Click Click: Take a Seat

On a Monday afternoon, we met two women standing in this park.

They told us about how they care for the pigeons here. They said the birds recognise their faces - the pigeons and the ducks. They know when they’re coming and they wait for them.

They told us about a flock of pigeons under the bridge - only noticed by those who care to look and children. She said children notice everything. They see her holding the pigeons and teach them not to disturb them.

Squirrels, robins, a fox with three cubs. She stood really still to watch them.

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Ice melting, rhythmic canal boat engines and pigeons cooing. Sounds that appeared to us through chance encounters with three residents within King’s Cross: The man at the Canal Museum, and two women who feed the pigeons along the canal every day.

The Canal Museum is home to two ice wells, used for the production and trade of natural ice transported from Norway via the canals, until the introduction of artificial refrigeration in London in 1904. The fact that ice was once a scarcity that had to be housed deep underground, and its transportation via the canals speak to a time period where everything was much slower. Yet, the sounds of the canal boat engines, a repeated and rhythmic beat, bring to mind a more recent history: the raves that were held in the 1990s within the building that now holds Central Saint Martins. These easy misidentifications of sound - as canal boat motor or musical beat - speak to the fabric of the area as an ever-changing collage.

The two women we met who feed the pigeons spoke to us at length about how they care for the wildlife in King’s Cross. As we listened to their stories, the pigeons watched us from above. Two robins appeared in the hedgerow, and a squirrel scurried up a tree. We invite the listener to observe these inhabitants as they listen to this soundscape, considering not only the current living residents of the area, but also these histories that linger under the surface, within the canal that runs below this community garden, and onwards to the other sites on this walk.

In Visiting as an Indigenous Feminist Practice, Tuck et al. discuss a reciprocal way of being a part of a community: a giving and receiving of stories, knowledge and experiences, with close listening at its core. We would like to invite the listener to hear the sounds that emerged from these chance encounters, and to consider, in being present in a site off the beaten path, to invite a chance encounter of their own.