Holiday Break, Adventure Boating Hidden Rivers part 2 June 30, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Europe, Flight Schedule, London, Scotland , trackbackBut this weekend is for costume cutting and we are all girls; pinning, measuring and sewing, lashed on by our two teachers. There is so little time and so much to learn. There are twelve of us from all parts of the country — I came down by bus from Scotland. Only the thirst for knowledge will ever force me to travel that way again, but it’s the cheapest when you’re unemployed. There’s another girl there as skint as I am, Izzie from Oxford. She’s wearing a leather mini-skirt which unzips entirely into shreds and is quite obviously pilfered from some bygone production.
Izzie’s made a special corset for one of our teachers and laces her into it at the end of the day. The peristalsis of sprung steel and canvas half swallows her down and displays a heroine of the belle époque; tiny waist and huge trembling bosom. Shrieks! — Is there a man looking in from across the road?
Then we close the windows, consult the maps and leave our dressmakers’ dummies standing in the darkening room. Twelve of them, in their calico finery.
That evening my hosts were to sing in a concert in Highgate, and I might join them if I was early enough. By the time I’d won through to Archway Station (which sounded cryptic) and started up Highgate Hill (which did not) it was too late, the concert had already started. But by this time my A-Z had become like one of those magic painting books children have, where a few strokes with a wet brush make the colours appear between the lines. London was growing up around my eyes and under my exhausted feet. To colour in some more of the network of streets and names I would walk right over the hill and down to Highgate Station.
After a steep climb I came to a park, where the ponds lie in levels under the hilltop and trees hang in curtains above. The smell of earth and new leaves rose up as the rain dropped in rings. Water gleamed in veils on every bank and I soon realised this was not a passive wetness, but that the whole area was alive and springing with moisture.
Later, back at home, I described where I had been to my hosts. Where does that water go to, I wondered?
“Aha!” cried my hostess, flourishing a book out of the shelves.
“You have observed the source of one of The Lost Rivers of London. You were in Water- low Park, and right across the hill (which lies like a soggy sponge on a draining-board), through Highgate Ponds to Hampstead, spring up streams that feed the river Fleet, once an important tributary of the Thames and sometime known as the River of Wells. It is now a gigantic sewer culverted away underground and pours into the Thames below Blackfriars Bridge.” She paused for breath and resumed:
“To where Fleet-ditch with disemboguing streams Rolls the large Tribute of dead dogs to Thames”.This, I discover, is a quotation from Alexander Pope’s The Dunciad. After this impromptu lecture I took the book to bed and coloured in courses of the hidden rivers in my A-Z with a blue felt-tip pen.
I was fascinated. The water I had seen today was now running down from Kentish Town to Pentonville, Clerkenwell and Holborn, gurgling secretly under houses and unknown to the sleepers above except the lucky few (as I read) with observation trapdoors in their cellars.
I told myself there was no real mystery to it; that any great city needs, and pollutes, water on a massive scale. But all the next day, in the lecture room, and on the bus home with a stiff neck and a bad temper, a trickle grew and grew in my inward ears into a silently roaring flood which swept away all I had known before.
The imprisoned rivers vaulted over with streets and houses seemed to me the most real thing I had found on my journey.
More about: Holiday Break, Adventure Boating Hidden Rivers part 2
- Holiday Break, Adventure Boating Hidden Rivers part 1
- Tips For Trouble Free School Tours
- Traveling US, don’t forget to buy a Car with the Fantastic Auto Loan, we can do it
- Please to make a Hotel Reservation
- Luxury Jet Air Flight, the true beginning of Jet-powered Flight
- Airline/ Flight Travel Jokes
- What Air Tickets say, what Airline Luggage can take, have you been treated differently?
- Backpacking in Mani continue...
- What Air Tickets say, what Airline Luggage can take, have you been treated differently? continue...
- Not on the Itinerary
Comments»
In many ways, this is the easiest to use, the most versatile and the most fun inflatable canoe that we sell. … Thrilling Adventures
To compliment the exhibition, a conference programme is planned, which will cover several topical issues and provide farther information about many aspects of the spa industry. … Health Spas
If you have any questions about how our personal online loans service works, contact us for any questions or comments regarding personal online loans. … Largest Online
All the golf equipment products we carry are reviewed and evaluated by our professional golf staff to ensure the highest level of quality and service to our customers. … Fitness Ellipticals
All holidays which include any flights are operated by Leger Air Holidays Limited which holds an Air Travel Organisers' Licence issued by the Civil Aviation Authority (ATOL 3880). … Activities Holidays