Town Mouse

Tom Hodgkinson

For the Town Mouse stuck in the city, the canals can offer a breathing space. They meander quietly under the smelly main roads, minding their own business, attracting a mix of dog-walkers, cyclists, boozers and ducks. One moment you are rushing out of a tube station, dodging gigantic red buses, and the next, having walked through an inconspicuous gate and down a few steps, you are in a slowed-down world where boats move at walking speed.

My local canal in west London is the Grand Union. It was originally built in the late 18th century as a trade route between London and Birmingham. In other words, canals were built not to provide harried city-dwellers with a haven of calm but in order to increase the profits of speculators, the 18th-century equivalents of today’s Silicon Valley capitalists. The canal builders made money by charging tolls on boats carrying coal to canalside factories.

The canals continued to be used through the 19th century but, after the Second World War, went into decline. They are now used for holidays and low-cost housing solutions for divorced men.

I walk along the canal almost every day. After lunch, I stroll to Little Venice, which must be a prime spot for mooring, and Paddington. The towpaths are lined with narrowboats and you start to speculate on the lives going on inside them. One couple near my office have a private mooring with a deck and pot plants. On summer evenings, they are to be seen sitting at their table with a bottle of wine.

The canals can offer a sort of freedom to bohemian types who are not attracted by a life of wage slavery. The harmonica teacher at the Idler – the magazine and company I run – and our ukulele teacher live on narrowboats, one at Brentford and one at St Pancras. Living on a narrowboat means overheads are low. You either pay mooring fees and stay in one place, or you move every two weeks and live for free.

The names of the boats give an indication of the aspirations of the owners. There is one called Idler, and names such as Tranquillity are common. Some are neat as a pin: the roofs are covered with geraniums, herbs, solar panels and neat stacks of logs, and the paintwork is shiny.

Others are held together with bits of string and occasionally a crazed, hairy face will pop out. It is not uncommon to see lone males drinking cans of Stella Artois in the morning. Some of the boats are covered in blue tarpaulins to keep out the rain and you wonder about the conditions. Not long ago, I took the family on a canal-boat holiday and, cruising through Uxbridge, Boris Johnson’s constituency, we were struck by the number of surly alcoholics sitting on extremely ropy-looking set-ups.

So, one moment you are in heaven and the next you are in a desolate crime zone. In the morning, the towpath benches are surrounded by cans of lager and takeaway boxes. Under the A40 motorway near my office, there is a grimy stretch where you see sleeping bags and fag butts. Dog-walkers scoop their poops into bags and then leave the bags hanging in bushes. Graffiti artists create impressive works and dump aerosols.

Canals attract criminal behaviour. The local weed-smoking population enjoy a calming joint by the canal, and moped thieves and joyriders dump their cargo in it. The other day, I saw a brand-new bike half-submerged in the water under the bridge at Westbourne Park. Two years ago, a former art thief was found dead in the canal at Camden Town, his body strapped to a shopping trolley.

Other ne’er-do-wells are attracted to canal paths. I was quite shocked to see a bold rat poking his nose out of a bush along a section of the canal near Little Venice. My black Labrador had great fun chasing him.

Wild creatures make no judgements about the lifestyle of the human beings they live alongside, and the canals are home to a lot of birds who somehow – and almost tragically – eke out a life. I have seen swans, barnacle geese, mallards, moorhens and coots, all of whom seem happy to make their nests among the rubbish.

Is it a nice way to live? Well, on our five-day canal trip, we found that outside the urban jungle the scenery gets prettier and prettier, and there is great joy in moving – but moving very slowly.

We met dozens of retired couples who had handed their houses on to their children and taken up the peripatetic life. They were equipped with Wi-fi and sang the praises of being able to cruise down to Little Venice for two weeks for a holiday.

It is an attractive notion. A recent TV show starring oldies Timothy West and Prunella Scales, cruising the canals and getting shouted out by undesirables in Camden Town, was an unlikely hit.

But you’d have to be of a practical bent to live full-time on the canals. You need to keep the fire burning and look after the twelve-volt lighting systems. Toilets must be emptied, water tanks filled and repairs done. Our harmonica teacher is also a carpenter; so he is able to look after himself.

The canals and canal paths in cities are what a slightly pretentious pscyhogeographer might call the ‘edgelands’ or ‘otherzones’. It is here that marginal people, the misfits, can find a home. It is also here that the Town Mouse can find a taste of the country life.