Defoe's playground

On Sunday, I climbed a sixteenth century tower, toured a tudor manor house built by a courtier to Henry VIII, took tea in a National Trust teashop and strolled down a Georgian market street. I also watched the leaves fall in a Georgian  square and wandered through green space originally a sixteenth century common (vaguely reminiscent of Cambridge's Parker's Piece).

Where did I do these things? That's right: Hackney. 

An area of London I grew up slightly fearing, famed for its Murder Mile and sink schools, the place I have discovered since moving to East London is entirely different to my childhood perception. It is far more clearly the chain of ancient villages (Hackney, Homerton, Clapton, Wyck) than the cliche I thought I knew.

If you haven't visited in the last few decades, I strongly suggest you prepare yourself for a treat. 

Identity

I've just got back from taking part in a film campaigning to save Walthamstow. 

OK, perhaps that's a bit dramatic. The context is the review of constituency boundaries currently taking place (which, thanks to Nick Clegg's hissy fit over Lords reform, may never be implemented). It has proposed abolishing Walthamstow.

Up until now, constituencies have been designed to reflect the natural boundaries of local communities. This is amorphous, but the boundary commission seems, generally, to have got it right. The consequence, though, has been wildly differing numbers of electors in different seats. The Isle of Wight crams 111,000 voters into its self-evident borders, while at the opposite end of the country, Orkney and Shetland's 32,000 voters are outnumbered by sheep four to one.

This is changing. From now on, every seat (except, as it happens, the Isle of Wight) will contain 76,641 electors; with a 5% variance permitted. This means the boundary commission's longstanding respect for natural borders must be cast aside. It is for this reason that Walthamstow, a clearly defined single community with a thousand-year history and a powerful sense of identity, is to be lost. Half of Walthamstow is to be merged with Chingford; the other half with Leyton.

Does it matter? I passionately believe it does, but I haven't really got any evidence. Perhaps we shouldn't worry at all about natural borders or communities and just divide the nation into perfectly equal sized boxes: the population equivalent of the back cover of the Ordnance Survey map. It would be easy, but surely an MP should represent a place that voters recognise, believe in and identify with? Rightly or wrongly, I am sure democracy will be weaker if that tradition is abandoned.

The case study is local authorities. Over the last fifty years, successive Governments have weakened the bonds between councils and people as local authority borders have become more logical and administratively convenient; but less relevant to the people the councils are meant to serve.

Until 1965, Walthamstow was a borough in its own right. Now it is part of Waltham Forest; an entity that merges the leafy suburbs of Chingford and the northern tip of the Olympic park in gritty Leyton. In the half century since local council borders were redrawn in the name of convenience our local authorities have become the weakest in Europe. Led by people we don't know, in elections we don't care about, they have no power and little influence. Just perhaps, who knows, Walthamstow council might have been able to keep the power and influence that its larger successor has gradually lost.

I don't know; perhaps I'm mad. Just 17 of us turned up to take part in the film, out of 65,000 of us in the constituency. Perhaps this simply doesn't matter. Does it? Do you think your council or your constituency should be designed around the place you feel you live in? Maybe you don't.

But two final thoughts. If we do this with councils and constituencies, perhaps we should do it with nations? There are 503 million of us in the European Union, and 27 nation states. Well, 27's a stupid number - let's make it 20. It's neater, and means that each

country could contain 25 million people. Fine. Let's start in the West. 6 million live on the island of Ireland. Group Ireland with Wales, South West England, North West England and the West Midlands and we've got our 25 million. Now let's start in the north. Scotland, the North East, the East Midlands, the East of England and London also make around 25 million. Good. The final region would then combine the South East of England, Nord-pas-de-Calais, Picardy, Upper Normandy and Ile de France. Blimey, combining the commuter heartlands of both Paris and London, this country would be the world expert in commuter train travel. Bit odd that most of the population would need to cross a national border to get to work each day, but we can't let these things get in the way of logic. After all, much better that every country is a nice, neat average size...

If we're going to be like this, then let's take it to its true extreme and simply have the Government divide us randomly like the teacher did when splitting us into groups at school. "You're in 1, you're in 2, you're in 3..." and so on to 600, then back to the beginning. I might end up voting with a farmer in Falkirk, a teacher from Totnes and a builder from Birmingham. We'd all get together on Facebook and form our own, new community untrammelled by the false proximity of disregarded geography. It sounds rather romantic.

If you have an opinion on the boundary review (especially if you live in Walthamstow!) visit http://consultation.boundarycommissionforengland.independent.gov.uk/

Life

The world divides into two distinct tribes: those that have (successfully or otherwise) attempted to become parents, and those that have not. It's a division more fundamental than any of race, class or gender, with procreation bringing its own distinct language to ensure the parental elect remain aloof from the barbarians. When, last week, I was forced to tell people that my wife was suffering from an ectopic pregnancy, their reaction instantly identified the listener's alignment. 

Those in the know reacted with horror: their eyes widened, their mouths opened and they expressed sympathy, sorrow and support. By contrast, the rest looked puzzled. Several said congratulations, but their furrowed brows revealed their fear that the "ectopic" caveat must, in some unexplained way, partially negate the benefit of the pregnancy.

As it is perfectly possible that you, my reader, forms part of this second group; let me explain. An ectopic pregnancy is a pregnancy where the fertilised egg (and, yes, I'm sorry, we must use this kind of language when we talk about this topic) implants in a part of the female reproductive system that is not the womb; typically the fallopian tubes (and, yes, sorry but there are tubes involved in all this). In rare cases, it is fatal. In a large minority of cases, it costs the woman her fertility. In all cases, the potential baby is lost and the woman feels dreadful. The expressions of sympathy were deserved.

My wife, I'm glad to report, did not need to have surgery and is starting to recover. However, to get here has involved several trips to our local hospital, and specifically the early pregnancy unit (the reason, incidentally, for my silence last week is that I was there). The early pregnancy unit is one of those strange "joy and sorrow" places that you only visit if something wonderful or desperate is happening. Registry offices have the same atmosphere.

Growing up in Camden, the only two occasions I visited our rather forbidding local registry office in Kings Cross were for my brother's wedding and to register my father's death.

Like the early pregnancy unit, the Camden registry office had that downbeat public sector aesthetic. Notices handwritten or badly typed are taped to the walls; furniture is mismatching but not in the Shoreditch style and the decorative scheme is impossible to date even to a broad era, clearly having accumulated piecemeal over decades. It is as if the human stories within need to be diluted by an environment as bland as they are momentous.

Registering my father's death was odd. I was there to do the worst job I've ever had to do, and I was standing surrounded by ecstatic young couples there to register the child that - to them that day - was the only thing in their world. Wrapped up in their own cocoon of neo-natal bliss, they probably didn't notice the mourners in the queue. 

At the time it seemed rather insensitive to put us together; let alone with a wedding taking place outside the door. However, births, deaths and marriages are the stepping stones of life and it's probably a good thing to be reminded every so often that these are the big things and, actually, they are the only things that really matter.