Adrift E-Book

Helen Babbs

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 310

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Journeying along London's waterways on a canal boat called Pike, Helen Babbs puts down roots for two weeks at a time before moving on. From Walthamstow Marsh in the east to Uxbridge in the west, she explores the landscape in all its guises: marshland, wasteland, city centre and suburb. From deep winter to late autumn, Babbs explores the people, politics, history and wildlife of the canals and rivers, to reveal an intimate and unusual portrait of London – and of life.

Leseprobe

ADRIFT

ADRIFT

A Secret’s Life of London’s Water Ways

Helen Babbs

Published in the UK in 2016 by

Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre, 39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP email: [e-mail]

www.iconbooks.com

Sold in the UK, Europe and Asia

by Faber & Faber Ltd, Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street,

London WC1B 3DA or their agents

Distributed in the UK, Europe and Asia

by TBS Ltd, TBS Distribution Centre, Colchester Road, Frating Green, Colchester CO7 7DW

Distributed in the USA

by Publishers Group West, 1700 Fourth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710

Distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd,

PO Box 8500, 83 Alexander Street,

Crows Nest, NSW 2065

Distributed in South Africa

by Jonathan Ball, Office B4, The District,

41 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock 7925

Distributed in Canada by Publishers Group Canada,

76 Stafford Street, Unit 300

Toronto, Ontario M6J 2S1

ISBN: 978-184831-920-2

Text copyright © 2016 Helen Babbs

The author has asserted her moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Typeset in Proforma by Marie Doherty

Printed and bound in the UK by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

Contents

winter, marshland

1. storm

2. boat

3. fen

4. river

5. unreal city

spring, wasteland

6. the cut

7. flora, fauna

8. homecoming

9. rites

10. fragments

summer, heartland

11. lost ways

12. truth, illusion

13. outside edges

autumn, metroland

14. voyage out

15. underbelly

16. adrift

Endnotes

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

winter

marshland

River Lea and Lee Navigation

Leyton Marsh to Limehouse

1. storm

It’s dark out. In here it’s warm and orange-lit, flickering. The smell is wet coal and woodsmoke. The sound, violent: high-pitched whistles and metallic cracks. The boat shifts and shudders, moans and rolls, more like a ship at sea than a broad barge on a narrow river. Dislocated branches suck across the Lea at speed, dragging their claws over the roof before rushing mad into the marshes. Suddenly there’s a smash and scraping overhead as the wind grabs hold of the chimney’s rain hat, rips it off and carries it, bouncing, away. The fire shudders in the stove, spits and starts, then settles again into its gentle, giving roar. Sometimes it’s possible to forget this is a home without bricks, that she floats free of foundations. Not tonight. Tonight she is a tin drum, beaten by a thousand furious drumsticks. Tonight she is the weather’s toy, to toss and whip at will.

It has poured and blown like this for weeks and weeks, and the world is taking on an underwater aspect. Christmas has been and gone in a tumult. Stowed away against the terrible storms, we’ve spent the holidays drinking whisky and watching trashy box set television on a tiny laptop. A gaudy noble fir, decked to disappearing in tinsel, slow cooks in the corner beside the red-hot stove. Our existence has shrunk itself into a few woozy square feet. We need to get out.

Next morning, when daylight cracks weak and grey, we dress from head to toe in waterproofs and wellies and air ourselves on the marshes. Water pools on top of the grass and starts to form streams. A moorhen has swapped river for sodden ground and busies itself in a swollen puddle. Leviathans gather on the horizon, promising more storm to come. We pretend they hide mountains. And we walk, bent against the weather, in a slow, looping ellipse, the boat never far from view. Dog walkers follow similar circles. Slapped cheeks flood with colour, cold eyes prick with tears, fur spikes. In a moment of abandon we let our hoods drop and allow the wet wind to catch our hair.

2. boat

It’s early January and we’re moored on the peripheries of the city, where Leyton Marsh meets Walthamstow Marsh, just downriver from Springfield. The storms that have wracked the country for most of the winter are easing off but the mud remains. London feels swamp-like, primaeval. Dickens’s megalosaurus will surely be seen wandering across the marshes at any moment. The boat is brown-streaked and bramble-scratched. Lying in bed with my boyfriend S., we search for the willpower to get up, each urging the other to make a decisive first move. We blow breath rings, listening to a chorus of creaking rope and fender, the Lea’s particular slap and gurgle, and a crow’s serrating caws. A boat passes close by. We don’t see it but we feel it as we slide forward, back, side to side in its wake. Condensation drips from the brass mushroom vent above us and leaves an accusing dark mark on the covers.

It’s been a hard night. We got in late and didn’t light a fire, cockily didn’t even fill a hot water bottle. We thought single malt was enough and resolved to brush our teeth in our coats. We have been punished. The cold crept in in the small hours, seeping through the floorboards and under the doors. It was so penetrating it woke us up. A crystalline presence in the room that seized at every limb. Slipping in and out of sleep, I imagined my soft organs icing over, my bones splintering into jagged pieces of ice. Sunrise brought some relief and the space between the sheets slowly warmed, but the heat feels hard won and difficult to give up.

The cabin is properly insulated – and has a fairly successful attempt at double glazing in some rooms, if you will allow industrial-strength cling film to stand in for a secondary sheet of glass – but there’s no escaping the fact that our home is made from steel and that that steel is partly submerged in a cold body of water. When standing up inside, the area below the knee is technically underwater. Unless the fire is lit, the temperature inside the boat can easily drop below freezing. That period of indefinite length between getting up and the cabin warming up is an unpleasant one to step into, so we continue to hunker, to extend the conversation that keeps us in bed. These days, we tell each other, it’s an effort to remember how it felt to wake up on dry land, how it felt to live in the same street, the same borough, for months, maybe years on end. We course through London, following her navigable waterways, cruising ever onwards. There’s always another local to drink in and so many different corners with so many different corner shops. Our journeys home from land to river have to be constantly remapped. Conversations, thoughts, dreams, nightmares; all now have a boating bent. The boat, and the water she traverses, are our obsession.

Braced, we eventually rise and set about making the cold boat warm. We had some foresight last night so there are ready-prepared layers beside the bed to step into: a t-shirt pre-nestled inside a jumper, a hooded sweater, ski socks and sheepskin boots. In the bathroom condensation laces across the window and beads up on the metal frame. The toilet seat is like ice. I shuffle into the kitchen in my too-big boots, and fill the kettle for tea and a wash. I tip porridge oats and milk into a saucepan and put it over a low heat. While both slowly reach the boil on the gas, the stove in the living room can be cleared of old ash and the fire laid and lit. It – closed, cast iron, with a glass window – is the heart of home and we forget this at our peril.

The boat squats long and low on the water. Flat-bottomed with a gently curving roof and traditional stern, she’s a twenty-tonne hulk of metal painted black and midnight blue. Close inspection will reveal rusty war wounds and popped paint blisters; her crannies house snatches of cobweb and leaf. The boat’s sides are protected by fenders fashioned from old car tyres, her bow and her stern cushioned with more traditional buttons of plaited black rope.

Unremarkable on the outside, it was the boat’s innards that made us first fall for her. Inside she has country cottage charms. Dark wood floors, oak panelling, painted pine tongue and groove, built-in cabinets and plenty of brass. We bought her second-hand from a cabinet maker and his wife, who named her Pike as a wink to their gypsyish status. It’s a moniker that will forever ingratiate us to freshwater fishermen. The couple designed and fitted the interior themselves. It shows. The more time you spend on board the more you realise it’s the panelling or a shelf that’s sitting at an off angle rather than the boat itself, but the cabin also has the handsome finish of a craftsman’s hand and ingenious storage solutions only a boater would think of. Every step is hollow so it can double up as a chest; every nook realises its potential as a bookcase or cupboard. When the cabinet maker and his wife gave us our first tour, their love and pride felt strong. Age had overtaken them and they felt forced to give up the wandering life they had pursued since retirement. The five years they’d spent touring the UK canal network had infused Pike with an enthusiasm and practicality that we hoped would be infectious. This, we thought the minute we met her, was a boat with soul.

Two steep steps lead down into the living cabin from the front deck and it’s important to mind your head as you climb in. The sides slope inwards and the oak ceiling has a gentle upward curve. As a whole the interior space has a shape similar to that of a tube train. The rooms adjoin in a long line, each a living space in its own right but also a connecting corridor to the next room along. The kitchen – or galley – is at the very front of the boat. It has fitted wooden cupboards down both sides, tiled worktops and a bar with high stools where we can eat. We have a power-hungry refrigerator that we only use in summer; in winter the cupboards are as cool as a fridge. There’s a sink, an oven, a grill and a hob. It’s the biggest kitchen I’ve had since moving to London at eighteen and I don’t have to share it with anyone except the man that I love. The dirty dishes piled beside the sink and the shadowy smells of meals past are all our own.

The living room is next, on the other side of a frosted folding door. The walls are painted dark red and green, mixed with unpainted oak, and it is easily my favourite room. One corner is all bookcase and another all desk; there’s a dresser and shelves on one side and a two-seat sofa on the other. The stove sits in this room, right in the middle of the boat, between the desk and a wooden coal box with daffodils carved into its lid. We have two ceiling-mounted drying racks by the chimney pipe, and a line stretched over the fire for wet towels and cloths. A large, fake Persian rug covers the floor, and a coffee table sits on top, stacked underneath with old newspapers and magazines. There are rectangular windows on both sides, curtained with thick floral fabric and lace. We dry out orange peel on the stovetop to mask some of the boat’s earthier smells and are generally lazy about sweeping up. Everything, everywhere is gathering dust. It rolls in great soot balls down the hall and gathers in clumps around the rug.

A short oak-panelled and book-lined corridor links the sitting room to the bedroom, with the bathroom through a folding door to the side. We’ve painted the cabinets a creamy bright blue and decorated the white walls with pictures. There are all the things you would expect to find here: toilet, sink, shower, storage. The bedroom is larger and plainer, the walls painted off-white and the fitted wardrobes stripped pine. Our freestanding bed takes up most of the floor space but there’s also room for more shelves and a chest.

Towards the back of the boat – the aft – there’s a compact utility room with a porthole on each side and a large built-in coat cupboard, a chest of drawers, a washing machine, a small sink and space for bags and boots. Finally there’s the engine room, which is the equivalent of a chaotic garden shed. It’s full of bicycle, wood and hose, and smells of diesel and grease. The doors swing right back and the top hatch slides across, opening out onto the small rear deck. The inside panels of our back doors are hand-painted with jumping silver-blue fish.

Pike’s cabin is colourful and crowded but it isn’t traditional and doesn’t come close to the canal boat interiors that Barbara Jones depicts in The Unsophisticated Arts. In this book – a sketchbook really, and one that can be pored over for hours – Jones meticulously documents everyday, handmade art through illustrated essays and intricate pictures. It was first published in 1951, the same year Jones curated the ‘Black Eyes and Lemonade’ exhibition of British popular art at the Whitechapel Gallery, during the Festival of Britain. In a chapter called ‘The Rose and the Castle’, Jones celebrates and elevates the craft of canal boat decor, where strictly prescribed patterns extend inside as well as out. The now all-but-lost world she describes is splendid with painted decoration and dense ornament. Her busy drawings show cramped living cabins with every inch covered in hand-painted flowers, turrets and towers, and hung about with fussy lace-edged plates. The sketches also describe an exceptionally efficient use of space. In a family home that might have been just nine feet by seven – most of the boat being given over to cargo – everything would have its place and a dual purpose. The complexity of the decor belies the fact the paint job would have been executed swiftly and redone every three years because of intense wear and tear.

It’s possible to experience a living cabin of similar dimensions first hand at the London Canal Museum, where a wooden narrowboat that worked between London and Birmingham in the 1930s is on display. The recreated cabin is truly tiny and just as efficiently organised as Barbara Jones describes, although not so lavishly decorated nor as layered with personal ornament. Here every piece of furniture doubles up as something else – fold-down cupboard doors become a dining table or a narrow bed – and there are lockers overhead and underneath. Sitting inside this boat, knees tucked up to chin and back hunched, it is mind-bending to imagine a family existing in such a confined space.

Jones’ close study of canal boats’ decoration leads her to theorise that ‘only those that live such a separate and lonely life as that of canal boatmen will create elaborate layers of decoration round their daily lives’. The modern boating life is not nearly as isolated, which perhaps partly explains why boat interior design has so sobered up. Jones’ documentary sketches capture a way of life soon to be wiped out by more modern logistics and tastes. Within twenty years the canals’ commercial days had all but ended and those that lived aboard in such small but exuberant surroundings were forced to find other employment, and lodgings, on land.

We might not share the same visual style as Jones’ boat people, nor indeed the same lifestyle, but we do negotiate a similarly shaped, if larger space. It’s an interior you move through in a particular way, realigning your body to approach doors shoulder first, adopting your thinnest profile. Discounting the front and rear decks, Pike’s living cabin is about 560 square feet – small, but in a capital city a respectable amount of space for two people. The fixtures and fittings stay solidly the same but the atmosphere inside the boat alters depending on where we’re moored. The light and sounds filtering into the cabin space are distinct, each place we stop altering the colours of the fabrics and throwing different patterns up the walls and across the floor.

It’s Saturday. Afternoon already. The lie-in ended up spinning out until after twelve o’clock. S. takes charge of the fire and I spend some time looking out of the window while I wait for the water and the oats to heat up on the gas. The wind has temporarily dropped. Brown-grey and thick with debris, today the Lea sits flat and murky. Its head-waters are in the Chilterns just north of Luton and it cuts its course from Hertfordshire to the Thames at East India Dock with a lazy ease. This is no torrent, rushing headlong toward the sea. It’s more of a slick, a swamp, a long thin pool. Wintering water birds bob through its solid seeming mass; barges and cruisers rock slowly in its barely-there ebb and flow. A half-submerged piece of wood floats by, an empty beer bottle in pursuit. Branches set free during recent high winds knit themselves with rogue plastic bags into slow-moving islands. Coots balance on top.

The UK is veined with over 2,000 miles of navigable canal and river like this. Now primarily used for recreation, the man-made network’s industrial roots mean its waterways are a feature of towns and cities as much as the countryside. The Lea’s fate has long been tangled up with our own and we have bent it to work to our will. For hundreds of years the tidal river system was an important source of food, water and power; the Domesday Book of 1086 records eight mills in the river’s confusion of channels at Bow. The first lock was installed on the Lea at Waltham Abbey as early as 1576 and the true river was partially bypassed to form the Lee Navigation in 1769. The canalised stretch was then used as a route to and from the Thames by the ‘stink industries’, as Peter Ackroyd tellingly calls them in Thames, Sacred River. The naming is confusing but ‘Lee’ tends to be used for the canalised waterway and ‘Lea’ for the true river. Controlled by several locks and weirs but no longer hosting trade traffic, the River Lea and the Lee Navigation present different faces as they flow in and out of each other. The Lee is comparatively wide and straight, made practical for boats; the Lea meanders prettily.

This particular stretch of river beside Leyton Marsh – a stretch where the River Lea and the Lee Navigation are one – has long been sacred for continuously cruising boaters, those of us without permanent moorings who are licensed to journey on every two weeks. The bank here has room for around ten boats and is one of the only places to lower ropes within London that can really be called an urban wilderness; a hard-to-reach mooring where vessels are caressed by brambles yet Liverpool Street is minutes away by train. You can be in the heart of town one moment, doing London things, and out on the mist-shrouded marshes the next.

We will spend a fortnight here, paying close attention to lay of the land (meadow and marsh), the people (few) and the river’s character (changeable), because we both want to and need to, and then we will move on. Our life is a continual departure. The boat is one of the only constants in it. We found her up north in June and were living on her down south by July. That hot summer long ago gave way to autumn, now winter. We have moored in many places over the intervening months; our most recent journey happened to end here. We like it. Other places feel less apart.

Once the fire is beyond babysitting point and we are fed, today we will do boat chores followed by a long bout of stove-side lounging. Outside the remnants of a heavy dew cling to the long grass, and there’s the shadow of a slow-melting frost still stitched across the empty boat next door, our ghost ship neighbour that seems to have been left to ice up. The path running alongside the boat is narrow, uneven and, at the moment, muddy as hell. It’s the kind of path you negotiate rather than stroll along; a path that snares you and snags your clothes. The slim length of canal verge wherever we moor can come to feel a little like our own ground, albeit temporarily. At Leyton Marsh the feeling is particularly strong because the main towpath runs along the opposite side of the river and, although this muddy path directly outside the boat is a public one, there is very little footfall here except our own. We are attached to the bank by way of ropes and long metal mooring pins at the bow and at the stern. It’s a way of anchoring similar to that of guy ropes and tent pegs, but on a larger scale.

I have never lived in the countryside proper, somewhere remote and cut off, but I imagine ours as a rural kind of existence, especially in winter. It’s a conceit I enjoy, one that is, of course, entirely misplaced in Zone 2. However, on a day like this one, you will likely find at least one of us out on deck or on the bank, steaming in thick woollens and walking boots as we split logs. It’s harder work than it might look but there is satisfaction to be had in seasoned wood developing forking cracks under your will. Chase the cracks with the axe, make them widen and gape, until the trunk or branch splits down long ragged lines into stove-size pieces.

The goal this afternoon is to slice out enough slivers of wood to fill our hollow front steps. There is no shame in the fire-lighter but, even with that aid, plenty of good, dry kindling is key to starting a fire. It’s a constant mission to keep supplies well stocked; we haunt the places where giant bins huddle on housing estates, hunting out old furniture and other flammable scraps. Skips are an endless source of offcuts. Our best find so far is an untreated, slatted pine bed, left discarded in bits on the pavement. And the most welcome Christmas present a dead tree from my dad’s garden that was felled by a storm and then chainsawed into rough logs. It is this festive haul that we are axing apart today.

As well as being gifted logs and scavenging for our own, there are a handful of barges working up and down London’s canals and rivers that deliver fuel and other boating paraphernalia direct. These fuel barges make life possible. We ordered coal and gas by text earlier this week and can now hear the fuel barge’s lister engine put-putting upriver on the approach. It will pull up alongside us and plastic sacks of coal and a cylinder of gas will be hauled straight onto our roof. The barge will not only bring fuel but also news from the world beyond this riverbank. It cruises in the traditional twin formation of 72-foot narrow-boat with 72-foot butty alongside. A butty is a narrowboat without an engine that doubles the available cargo space. Butty and boat move side by side, lashed together with ropes and powered by one engine. This particular pair are brightly painted with the green and red scales of the Welsh dragon. Both butty and boat have small cabins, where the couple who run the business live, but the vessels are mainly given over to goods: cylinders of gas, sacks of coal and a large tank of diesel. The fuel barge and its butty are a faint echo of the era when all the boats on London’s canals were cargo-carrying ones.

The delivery is an excuse to spend some time on Pike’s roof. It’s our largest outside space but doesn’t have the draw it does in summer. We use it mainly for storage at this time of year; there’s a pallet where the coal sacks can be stacked and a tarp-covered top box for seasoning wood. It’s also where we keep the gangplank, the lifebuoy, the boat poles and boat hooks, which we use for punting out of tight spots and fishing fallen things out of the water. I pace out our rectangular territory with its peaked nose and rounded back: 57 feet long and 10 feet across, about three feet wider than a narrowboat. I stand and keep watch for a while, my numb hands tucked up under my armpits. A dark grey barge passes heading north, its roof stacked high with branches brought down by the recent weather. The driver and I nod and smile.

Our own storm wood chopped, coal stacked and sun already sinking, we return to the cabin to enjoy the fire. When time is unimportant, tending the stove outstrips all other entertainment. A good fire, for us, often begins as a sandwich of newspaper, wood and coal. I call it coal for ease; it’s actually a smokeless fuel suitable for cities. Still pitch black and phenomenally filthy, it comes in uniform, rounded square nuggets that burn with an odd odour. Paper and wood help light the nuggets and burn up fast with satisfying flames, but the ultimate goal is a pile of red glowing coals that fresh fuel can gradually be shovelled upon. Once the wood and paper have burned away and only coal remains, the smoke from our chimney should be barely discernible, just a faint distortion of hot air. We use logs too when we have them, and, depending on the tree, they usually burn much hotter than coal. It’s not unknown for a log to reduce you to your underwear.

A back boiler helps to spread the warmth: water passes through pipes behind the stove where it heats up before being pumped into radiators in the bathroom and bedroom. We also have a device that uses a thermoelectric generator to convert heat from the stove into electricity. This powers a small motor, which in turn powers a fan that helps keep warm air inside the boat circulating. Both fan and boiler pump gently hum, our winter cicadas efficiently redistributing the stove’s heat. This kind of technology holds much promise; we are now waiting for another stovetop device to be made for us that will convert heat energy into both a lamp and a charger for our laptops and phones.

Electricity is something we think about a lot. Our marine engine – like a tractor engine but for boats – tops up a bank of batteries that power the twelve-volt lights and plug sockets, and heats up water. In the summer we can rely on our rooftop solar panels to provide most of the power the batteries need but they can’t keep up in winter, which is why channelling more thermoelectric energy from the stove would be brilliant. We obsessively monitor both the weather and our battery life at this time of year, rationing electricity use on the darkest days when we need it the most. Because daylight hours can be so very short, we have to run the engine for an hour most days to stop the batteries going flat. Outside you would barely notice it’s on unless you got close but inside the whole boat vibrates with it, pots and pans jumping on the spot. There is an honesty in using the engine like this. On land you can easily forget that, with our current energy system, someone, somewhere has to burn something in order for the lights to come on or for the shower to run hot. On a boat without mains electricity, you have to burn the fuel yourself. It makes you much more conscious of what you’re consuming.

Beyond physical dimensions, and creating one’s own power and heat, daily life on board for us isn’t so unlike life on land, although I think we are now more aware of how things work and the finiteness of things. When we plug something in we know exactly where the electricity has come from, and we know there’s a possibility that the supply will stop. There’s a feeling of precariousness that makes us appreciate small things like a light to read by or a hot shower more than we used to. I think the writer Tom Rolt’s assertion that ‘the boatman’s life is stripped of all the complex comforts with which we have surrounded ourselves at the price of contentment’ – a reflection of how his own experience living on a converted narrowboat in the 1930s compared to life on the land – just about holds true.1 For Rolt, the spare life boating demands allows one to regain a lost sense of peace.

It is possible to surround yourself with complex comforts on a boat today, but it is easier than it would be on land to actively not. There is a paring back that takes place on the water, a simplification and an easing out. Our home space is not entirely domestic either; it is mechanical, it moves, it is subject to the weather, the water, the landscape. Richard Mabey was on to something when he said many of us – wherever we might live – nurse a ‘dream of satisfying two strong and contrasting human drives, to be both settled native and adventurous pioneer’.2 The boat allows us, demands us, to try to be both.

There’s no doubt that this is a tough time of year to be living like this, that it’s a season full of its own specific concerns. The fear of running out of fuel, of condensation and damp, of frozen pipes and flat batteries. The boat’s climate is hard to control and our source of heat not instant or always reliable; sometimes the stove sulks and sighs and fills the cabin with smoke. And everything breaks in winter. Last week the folding bathroom door fell off the wall in a weary heap, just like that. There are, however, some advantages to the cold. For a would-be hermit like me, it’s welcome to have the excuse to stay in, fire tending, self-importantly fending off the chill while rain blears the windows and makes the outside invisible. The cabin is lovely in candle- and firelight, the cosiest place you could possibly be. Flame light is forgiving, it hides all the cracks.

Night comes early at this time of year and an evening passes in much the same way anyone else’s might: a meal, the radio, a film, the washing up, a book. The sky has cleared tonight and a full moon trails across the water, beaming uninterrupted through our front doors. I wonder if, when I was a house dweller, I ever felt quite so close to the stars.

On the stovetop the samovar quietly hisses, the gathering heat bubbles making the copper sing. I move it onto a trivet to stop the water boiling and fetch a jug from the bathroom so the hot liquid can be decanted out. I need a wash. The living room is warm, the bathroom cool in comparison. The water creates clouds as it fills the sink, fogging the mirror opaque. I clean the day from my face and hands, wiping away the coal and the wood dust, carefully flushing out a new wound on my left forefinger. I slipped earlier with the axe, my one false move met with a flash of red pain and a small crescent-shaped gash. Living on a canal boat marks you out in this way. Cuts and splinters, a thumb knuckle seared white, fingernails ingrained with grime, smoke-laced hair: these are all the necessary side effects of keeping a vessel warm. Clean, I return to the stove-side to undress before scurrying into the back cabin, to boyfriend and bed. Beneath two duvets and a huge blanket, S. and I keep each other warm. The fire burns out as we sleep.

3. fen

London is a city of contrasts. Here in the borough of Waltham Forest, one of Britain’s most polluted rivers runs alongside one of the capital’s last remaining wetlands, part of which is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Perhaps this peculiarity is part of the Lower Lea’s charm: that it is an unexpected pleasure and a bit of a mess at the same time. The river is loved and well used by all sorts of people – rowers, runners, walkers, cyclists, motor boaters like me – even when wintry conditions are harsh, but it’s also shamefully abused. Every day great islands of rubbish float past. Some of it is likely to be accidental blow-off, lightweight stuff that has been caught by the wind, but things like insulation panels seem purposefully dumped. The snarled-up weir downriver from here, below Lea Bridge, illustrates just how much junk ends up in the water. The flotsam that accumulates is only part of the picture; it doesn’t show the pollution from roads and houses with misconnected pipes that lurks in the water as well.

The River Lea is especially vulnerable in wild weather as storm run-off from roads flows straight into it from across east London. In July 2013, when two weeks of hot, dry weather were followed by torrential rain, a cocktail of oil, copper, lead, zinc, grit and tar flooded into the river because there was no buffer to filter the flow. Dissolved oxygen levels, which were already low because of the heat, dropped to zero in places. Thousands of fish died.3

Despite horrors like this, the Lea – which, with its streams, forms London’s second largest river system – still manages moments of beauty. It can support many species of bird and fish; there are rumours that bitterns, kingfishers, even water voles frequent its banks. At the moment, on cold mornings and nights, the water is often cloaked with great puffs of organza-soft mist.

Walthamstow and Leyton Marshes lie low in the river’s alluvial flood plain on a bed of silt, gravel and London clay. They don’t have the curves and contours the name Lee Valley suggests. They’re flat, soggy expanses, crisscrossed by railway lines and ringed with industry. A line of poplar trees marks the border between the two. The marshes have a wildlife-rich bleakness about them at this time of year. Over 400 species of plant have been recorded here, with 250 considered regulars. There’s meadow, reed bed and wooded thicket as well as marshland, which together attract snipe, water rail, stonechat and meadow pipit in winter.4

Both marshes have fraught pasts and even today their future doesn’t feel completely secure. There seems always to be someone willing to sacrifice our green spaces for profit. Before Site of Special Scientific Interest designation in the mid-1980s, gravel extraction loomed large at Walthamstow Marsh. It was, incredibly, the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority that applied to the Greater London Council for permission to dig down 36 feet, mine the marsh for its gravel and then replace it with a marina. Threats do, thankfully, spur bursts of action and, now and then, the activists are victorious.

Michael Knowles – one of many involved in saving Walthamstow Marsh – recently produced a pamphlet that tells the story of the campaign and how it was won through creativity, high spirits and hard work. In it, he describes the site as it is today as ‘a monument to what a determined group of people, even when confronted by the powers of the land, can achieve’. He also cautions that we ‘remain constantly aware of this precious and cherished feature’ and ‘be always on guard against the false blandishments of transient profit or ephemeral pleasure’ that could threaten it again.

The pamphlet is a defiant quest for the local people who saved the marsh to be properly acknowledged but also a personal exercise in remembering, a way of solidifying the past within the pages of a self-published book. Knowles spent a lot of time on the marshes and beside the river in the 1970s, and shares some of his strongest recollections, including one that describes the Lea’s recent industrial past:

There were few sights I can recall so magnificent, so locked into my mind’s eye, as that of the great barges pushing their way through the water, sailing up from the Thames through the Isle of Dogs, loaded with huge logs, which had been unloaded in the London docks and transferred onto the barges, making their way to the timber yards, the waves they created rising up against the prow and splashing over the decks. It was splendid honest physical work; and the sight of it all on a frosty winter morning, the sun gleaming and dancing in the waves and the surging resisting waters, is simply unforgettable.5