Dead bodies and winter gold
Winter on the Grand Union Canal
Dead bodies and winter gold
Today the canal is quiet; no lines of funeral boats waiting to drop off their cargo, no clandestine gangs waiting to steal the bodies. In the cemetery across the narrow channel, the human dead rest in peace under their stones, unlike the water rat, his fur bedraggled, his chisel teeth exposed, lying in a towpath puddle. Dead.
Bodies in the first half of the 19th century were big business in London. Shipped on a canal barge from the city, they were unloaded and buried in London’s first commercial cemetery at Kensal Green. Often, clandestine gangs exhumed the freshly buried corpses and put them back on a boat and transported them back into the city. The cadavers were then sold to trainee doctors who had to dissect at least two human corpses before being certified as doctors by the General Medical Council.
Above the dead rat is an anarchic sea-bird, a cormorant perched at the top of a dead ash tree, its webbed feet curled around a cinereal stick and his snake-head set against the azure sky. He is It is infatuated with the city. Observing the dead.
The towpath is metalled and smooth. The bike’s tyres hum and pedals turn with ease. The few people who are out walking purposely beside the canal wear faces from all parts of the globe; from the steppes of Asia, from the plains of the Punjab, from deep within the African continent. Small groups of men released from the night-shift walk with fatigue attached to their limbs. Women of colour stagger with weighty bags, a few white British youths sit on the back of a bench, smoke emanating from deep within their hoods, lager cans stacked by their feet. From behind vegatative walls, the percussive ring of rivets and hammers, steel on steel, chorus from building sites.
The Paddington Branch of the Grand Union Canal was built with private money in 1801 to link the industrial midlands to the heart of London. At its height in the mid-nineteenth century, it roared with commerce. The canal was thick with barges, bringing iron, coal and bricks to the city and taking away the many tons of horse manure which had covered the city’s streets to be spread upon the fields which bordered the city bounds. Smoking chimneys of the brickworks which lined the path. Imagine the scenes - the cries and shouts of bargemen, the course language of the brickies, the shrill calls of the dust-covered children, smoke and grime. Movement and noise everywhere.
A few coots snap at each other. As a species they seem to be unhappy under their feathers. The old brick walls are bramble covered and new concrete slabs are art covered. A portrait of George Michael under a flyover is particularly finely sprayed. Thin boats are moored like the lines of lorries on the M2 awaiting Brexit clearance. Some old office chairs with soggy seats have been placed in arboreal alcoves beside the path, and bits of broken things; shelves, kettles, a microwave, old iron pipes, are piled against the buddleias and willows. Cans of beer with names such as Baltijos and Kalnapilis are heaped at yesterday’s get-together points.
In this post-industrial tranquility, nature is reclaiming its land. Willows flame their orange limbs against the azure sky. An Oxford ragwort is in flower, still vivid in its summer yellow. A milky way of yarrow flows in the grass-green celeste beside the path.
As the canal turns northwards the north wind crystallises and makes ice diamonds in the sky which catch the low beams of light and thrills the eyes. A panoply of poplars shed their remaining leaves which tumble like clubbers falling out onto streets at 3.00 a.m. Reed beds, their feather-like heads, age grey, spread beyond the canal banks across the valley floor and fields full of mud and light green grass replace homes and distribution centres.
Out on the water a pair of swans dance together and make two sides of a heart with their necks in an avian display of love. A kingfisher, the colour-giver, as blue as a tropical lagoon with a breast of orange sunset, fires from a willow branch.
At Rickmansworth, the route leaves the serendipitous canal and takes an old railway path to Watford. The town isn’t easy on the eye, but the cycle-path is traffic-free and winds through open spaces and recreation grounds and up into wood-covered hills.
The winter afternoon is so still and quiet that you can hear the dead breathe. Trees are sentry still. The mystery of dusk covers the land and the light becomes less fixed as shadows multiply and assemble across the path.
A few mixed miles of woodland and housing estate remain before the dusk is filled with the ring of bells from St. Alban’s cathedral. Tongues of red sun illuminate the old Roman walls and two hundred metres above the Norman tower, Isis herself lolls in the sunsetting sky. In Ancient Egyptian mythology, Isis is said to have taken the form of a kite in order to resurrect the dead. Perhaps it is in the process of lifting up St. Alban a Roman soldier and the first English martyr, who has lain entombed for over 1700 years in the abbey church.
Black rooks spiral into flight from the nearby chestnut trees, the sun sinks. A dusky chill spreads across the blackening grass. A heron with heavy wingbeats heads across the old Roman town to roost.
The golden leaves of a birch tree, St. Albans