I’ve been reading an advance copy of Iain
Sinclair’s London Overground, an
account of a one-day, fourteen hour walk around what’s now widely referred to
as the Ginger Like – a circular (or at least more or less joined up) rail
network around the middle distance suburbs of Greater London, places like Rotherhithe, Peckham Rye,
West Brompton; all places I’ve been to, but seldom more than once.
Sinclair walks with the engagingly eccentric film maker Andrew Kötting– a
man who sounds more fun to read about (or write about) than actually to walking with, but a
great character to have in your book. They
enter a “fancy junk shop” in Lavender Hill where Kötting describes Sinclair for
the benefit of the shop owner:
“This man’s sources are innumerable.
His erudition is profound. And
truth to tell, a mite tedious.”
Of course it’s Sinclair reporting these words and possibly putting
them in Kötting’s mouth; pretty funny either way.
Kötting buys
a copy of Bruce Chatwin’s What Am I Doing
Here?. (Sinclair puts in a question mark, the book itself doesn't). Sinclair flips through and
finds the quotation “Man’s real home is not a house, but the Road and how life
itself is a journey to be walked on foot.” Sinclair says, “I thought the
capitalization or ‘Road’ was a little pretentious.”
I’d say my
objection was to “life itself is a journey.” I’d have thought Bruce could have done better
than that.
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