Call of the Doggerland
© Michael S. Collins

Can you feel it, this ripping of the soul and awakening of the spirit? Can you feel it, the Call of the Doggerland? This is the beginning of nothing, the end of it all. The waves of time crash down on this puny little island of ours and we feel it: we feel the time mist up and the atmosphere sink, and we know what it all means. The end of days, the rapture, the loosening up is afoot. Unless, you are like me, and then, in my case, you have nothing to fear. No fear of the rapture, the warming, the rising tides or the rising flu. No need to fear, for the Doggerland is calling us.

It was a month ago tonight when the Doggerland first started calling. The sad sirens were screaming alongside the women, and the Thames was starting at Barking. The phosphorous clouds hung in the bleached sky, the rain tasted salty and tore into the ground. Old pillars of established past crumbled into the ever increasing coast line. Nothing was sacred – no Cathedral, nor dwelling, nor saintly destitution: it all fell away, awkwardly collapsing into the abyss below. St Paul's, that long standing Cathedral of hope, bastion to lost souls for centuries and protector of London from the air raids, stood dangerously close to the river. But we would not need to see it fall. 

I was sitting near the waters edge, as the sirens wailed and the sky cried, and I heard the Calling. The Calling of the Doggerland, so clear, so precise, that I was unsure why I had never heard it before. The slow sharp call to arms, the longing to return, the need for confirmation. It stirred longing and forlorn passion, the sad bugling call came from beyond the river, it came from beyond the abyss, came, even, from beyond the sea. It was the Doggerland. It was my home. And it was calling me. And I could hear it.

And I was not the only one. It was talked about, the Call. Others could hear it, a sizeable minority. One in every ten. They could hear it too. They could hear it and they wanted it and they longed for it. This call, from the dead of night to the rising decay of morning, came to each one of us and we wanted home. Home to where we belonged. We did not belong here, in London, in England, in dying suburbia. We were the children of the Doggerland, the descendants of the Doggerland, the heirs of the Doggerland. We needed what was rightfully ours, the land that was rightfully ours. We heard it's call from beyond the abyss, the lonely song of an abandoned birthright, and we needed it. 

And then, we could see it. The Doggerland, back in all its glory. It had risen up from the seabed itself, at night, when we were all asleep and no one was around to see it. Hiding the hard work like a modest harridan. A land so bountiful, one would never hunger again. With streams plentiful and animals friendly looking enough, it screamed at us to join it. It was our home. It was ours. 

We stood alongside the hastily erected river front, not looking once at the black waters or the debris passing through it. The bricks, the mortar, the bodies: it mattered not a jot to us, it was merely a black mark on the road to freedom. To Doggerland: to enlightenment and prosperity. We stood along the river front, we looked at each other, we nodded and we knew. We had to get home. The images, clear in our minds, were too much to ignore. We needed to get home. I needed to get home. So I stepped forward.

The black water swept over my head before I bobbed to the surface. I looked for something to grab on to, some floating jetsam or flotsam or anything, but nothing was in reach. I struggled against the tidal flow, but it was useless. Choking, I took one last look to the South, to the Doggerland. But it was not there. And so I sank.

I sit, further South, away from the tidal flows, beyond the abyss, beyond even the seas, starring at the glory of the Doggerland. My home. The call to arms was heard, and carried through, and now I have no want for food nor drink, nor friendly animals. I can sit and look out on a peaceful Sun, and friendly water, and sleepless nights. This is the best land possible. The best of all worlds. I have found the Doggerland like many before me. The place of our ancestors, where we originally all sat in the bowels of the North Sea with our mammoths and fought for survival against the Neanderthals. It is hard to say how many of us survived in the islands – after all, with the French and the Dutch and the Germans and the Celts and others, the bloodline may easily have diluted. Maybe one in ten still had it strong enough, to feel the calling. For no one is ever happy, in the end, unless they are at home. And as I look over this quiet, peaceful and quite impossible place, I know I am at home, and that makes me happier than any truth ever could. 

For sure, I know that my body lies somewhere in the bed of the Thames, corroded by the lethal black waters, and the swarming predators. But what do I care of that? I am home now. I am happy now. And that is not a world that I wished to return to anyhow. I got my call home, and nothing could tear me away.