At 9am the Thunder Started

With a coincidental precision that would please any maker of atomic clocks, at 9am the thunder started. The roaring detonation outlasted the final Greenwich pip by several seconds and then gave way to solid hiss of rain. Explosive drops cratering the canal, pulling leafs into water.

Radio 4 headlines absorbed, I walk my bruises along the towpath. The canalside air is a warm kiss, the downpour pure espresso. After Belfast, Dorset and broken toes, this is the first time in three weeks I have actually fulfilled my boyfriend duty to get and the papers and milk.

It is not the rain that keeps me close to canal today. There is a natural indolent gravity to the Three Bridge Kingdom when you feel under the weather in every way. It is easy to wait for the barge which serves as a mobile shop to chug passed. I can buy beer for the batter at the end of the road, pick rain-washed rosemary from the towpath.

Night comes. I cook sausage toad and roasted vegetables for four, pour wine. I am surrounded by friendship, laughter and love. There are no greater forces to bind me to this place than those.

A Year in the Three Bridge Kingdom

A breakfast of scrambled egg with basil and cherry tomatoes is taken while watching water traffic create duck scattering wakes. The sun fills Lisson Grove Moorings. I listen to the wood creak as the boats gently roll in the heat. It is my mother’s first visit canalside so we take the boat along the Regent. It is too languid a day for the exertion of locks so we push along without falling or climbing.

The route offers tunnels, waving children and a baby warthog. This would be enough adventure, but travelling with my mother turns it into a botanic expedition. From wild mallow to water hemlock, plants are named and lore passed on.

At dusk, the sun plays alchemist, turns stone to gold. I exhale. Let tension fall away with the last of the day. It has been a year in the Three Bridge Kingdom and my heart grows with each sunset and each dawn across the water. You know you have a home rich with love when you can invite others to share it.

The Energetic Kiss of London

The last two days have been stolen by swapping Wars of Dissolution stories with hard-drinking Anglo-Serbs and bonding over a shared love of cooking with a charming American multi-millionaire who was proud to have voted Bush. While it is great fun to swap recipes and discover my Serbian swearing is still up to scratch, I need to be home. My heart needs to be resting canalside.

I might be a southerner who loves the north, but right now I want to be inside the energetic kiss of London. Sitting at the station, all I want is speed. I want the landscape to blur. Synchronicity seems to offer hope of that. At the exact moment I pull out of Leeds, the iPod offers Gone Dead Train. Randy Newman singing: ‘Burning down the rail…’

However, instead of a jump edit between Yorkshire and King's Cross, there is an hour of static landscape. Starring at the same rough curtain of trees as the fields catch slow motion rain. The area outside Newark Northgate offers little to eyes waiting on signalling failures to be sorted.

We eventually push through Grantham – the town that spawned a monster – and I begin to detect the faint gravitational pull of the capital. The 14:40 feels it as well. The attraction accelerates us and we turn non-stop. There is enough speed to make station signs unreadable and render Stevenage a dirty smear.

We do not slow till just outside of Highbury. My heart somersaults with childlike joy when we pass the Emirates Stadium. Even after the last few games, a glimpse of 30-feet of Arsenal iconography adorning the curved wall of dreams still guarantees a smile.

Graffiti blooms in dense abundance. Green disappears from the palette and building after building bears the tired scars of pollution. I am responding to the beauty of familiarity, the beauty of recognition. The end of every small exile is made sweet by the love of home.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

Trying to shake the sleep from my eyes this morning, I stood and looked out on the canal. There was something wrong with the picture. Still addled with the decay of half-life dreams, it took me a few moments to process what was different.

The canal was frozen.

Except for one small patch that stood up to the bullying of the -5°C temperature during the night, the water around my home was now supporting a thin crust of ice. Clearly baffled birds moved gingerly across the new environment. Hogging the one gash in the crystal skin were three swans, new visitors to my stretch of the Regent. While I and everything else shivered, they were the epitome of effortless elegance.

When I ventured outside, the cold air stripped away the last trace of sleep, but the surprises kept coming. At the point where the Westway traffic rumbles oblivious over the canal, more than 100 geese were gaggling. A honking chorus sounded as I pushed through them. Beaks were snapped open and shut like teen hoods trying to intimidate by playing with knives. Thankfully my ankles and knees escaped unpecked.

With the swans, geese, the partridge I ate at the Army and Navy Club and number of Lords I met last week, I feel as if every day at the moment is trying to offer up a gift category from The Twelve Days of Christmas. There have been no gold rings, maids or calling birds yet. However, given that Christmastide does not actually start to the 25th, there is plenty of time for the universe to deliver.

When Cities Dream

This morning canalside was dusted white. The roofs of boats painted with hoar frost, the towpath glinting thanks to its temporary crystal carpet. Neither the smoking chimneys of the barges, pumping out the intoxicating scent of burning wood, nor the runty sun were shifting the new palette.

I walked along the canal, boots crunching frost flowers. I left shiny impressions of my previous position on the path with each footstep, crushed silver ghosts. I exhaled dragon breath, stuffed my hands deep into my pockets and kept moving south.

The pavement of Little Lebanon was untouched by the cocaine spill whiteout. Its storefronts still a riot of colour as crimson cherries fought for space with pillar box red chillies and Tyrian purple aubergines. Even on a frosty London morning, some of the area’s shops still exude a sense of Middle Eastern heat

Finding my pockets too short of coins for either a Beirut breakfast or a coffee, I turned into the Georgian plush of Connaught Square. I made my usual nod to security and was frozen in place not by the Heckler & Koch holders, but the vision at the end of Stanhope Place. Instead of the usual burst of green, under frost and low mist Hyde Park was transformed into an inland sea. The street now ended at the start of an illusion I did not wish to shake.

For a few moments I was caught in the City’s dream of itself, a reverie of tides and rolling spray. When we dream we may become other people. When cities dream, they become other places. In trance, London allows itself to become so large and fantastic its imagined maps even include nautical charts.

A Twinkling Canalside Outpost of Hogwarts

Due to circumstances beyond my control I may shortly be homeless. It will break my heart to leave the canal, pushed inland by brute economics. Tears will be shed.

I could start feeling the sorrow now. It would be the perfect partner for the worry about where I will be laying my head after this year closes. Yet last night the only response that made sense was to host a party.

Adrian, the lovely Canadian man I live with, will be in the Philippines for Christmas and the New Year. This provided the perfect excuse to hold a gathering. Wine was mulled, food heaped onto tables and our home transformed by light. Every flat surface held a candle creating a pool of stuttering golden warmth. Fairylights and snowflake LEDS were tumbled across the windows. From the water it must have looked as if we become a twinkling canalside outpost of Hogwarts.

As the hours flowed, I drank Kir Royale and Canadian icewine, watching as every guest marvelled at the spills of light rippling across the black night of the canal. According to Surreal Girl, I sat cross-legged and held court like Buddha. I think this is a little unfair as I do not remember Prince Siddhārtha answering questions about the Mongolian Death Worm.