Saturday, June 20, 2015

Flaneur Dispatch 5--- Longer Boats

I wrote the following bit ages ago and apparently forgot to post it. I'm a doof. Oh well, coots!

There is a district in London called Little Venice where the long, painted narrowboats tie up for free, so long as they move two locks up or down every fourteen days. They look like this:

There's dozens and dozens, up and down Regent's Canal.

The people who live on them tend to wear tattered waistcoats and hats with hawk feathers and have long hair and fancy mustaches. I don't know how much of this raffishness is studied (I would guess a lot) and how long of the romantic appeal of living on a narrowboat lasts (I would guess not long) but it's still enchanting. There are herb gardens and bicycles on the roofs and beautiful wooden rooms inside. The painted detailing gleams and you can almost completely ignore that they are sitting in a nasty stagnant canal with trash and mean looking coot families bobbing around. 

Zoom out

Zoom in!

I went to a boat festival there a few weeks ago and hung out on a boat that did classes for kids by day (probably--hopefully-- involving the six or so large, exotic reptiles and amphibians roaming freely around) and was a bar by night. The proprietors were tan, grimy and cheerful. Boats had come from all the canals in London and were blazing with light; they tied up three abreast and chugged by in a procession to the sound of a really unconvincing bluegrass band. It was magic and a bit sad, because while living on a boat connotes freedom and detachment from the world, they are all bundled into canals they can't even turn around in. About 40% of me wants to drop everything and live on a narrowboat, and the rest of me sensibly points out that I like long showers and high ceilings and not living with only an inch or two of wood between me and belligerent coots. I also like open water and long sight lines. 

There's only a month left of school, which is depressing. I am learning so much here, and my brain is full, oiled, and pleased. I am not entirely happy with the quality of some projects, but I am making the sort of mistakes I can learn a lot from and it is worthwhile. I started the long, excruciatingly boring process of patenting one of my designs and it's terrible and I hate it and I'd better not think of anything else that is clever until I can afford a minion to do all this nonsense for me. 

I really want to put up a picture of the design in question but I can't so here is a really confused heron.

Today I went to Ford's UK HQ, which I can't write about much because they make all visitors sign NDAs before even reaching the gates. There was a modest little statue of Henry Ford, that Great American Entrepreneur, standing in a rigidly controlled garden next to the car park. He looked confused. They zoomed us round the test track in some silent electric cars, which was oddly placid. I'd never thought about it before, but the fast car experience is very much tied into a good loud roar. Apparently electric cars in the EU will be required to make noise, which makes sense but seems a shame. I was about to say that I like to ride silently, but I have incredibly loud pawls on my two favorite bikes so never mind that. 

You know what else is loud? Sheep. They actually say 'baa'. With the 'B' sound and everything.

I had another long ramble over the weekend in the endlessly lovely, nonthreatening empty countryside. As I get older and more boring it seems I need more and more time alone, to have nice uninterrupted thinks. I walk along the Monarch's Way, which the route Charles II took while running away from Cromwell. I looked in all the oak trees and climbed a few myself and didn't see any ghosts or even reenactors which was a real shame. 

Resumed 20/06

I've spent today trying to design an interface for a self driving car that I can't post due to NDA nonsense but you're not missing much. Despite my very best efforts, I am beginning to be a bit dazed with England. Maybe it's seeing the sun so rarely or maybe it's always being a bit cold, but my usually boundless energy is flagging a bit. For the first time since I got here I am almost (almost!) ready to go home. I swooned over the Elgin Marbles, I saw the Oldest Known Socks in the World, I learnt a few new programmes and saw my first and probably only penny farthing pace line:

Most of them were taking it seriously! An Austrian won. I wonder how he transported his bike?

I went to cold, windy, slightly creepy Brighton that had so many allusions rolling round in my brain I could barely keep my eras straight. 

Can you see the REAL me, can you? CAN YOU??

I did go in the freezing ocean up to my knees because that's The Rules, but I can see why the act of bathing is seen as a character former rather than something one does for fun. I was hoping to see a bathing machine, but there weren't any. Just some truly ridiculous cakes. 

Because when I think of fancy shindigs I think of military sheep.

Tomorrow I shall go to Canterbury and damned if I'm not gonna make a pilgrimage out of it. I'm trying to approach western religion with the same respectful incomprehension and sense of sanctity that I attached to Shinto and Buddhism, but it's not working at all. I will get a pilgrim badge, but it will not feel lovely in the way that all my Japanese badges and charms do. 

And on a final note, I cannot believe the messes that are unfolding in my own terrible, loved, backwards and beautiful country. It feels wrong to be swanning around abroad and fixating on making things when there is so much horror going on at home. I just spent forever trying to say more, but there aren't really words. It's not been a good year at home; when I get back I want to do something to help but damned if I know what. 

Isis


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