Andrew Whitehead

The previous blog showed the view from my window as it was until this morning - now it's what you see above.

Thames Water certainly didn't waste any time levelling everything in sight. And now the pastoral reservoir bank looks like a newly cleared copse - or a bit of the Amazon rain forest being converted into beef burger grazing.

Two men, well under a day's work, and a few decades worth of natural growth is gone.

So what can we still see from our bedroom?

Well, the view's not bad - indeed it has a bit of a 'wow' factor. On my tinny point and shoot, you don't get the full majesty of the evening sun catching Canary Wharf. The human eye picks it up much better.

But the wide vista to the east and south-east is really enticing.

And to the right you can see, little more than a mile away, Arsenal's Emirates Stadium - often floodlit in the evenings. A compelling piece of modern architecture.

And below you can see our glimpse of the City skyscrapers including, lurking behind some stray branches, the Gherkin - another mpiece of the modern that really works on the London skyline.

I live next to a covered reservoir, the Maiden Lane reservoir, which gives a heartlifting pastoral aspect to this crowded corner of north London. You can see for yourself - the photo above is the view from my bedroom window (which also takes in the Emirates Stadium, Canary Wharf and quite a few of the City skyscrapers). You can just see the top of the reservoir, and the fenced off banks are home to foxes, woodpeckers, finches - a decent array of inner city wildlife.

There's a network of covered reservoirs across north London - at Highgate, Hornsey Rise, Stroud Green and Claremont Square and I'm sure many other locations as well. Most date from the mid-Victorian era when there was an acute need to provide water  to a rapidly expanding city.

It's only when repair work started on the reservoir that I was reminded of its name. Maiden Lane was the ancient name for the route from King's Cross to Highgate, now fallen into disuse. The northern part of the lane was renamed Dartmouth Park Hill as long ago as the 1870s.

Sometimes in my more lurid imaginings, I fear that the reservoir is about to burst and sweep us all away down the hill, following - no doubt - the route of the former Fleet River. So I suppose I should be grateful that Thames Water has of late been conspicuous in carrying out repairs.

A few years ago, they rooted out the trees fronting Dartmouth Park Hill, without much of a by your leave, to ensure the integrity of the reservoir. Now another round of inspection and repair appears to have revealed a small crack in the reservoir lining. This means the impending loss of all the trees in the photos above and below, and the driving of massive concrete piles to ensure the reservoir remains stable.

I suppose it's better than losing the space altogether - not that the reservoir and banks are accessible to the public (I've lived alongside for fifteen years without setting foot in it, though the area on the far side of the rails constitutes the windswept and rarely visited Dartmouth Park). But it would be nice to keep the reservoir in one piece - and the trees and bushes and the wildlife they harbour. Is that asking too much?

For the past thirteen years (with a few years off in Delhi for good behaviour) I have lived in a north London house with 'Dartmouth Park' in its postal address. We're not in the Dartmouth Park conservation area - not in the sort of white stuccoed four-storey 1860s terraced house which sells for £1.6 million - but like to feel we're in nodding distance. Still, it's come as a surprise to learn first from 'The Times' and now from Anne McElvoy in the 'Evening Standard' that we're part of pinkish London's biggest socio-political hotspot.

It was only after Ed Miliband's fratricidal triumph that I discovered he was almost a neighbour - he and his partner had bought, yes, a white stuccoed four-storey terraced house at the Heath end of Dartmouth Park Road. Now, says Anne McElvoy, there's a 'Dartmouth Park posse' of Milibands, Kinnocks and associated hangers-on which is giving our area a touch of class.

Well, I've only spotted Ed once, pushing a buggy on the Heath - and have yet to alight (knowingly at least) on a Kinnock. The late Adrian Mitchell used to live nearby - you can still spot the house from the 'Stop the War' posters in the windows. I occasionally see the novelist Julian Barnes making his way up Dartmouth Park Hill. But for such a well-heeled enclave, Dartmouth Park is astonishingly free of celebrity.

Lots of lawyers, a few behind-the-scenes cultural types, not much in the way of famous faces. A bit like the old part of Highgate cemetery (Karl Marx and George Eliot are in the 'new' bit, the Eastern Cemetery), where there's lots and lots of old bones, and almost all remarkably anonymous.

Anne McElvoy, by the way, lives in ultra-fashionable Amwell, where Peter Mandelson once had a flat. Not many know where Amwell is - but it's chic, smart, with wonderful architecture, and easy walking distance from Fleet Street. Let's learn a little more about that posse.