You're Frozen When Your Heart's Not Open

Bin's clothes on regent's canal
Originally uploaded by VelocityGrrrl

It's been a real pleasure walking up and down Regent's Canal this past week, the path nearly all to myself. The usual cyclists that love speeding down it as if their jobs were a matter of life and death clearly don't have the guts for a bit of deadly black ice. Sadly, though, the canal is now attracting people fascinated by its spontaneous ice rink quality, and this means that anything heavy, and preferably metallic, is game. First went old bottles, discarded toys and dismantled bicycles that lined the path or the nearby streets. Now they've started ripping off the garbage bins placed by benches. It brings out the Daily Mail reader in me. I was thinking today if maybe Singapore's iron-gloved right-wing government got it right: spit chewing gum on the pavement, pay up a hefty fine; vandalise public property, get caned and left with a nice red scar across your ass cheeks.

What bothers me is that London's canals could be cleaner, home to more fishes and wild plants. But they are littered instead with traffic cones, tires and all sorts of other garbage I often see people chucking into the water. I'd love to have the power of placing a spell on the canal: anything thrown into the water reappears in the person's bedroom. That might be a nicer, bleeding liberal heart way of solving the problem.

Tonight, I'm spending the evening in bed watching brasilian soap operas and reading. I'm hungover from a night out in Walthamstow, where neenaw, king_prawn and I drank the night away while playing a pub quiz. We came second place and won a bottle of white wine called Oliver something-or-other. I naturally had to have it.