The danger drain in Pratt Street

I HAVE found, without doubt, my least favourite drain in all of Camden. It’s in Pratt Street in Camden Town, close to Our Lady’s School.

Rather than hidden away in the gutter next to the pavement, it’s hidden away in a dip in the middle of the road.

In January, as I prepared to turn into Mandela Street, I scooted over this trap not realising it was there – it was dark! A wheel got caught, and bang! Bits of bone were soon sticking out of the arm, which I had used to protect myself with on the way to the ground. I must thank some higher power there was no car following up behind, and the Whittington Hospital for their urgent response and ready use of morphine.

Some will say: what is a middle-aged man using a rental scooter for? It had proven a simple way to connect Camden Town and the Town Hall in King’s Cross for council meetings, but the roads are clearly not the polished boulevards of American suburbia in the e-scooter brochures and perhaps something like this was always bound to happen.

But everybody who has to listen to me bore on about the horror of this incident over the past six weeks seems to have, in response, their own story to tell about their least favourite potholes, a hidden dip, some irregularity in the road or a missing drain, not just in Camden but elsewhere too.

It’s part of a wider narrative that this is a city or a country where nothing is working – or at least nothing gets fixed because public spending has been too meagre for so long. So while you may have your own hole in the road where you’ve had a near miss, my conscience demands of me that I warn you about the drain in Pratt Street.

Cyclists, scooterists, everyone – don’t let the same thing happen to you.