I am pounding out the steps, buoyed by returning to an average of 10k in January and aiming for a new target of 11k for February.
On Wednesday, I recorded my first-ever 30,000 steps in the MyFitnessPal app. I’ve never done it before because I get bored walking after a while, but this week, I was helped by a lovely little guidebook called London’s Hidden Walks by Stephen Millar.
First 10k - To Kings Cross
I walked from South London, through covent garden and up to lunch in Granary Yard, Kings Cross.
Five reasons you should visit St Pancras Old Church
Nearby I visited St Pancras Old Church - and it was a find. It’s arguably the oldest church in London (314AD). In the 6th century AD, St Augustine may have used the altar. During the English civil war, it was occupied by Parliamentarian troops in 1642.
Firstly, the Beatles took their ‘mad day out’ while recording the White album in 1968 here.
Secondly, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) got married here. Mary is one of those historical figures you want at your fantasy dinner party. I love her so much that I campaigned to get her a statue (more on this victorious campaign here).
Thirdly, Mary Wollstonecraft is also buried here. Mary died giving birth to her daughter, Mary Godwin (1797-1851). While visiting her mother’s grave, a poet spotted Mary. The married Percy Shelley Byshe fell head over heels in love with her instantly.
After his wife’s death, Percy and Mary were ostracised by London Society and, in 1816, took refuge at the home of Lord Byron in Geneva. Whilst there, Byron held a competition for his house guests to write the best ghost story.
Despite Byron and Percy being literary giants, the winners were Mary, who wrote Frankenstein and Byron’s doctor, John William Polidori, who wrote Vampyre.
Polodidori is also buried in the graveyard. So you can say that this little church’s graveyard is at the epicentre of the Gothic Horror genre we know today.
Fourthly, Charles Dickens wrote about the graveyard in Great Expectations as a location for body snatching. Graveyard bodies are featured in the life of another great literary figure, Thomas Hardy.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the growing rail network cut through the graveyard leading to complaints that corpses were left strewn around the construction site.
A young Hardy was put in charge of tidying up the burial ground. He was left traumatised when he discovered a rotting corpse with two heads in one of the coffins. Until the winter storms there was the famous Hardy tree, whose roots were entwined around a mound of gravestones.
Fifthly and finally, to re-enforce its Gothic Horror heritage, the church, which celebrates its Anglo-Catholic traditions, was desecrated by Satanists in 1985.
The next 10k - glorious Camden
I’ve hazy memories of Camden from the eighties, nineties and naughties, mainly the pubs and the hi-jinx within them. Many of them have a fine music history.
The Good Mixer was Britpop Central in the early nineties, having to ban one of its more famous regulars, Liam Gallagher.
The World’s End pub became the scene of a momentous day of drinking when I first moved down to London in 1984. It’s also where years later, I serendipitously sat next to Amy Winehouse for an afternoon before she became internationally famous.
The Dublin Castle, with its Indie tradition, was the pub where the mighty Madness made a name for themselves.
Yet the cultural history of Camden is deeper and richer than this. When they walk down Arlington Road, most people will not know that Arlington House, which supports the homeless, accommodated George Orwell in the 1930s, who wrote about it in Down and Out in Paris and London.
Patrick Kavanagh stayed in the House and wrote of it in his autobiography, The Green Fool:
Many Irish boys made Rowton House, Camden Town, first stop from Mayo. The soft voices of Mayo and Galway sounding in that gaunt, impersonal place fell like warm rain on the arid patches of my imagination.
These boys were true peasants. They walked with an awkward gait and were shy. To me they looked up as to a learned man and asked me questions I couldn’t answer.
Madness wrote about it in One Better Day:
Arlington house, address: no fixed abode
An old man in a three-piece suit sits in the road
He stares across the water, he sees right through the lock
But on and up like outstretched hands
His mumbled words, his fumbled words, mock
Not far from the World’s End pub is a house where Charles Dickens used to live. I couldn’t find it, but it has a blue plaque. Down from the World’s end, I often fell into Camden palace and enjoyed its dilapidated glory. That won’t happen again as the building has transformed into Koko, a cultural venue connecting art and music. It’s magnificent.
The last 10k was a walk back to south London via Bradley’s Spanish Bar - my favourite pub of all time, after the much-missed Prince Albert in Kidderminster.
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Listening
BBC Last Word is one of my favourite programmes on Radio 4. This week’s episode is particularly poignant as I knew two subjects, Burt Bacharach and Janet Anderson. Janet is a former parliamentary colleague. Labour friends will realise she was an exceptional person. Many of us were shocked and saddened to hear of her death. I’ve been thinking about her husband Jim and family.
Love will tear us apart by CK McDonnell is excellent in the audiobook format and very easy listening.
Watching
The Gold. The Guardian describes this as a 24-carat drama about one of the UK’s most shocking robberies. It’s a perfect replacement for Happy Valley.
If you’re quoting from this newsletter, please mention “Tom Watson’s newsletter on Substack.” Thank you.
The epicentre of Gothic Horror
Great issue Tom, love a London walk! One thing on Koko though: it is a magnificent building but much of it is off limits unless you're a paying member and the redevelopment was funded by Vevil, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands and owned by the Russian-born Belgian oligarch, Vladimir Zemtsov. The same company tried to evict Corbin & King from the Wolseley and just succeeded in pushing Curzon Cinema out of that iconic Mayfair building. Wish there was a happier thing to say about that, but it's not a great state of affairs. More here: https://londoninbits.substack.com/p/the-curse-of-the-curzon-635
I always enjoy your newsletter, Tom. Your Gothic walk is now on my blog, with acknowledgement to your newsletter. I was particularly interested as it links to my review of The Movie Lovers Guide to London that also provides information about fascinating London walks. I have just finished a Nicci French novel that refers to the Hardy Tree, still erect, which made another connection. I am accustomed to making political connections, but this was also a great read!