Читать книгу The Groundwater Diaries: Trials, Tributaries and Tall Stories from Beneath the Streets of London - Tim Bradford - Страница 11

A while back I miraculously had a bit of money to burn and decided to buy a flat in Hackney before I spent it all in the local pub. I didn’t really need the flat – I was already happily settled somewhere else – it was just greed. The theory was simple: buy something in a cheapish part of town, make some money on it, then sell and get a bigger place. Instant capitalism. Fast cars. Cigars. Shiny jewellery. Gadgets. Swimming pools full of beer. Beatles box sets. Er, big lorry loads of boiled lobsters. Hand-crafted living room furniture made of pasta ….

There were two flaws in my plan. First of all. I am Britain’s most useless fuckwit capitalist. Secondly, the man I’d chosen to be my expert from the world of property was a Dickensian character in a shiny suit called Phil from a disreputable Hackney estate agents (let’s call them Greed & Shite) who had, seemingly, come through a Narniaesque wardrobe from the Victorian era while searching for castiron Empire paper clips, and liked it so much he never went back. Through some outrageous personality quirk, Phil would manage to skirt me around the obvious and plentiful bargains of the area for enough time until prices went up so quickly that I was priced out of the market.

When I told Phil’s boss my upper limit, he did an Elvis-type sneer with a little quiet laugh, then got out an old dusty file called Mugpunter Ramshackle One-Bedroomed Hovels That Haven’t Been Modernised Since The Thirties. There was this little place on Mare Street, Hackney’s central thoroughfare, that I really liked the look of. One bedroom, arched windows. I tried to look at it several times but Phil kept producing blocking manoeuvres. I’d phone up and say ‘Can I speak to Phil?’ and he’d say ‘Phil speaking,’ and I’d go ‘Hi, it’s Mr Bradford. I’d like to view the property in Mare Street,’ and he’d say “‘Ello Chinese laundry no understandee wrong number,’ and put the phone down. Or he’d just play dumb. Eventually I got to see it with a crowd of about six other people. Phil informed me that the price had now gone up by six grand. How is that possible in six weeks, I argued.

‘That’s the market, innit.’

That’s the market, innit. In some way that encapsulated everything I hated about capitalism. Unthinking drones in shiny suits mouthing the ideology of their dad or boss thinking they’re being somehow radical and exciting. This is Hackney, for fuck’s sake. Take it or leave it, Mr Bradford. He then also informed me that I’d have to enter a contract race and I decided, at that moment, to renounce capitalism, forget about buying a flat and becoming a property magnate and concentrate on walking my daughter though the park, racing the old blokes in electric wheelchairs and laughing at it all.

Of course the flat is now worth twice as much. But I never liked the Beatles that much anyway. Shame about the lobsters though.

1 Tallis’s Illustrated Plan of London & its Environs (1851)

2 In The Lost Rivers of London, Nicholas Barton tells us Hackney Brook is now ‘wholly lost’ but at one stage was a large stream which at flood could reach widths of 100 foot.

3 I expect that those lyrics have made their way into the Danish National Anthem by now. King of Denmark: Lave de skylde os en nulevende? Selvfolgelig de lave Selvfølgelig de lave. Lave de skylde os en nulevende? Selvfolgelig de [fucking] lave.

4 When we were kids we had a room that we used to cover in graffiti and drawings then, when the walls were full up, my parents would give us a tin of white paint and tell us to paint over it so we could start again. Like some weird communist job creation scheme.

6 Possibly an obscure relation of top centreforward, Les, who played for Spurs.

7 She walked down from Manor House, one imagines to buy drugs or procure a prostitute.