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Thinking about all this water, water, everywhere; and its attendant miseries, I thought we ought to have something much brighter and summery to look at. So rummaging through last year's pictures I came across this. Irresistible, obviously. From what I remember, the lettering is beautifully ticked-in (as signwriters say) along the jib of a big mobile crane used to hoik boats in and out of Oare Creek at Faversham in Kent. All around here is a wonderland of the things we like: boat hulls, maritime detritus, rusting containers. Let's hope the sun starts to shine on Faversham and everywhere else very soon, and for longer than five minutes.
This week I've been photographing the remarkable stone-built town of Stamford in Lincolnshire, for a project I'll talk more about later in the spring. In the remains of the day I found myself at the west end of the town, and in particular on this pathway that runs between a stream and the water meadows that stretch out to the River Welland. It's called Melancholy Walk, and is in fact a raised causeway that ends at a few acres of allotments and an isolated cottage. Standing there I was taken back to a spring evening long ago, when aged about three I was taken down here by my two older girl cousins who lived nearby on Tinwell Road. They held my hands and patiently let me toddle on between them until we reached a gateway that's just out of sight to the left of this photograph. We tried to traverse an area of deep black mud churned up by cattle, in an attempt to cross the meadows, but I got stuck fast, my little wellington boots slowly sinking into the ooze. They pulled and pulled, to no avail. And then a man in a raincoat and flat cap appeared, cycling slowly down the causeway either to the allotments or the cottage. "Excuse me mister", the elder girl called out, "But our cousin has got stuck in the mud". He didn't even turn and look, but just shouted over his shoulder "Bugger off".
It started with three pop-pop steam boats I bought at the Abbey Pumping Station event (see last post). The idea is that you fill them with water and then light candle stubs that you slide under their tiny boilers. On heating up they start to go pop-pop and if you're lucky they steam happily along for five minutes or so. That's the theory, but we had grandiose ideas of having a race with them across our local stream where it fords a bridleway. Youngest Boy quite rightly said we should test one first in the kitchen sink, so after I'd burnt myself with the cigarette lighter, cut myself on the tin and thrown the offending boat down the garden, we took our Sutcliffe Clockwork Liner out instead. What a performer. A few turns of the long key you put down one of the funnels and it's away. It head-butted not only a strong wind but also the unpredictable current of the stream, whirring away whilst we let water flow into the tops of our Wellingtons. Having gone through a couple of concrete pipes unscathed it finally grounded itself Fitzcarraldo-style in a reed bed. We went home for cocoa, (well, Bovril in my case), wet through, caked in mud and very, very happy. I told The Boys I had bought the tin ship from Mr.Sutcliffe in person, which was met with utter disbelief. Amazingly, it's true.
Deceptively simple. Probably. All I'll say is that although this view today still has the mill, a river and boats (and very little else), it looks very different. Think silting up, as you do on a Tuesday morning.
