it’s a lovely day; let’s go for a walk while i tell you about my museum of rubbish.

look at that blossom! look at that magnolia tree on the right there - all bursting into life!

as you know i love to notice things. i also like picking things up when i can and when it’s appropriate. just little things that i see and they almost speak to me i think. i like to think about these things and how they came to be wherever and who touched them last. that kind of thing.

i see things on the towpath. things like this bottle coming through here…

the towpath is often backfilled with dredgings from the canal so there are things brought up for me to look at. pieces of clay pipe, bits of pottery, bones and things.

i fully expect an eccentric millionaire collector of vintage(ish) pepsi bottles to pay me handsomely for this example that i dug out of a towpath. shame that the design has been partially abraded by passing feet.

some things will have to go into a special wing of the museum of rubbish. that’s right! i’m talking about the edmund trebus memorial wing. the stuff that goes in here are things that i haven’t directly unearthed myself but have got my hands on in such a way as i feel i can still commune with the found objects. these bottles are such an example.

they were dug up by a bloke who was digging a hole (to do with the electrics or something) when i walked past on my way to the hospital. and now they belong to me. i wonder how the bottles got to the bottom of a front garden near a 20s or 30s bungalow. perhaps they were filled with poison and used in a murder and then buried to conceal the evidence.

i fish lots of things out of the canal with my big magnet. have a look at these nails. the ones on the left are clearly from boats. the ones further to the right are what vodka mick tells me are horseshoe nails. he says the curve and that they are nipped of at the tip after the farrier has fitted them gives them away. horseshoe nails from a horsedrawn boat. all those years ago. do you understand what i mean about these things talking to me?

at the bottom are a couple of bits of clay pipe that i have picked up from towpaths. it’s always wise to keep your eyes peeled when walking on the towpath. dogs. you know.

i should have included a scale for reference in these pictures.

these pins are about as long as a tabloid newspaper is tall. the slender one has a decorative twist but is not very robust. it looks as if it was designed to be poked into the ground by hand. the thicker one would need to be whacked in with a hammer. i like to think that it’s a mooring pin but i could be wrong. it looks old to me.

and lastly we come to some windlasses. these aren’t all of them, i have some more on the boat including one with a revolving handle which will work again one day. if i ever get round to restoring it.

i might tart up some of the windlasses and see if i can sell them. the other things i really don’t know. if i take the rust off them and tart them up they might stop talking to me.

and what use is a museum if it cannot talk?

while researching mr trebus i discovered that a favourite artist of mine, ian hamilton finlay, has died recently aged eighty. i don’t pretend to understand his stuff but i know what i like and one day i will visit his garden at little sparta. RIP.

i feel a sunday morning feeling to this although technically it’s not. it’s the afternoon. because the clocks went forward.

good word that, ‘clocks’. a poetic word. which reminds me…

i’m rather fond of the works of charles bukowski and because i am so technical i thought that i would try to get hold of his voice, of him reading; surely there must be some on the magical internet?

there is. it’s so odd to hear him at last. i’ve been reading him for getting on for thirty years and now i get to hear him! his accent is rather californian, the words drawn out, the voice is ‘knowing’ and no, not ‘weary’, that’s not quite it. he sounds a bit like w c fields. i’m not disappointed, far from it. i’d love to have met him.

and this puts me in mind of a drawing that i intend to do this afternoon because a representation of ‘buk’ will be in it. that’s anther thing i learned, his name is not pronounced ‘bukOVski’ as i had pretentiously thought to myself but ‘bu COW ski’.

this drawing got planned out in my head as i squelched along the towpath yesterday(stripe me! what a square deal value blog!; full of meaty chunks and savoury jelly in a rich gravy - for extra sunday morning bloggy goodness). following on from the rip-roaring success of previous blog, ‘GO TO HASLEMERE - GET A FREE HAT’ we now have ‘GO TO NEW HAW LOCK WITH A BIG MAGNET - GET A FREE BICYCLE’.

and here it is.

NOT OFF THE DECK
my sunday morning listening has been based around these three:
richard hawley: coles corner (nice one, hawley - it pays to advertise. well, not to me obviously but you get a free plug on my blog. this track puts me in mind of matt monro)
kevin coyne: sunday morning sunrise (great chorus, i think it’s about doing a rude with the missus)
snow patrol: ask me how i am (great drumming, great effects, great)

i think that bicycle was looking so sorry for itself because it had been sat on by twenty ton boats. i left it propped up by the lock to annoy adam who lives in the cottage. i hope he gets it disposed of before a scummer throws it back in. it was a hazard to safety where it was (imagine falling in and getting caught up under a boat in that lot) and a hazard to shipping (imagine that set of handlebars coming up through the bottom of your boat). i award myself a gold star for fishing it out. it weighed a ton; never let me doubt the hauling power of my sea magnet again.

here’s a picture of the day’s spoils…

one windlass out of town lock (that’s in weybridge. i saw a depressed looking man down there who looked as if he might be about to chuck himself in. i engaged him in conversation. i’m still kicking myself because i didn’t ask him ‘are you alright?’. but i DID take the trouble to talk to him). nothing out of coxes lock. a windlass out of new haw lock (looking very much like the one i sold to matey the other day) and some more nails. i don’t know what to do with my nail collection; any suggestions?

right. i’d better get on with this picture. what do you mean “dog’s aren’t blue"? yes they are, and they are also green and also red. and ginger if i want. it’s my picture and it will be exactly how i want it to be.

i’ll do the washing up later.

wednesday is art therapy day. it was also a lovely day so i walked all the way there and all the way back and i reckon that’s about eight miles.

while i was there i did a drawing called ’snuffy the dwarf goes in space’. this was a mixed media affair (posh term) using collage, pastels, pen and charcoal. it came out alright i suppose and that is the main thing. art lady mary says i’m not allowed to take photos of my art but on the way home i saw some art and i DID photograph it and nobody could stop me.

what do YOU think of THIS?

here is a series of works by exciting addlestone ’street’ artist, SCUMMER!
following on from last year’s hit exhibition ‘TITS!’ at tate modern we see further visceral imagery from SCUMMER! in his current collection: ‘your street, my nob’
using the essentially ‘mineral’ background of hard asphalt we see it is annointed with a pollockian trailing genitaliata of the most ‘animal’ kind. this is executed in use of more mineralia, OIL.

we have ‘animal’, we have ‘mineral’

in his isolation, SCUMMER! is making up the absentee of the triumvirate, we seem to hear him shout…

…"behold! i AM a VEGETABLE!”

word is that SCUMMER! has been awarded a £20,000 grant from the arts council of great britain for his triumphant tarmacadam triptych. this will bring a welcome smile to the face of the man who won the turner prize for his pavemental installation

‘my delicious dinner you bastard!’

because SCUMMER! has already spent the prize money on crack cocaine.

anyone interested in acquiring an edition of SCUMMER!’s limited availability work, ‘front door dog muck’ should send ten grand to ensure overnight delivery (provided the artist does not compromise his ASBO by breaching his curfew conditions).

look at that! nice work, railway nazis.

when i went to see the doctor this morning i saw what had happened to the tree. involuntarily an ‘oh no!’ sprang to my lips, the kind that might do some springing to lips if i had just had some very bad news.

the railway line through the station was built in the 1850’s and the station (which was originally called ‘west weybridge’ before being renamed ‘byfleet and new haw’) was built in 1927.

so hold it right there. hold it. now have a look at the picture again.

the sorry remains of that tree are on the embankment that the railway station is built on. it’s right up at the top, on the other side of the fence from the platform.

how old was the tree, before it just got murdered? i don’t know, but it looks pretty old to me.

how do you know it’s a pear tree then, henry old bean? well, i know because i notice things and that pear tree has been producing pears that taste very yum indeed for many, many years.

come on then, clever clogs, what kind of bloody pears were they that you are getting so upset about? ah, well i don’t know what kind of bloody pears they were that i am so upset about but let me tell you that THIS is where it gets really INTERESTING.

one of the many fascinating things about the way my head works is that i notice things and i make up little stories in my head to account for the things i notice. and then i go round boring people silly with the details. but these things are really, really important to me.

because what happened was that long ago (before anyone who will ever read this was born) on a bright autumn day someone was travelling by train. and that someone had some pears, maybe in a paper bag, and that someone ate a juicy pear and then lobbed the core out of the carriage window or off the footplate of the steam locomotive. and that is exactly how come there was a pear tree growing by the side of the platform for all these years producing beautiful dessert pears for anyone with half a brain to enjoy.

but then some people with no brains whatsoever came along and cut down the tree that was doing nobody any harm at all. they cut it down and broke my heart and left pieces of it to die on the embankment amongs the discarded lager cans and the filth and the litter.

what a waste. do you know how much someone who turns fruitwood to make beautiful things would have to pay for a piece of pear tree that size?

all these years growing. all these years in celebration of a golden autumn day years gone by when somebody thought to themselves ‘those pears look lovely, i think i’ll take one on the train with me’.

i hope i’m not the only one who thinks of things like this. that i’m not the only one imprisoned in a hateful world where every minute beauty is slashed at and torn and every second is a needless heartbreak.

and everything turns to dust.

fancy a pear? sorry mate. you’re too late.

it’s really hard to explain me and haslemere.

i went back there today to maintain a cache, ‘narnian gateway’, which is in one of my best places in the world. thirty years ago i used to live there and this photograph was taken on high lane down inval hill to bunch lane. i had just taken delivery of my free hat and the snow had started to fall. i can not explain the magic that exists for me on inval hill. there’s no explaining it at all.

coming out of the station i started walking and just as the first flakes began to fall i looked down and there was my new hat. an oiled cotton flat cap, brand new, no old man baldy head grease or anything. just the ideal hat and there it was. i put it on.

the cache was just where i had left it up in the silent woods. close to the narnian gateway that i first found thirty years ago and that has drawn me back again and again to a place that just has magic in it. i told you that i can’t explain.

here’s a photo of the gate, the gate that i put my lips to and kissed the cold metal goodbye as i left.

call me weird but i have to do things like that for the sake of the magic and for what it means to me. not to anybody else, just to me.

walking back down bunch lane i could feel my innards being torn out at the leaving.

the magic is a funny thing. i think that i have to say thank you for what it does for me. for the peace that it gives to me. and for the free hat.

and then i walked over to the other side of haslemere up haste hill to find another cache on blackdown. there are some footballer houses up on the top, it’s not bunch lane at all. but when i was coming back down i saw a house called ‘rose cottage’ that’s for sale and i thought to myself, ‘i could live there, i really, really could’.

peace, quiet, magic, a cottage that i could happily live in, even the waiting room at haslemere station is like something out of the railway children. what more could anyone ask for?

and i got a free hat.

ooh, i DO like to notice things. today i had to go to the hospital for a bit of art therapy and a very lovely day it was too. so i decided to walk.

i could only fit a short bit of towpath into my walk but i do love my canal so…

someone (probably dave c.) had left a trust punt moored up on the towpath side. i’d got about twenty yards past it and then the old wheels started going round in my head and i stopped walking. and i started wondering…

have a look at the photograph. how come the punt isn’t going anywhere? it’s not moored at all; there’s nothing tying it to the bank but it’s not moving in the current. how come?

and then i worked it out for myself, something that i didn’t know about before. this is the kind of thing that i love to do, just going round noticing things. what they have done is a really clever idea and one that probably goes back to the ancient wossnames but i never knew about it before - what they have done is cut tubes down through the bottom of the boat, one at the front and one at the back. and then when you want to park you drop a bit of scaffolding down through the tube and it digs into the bed and puts the brakes on a treat. i was so impressed i took a picture.

so that’s something i learned today.

and then i went to the hospital and got there early and wandered about looking at things and took a couple more snaps. i have been offered an extension to my art therapy. apparently i am so bloody fantastic and all-round marvelous that i have, this very day, been offered another year!

so hoorah for that.

but i had a peculiar feeling that i was being watched. nah. i must be getting paranoid. who would have been watching me?

i feel like i got a fair bit done today and amidst all the doings of the things that i’ve been doing i grew to like myself a little bit more.

first of all i walked towards the boat because it has been raining and her bilges needed a bit of a pump. on the towpath at new haw lock i met a man and wife who have a plastic boat moored there. i know them from last year. we said hello and that and he promised me two sacks of charcoal to burn on the stove. there was a narrowboat coming that i didn’t recognise and i was straining to see… ‘oh, these boat people all know each other’ said man to wife.

off the boat that i hadn’t recognised jumped matt from catteshall lock and i haven’t seen him since last year the day after his dad had died. we talked of this and of that. he was taking this boat up to eel pie island to have her surveyed as he wants to buy her. and as i walked away towards coxes lock i swear that i could feel taller, for i belong here. for once i belong and i am not a figure of ridicule but a respected member of a community that i love. and i have got where i am because i have worked for it and i have worked bloody hard. and i’m starting to realise it.

the pumping got done and i sowed some poppy seeds alongside our mooring and then i walked back and fed the ducks and talked to the owners of another springer boat that moors under the motorway bridge when they need a bit of cover to work on her. this springer is pretty much the same as the charley rose but has a wooden superstructure as opposed to metal, and consequently leaks. we talked springer.

instead of taking the woodland path home i came over the fields owned by the national grid, just to make a change. thus the photo, that one up there ^^^

at home i stuck my pictures so far up on the wall. it is my little gallery and makes me very happy.

do you know, i haven’t half learned some things these last few months. i cooked some splot for tea and that came out well and i was thinking about this and that and these days i am so excited about being me.

when a magician does a trick and pulls loads of coloured hankies or the flags of all nations out of a hat, this is what my head feels like - i wonder what’s going to come out next.

if i want to stop drinking then i have to not drink. same with smoking; at present i want not to smoke more than i want to smoke. result is that i don’t smoke and i am happy because i’m doing what i want to do. same with art. if i want to be a brilliant artist i had better do some brilliant art. and I LIKE what i do so it is making me happy. i don’t know what is going to happen or be revealed next so it’s all rather surprising and lovely.

and exciting.

i like being happy, i’m going to do it more often.

in the meantime, does anyone know where they sell smocks ‘n’ berets?

oh how trumpingly marvelous.

i had an important picture to take. for the purpose of highlighting hazards to shipping that are to be found at papercourt lock i thought a snap would suffice. what needed to be shown was the viewpoint of a boat entering a rising lock and going ‘uphill’ so to speak. the hazard at papercourt is that the cill is very high (this would be clearly shown in the photograph) and as it is a paddle type lock, with paddles in the gates that are comparatively high up, the boater who is new to this lock would be well advised to tie up as far back as possible to avoid getting surged forward under a ten foot spout of water and filling the nose of his boat and sinking in the lock.

i opted for ‘no flash’ as i am trying to be good at photography like what stu is. i took the picture. here it is…

oh dear! i must have failed to notice the sheet of pink corrugated plastic that was obviously dangling in front of my nose.

good job i took two pictures, eh reader?

didn’t really make any difference as they both came out the same. where has all this pink stripey crap come from? why can’t i just take pictures? why does nothing ever work? why can’t i have a phone that just works? why can’t i have a compluter that just works (this one disconnected half way through this blog)? why is my bicycle unmendably unwell? why will nothing ever work in the future? why is everything i try to do that has anything whatsoever to do with technermology… why has it, is, or will be or whatever (i’m a bit cross; i’m losing track of my rant here). pant pant gasp pant…. calm down…. breathe deeply…. there there…….

so, to sum up:

either my camera is broken and all i have to do is spend another million pounds on yet another new one,

OR

all i have to do is go all the way to papercourt lock, empty the lock, tie a tightrope across the lock, hang on to the tightrope by my toes, get - upsidedown - to the middle of the lock, remember to hold camera right way up, take a new set of pictures, walk all the way home again, try to download pictures, find out something else has gone wrong, burst into tears, go all the way back to papercourt lock taking smock, beret, easel, piece of paper and a pencil

AND DRAW A BLOODY PICTURE BECAUSE TECHNERMOLOGY

STINKS!!!!!!!!!