The train went over Tanners Hill, which is unusual these days. That’s the main reason I came out. Such a strange thing, but I feel slightly nostalgic seeing the view over Lewisham Vale and the fast run up to London Bridge. It reminds me of times gone by when travelling to work was enjoyable. Now I don’t dislike it, I just feel numb. I’m ready for that chapter to close, but it can’t yet, so I just wait and feel increasingly detached from it. I’ll have to go somewhere else one day, I can’t exist like this forever.
It is noisy here, full of football enthusiasts. Mostly white, all male as far as I can see. It is such a strange tribal thing, something I know I can never relate to, or understand, or join in with. I don’t want to or need to. I used to describe people in some level of detail when coming to places like this, but I don’t feel inclined to do that today. They’re just a mass of uncouth noise, flesh, tattoos, attitudes. They wear football team shirts, which subliminally reinforce the tribal mentality, creating a potentially hostile atmosphere for those not included. There is someone near me – too near really – who clearly isn’t of the tribe. Sensitive articulate voice, blond grey hair, soft neutral clothing, probably just a little chest hair.
There’s a strange smell of meat in these places. It’s hard to determine what kind of meat though. A mass produced, slightly Orwellian flavourless kind, carefully developed to give just enough flavour to evoke the sensations of a good quality roast dinner, but contained within a prescribed cost. Any nutritional value is a secondary benefit. I’ve left it too late to think of cooking a joint today. I can manage without though. I could explore making shakshuka again without the meat content, that made me ill a while ago.
I have a friend who talks about big dinners and On The Buses. I say a friend, but I can’t really bear to be in their company any more. We met recently and explored Canvey Island. It was a day filled with memories, sunburn, mundic doom, and a renewed desire to infiltrate the edgelands, the leftover parts, the infrastructure plants. I want to do it at night, alone, with a bike and a camera, but not with someone constantly talking about themselves, oblivious to their audience’s utter lack of interest, gently growing into contempt. I suppose I just want silence.
On the way home now. My tolerance and desire for these Orwellian meat odoured canteens has diminished over recent months. I’m more able to sustain days alone now, although entire days enclosed on the marsh still make me crazy. The train has just crossed the river at Blackfriars. I used to think of the river as an emotional, historic and physical conduit connecting me with many of the places significant to my existence. I expect Iain Sinclair would call them nodes. He’s not really that bad, well meaning, just miserable, but that’s okay. Relentless positivity is exhausting and fake. I work very close to the river, so close that flooding is always a danger. I live not too far from it too. I would use it for transport if the boats were not so expensive.
I wonder, if I start cycling again will I like where I live?
Andrew Stevenson 