I didn’t answer her the first time she had asked, so it struck me as odd that she would persist. I got up from the bench and left her without saying a word. I headed back towards Hackney. I was sure she was still asking the same question over and over and over again as I walked away.
I was hungry.
two
The very next day, instead of walking to work, I headed back to the bench. Before I got to my bench, I noticed a sign fixed to the railings along the walk-way up to the estate. It was a British Waterways London sign. An official Towpath Code of Conduct. Beneath this heading was a list of dos and don’ts. Some of them seemed quite petty, but on the whole, the sign seemed to make sense. Up on the wall, it looked quite threatening.
British Waterways London
Towpath Code of Conduct
Pedestrians have priority
Considerate cycling permitted
Give way at bridges
Be careful at bends & entrances
Cyclists:
Ring with two tings
Pass people slowly
Give people space
Pedestrians:
Listen for two tings
Allow people to pass
I found the word tings amusing. I decided to sit on the bench and see if any of the numerous cyclists that passed me by would adhere to the two tings rule. Most of the cyclists who passed me by, weaving in and out of those people walking along the towpath, ignored the rule and certainly didn’t consider the well-being of those around them. And those who did ting their bells often tinged their bells more than four or five times, waiting until they were right up behind the pedestrian before doing this. This caused most pedestrians to jump; to get annoyed and mutter obscenities. It didn’t take me long to observe that there was a lot of ill feeling between the cyclists and pedestrians: a sort of passive-aggressive turf warfare was in progress. I wasn’t going to interfere.
The Canada geese were in full cry — as were the coots. I liked my spot across from the flat-screen monitors and superfluous balconies. I liked being bored — I liked what it was doing to me. The word “boring” is usually used to denote a lack of meaning — an acute emptiness. But the weight of boredom at that precise moment was almost overwhelming, it sure as hell wasn’t empty of anything; it was tangible—it had meaning.
It was important for me to be sitting on that bench. I pondered this conclusion for about an hour or so. It felt good — so good, in fact, that I hadn’t noticed the young woman who had joined me. I glanced to my right: blue. She was wearing blue. She had brown hair — medium-length and of no particular style. I caught a light whiff of her scent in the breeze: she smelt clean, as though she had just stepped out of the shower. She stared straight ahead, motionless, silent. I smiled.
Two hours later we were both still sitting on the bench. We hadn’t even acknowledged each other — although it was obvious she was aware that I was aware of her. And then, suddenly, without making a sound, she got up from the bench and walked away, towards Hackney. I remember that this pleased me: Not the fact that she was walking away, but that she was heading back towards Hackney and not Islington. I hold a lot of ill-feeling towards Islington. It’s not my kind of place — no matter how hard it tries. If I was an estate agent then maybe I would feel at home — but I’m not an estate agent.
three
Little by little, yet another pattern was beginning to emerge in my life. It was between 8:30 and 9:00 in the morning, and once again I was to be found sitting on the bench. This time I was fully aware when she arrived one hour or so later. I had spent the time waiting for her to arrive — not that I knew she would — thinking about the dredgers. They still hadn’t visited this section of the canal, although they had been at work farther down towards Angel at the wharf, and scum and debris was beginning to fill up the stretch between the rusting iron bridge and the whitewashed office block. I had already counted twelve empty beer bottles float by, maybe ten or eleven crisp packets of various description, four or five bits of wood, one milk carton, and about sixteen plastic bottles. Scum was beginning to settle by the moss growing up the whitewashed building at the water’s edge. Things were beginning to look a mess.
I wanted to see them, the dredgers. I wanted to see them in action. I wanted to see what they might find buried in the thick sludge. I got up off the bench and walked to the bank. I peered down. I couldn’t even see my own reflection in the water — let alone what was down there, below the surface. I felt aggrieved by their no-show. I contemplated contacting British Waterways London, or maybe Hackney or Islington council to see if an emergency dredger team could be deployed immediately. But I didn’t own a mobile phone — I had thrown the last one I owned into the dustbin in disgust — so I was unable to phone for the number. I would have even paid the extra charge and demanded that I be put straight through. I walked back to the bench wondering what I could do with myself. I kicked my heels into the dirt, scattering the used cigarette ends, and moved them about, to make random patterns and then erased them, over and over again. I looked over at the snazzy flat-screen monitors. The same man I’d watched before — this time dressed in a slim-fitted white shirt and a thin blue tie — was walking back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. A lone coot trundled along in the canal below him, its large feet paddling like crazy against the current. The man in the slim-fitted white shirt and thin blue tie got up and walked towards the other desk in his office. He walked in the same direction as the coot on the canal, and for a fleeting moment they were both parallel with each other, heading in the same direction and at the same speed, until the coot stopped and dived to the bottom of the canal for something it had spotted.
I looked to my right as she walked over to sit down on the bench: black. She was dressed head to toe in black this time. Like the day before, she began to stare straight ahead. It was probably my discomfort over the dredger shirking its responsibility that caused me to stare at her longer than I, perhaps, should have done. I was pretty sure that she was aware of this, and I’m maybe sixty percent sure that I saw her eyes dart to her left for a nanosecond. But I could have been wrong — like most people I can be quite vainglorious at times. She could have been blinking.
It is obvious that boredom has existed since the dawn of man. I realise that this is quite a pompous statement—the dawn of man—but I can think of no other way of expressing this, so the cliché will have to do. It has existed in various forms, since before there was a word for it, since long before the word boredom and its equivalents across the globe sprang into existence. I often wonder how the feeling of boredom was expressed before we had the language to express it. We must have lazed about, much like a bored dog does, making noises: huffing and puffing, sighing — things like that. Eventually we would have begun to feel the same urges we still find hard to articulate — it must have been a very confusing time for us. I’m not sure that many people I know have thought about this before, not because I think on some deeper, more intellectual level — I don’t. I’ve certainly never discussed it with any of them. They’d probably find the subject boring and want to talk about more interesting things like sex and war, or terrorism.