After London

I don't know when I first noticed that our next door neighbour’s rose has a bud on it. Around the New Year, I think. It is the kind of rose that has a second flowering in the autumn; still, I have never seen it in bud in January before. The bud is still there, still pinky white, though browning at the edges now. I do not think it will open.

Yesterday we went for another muddy walk, or rather, a stroll: in Aylestone water meadows, on the outskirts of Leicester. Where we found a king cup flowering (marsh marigold to some); more than a month before I would normally have expected to see this.

Here in the English Midlands, autumn has merged imperceptibly into spring, with only one light fall of snow and a mild frost or two to gesture towards the possibility of winter.

From today’s Guardian: ‘The world's scientists yesterday gave their starkest warning yet that a failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions will bring devastating climate change within a few decades.’

As a child, I once read a piece about the prophecies of Thomas the Rhymer. I think it was probably a tailpiece to some retelling of his journey to Elfland. The writer noted cheerily that some of the prophecies ascribed to him by tradition had never been fulfilled, and quoted one of them:

     York was, London is, and Edinburgh shall be
     The biggest and bonniest o’ the three.

I remember cudgelling my young brains over this, and concluding with some regret – since I always wanted to believe in wonders – that Thomas must have got it wrong. I lived in Greater London. London was vast, and growing more or less visibly all the time. There was no chance, none at all, that Edinburgh could ever catch up. It never occurred to me for one minute that London might disappear.

The Victorians, famously, believed in progress, and bequeathed that optimistic faith to the twentieth century. What we need now is to look with clear eyes at where that has brought us and take an equally firm mental hold on the importance of, and potential for, damage limitation.

The Victorian writer who is on my mind a lot at the moment is Richard Jefferies. If he was a believer in progress at all, you certainly wouldn’t tell it from his novel After London. This may have been the first ever post-disaster sf novel, though I am open to correction on that. It is an interesting read, though the story never really arrives anywhere. Jefferies, mainly a nature writer by trade, was better at description than narrative.

***

Now the most striking difference between the country as we know it and as it was known to the ancients is the existence of the great Lake in the centre of the island. From the Red Rocks (by the Severn) hither, the most direct route a galley can follow is considered to be about two hundred miles in length, and it is a journey which often takes a week even for a vessel well manned, because the course, as it turns round the islands, faces so many points of the compass, and therefore the oarsmen are sure to have to labour in the teeth of the wind, no matter which way it blows.

Many parts are still unexplored, and scarce anything known of their extent, even by repute. ... Yet the Lake cannot really be so long and broad as it seems, for the country could not contain it. The length is increased, almost trebled, by the islands and shoals, which will not permit of navigation in a straight line. For the most part, too, they follow the southern shore of the mainland, which is protected by a fringe of islets and banks from the storms which sweep over the open waters.

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Richard Jefferies (1848–1887)

from After London or Wild England (1885)


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