In these hidden corners I also saw great shoals of chub and bream, a giant carp slurping at scum in a neglected drain, barbel furrowing away. Abandoned behind railway fences, on the edge of playing fields, anonymously skirting business units, I found places I had never imagined possible, a parallel world. Curtained by trees, fish-shadowed, a channel between the park-and-ride and the dump became a tributary of the Amazon. I saw mink, roe deer, water rails, kingfishers, sandpipers, the debris of fish and clams eaten by otters, all within the bounds of the city.įrom the water, everything looked different. I'd come home covered in mud and duckweed, scratched to ribbons and thrilled to be alive. I dragged my kayak out of the water and through the branches of fallen trees.
I stumbled across cannabis gardens and camouflaged shelters where fugitives lived. I found backwaters no one had navigated for years. I pushed through rush-choked channels scarcely wider than my boat. Though wrung from the ground, the water is still there, forced into a labyrinth of drains and feeders, most of them unknown, overgrown, blocked by rubbish and fallen trees. As soon as I sat in it, I felt I belonged there. I bought an old kayak for a tenner and dragged it down to the Thames. Walking by a stream one day, I realised that the land might be dead but the water was alive. At weekends I'd explore the city's green spaces or cycle into the countryside, but I found only sterility: pasteurised parks, perfect rows of rape and wheat, woods picked clean by pheasants. I was heartsick, dried up, deprived of nature. Living in Oxford without a car, I felt throttled by the ring road, the city's concrete necklace.
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