This post is the illegitimate child of a Twitter conversation with John D from Pynchon in Public and author David Southwell. Many of these ideas are David’s. You can read his blog here and follow him on Twitter here
The narrowboat seems longer and wider than the rest. But somehow it glides effortlessly down the canal, moving through other boats like a ghost.
Shapes shift at stern. A man peers through a telescope. A woman scrawls on a map. Behind frosted windows figures hunch round a bottle of wine. Above them a lightbulb shimmers to the pulse of ambient electronic drone.
A passing dog walker on the towpath might sense something unusual about this vessel. If they were in a certain frame of mind – receptive to other channels – they might know this was the headquarters of The Umoored Manor of Mutating Manifestation (UMMM), an independent micronation.
Queen of the backwaters and lost rivers
This floating state drifts through the backwaters of London, from the Lee Navigation to Regent’s Canal to the Grand Junction. Sewer workers have reported sightings on London’s buried rivers. The UMMM is as buoyant on the Beck, the Ravensbourne, Hogsmill, and Roding as it is on the Limehouse Cut.
Some keen-eared pedestrians swear they hear its engine putter below the street they’re standing on. They can smell engine oil and caramel wafting through the drain covers.
But the narrowboat itself is only the hub of the Unmoored Manor of Mutating Manifestation. Its nerve centre.
The citizens of this micronation are spread throughout London and beyond. Its government is randomly selected at every full moon. Encoded graffiti on bus shelters – a golden apple bearing the name of the new elect – is the clarion call for those that have ears to hear.
It can take days of walking the streets to find the Unmooored Manor. Its borders are arbitrary creases in the A-Z clutched by citizens as they slip through bricked-up entrances behind London’s main drags.
If asked where they are going, citizens raise their eyes, tap a finger to their chin and answer “UMMM.”
For this state is neither here nor there. It is and it isn’t.
As UMMM drifts on the tides, it changes those tidal maps by its passage. Whenever and wherever the boat appears, maps have to be redrawn to accommodate it. In this world, movement is a place. Its foaming bow is a constantly shifting edgeland.
“Land ho!”
The man puts down his telescope and points excitedly. Up ahead is The White House, Dick Turpin’s local watering hole on the Lea by Hackney Wick. Long vanished from London, it remains a favourite resting point in the interzone of UMMM.
The woman picks up a bugle and blows. Green smoke curls from her hair. Figures appear on the footbridge ahead, dancing.
Aside from plentiful drink in exclusive pubs, there are more serious benefits to citizenship. Dwellers live beyond UK’s legal jurisdiction. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” reads the by-line on UMMM bank notes, made from rolling papers.
Having no fixed position on a map makes the Unmoored Manor impossible to invade. But no wars are forthcoming, because UMMM is a shadow in a back alley. It steals behind warehouses, marshlands, dumps and forgotten aqueducts, liminal territories where nobody thinks to challenge it.
Even when, on rare occasions, the UMMM narrowboat cruises into places like St Katharine’s Dock it’s barely visible. The City folk sipping wine on their balconies fail to notice anything more than a discolouration in the water and a faint smell of burning hair.
They go back inside. Close the curtains. Put the television on.
And beyond UMMM’s wooden hull, adorned with cherry-blossom eyes and tendrilled leviathans – out there in the city – this is a nation which exists only in the minds of its adepts. Many don’t even realise they’re citizens. Not yet.
Then one day they find themselves staring down into a canal behind an abandoned factory, and the water starts to steam, and they hear the sound of horns…
