River Crossings
odyssey through the valley / LARPing at the viewing / Little London / apocalypticism
The Avon’s burst its banks, the railway track through the valley appears to be floating atop a pretty lake, it’s the worst flooding in a century, at least according to one of my fellow passengers, all of us stuffed in the overcrowded, rickety, three carriage locomotive, gawping at the grey-brown water, no trace of the river, the hedgerows or footpaths or drystone walls, only the tops of trees naked and forked clawing up from the depths like the skeletons of mythic sea creatures. The trip to Bristol usually takes thirty minutes, today it’s quadrupled, owing to the flooding: half the line is underwater, we have to hop on a rail replacement bus at Bath, which sluggishly navigates roads that are themselves flooded, tarmac torn-up by days of torrential rain. After eventually arriving at Temple Meads, I walk two miles from the station in a downpour to a neighbourhood I’ve never before stepped foot in, to attend a house viewing I was fortunate to have secured, being one of forty-plus applicants that particular ad had received, I later learn, within three hours of its going live. Soaked to the bone, I reach the house just in time, and my friend, who I meet there, and who for the purpose of this viewing is also my romantic partner, since the landlords will only accept couples not sharers, is soaked to the bone too.
We trail water into the house, leave muddy footprints on the very tasteful exposed floorboards. The landlords are a married couple with a baby. They inform us that until recently they’d rented this property on Airbnb, which scans: it’s well cared-for, the decor is very Instagrammable, clean lines and skylights, no disrepair or black mould begat by absentee landlordism, no, this property has had to weather the discerning star-ratings of hundreds of city-breakers in order to turn a consistent profit. The landlords are friendly, hot tea is offered and politely declined, and just as our conversation begins to flow, my friend and I feeling comfortable in our disguise as two ‘partnered young professionals’, we’re interrupted by other prospective tenants, who have arrived to their viewing early, perhaps to escape the rain. They’re a youngish couple, and they also have a baby. For a moment I entertain the idea that they, too, are sharers pretending to be partnered, maybe they’ve even borrowed a friend’s baby for the occasion, to complete the illusion of ‘normal’ early-thirties coupledom and win the landlords’ trust, a ridiculous idea, Seinfeldian in its absurdity, but not a million miles away from the very real double-act my friend and I are engaged in.
With the babies, the landlords, myself and my friend, and these rain-dodging interlopers all in the same room, the atmosphere becomes awkward, the stakes suddenly seem high, everyone’s hypothetical futures competing – where I see a workspace the interlopers might see a playroom, etcetera – it’s all getting a bit quantum-y and weird, possible outcomes and branching timelines and from nowhere, to break the tension probably, I blurt out that ‘I admire the colour of the kitchen worktop’ (mint green) to which the landlord, the husband, slowly replies ‘Yes… it’s Formica’ and in that moment I sense all is lost.
We shuffle back out into the rain, my friend and I, the landlords will be in touch to let us know ‘who they choose’, and after several hours walking around Redfield and Easton, kicking cans down the road, shooting the shit, and trying to get a feel for the area that some refer to as ‘Little London’ – an appellation I can only imagine being invented by erstwhile-East-Londoners-turned-Bristolians, so-called ‘geriatric millennials’, those Big Society hipsters whose years in the capital began in Shoreditch and fizzled out in the pizza places, craft beer taprooms and fixie bike workshops of post-gentrification, post-Olympics Hackney Wick – I begin to journey back to my current lodgings, via the rail replacement coach, the replacement bus having broken down somewhere in the valley. Urine, or at any rate, urine-laced water, leaks from the coach’s onboard toilet, the final straw for two of my fellow travellers, who vacate the vehicle as soon as the stench hits their nostrils, shaking their heads disapprovingly at the high-vis-vested driver, who, cigarette wedged behind his ear, doesn’t even notice.
Back in Bath, I wait at the station for the three carriage train, which is half an hour late, and eventually arrives in reverse formation, so that the carriage letters ‘C-B-A’ flash in repetition on the LED notice board. Then I’m carried at last through the flooded valley, darkness falling, starlight on black water, Anne Briggs on Apple Music, that unsung folk revivalist whose compositions and eerie renditions of traditional ballads – full of murderers and rogues and doomed flower-picking lovers – poke holes in the present, letting the murky half-light of an imagined rural past bleed through, and my mind, perhaps inevitably, drifts to apocalyptic imagery: all these limestone houses on the valley slopes, the little riverside hamlets and farms and lopsided barns, a whole world of parish notice boards, churches, stables and SUVs, horses and horse riders, hunters and hippies, dovecotes and satellite dishes, all of it will eventually collapse into the water, the hills will collapse into the caves and caverns beneath us, so why worry, why worry about anything.
Finally, having arrived back at my point of departure, I claim a well earned, well-pulled pint at the freehouse, and check my email to find that the landlords were grateful for our time, but they have opted for someone else, they’re very sorry, and so forth. I rifle through my mental pockets, so to speak, looking for a different reaction to this sinking, piss-smelling, climate-cum-housing-cum-cost-of-living-cum-NHS-cum-public-transport permacrisis than disappointment or dispiritedness or, worse, self-pity, and eventually I land on righteous indignation, wonder if the situation warrants such a feeling, a feeling of good anger, a healthy or morally justified anger, bright as the morning sun. Righteous indignation, an affect which, according to Wikipedia, Juvenal thought to be the very essence of satire.
Later that evening, I discover that the property I’d just viewed is only a few streets away from a house my parents rented, in the late 1980s, when they were roughly the same age as I am now, a weird coincidence that hits me sideways, I guess, because that night I dream I am driving in a car with my late dad, a cross country trip, though it’s unclear where we started from or where we’re going. There’s exactly 3 hours and 33 minutes (‘3:33’) left until we reach our destination, according to the dream-GPS, and for some reason I insist that we turn back, it’s too far, it’s too far to go, but he’s adamant that we keep driving and complete the journey…