[ 23:01 tuesday 24 march 2020 – old ford lock, london ]

today was the first day of britain’s mass quarantine against the coronavirus. along with most of the population i shall be secluding myself at home for the next three weeks, and i suspect longer. here in london it has been a glorious spring day. the air remains chilly but the sky was a perfect blue and the midday sun was strong enough to warm the face.

since the middle of february the storm’s approach has been creeping up on my consciousness. each day as i visited an exhibition, walked into a shop or passed a group of friends laughing on the towpath i found myself pausing for a moment to appreciate the beauty of these everyday things, and wondering how long remained before they were swept away.

the final large gathering i attended was a seminar at mansion house on tuesday 10th march, hosted by the lord mayor of london, where i chaired a discussion on the relationship between place and creativity. it was a splendid event, and a remarkable experience to observe a hundred and fifty city dignitaries bashfully experimenting with elbow bumps, waves and various alternatives to shaking hands.

my last face-to-face meeting came a day later on wednesday 11th march, from 5pm to 6pm, with the team at the trampery old street.  for the subsequent twelve days i’ve been working from home, so yesterday’s announcement didn’t feel like a particularly abrupt change.

the fashion business where alejandro works sent their team home last week, so each day he’s been working here in the house alongside me. quickly we are establishing new etiquettes and habits for these novel circumstances. when it’s sunny we each have our spot to work on the terrace outside. when the air becomes too cool for alfresco working, we perch at respective sides of the circular table in the sitting room. if either of us has a video call there’s a tacit agreement to retreat downstairs to the dining room.

yesterday’s announcement from the prime minister’s came three years, almost to the minute, from when alejandro and i first met each other at a lecture in poplar. we celebrated a slightly muted anniversary at home. a lot of the local shops had closed early so the most luxurious items i was able to forage were peach ice cream, watermelon and a chocolate rabbit.

all of my life, i’ve been drawn to solitude and generally i find myself comfortable in isolation. i chose to live on islands for most of the period 1999 to 2003; first on st agnes and st mary’s in the isles of scilly (diary entries here), then on stromboli in the aeolian archipelago. (diary entries here). i was serenely happy for much of this period. however as it became clear last week that extensive restrictions were likely to be imposed, i felt a growing terror at the possibility i might be barred from leaving the house for excursions on foot, bicycle or kayak.

perhaps in subconscious preparation, over the weekend i gorged myself on adventures in wild places in the full thrall of springtime. on saturday alejandro and i cycled out to explore the huge expanse of wanstead flats. then on sunday i did a twenty-five mile bike ride up to epping forest and back, getting completely smothered in mud in the process. finally on monday afternoon, just a few hours before the prime minister’s announcement, i dropped my kayak in the water for the first time this year and paddled up to hackney marshes.

in the end, to my relief, the restrictions leave us free to make an hour-long excursion each day. this bodes well for my sanity and for the future of my relationship with alejandro. today at lunchtime we celebrated this liberty by cycling up through the olympic park and across hackney marshes to my favourite stretch of the river lea. i climbed down the bank and stood on a stone in the flow of the river, listening to the rush of water and birdsong, with fresh green leaves glowing in the sunlight along the sides.

this is truly a remarkable moment. it will be a shared experience for almost all humans now alive, in a way that possibly has no precedent. people refer to the september 2001 attack on the world trade centre (diary entry for that day). however that was an event that happened in one place and was experienced only vicariously by the rest of the planet. even the second world war was, in truth, largely a european, western russian and pacific affair that left much of the world untouched.

i suspect many people will have felt moved to record their impressions on this first day of the general quarantine, as countless others will have done in different countries. perhaps i shall write more in the coming weeks as the situation evolves. for now i hope that you, my friends and my family, wherever in the world you are, remain safe and cheerful.

: c :

[ 17:44 sunday 18 june 2017 – roydon gravel pits, hertfordshire ]

yesterday morning i woke at 4am, showered and dressed, then sped on my bike through the empty streets to limehouse. the sky was already bright enough that i didn’t need my cycle lights. it spanned a gradient of chroma from deep azure in the west to cerulean blue in the east. the half-moon and venus were still visible. the air whispered the thrill of a blazing day to come.

winding through the narrow alleys i emerged onto limehouse basin. this area of water, originally called “regent’s canal dock”, was a pivotal connection in britain’s commercial infrastructure through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. this was the point where freight coming up the river thames was trans-shipped onto barges to continue its journey through the inland canal system. a couple of hours either side of high tide ocean-going ships could pass through a lock from the river into the basin. here they unloaded their goods into warehouses from where it could be transferred into barges. to expedite this process the world’s first hydraulic cranes were installed here in the 1850s. once loaded the barges either travelled up the “limehouse cut” to join the lee navigation canal heading north into hertfordshire, or up the “hackney cut” to join the regents canal to west london and beyond that the grand union network linking birmingham, liverpool, manchester, leeds and the great industrial heartlands.

the commercial dock closed in the 1960s and was redeveloped with (mediocre) housing in the 1980s. nowadays it is is a marina for motor yachts, but it still serves the same function providing a link from the canal system to the tidal river. so at 4.50am yesterday morning i chained up my bike, found my friends arthur and mathilde on their narrowboat “manatee” and prepared to untie from the wharfside ready for the slot they’d booked for the lock.

at 5am the lock keeper appeared, cheerful despite the unsociable hour, and opened the inner gates. we passed slowly into the lock chamber and made fast to cables on its side. the inner gates closed and pumps started evacuating water until the level was equalised with the river. the pumps stopped and the massive outer gates slowly swung open. in front of us was the open river, shimmering blue in the pre-dawn light.

at the exact moment we pulled out onto the river the first sliver of sun peaked above the eastern skyline and the buildings on either side of the river exploded into red and gold. we turned and began to head upriver.

at that hour on a saturday morning we had the river completely to ourselves. we passed the warehouses of wapping and rotherhithe then entered the realm of central london’s icons. passing under the traffic-free tower bridge with a cloudless morning sky above us and the empty expanse of river around us, it was hard to escape the feeling that it was there just for us.

i’ve travelled along the river many times in the clipper ferries. but zipping along at high speed in an air-conditioned cabin is a world away from standing on the roof of a seven foot wide narrowboat chugging upriver at three knots. there is an intense sense of connection with the river and time to appreciate every detail of the passing landscape. minute by minute the icons of central london unfolded around us and the sun slowly rose in the sky. the houses of parliament were at their best, the intricately carved stone glowing in the morning sun. the lock keeper at limehouse had taken a macabre pleasure warning us not to slow down in front of parliament since a narrowboat is apparently an ideal transport for a mobile rocket launcher and the security services are prone to get twitchy.

passing under the thames bridges was a revelation. from ground level they are all much the same with their tarmac, traffic and pedestrians. but seen from the water each one is individuated by its style, engineering and ornament; from the ornate gilt panels and bold scalloping of bazelgette’s cast iron battersea bridge of 1890 to the wonderfully light steel underframe of the grosvenor rail bridge from 1965.

after putney the character of the river changes with fewer buildings and more greenery lining the banks. by hammersmith the river’s width is halved from limehouse. on this stretch we began to encounter our first traffic, with rowing fours and eights out for practice on this idyllic saturday morning.

at 9am, four hours after leaving limehouse, we arrived at brentford where the lock keeper was waiting to usher us back into the canal system. from here we set off north on the grand union canal, mostly following the ancient path of the river brent. we passed through seven of the nine locks in the hanwell flight, which gave me some exercise, then we tied up. the water looked clean so arthur and i couldn’t resist stripping off and jumping in for a swim to cool off. after bidding farewell to arthur and mathilde i walked to southall station and took a series of trains to arrive back at limehouse where i picked up my bike thirteen hours after locking it up.

today has been even hotter with temperatures reaching thirty degrees. craving water, greenery and a breeze i took the train up to hertfordshire with my friend mathias and his pug sophie. half an hour’s walk brought us to the gravel pits where i now sit, surrounded by willows and oaks. we’ve spent the afternoon swimming and sunbathing in the swaying reeds listening to birdsong. this is my favourite swimming spot within an hour of london.

for a country boy like me, london in the summertime still has its charms.

: c :

[ 18:15 sunday 26 march 2017 – old ford lock ]

late last night elaine came round. we watched a 1970s documentary about the inhabitants of the (now demolished) tower blocks of hackney wick’s trowbridge estate then chatted about life and love. we both had things to do on sunday so around four in the morning we decided to call it a day. i accompanied elaine downstairs to see her off. as we reached the front door i observed a slight rhythmic vibration in the walls. somewhere nearby an unusually powerful sound system was playing. i suggested we should go and hunt it down. elaine concurred. i donned shoes and a jacket, turned off the lights. we went outside and locked the door.

coming out of the gate onto the dark towpath the sky was clear and, in the absence of street lamps, populated with more stars than the usual meagre london ration. the surface of the canal was inky smooth and black in the windless night. a swan grunted from its nest in the centre of the lock, protesting our disturbance of its sleep. straining our ears we followed the faint rhythmic sound of bass. we crossed the footbridge over the lock and proceeded down dace road. walking past the edwardian red-brick stables on the left and the construction hoardings on the right. there wasn’t anyone around. i was about to turn up bream street but elaine suggested the sound was coming from further down so we continued to smeed road. the bass increased in intensity. half a dozen people were huddled on the street outside one of the warehouses. elaine said “let’s see what the door charge is”. we approached and found the door open. we walked in.

over the years i’ve visited a lot of the warehouses in hackney wick but never this one. the pattern was familiar; a two-storey brick structure with a pitched roof of corrugated asbestos, the interior subdivided with stud and plywood to create a large open living space, kitchen, bathroom and several bedrooms. at first floor level a dozen bicycles were mounted on a rack. decorative gewgaws were displayed on the walls and floor. the kitchen area had been turned into a makeshift DJ booth with decks, a mixer and a tangle of electronics. a video projector played abstract images across the side wall. a laser scanned patterns like an oscilloscope. speakers were stacked two metres high in the corners opposite the DJ booth , explaining the vibrations we’d felt from the house. a hundred or so people were in there, ranging in age from twenty to forty .

elaine and i started to dance, weaving through the crowd until we found a welcoming space. after a few minutes we realised the music wasn’t being played from a recording, it was being generated by a curly-haired man working a suitcase-sized modular synthesiser with a mass of dials and patch cables. we kept trying to leave but it was too intoxicating. we stayed and danced until our limbs could dance no more.

experiences like this are what make me feel alive in london. the event itself was beautiful. there might only be half a dozen places in the world where one could encounter a live performance with a modular synthesiser like this. but the fact we walked out of the house and discovered it through pure serendipity is what makes it truly transcendent.

ten years ago it might have been commonplace to encounter something like this in hackney wick. but every month that passes brings the demolition of another warehouse to make way for a bland apartment block. nowadays each time i stumble across an event of this kind it requires an effort of will to appreciate its beauty straightforwardly without allowing myself to feel a sense of impending loss.

: c :