This Other London by John Rogers

Author:John Rogers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-08-20T16:00:00+00:00

This was the type of exchange that characterized the radio shows we produced for Resonance FM that centred round a field recording from a walk just like this one. From hours of audio I’d recorded on a handheld device a significant portion would be debating about which route to follow, realizing that we were lost and Nick yet again berating himself for not bringing a compass, even though neither of us know how to use one.

Today’s walk has been fairly typical – several hours of unbroadcastable banter. I haven’t done enough research but am clinging on to the few factoids that have lodged in my befuddled brain, so I keep going on about trying to find the underground passage that leads from Uxendon Farm to the hill. Nick is dismissive of this and spends much of the time talking about the novel he’s just started writing, none of which I can repeat (nor record for possible future use). In between that I’m recounting funny things my kids have said and trying to explain Call of Duty: Black Ops II, which I’m sure Nick would love.

After walking alone for the best part of the year it’s just a pleasant change to have any chatter to accompany the sound of your own footsteps. As eagerly as we chuntered on we both openly acknowledged the fact that we preferred to walk alone – Nick was even planning on writing a whole book on the subject. This walk is therefore a welcome interlude before we return to our solitary schleps. I’m already ruing that we by-passed the Fred Kormissculpted memorial to concentration-camp victims in Gladstone Park because of the argument about the origins of the green parakeets. I try to raise this with Nick but he’s too busy telling me about the central plot of his novel.

I’ve only just noticed that Nick isn’t carrying a bag; he just threw on a jacket as we left the flat. My permanent mental image of Nick is of a man wearing a Russian hat with a canvas satchel containing a large notebook and an old Bartholomew’s atlas. Here he is, hands in pockets, hatless with a woollen lumberjack coat. Meanwhile, I’m not only rugged up in a thick fleece and waterproof jacket but packing a messenger bag containing a camera, field recorder, travel tripod, spare batteries and memory cards, water bottle, 1950s Geographia atlas, sheaf of notes, archaeological report of the excavation of Dollis Hill (unread), first aid kit, BlackBerry, knee strapping and spare cap. And I feel quietly proud for packing light. Nick tells me he stopped writing up his walks some time ago whilst I find even more methods for documenting almost every footstep.

I knew all this electronic clutter annoyed Nick on one level. Waiting for a train at London Bridge when we were heading off on our previous walk together he’d told me I that he’d once thought of me as an artist but I was now ‘just some sort of media type’. It’s

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