A Dutch naturalist on the River Lea counts royal registration plates, coal comebacks and the herons who never needed a vehicle at all
Saturday, 17 October 2026. Narrowboat moored below Tottenham Lock, River Lea. Fog on the water, a heron on the roof, 7.10am.
The Heron Has One Mode Of Transport And It Is Himself
There is a grey heron who stands on the roof of my boat every morning as if he has paid the mooring fee. I call him Meneer Dijkstra, after my old headmaster in Leeuwarden, because both of them have the same expression, which is profound disappointment at everything younger than them. This morning he stood on one leg for forty minutes, flew eleven metres to the bank, and caught a roach. That was his commute. No registration. No plate. No emissions except one small, deeply judgemental noise.
I read the news on my phone while the kettle boiled on the little gas ring, and the first thing I saw was that Prince William has ordered three personalised number plates for three different cars. An Aston Martin for waiting to be King, a Range Rover for avoiding his brother, and a Bentley for disapproving of things. Three vehicles to express three moods.
In Friesland my grandfather had one bicycle for all his moods. When he was happy he rang the bell. When he was cross he rang the bell harder. When he disapproved of something, which was most of the 1970s, he simply cycled away from it into the wind, which in Friesland is always coming at you from the direction you are going. That is the Dutch emotional system. One bicycle, one bell, one headwind.
A Feelings Wheel With A V8
The report’s own observers call the collection a feelings wheel with an engine, and I could not stop laughing, which frightened Meneer Dijkstra off the roof. I admire the efficiency of expressing a whole personality in traffic. But I did the sum on the back of a seed packet. Three large cars, each needing to be built, fuelled, polished and parked, so that a man can tell the M4 how he feels about his father. The heron tells the whole Lea Valley how he feels about everything, and he does it standing still.
I would propose a fourth plate for the Prince. It should go on a bicycle, and it should read STILLWAITING, and he should ride it to Windsor in October, with the leaves coming down and the rain sideways, and he would arrive calmer than any Bentley could make him. I have no influence in the palace. I barely have influence over my bilge pump.
The Coal Has Come Back, Like A Bad Ex With A Van
Then the Grist headline arrived like a cloud over the reservoir: coal is making a comeback in the United States. I read it aloud to the heron, who had returned, and he looked at me the way my aunt Wietske looked at the man who tried to sell her a timeshare in Benidorm.
Coal coming back is like that boyfriend everybody warned you about turning up on your doorstep with a bunch of petrol station carnations, saying he has changed. He has not changed. He is still black, still dusty, still gets into everything, and he still owes your lungs an apology. In the Netherlands we spent decades pumping water out of the land so we could live on it. Now the water would like to come back too, and coal is holding the door open for it.
Smoke Over The Water
Inside Climate News had a quieter, darker piece about climate change increasing exposure to heat waves and wildfire smoke at the same time. I have seen smoke drift over the Lea only once, a summer when the marshes caught near Walthamstow, and the swans sat on the water looking like they had been asked to attend a meeting they had not agreed to. The air tasted of toast. The heron left for two days. I do not blame him. I also wanted to leave, but my boat moves at four miles an hour, and smoke moves faster than that.
What frightens me about heat and smoke arriving together is not the drama of it. It is the ordinariness. A hot day becomes a hot day you cannot breathe on, and then that becomes a normal Tuesday, and then a man in a Bentley says it is distasteful, and drives through it with the windows up.
What I Did Today Instead Of Despairing
I took the canoe out past the Walthamstow Wetlands fence and counted birds, because counting is what you do when you cannot fix anything. Twelve tufted ducks, which look like they have had their hair done for a funeral. Four cormorants holding their wings out to dry like old men airing coats on a balcony. One kingfisher, which shot past so fast it was nearly a rumour. And Meneer Dijkstra, back on the roof, looking at me as if I had parked badly.
A jogger stopped on the towpath and asked what I was counting. I told her birds. She asked why. I said so that when somebody in a big car tells me everything is fine, I have a number. She thought about that for a moment, then said that was the most Dutch thing she had ever heard, and jogged off towards Tottenham Hale. She is correct. We do not trust feelings. We trust a ledger.
Tonight’s Ledger
Three royal cars, one coal comeback, one smoke report, twelve tufted ducks, four cormorants, one kingfisher, one heron who has never once needed a number plate to tell the world what he thinks. Kettle on again. Fog lifting. The heron has declared the roof his estate, and I have decided not to dispute it. He manages it, I suppose, in the sense that it mostly involves the roof.