Iain Sinclair - London Orbital

So far, so good. The Bull at Theydon Bois. Kevin has got his round in, Renchi has shot off to look for a torch. It’s getting dark and the walk through the forest is beginning to play on Kevin’s mind. The smile is still there, but it’s in danger of becoming fixed. Naked panic in his eyes. Because this time, as we move into night, there’s no way out, nothing but trees between the pub and Waltham Abbey. Trees and road.

Another pint? Postpone the moment. The pub is warm and dry. Kevin is replaying his visit to the poet Bill Griffiths in Seaham, County Durham. The shock of it. How poets live. Washing in the sink. Two rooms. With a lodger upstairs. Coal-streaked shoreline. Survivalism. And, despite or because of this, Bill produces book after book. He digs into where he is. He addresses the local and discovers coherent arguments, myths and scandals. He finds the words.

Hackney, of late, has also suffered from strange visitations. There must be something about the place I’ve missed. It’s become a second home to the Prince of Wales. Every time you run up against a police cordon, cop cars without sirens blaring, bored camera crews, you know he’s back. Showing solidarity at the mosque. He can’t keep away. Snipers on the roof of the school. The caretaker in an Italian suit. Charles dropping in on Albion Drive, the Teachers’ Centre, to take a gander at a model of Hackney. Much safer, his advisers will have told him, than sampling the real thing.

What was once a school, one of those red brick Victorian monsters (alma mater to Kray footsoldier Tony Lambrianou and a dozen premier league armed robbers), has been rationalised into a ‘professional development centre’. Rest and recreation for battle-fatigued teachers. Advice on how to cope with the latest government rethink, post-spin paperwork. There’s always a spot for those who teach the teachers, the bureaucrats of education.

In decommissioned classrooms, Hackney has been miniaturised. A bankrupt Lilliput. Papier-mâché estates, systems that work: demonstrations of electricity, machines humming and throbbing. Craftsmen have given their services. School children have carried out projects. There are tower blocks with tiny photographs of inhabitants who volunteered for the scheme; a micro-video monitor loops a sitting room. Ghosts of soon-to-be-demolished Utopian experiments.

Here is the voodoo version, the idealised borough. Without crime and drugs and craziness. Without sound or smell. Drills or dogs. The secret city in which a couple will sit smiling on a sofa: for ever. In which there is no weather, just drawings of weather. A fit principality for a future king.

‘Something must be done.’ The hereditary mantra. Heard by miners. Bangladeshis in Brick Lane. They know the proper response: a celebrity photograph to stick in the window of the curry house, an unofficial endorsement. HRH and the manager shaking hands. Part of a gallery of clapped-out media Xeroxes, cricketers on the piss. Tourists in search of the most popular English dish of the moment: Chicken Tikka Masala.

Batteries, springs, bulb. Renchi spreads them on the pub table. Puts them back into his SAS ‘power torch’ ( £ 1.50) — and finds that it still doesn’t work. This was the best that Theydon Bois could come up with. It’s about as effective as trying to light a stick of celery.

The barman denies the existence of food. They have menus, yes, customers expect them. Visitors from London, forest sophisticates who subscribe to digital channels. But we shouldn’t take the PR too seriously. He’s pissed off because Kevin is drinking pints of orange juice and lemonade. In the belief that a hit of sugar will get him to the finish.

A woman who hangs about the place is more helpful. It’s late of course. You can’t expect to wander in from nowhere and be fed, just because there are signs outside punting Essex-Mex specialities. The portions, when they arrive, are Texan. My ‘small’ plate of Nachos is a challenge: crispy satchels packed with Copydex cheese.

A light rain is misting the windows. We’ll take to the forest paths later, but for now we’ll stick with the headlights, the deranged traffic on Coppice Row.

The pub sign at the edge of town does nothing to lift our spirits, SIXTEEN STRING JACK. A painting of a man in a green jacket, noose around his neck, waiting for the horse to gallop away. As light fades and the long road stretches ahead, Renchi steps it out; he disappears among the dark trees. Kevin’s hair is plastered to his skull. Rain-slicks alleviate the cold sweat of fear. Epping Forest has a master’s degree in disorientation, car-swallowing bogs out of Psycho. My snapshot of the Cantab essayist, collar up, mouth agape, makes Munch look like Millais. We’re walking into the oncoming headlights. Kevin is limping badly. I hope he’s not going to jump.

Trapped between M25 and M11, Epping Forest is a motorway island with overambitious planting. There are paths marked out for riders, paths for hikers, but I’ve never walked any distance without getting lost; expecting to emerge in Loughton, finding myself returned to Theydon Bois. Don’t ask me how it works. The spirit of the primeval forest is still present and it abhors trippers, map fetishists. Step away from the road by a few yards and the road is cancelled. It disappears. This ridge between the rivers Lea and Roding is a very public secret. Plenty of Londoners have been conceived here, in cars, on tartan rugs; plenty have died. Epping Forest is an unlicensed extension of the cemeteries that cluster around Waltham Abbey.

Five roads meet at the Wake Arms roundabout. Walking towards it in the dusk, the rain, wasn’t one of the highlights of our circuit. Dazzled, driven on to slippery verges, subject to the occasional drenching, we plodded on, increasingly locked into misery, increasingly separate. Renchi was remorseless. Kevin was brave, but hobbling. I fell back to chat to the straggler, then marched flat out to keep Renchi in sight.

To take Kevin’s mind off the horror of his situation, I asked him about writers who had died in cars. Give him a list and he’s happy. Albert Camus was an easy one. Nathanael West. John Lodwick, a novel-a-year journeyman: one of my favourites. J.G. Ballard had a front wheel blow-out on the approach to Chiswick Bridge, spun across two carriageways, turned upside-down. But he wasn’t hurt. Then we struggled. I couldn’t accept Margaret Mitchell, or Robert Lowell — who gave up the ghost after a heart attack in a taxi. The poet Weldon Kees abandoned his car to go over the side of a bridge, but must be scored as: not proven. Ditto for Manic Street Preacher Richey Edwards at the Aust Service Station. Self-mythologising T.E. Lawrence (despite his connection with Pole Hill in the forest) was out. Richard Farina also. Motorbikes were another story. They were asking for it, the Jim Morrisons of road culture. Peter Fuller (of Modern Painters ) was being chauffeured back to Bath. That left W.G. Sebald, far ahead of us, and still alive. A melancholy walker, landscape fabulist, collector of photographs: what was he doing at the wheel? I stood in a lift with him once. We didn’t speak. The saddest face (moustache, glasses) I ever saw. CULT NOVELIST IN CAR ACCIDENT. The only writer I could recall who went off the M25, pranged his BMW and walked away without a scratch. Lord Archer.

The distance to the roundabout was calculable by reading debris left at the side of the road. Single cans of Foster’s (‘Official Beer of Sydney Olympics’), Stella Artois, Carlsberg Special Brew and Tango. Two packets of Walkers Crisps (Cheese & Onion), one of Salt & Vinegar. Five McDonald’s/Coca-Cola cans. One Lambert and Butler (King Size) cigarette packet. Two Marlboro. One Silk Cut. A Coconut Bar. Smilers (Tropical Pastilles). Four cans of Red Bull (‘a carbonated taurine drink with caffeine’). Three burger cartons; one milk carton (2pc fat). Diet Cola. Dr Pepper. Orange peel. Knotted condoms. One stainless steel watch (LB417, Japan). One burnt-out car: POLICE AWARE. One motorcycle engine. These are the contour rings of civilisation as they spread out from the Old Orleans (‘A Taste of the Deep South’) Roadhouse. A midden for future archaeologists. And present forest creatures: one fox, three grey squirrels.