What a book...chapters on various night happenings in London. Sharing secrets and exploring myths, writing about his various encounters with the London night and its keepers.Most of which are jobs which at first glance seem pretty mundane, of which you wouldn't normally think about, of which you just expect to happen or be.
Written so well, and at such great detail, he creates such a rapport with the various Londoners, be it taxi driver or 'flusher', that makes me envious of what they get to see in their everyday lives that is hidden from us 'normal' folk.
My favourite chapter, and most relevant to the research i am doing at the moment,
'A partial burial, Flushers'
Flushers, a dying breed (a couple of decades there were over 300 and now only 39)' of sewer workers who go down the sewers of London everyday to unclog the mountains of fat that builds up.
Some of my favourites...
'These Styx-dwellers man handle everything that its inhabitants have abandoned and forgotten.'
(On senses)
'The darkness of the sewers has the effect of amplifying and intensifying sounds. Ears need to work as hard as eyes to aid navigation through the curving tunnels that create an echolalia at once consoling (any cries for help will reverberate for a long time) and terrifying (scary, inexplicable noises will reverberate for a long time)'
'All flushers are lucky once in a while...happen across something glimmering among the shit: chains, diamond rings, gold sovereigns'
'At a time when gentrification is eroding much of the texture and historical gristle that made London what it was, is and should be, the sewers encourage necessary speculations about the existence of secret tunnels, through time as well as space, that might lead civilians to a parallel metropolis - Arnos Grove-meets-Atlantis, Snaresbrook-on-Shangri-La -in which a richer, deeper urbanism flourishes'
The idea of escaping reality - that there could be a tunnel leading us somewhere unknown - somewhere better? A utopia or lost land or just uncharted. An exciting prospect.