Rivers of Ireland? Story 1: The River at the bottom of my garden: 3 inter-dimensional portals and a goddess
Ok. Try this for size. I suppose you could say that the whole basis of Aaronovitch's world in that there is magic just out of sight for most of us and that you can sense it if you just take the time to experience the vestigial. The submerged rivers of London are both characters in their own right and a metaphor for the magic.
In that vein, I'm going to describe some stuff. I'm not going to say I believe in the magic (I don't) but I'm going to hint at the vestigia and sometimes give the prosaic explanations too. I'm not going to attempt to imitate Aaronovitch's writing. The experiences and places and people are real, even if I've made small adjustments. I could take you to the places, show you the sights and you would experience some of the experiences. Whether or not you experienced the vestigia would be inside your own head.
Story 1 - The River at the bottom of my garden: 3 inter-dimensional portals and a goddess
I remember when you were over, oh so long ago, I took you to look into the field at the back of my house. I don't remember if I took you down to the river. Getting into the field used to be inconvenient. I had to walk down the road a hundred yards or so to reach the gate and then walk back to reach the back of the hedge of my own property. Well, now there is a better way.
This is one of a few good things to come out of COVID. Every year I trim the hedges around the boundary of my plot. It takes me a while because there is such a long boundary and so much hedge. And of course, Leylandii is what Kevin McCloud describes as "a horticultural thug". At the back of the house, I trim the back of the hedge on the field side too, because if I don't, the bits I can't reach from my side become a straggly ugly mess. I used to do this last because it involved walking down the road to the gate etc carrying the petrol hedge-trimmer.
Mid Covid, I set about trimming the hedge. This was one of the things I was allowed to do. Nobody, ever said I couldn't wander around inside my own boundary. The hedge was a job which needed doing, so I did it. In the back of my mind I must have been thinking about the back of the hedge.
You know how it is when you notice something which has been there all the time in plain sight? Well that's what happened to me. I was cutting the hedge in the far corner of my garden, next to the boundary with my neighbour on that side, when I noticed that the hedge was less dense that I expected. There seemed to be a hedge plant missing and I could see a concrete fence post, complete with diagonal to take the strain, which created a sort-of gateway with the corner post between me and my neighbours. I pointed all this out to Nnnn and said "you know, I think I could go through there and it would make access to the back of the hedge much easier".
So we agreed, and I cut away the hedge and removed a piece of chain-link fencing (there is a chain-link fence, fronted by the hedge), and Bob's your uncle, there was a gateway. This was a job which, amazingly, went much easier than anyone expected. The (prosaic) explanation is that when my house was being built, the builders put up the boundary chain-link fence but left a gateway (complete with concrete sill!) in the corner for ease of access (they didn't want the problem I had encountered with walking along the road to the gate). When they were almost finished they had sealed the gate with a separate piece of fencing and planted the hedge. They'd been a bit economical with hedging plants in that corner but eventually the branches from two plants reached out towards each other and the closed the gap. It became invisible. All I had done was expose something which had been there all along. Surprisingly, there was a short pathway through a piece of natural hedgerow (not Leylandii) outside my boundary, where my neighbours had been taking their dogs out to walk in the field. By that time we'd been in the house for about twenty years and this was the first time we had noticed! The hedge is that thick!
After I had removed the piece of chain-link fence and done a very little bit of trimming I was left with an empty gateway between two concrete posts about 3 feet apart leading through a thick Leylandii hedge which is about 6 feet high. At the foot of the gateway is a short length of concrete kerb which the builders had installed as a door sill. They had really gone to that much trouble to make a proper gateway before eventually sealing it up. I filled the gateway with a simple low wicket gate constructed from pallet wood, liberally doused in creosote and closed with a bolt. Simples! The gate opens onto a short pathway (barely 6 feet long) through a natural hedgerow, leading from my neighbours land, outside my boundary, into the field.
With the gate finished, I cut the back of the hedge at the bottom of the garden. What a difference the gate made! No more lugging the petrol hedge clipper all that way, throwing a cable over the hedge and using electric tools practical and forgetting a pair of loppers and having to go back for them was no longer a disaster. The job got done very quickly indeed. Only, a man's work is never done. Nnnnn didn't like being able to see the neighbours going to and fro to walk the dogs, and actually neither did I. There was something obtrusive about it. I like them, they get on with me, but I didn't want to see them and I didn't want them looking into the back garden. After a little thought, I constructed a high but very lightweight hurdle to put in front of our side of the little wicket gate. I fronted the hurdle with a piece of trellis with artificial greenery. The effect was miraculous! The gate was now invisible. The plastic leaves blended in with the evergreen hedge.
Time passes. I now go through the hedge and walk down to the river at least once a week, often several times. The gateway starts by being "invisible". Even for me, it doesn't stand out from the hedge. From the field side it is almost invisible too, and the eye is drawn from it by the route into my neighbours garden. The neighbours don't mind, the farmer doesn't know and the agricultural contractors who cut the grass for silage don't care. The cattle, when they are there, don't even notice. There is something magical about the process of going through the hedge. I start in front of the plastic greenery, remove that, go through the wicket gate, unfasten and refasten behind me a flap of square wire fencing and then duck under a single, almost invisible, length of galvanised wire at waist height and I'm in the field. Four, barriers in quick succession, two of them almost invisible. It's like parting curtains, one after another.
Each walk down to the river is an experience because the field and the river are changing constantly with the weather and with the seasons. I'm a good boy, so I usually walk round by the field boundary. Even going that long way round it's a short slow walk, 5 minutes at most, down a gentle slope to the bottom corner where the ground gets soft. The margin between the river and the field is marked by native trees: rowan and alder. In the summer and autumn my view of the river is obscured by a screen of bracken. Now in the winter I can see across the river. The water flows clear (but not too clear, the summer day when the water flowed "gin clear" is a different, bad and sad, story). In May the air is filled with May flies and in high summer damsels dance and flirt. There are several places where, if I am fortunate, I may glimpse the goddess. There she lies, lithe and elegant, facing upstream, sinuous limbs and muscular back, emerald green hair streaming down her back. Her skin is golden, mottled dark like a toad or lizard. In the summer she wears white flowers in her hair. I have never yet seen her face. I long for and fear what I might see.
Walking along the bank the atmosphere changes. The air becomes calm. The sounds of the road, far away, always quiet are silenced altogether and replaced by the whispering of the river. If I look towards my house it is no longer visible, even thought the line of sight is clear. I have passed into another world adjoining our own but separated from it.
Continuing along the river bank I climb a gentle slope to a point where the river margin widens to become a riparian woodland. As I climb, unexpectedly, the house becomes visible again just as I reach the boundary of the wood.
The prosaic explanation of the strange and perfectly real effects of the change in atmosphere and sound and the house being invisible are due to the lie of the land. The slope of the field is sort-of "s" shaped creating an effect like a ha-ha. There is a flat area near the river which is completely obscured from the top and you are not even aware of what you cannot see. You could pitch a small tent, and a man standing would be invisible from the top. The goddess in the river is the light on the broken limestone of the river bottom, illuminated by dappled light through the trees. Her flowing hair is water-weed growing from the river bottom.
The entrance to the woodland is another multi-layered gateway. First there is an electric fence wire to duck under, then a galvanised trip wire to recognise, avoid and step over, and finally the remains of a collapsed fence to avoid. This brings you into a vestibule or anteroom from where you can look down on the rapids which are quite loud or forward, through trees to a well-trodden pathway which forks down to the river beach or forwards along a terrace into dense woodland. And every gateway should have a guardian, and this one is guarded by Lala (yes, the Teletubby), perched in a tree, who has been watching over this path since before I have known of its existence. If I were remaking this as real fiction, I think I would replace Lala with an animal skull.
