  I can't spend as long on this as I would like - I have to go and cook a risotto - but if I don't put something down now, I might forget, and we don't want that. I walk through a little patch of my own personal heaven every morning on my way to work. It is a short stretch of the Regent Canal, parallel to the City Road, between the Angel, where I burst out of the Fritz Lang nightmare of the tube system, and Wharf Road, where I climb the steps. There are a number of narrow boats moored along the canal at this point, and the banks are green and dark with overhanging trees, and the narrowboats - at least some of them - are a vision of a way of life that I pine for, though why exactly they have such a strong impression on me, I could not say. This morning as I reached the canal bank, an unfamiliar boat had moored immediately before the canal disappears into a tunnel. Evidently it is inhabited by a woodsman - there's a tree surgeon's sign on the side, and the aroma of woodsmoke from the stove below is delicious.
On other boats along the bank, I notice bunches of drying flowers and bundles of withies, evidence of manual crafts that have all but disappeared from the environment. I get a thrill from these few minutes' walk every morning, even when the weather is filthy. It is one of the most magical spots that I know, in London or anywhere else. 
