Ever since 1984, when I went to Westminster School, I have explored the hidden corners of St James’s Park.
The park is tiny – only 57 acres – but there are still lots of places to get lost in. In 2011, the body of an American royal obsessive was found on West Island in the middle of the park’s lake. After sending hundreds of “strange and offensive” packages to the Queen for 15 years, including obscene photographs, he’d taken up residence on the island, with its unparalleled view of Buckingham Palace. His body wasn’t found until three years after his death.
I never got to the island but I did find the clearing in the trees where Westminster sixth-formers used to smoke. I was never cool enough to join them but I later found another clearing in a thicket with an empty bench. Later, in a regrettable “eccentric” phase, I took to smoking a pipe with a fellow schoolboy on another empty bench.
My favourite spot was by the side of the lake. All you had to do was walk over a knee-high fence, stroll between some trees and there, in the middle of London, you had a premium view of Horse Guards Parade and the lake – entirely to yourself. For decades, I have come to this place for the consolations of solitude. Until last week.
On the last warm day of autumn, I was sitting there when two policemen approached.
“Do you know you’re not allowed to be here?” one said – in an extremely polite way. “It’s against park regulations.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t,” I said – which was entirely truthful. Yes, there was the low fence I walked over. But not only is it low; there is no sign saying you can’t climb over it. There is a sign saying, “Please keep your dog on a leash.” But I didn’t have a dog.
“We’ve got problems with people sleeping rough – you’re obviously not one of them,” the polite policeman said. “They leave little packages.”
I thought the polite policeman was employing a euphemism for bodily functions. But then, right on cue, he said, “You see,” pointing at his colleague, who was extracting a large Sports Direct bag from the bushes. The poor homeless leave their clothes and sleeping bags there during the day.
“Here are the regulations,” said the polite policeman, pointing out the highlighted passages in a rulebook. The rule I’d apparently transgressed was to ignore a sign telling me not to walk in a particular part of the park. He then told me to fill in a form.
“If you give me your name and address, we’ll send you a letter explaining how you broke the regulations.”
“I’ll sign it, of course,” I said, “Though, I’m afraid, there is no sign stopping you coming here. There is a sign about dogs but I haven’t got one.”
The polite policeman ignored this and took down my name and address. OK, it’s not quite Nazi Germany or communist Russia but, still, this was a palpable erosion of British democratic freedom. I was being reprimanded by a policeman for breaking a rule I hadn’t broken. But, for a quiet life, I took the rap.
I was reminded of a brilliant New Statesman article by my hero, Auberon Waugh, written in 1975. Driving along the towpath of France’s La Rigole canal on his mobylette, he noticed a sign saying, “INTERDICTION FORMELLE DE JETER DANS LA RIGOLE ET SUR SES DÉPENDANCES DES ANIMAUX MORTS (volailles comprises) ET DES ORDURES.”
Outraged at this ban on throwing dead animals into La Rigole, Waugh tried to hurl a deceased hedgehog, squashed onto the towpath, into the water but couldn’t remove it from the tarmac. He then ran over a green lizard and fell off his mobylette in the process.
His failed attempt to throw dead animals into La Rigole was all part of his stand against this “unhealthy passion for creating new punishable offences”.
I’m not as dedicated to the cause as Bron. But if I had half his resolve, I’d sleep the night in my old refuge in St James’s Park this evening.
……
I’ve been reading Benjamin Franklin’s The Way to Wealth (1758), an early collection of get-rich-quick tips.
In his best tip, he writes that, compared to government tax, “We are taxed twice as much by our Idleness, three times as much by our Pride, and four times as much by our Folly.”
I started to think of our own lives as mini-economies, taxing and rewarding ourselves. I looked romantically at my bike and dreamily calculated how much money it – and its predecessors – had saved me in cabs, trains, buses and tubes. About £100,000.
Not smoking? About £50,000. I preferred not to calculate how much tax I’d levied on myself in a lifetime’s drinking.
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