I couldn’t really tell.  ‘Fuking shet.’  He hit the wall again and more dust flecked my hair ever greyer.

Part of me was glad that he was improving our walls, but part of me wanted him to stop making it worse first.  I mean, sure it wasn’t perfect, but then, what is?

And there, I think, is my fundamental failing with DIY.  I never actually expect things to work.  I know where my limitations are.  When it comes to work that I’ve done with my hands, passable is about as good as it’s going to get.

My fiancée knew this; there were plenty examples of slipshod, impatient work around our old flat, like the time I knocked a chunk of the plaster out when putting up a picture.  That wasn’t, technically, my fault, but the repair job was pretty poor.  I filled in the hole and left it to dry, but forgot to sand it down before painting over the top.  There was a riddled lump in the wall for about nine months before I realised my mistake.

This didn’t seem to put her off when we came to buying a place.  I mean, Casslee Road didn’t even have a kitchen installed when we looked at it.  Despite our frustration at being taken for a ride by the estate agent, I was secretly quite pleased when that one fell through.  The thought of such extensive renovations were frightening me and yet she seemed blissfully optimistic that all I needed was a bit of practice, some YouTube videos and a plaid shirt with dungarees combo. 

Unfortunately, I’m a bit sensitive about my crapness in this area.  I feel a manly failure, but I just don’t seem to have the aptitude for it.  Or, to be quite honest, the interest.  It isn’t genetically built into all men.  I’d rather read a book.  My fiancé, unfortunately, has seen too many feats of extremely masculine renovation to fully believe this.  Her Dad converted their house from bedsits back to a family home (although it did take him nineteen years).  Her friend’s husband added an extra floor to his cottage in Devon.  Me, I once built some shelves.  It took two attempts because I’m bad at reading numbers and muddled seventeen and nineteen, but once the two centimetre slope was corrected and the holes in the wall filled in they were okay.

In the end though, I kind of resent it because it’s keeping me from doing something else.  Usually this: writing. 

But that’s just life, isn’t it?  Best to grow up and get on with it.

The reason we could afford a house rather than a flat was that the fusty decor must have put off the other drooling, desperate buyers.  The same knackered looking couples we saw traipsing around the same properties every Saturday morning for three months.  It wasn’t blandly neutral like so many other places we saw, but the character it did have wasn’t for us.  It was going to need completely redecorating.

‘And those artex ceiling have to go,’ she said.  ‘Straight away.’

Which meant getting a plasterer in.  Which meant we might as well strip all the wallpaper off and see whether the walls needed doing too.  Which meant my optimistic hope that, after the summer of homelessness, we might take things easy for the remainder of the year evaporated.  She was right.  It made sense, but still a bit of me wanted to spend some time with my books rescued from the store and a desk to write at.

On the weekend we finally got the keys, my fiancée went on a hen do while I moved stuff in.  Once all the essentials were in, with everything else left out the way in the store, I wondered what else I could do.  I knew she didn’t like the fitted wardrobes.  Taking them out seemed within my expertise. 

That went rather well.  I quite enjoyed that.  It seems my talents may lie in destroying stuff rather than constructing it.

Afterwards came the wallpaper, on a deadline for plasterers to quote the following weekend, we stripped the whole house in five days.  In the middle of a heat wave.  Sweat swum into my eyes as the steamer filled the rooms with fog and thirty years deep of gluey mush refused to come off the walls.  It matted to our skin and every time we thought we’d done a room, an hour later we’d see dozens of straggly strips dangling that we’d missed.  Underneath one room’s walls we inexplicably found layers of polystyrene as though they were trying to make a room where it was safe to bounce your head off the wall.  Eventually, like a dawning sun the bare plaster appeared.

‘Hmmm, is pretty sheeet.’

The disadvantage of exposing all the walls – indeed of doing any exploratory DIY - is that we now knew they needed doing.  We couldn’t just ignore it and hope it went away of its own accord.

At least we were off.  I optimistically drew up schedules for completing the work that we immediately slipped behind.  I’d spread everything out longer and we’d still slip.  In the end I gave up; I was wasting my time.  It would all take as long as it would take.

Despite my reservations I threw myself in with enthusiasm.  Or energy, perhaps if not entirely excitement.  Writing was discarded and instead I attacked each room with gusto.  I lugged the remains of the wardrobes back from out in the garden and up into the loft to act as boards between the rafters.  I was pleased with the recycling logic there.  Physical strength and mindless labour seemed within my skill set.  I took off and disposed of the lounge door which, with its ugly frosted glass panes, also had to depart.   I successfully reattached the door to the study which, for reasons that elude me, had been removed.  These were small triumphs, but each gave me a little shot of testosterone.

‘It’d be nice to put a fireplace back into the lounge.’

Okay, I thought.  No sweat.  A bit of internet research and then off to B&Q to buy a mallet, masonry chisel and crowbar.  I can open up a chimney breast.  It’s just smashing shit up.

After four hours I’d cleared an area about six inches wide, three inches high and half an inch deep.  I’d created a fairly thick layer of dust on the skirting board and had been forced to use sunglasses as substitute safety goggles after a chip of concrete hit me just above the eye.  As the evening approached everything was a bit gloomy.  And, Jesus, did my shoulder ache.  Inside, I could see breezeblocks rather than the few bricks I’d expected.  I looked at my piddly little tools.  Getting those beasts out with them was going to be impossible.  I couldn’t spend four days solid hacking at one spot.  I had to go to work.

My painting was equally erratic, but at least swift.  We planned to splash a couple of coats of white undercoat on as the plaster dried to at least cut down the constant dust cloud of new plaster that fluffed through the house.  The small bedroom, which will become a study, went up easily enough.  The master bedroom, from which we’d been relegated to sleeping in the back room for a couple of weeks, was more problematic.  Skimping on money, we hadn’t had it plastered (aside from covering up the swirly ceiling), but instead had decided to filler the cracks and line the uneven walls with paper before painting over.  My natural instinct to cut corners was not best served here and even my dedication to painting – flying home on bike immediately after work to put a full coat on before shooting over to Peckham for dinner – was clearly prioritising speed over precision.

We started to get it, in the end.  It’s coming together.  The house no longer feels like a building site.  After two months, all the walls and ceilings are plastered and covered in a base coat.  Dust no longer follows me down the road to work.  I no longer trip over buckets of water left in the middle of the room by the plasterer.  None of the upstairs doors close because they’ve absorbed the damp of the drying paint and plaster, but that’s not a complete disaster.  There isn’t an urgent need to work rather than write.  The desk isn’t being used as a pasting table.  The lounge is going to be taken apart again shortly as we paint it a more permanent colour than white and install some proper book shelves rather than the flat pack ones I’ve been carting around for a decade, but for the moment it is a calm place to read.

It is, at last, starting to feel like home.