The bridges of London, Part III
By Bill Gallacher, March 9, 2007


The conclusion of the writer's journey up the Thames in search of the essence of Great Britain.

As far as the river is concerned, historic London pretty much ends at Westminster Bridge and Westminster Abbey. Up-river, the bridges are more widely spaced apart, and the walkways between them much more garden-like. With fewer landmarks to take in, and a stubborn head wind to counter, I need something to think about. The nature of celebrity in the United Kingdom might do. Fueled by a ribald and sensationalist media, we are certainly just as guilty as the Americans of creating celebrities out of nonentities. But there are differences. In television news here, for example, there is much less of the cloying, syrupy, familiarity that bedevils programming in America, where people who scarcely know each other feel obliged to repeat each other’s first names with nauseating regularity. As far as the press goes, we really have nothing quite on the level of the National Enquirer, though we do like our own brand of titillation. The British tabloid press, after feasting for years on Royal Family scandals, is suffering t
hrough a bit of a famine. The Queen remains mum about Helen Mirren’s film portrayal of her quirky side, while Charles seems to have slipped into a non-controversial domesticity with Camilla, putting years of torment behind him. A Royal Commission has just published a definitive report on Diana’s death, dispelling all doubts of conspiracy, while Al Fayed, the owner of Harrods, remains predictably implacable. Gossip commentators are now focused on Diana’s sons, William and Harry, but all attempts to dig up dirt there have hit upon stony ground. Even the battling McCartneys are enjoying a truce of sorts. In this barren landscape, sports celebrities have pretty much taken over the front pages. Soccer is big here, really big. In relative terms, bigger than football, baseball, and basketball all rolled into one. Although presently domiciled in Spain, there is still no bigger act than the “Becks”─ comprising fading Real Madrid soccer star, David Beckham, and his not-so-fading Spice Girl wife, Victoria. At least this 
pair has the looks to carry off the part. The same can hardly be said of the Beckham’s usurpers, twenty-year-old soccer star, Wayne Rooney, an undisciplined Liverpool ruffian with a face that only a mother could love and his equally chav and unphotogenic girlfriend, whose spending habits are alleged to dwarf even those of infamously profligate Heather McCartney. The Christmas stores are full of soccer-star autobiographies. Both Beckham and Rooney are there, of course, along with a host of lesser lights, the likes of Steve, Frank and Rio, who somehow imagine themselves (wrongly) to be such household names that they have the public recognition of Madonna. But guess what? The public isn’t buying it. We might thrill to watch them playing soccer, but no one, it seems, is interested in seeing them posing with mum in a Brighton pub, or building sandcastles as kids at Margate, far less their opinions on any subject other than soccer. They have all been rightfully remaindered before Christmas. Even Beckham’s story is 
going for half-price. Not that he has anything to worry about, having just agreed to join an outfit in Los Angeles for some unimaginable salary, in another doomed attempt to popularise soccer in an already sports-satiated market.

South-west of the unremarkable Lambeth and Vauxhall Bridges, the southwestern skyline is dominated by Battersea Power Station, which is in the process of being converted into some kind of commercial mall complex. With its four huge stacks protruding from an equally huge rectangular base, it resembles a gigantic upturned table. (I seem to recall it on the surreal cover of a Pink Floyd album, surrounded by flying pigs). When it comes to the present-day surreal, it would be hard to surpass the two murder mysteries that have held the British public in thrall these past few weeks. When I landed here in early December, the news was dominated by the killing of an ex-KGB man living in London, the murder weapon being a radio active isotope smuggled into the country from Russia. But this news was abruptly eclipsed by the emergence of a serial killer—now dubbed variously as the Suffolk Ripper (though no ripping of his victims has taken place) or the Suffolkator—who has been on a murder spree in a provincial town just ea
st of London. The British have always been fascinated by serial killers, especially if the victims happen to be prostitutes. The most notorious of all prostitute-killers was Jack the Ripper, a never-identified nor apprehended butcher, who terrorized the citizenry by disembowelling his victims in the murky days of 1890s London. Since that time, the “ripper” suffix has been popularly attached to any crime spree involving multiple murders of women, much the same way as “gate” is now affixed to any kind of cover-up scandal that surfaces in the US.

It began with the discovery of the naked body of a heroin-addicted prostitute in woodlands near the town of Ipswich, followed in rapid succession by the discoveries of four more. Most peculiar was the lack of evidence of any violent struggles, nor any clear evidence of cause of death. Strange indeed, but even stranger, was the intrusion of television reporting, which turned the police investigation into a kind of warped reality show. The fourth victim was actually interviewed on the streets, still “working,” after the first three bodies were found, before turning up, herself, in the same condition two days later. The police were completely baffled and came under tremendous public pressure to solve the crime. A man who protested his innocence, but claimed to know all five women “intimately,” sold his story to a Sunday tabloid —and was promptly arrested the following day.

We, the public, simply could not get enough of it. And the freezing fog that descended over the country only seemed to shroud the killings in more mystery. Predictably, as the investigation continued, we were introduced, via the “telly,” to a sorry parade of low-life boyfriends and family relations, all seeking their fifteen minutes of television exposure, and all protesting shock and disbelief that “she could have been working the streets.” The father of one of the girls, when asked his reaction, claimed—not surprisingly—to be utterly gobsmacked by the news. Some of the newspaper headlines truly boggled belief: LEAVE US ALONE. YOU’VE DONE ENOUGH screamed a headline in the Daily Mirror, as if the perpetrator had done nothing more than steal a few cabbages from somebody’s back garden. A few days after the first arrest, a second man was arrested and charged, and the first man released (doubtless having achieved his goal of goading the police into arresting him so he could sell his story to the Daily Mail). 

According to the police, the alleged perpetrator was tracked down with the help of a battery of CCTV cameras with extensive coverage of Ipswich’s “red-light” district. (It is a sad fact that Britain is now the most extensively camera-monitored country in the world, having basically given up traditional policing or crime-prevention measures in favour of crime-detection). As is common with an alleged serial killer, those who know him well are protesting the utter impossibility of his guilt: “Absolutely normal chap. Me and the wife, we went on holiday with ‘im to Portugal,” says one. “Out of the question. Such a good golfer. Sometimes plays 36 holes a day,” says another, as if golf and serial-killing were completely incompatible pastimes. His ex-wives, however, who implied that they had sometimes found themselves on the wrong end of his pitching wedge, expressed less surprise. It is shaping up as the trial of the century.

Ever hear of the Prince of Whales? No, it’s not a misspelling, but the name Londoners affectionately dubbed a bottle-nosed whale that in January 2006 lost its bearings in the North Sea and headed up the Thames. I have now come as far as the Albert Bridge (1873), widely regarded as London’s prettiest, and the farthest point up-river that the whale managed to reach. It was the scene of a massive rescue attempt witnessed by thousands who lined the river banks, an attempt that unfortunately failed, since the whale, starved of its staple food, deep-sea squid, literally starved to death. An autopsy revealed that in weeks it had only managed to consume a single potato scavenged from the river bed, and even that had proven indigestible. As soon as it entered the Thames, the whale was doomed, even had it managed to dodge river traffic. Not only was there no food—there are fish in the Thames now, but not, it seems, to the taste of the Prince of Whales—but the massive water-level fluctuations must have massively confuse
d the whale. The river being tidal, there is a very substantial current upstream on the flow, and an even more substantial current downstream on the ebb. But these currents essentially cancel each other out, as evidenced by the great loops in the river’s course, for the Thames is basically a very lazy, meandering thing, dropping only a few feet in net height over the course of tens of miles. They say if you throw something that floats into the Thames, it will take weeks to get to the open sea, even as it covers great distances, twice a day, going back and forth with the tides.

With dusk closing in, I have made it to Putney Bridge, the starting point of the famed Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race. I am still a few miles shy of Kew Bridge, but I see little point in pressing on in the dark. In summer, it would have been a breeze, but the wind, the rain, and the all-too-brief daylight have been too much, and Kew is a bridge too far—actually, if you count Hammersmith, Barnes and Chiswick, it is four bridges too far. So much for the Guinness Book of Records. Honourable mention in the Ministry of Silly Walks will have to suffice.

For all its outrageous gouging, I do have to admit that there is something about London. Maybe Sam was right after all: When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life. I just wish they would stop playing so fast and loose with the language. I can’t keep up. If the Queen lives long enough, we may one day hear her “wishing my naff, shambolic subjects a gobsmacking Merry Christmas. Don’t discount it. Anything is possible in the Scepter’d Isle.

[Editor’s note: Don’t throw a strop…if the British terminology is baffling you see the Travel feature in the March 2 issue of Atención at www.atencionsanmiguel.org.