Name: London Clay
ISBN: 9780857526922

Tom Chivers

Journeys in the Deep City

London Clay

Tim Pendry

Initially my heart sank at the thought that I might find myself wading through the reflections on London topography of yet another psycho-geographical (or here psycho-geological) poet with a gloomy world-view (having just had to put up with that aspect of Macfarlane's 'Underland'). However, I soon cheered up. I was in the company of an unpretentious and easy-going personality. Yes, he is a typical liberal Londoner - that type who can often drive us 'country' folk up the wall - but he is likeable and decent. Yes, dear reader, I liked him and he writes well. Macfarlane's book (though good) sometimes lost its way in the standard issue preachiness of the liberal intellectual. Macfarlane's poetic element can become almost a parody of itself at times, the tone portentous. Chivers has less ambition but achieves it more authentically. The book weaves the incidents of the life of a thirty-something catholic family man into walks through the debris that is London and with the geology, archaeology and history involved in tracing eight of the (mostly) more neglected underground (mostly) rivers and streams of the capital. For the record, these are an abandoned waste site near Aldgate, the Ambrook, the Neckinger and 'Lost Island' of Bermondsey in South London, the Walbrook in the City, the Fleet in North London down to the City, the old floodplain near Westminster and the River Lea in East London. Each ruminative walk covers quite a small area at a time but Chivers evokes atmosphere brilliantly. There is always a sense of 'being there' but in the context of deep time stretching down to the geological formations under the walker. It is not a book of subterranea in the expected sense but a book that produces gobbets of 'depth' of which the subterranean is necessarily a part. Chivers brings the past to the surface so that the tumbling plastic bag at the highest level is seen as part of a continuum reaching down to bedrock. The autobiographical component is not self-indulgent but thoughtful, the walks grounded ruminations and the 'facts' sufficient to inform and entertain. There were moments when I felt truly enlightened about some new detail of a city that I thought I knew fairly well. Every now and then there are references to contemporary history (Brexit, the Olympics, terror attacks, COVID) and, although Chivers reflects the prejudices of his class (the struggling London creative), he restrains himself from laying it on with a trowel for which this reader was grateful. The only complaint is that the maps are pretty and schematic but it is not always easy to follow the travels unless you have a street finder at hand. There are also times when the precise course of the journey appears a little unclear and does not seem to match the cast of the map. Photographs are not necessary because the art of the book lies in the description but better maps would have helped considerably. On the other hand, the typography and illustrations are excellent. The book is a pleasure to read from that perspective. It may, of course, be a bit cheeky of a thirty-something to offer us a memoir of a rather ordinary life but that is where the charm of the book lies. The ordinary life, the humanity of Chivers, being a Londoner, a sense of place and a sense of the past combine to give a feel for London today. Chivers becomes Everylondoner. The outsider who thinks he knows London from visits (including commuting) or having lived there in the past gets a subtle sense of both change and permanence, the recognisable place but also its continuing transformation when you cease to be there. Certainly the departed resident returns periodically and is awed at the amount of change as buildings are pulled down and rise so change is no surprise. The geology underlying London provides constraints on change that remind us that the land if not the city exists in deep time. London at the beginning of the 2020s is as different from, say, London in the 1990s (my last residence decade) as the latter was from the London of the 1970s (when I first arrived). Its multiculturalism is now embedded, its 'different ideology' established and its detritus piling up. Exactly what is more or less permanent or transitory is unclear. The course of ancient rivers become shifted into sewers while more recent waste threatens to degrade imperfectly and become lodged in the geology. Some things from the past are uncovered - a trove of Roman skulls, the basic outline of an Elizabethan theatre - but others will never be found or will be found, studied and then returned to the ground to be lost again. There are fascinating geological anomalies still imperfectly understood. What emerges from the book with some force is that 'native' London is very much a live community of humans and pets but one struggling at its own incomprehension of why it is no longer in control of events and living in a world of detritus piling up around isolated pockets of class difference. Time and time again, consciously or not, Chivers shows us streets, wastelands, rivers clogged with waste and pollution and 'nature' present but struggling to survive and break through despite the best efforts of its guardians and its underlying geographical reality. We all understand that, if the zombie plague did eliminate our species, cities like London would return to nature very quickly but it would do so on a new geological strata made up of what has been left behind by us, from concrete and asphalt to plastic bags and fatbergs. The relationship between underlying geology, the shreds of the natural to be found at the margins of the city's structures and the human community and its detritus are core to the book even if that relationship is never formally laid out for analysis. If London appears to be 'dying' or at least 'sick' in this book, it is not because the community of people is dying or 'sick' (on the contrary, this side of London seems stronger than ever) but because the weight of people, the waste from their purchases and unattended pollution are making it sick Chivers is not gloomy - in fact, he rarely wears his non-family feelings on his sleeve and the general air is one of nostalgia and love for his city - but you sense his own awareness that things are not quite right without his ever actually putting his finger openly on what is wrong. That is the charm of the book. It shows a poet's sensibility in a way that I found more convincing than the more overt attempt at poetry by Macfarlane. Somewhere between all the facts and ruminations, intangible things are being presented with inexpressible feelings attached. Of course Chivers presents a lot of tangible facts and expresses feelings (about his family past and present) but there is something else lurking behind all this, an amalgam of 'Sorge' (an appropriate German word), sadnss, love and anxiety. Maybe a dash of fatalism not helped by COVID. I ended up really liking this man and loving London again despite its politics and the arrogance of its middle class elites because 'London Clay' was able to remind me of another London, still resilient, outside the 'meeja', fully 'belonging' on its constant change and growing pile of refuse.

London Clay Journeys in the Deep City

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