At almost the same place on Clerkenwell Road this morning and again at 9.30pm I got a definite trembling in my hip. Like a mobile phone vibrating in my pocket, except my phone was turned off in my bag.
I have been getting strong impulses to go a particular way on walks to and from work. Impulses I can’t refuse. Last night I was virtually pushed away from my usual route along Fetter and Leather Lane, my legs just wouldn’t permit me to go that way. I ended up being drawn beneath the Blade Runner office blocks of Shoe Lane and into Farringdon Road. I took photos on my phone and sent them to my sister with cryptic clues as to the location. She was allowed to use The London Compendium and the A-Z.
Tonight though I had no problems taking a minor deviation down Hatton Garden, one of London’s most alluring streets. In daytime there’s a mixture of builders, jewellers counting the diamonds rings in their shop windows, young couples looking for engagement rings and great hunks of men in dark suits providing protection. The transactions that take place in this non-descript looking Lane must run into the millions. But twenty yards away in Leather Lane street traders knock out bargain priced designer copies and cheap bags of dried fruit. At night Hatton Garden is full of mystery.
Walking down there my head was still spinning from all the conspiracy sites I’d been reading about the London bombings. They’re rubbish of course but they’ve tuned me into the malevolence I sensed abroad in the city after 7th July. It’s still there. It’s not just the nutcases with bombs in their backpacks but the shooting of that poor lad at Stockwell Station by the Police and the sanctimonious droning of Tony Blair.
Of course the conspiracy theorists and the establishment always forget about the power of the street, the unpredictable force of the mob, the echoes from the past pulsing up through the pavement.
