are right-angled stones for corners.
I’m struggling now to find the really lovely stones I dream of: maroon stones, perfect ellipses – but it’s not just stones, sometimes huge bits of wood with the texture of water still in them in the plane of movement, a kind of camber.
I’ve made barns, sheds, chicken houses, goose huts, whatever I require, just putting two and two together, having a boat and a bit of space that needs squaring; which is how everything goes with me, because you see I’m a gatherer, an amateur, a scavenger, a comber, my whole style’s a stone wall, just wedging together what happens to be lying about at the time.
I love this concept of drift, meaning driven, deposited by a current of air or water. Like how I came by the boat, someone just phoned and said I’ve got this eighteen-foot crabber and one thing led to another. Here I am now with a clinker-built launch.
But it’s off the river at the moment, it gets a lot of wear and tear going aground on hard rocks and carrying a tonnage of stone around. I haven’t worked it for six months, hence my agitatedstate, I keep looking over my shoulder, I dream my skin’s flaking off and silting up the house; because the boat’s my aerial, my instrument, connects me into the texture of things, as I keep saying, the grain, the drift of water which I couldn’t otherwise get a hold on.
A tree-line, a slip-lane, a sight-line, an eye-hole, whatever it is, when you’re chugging past Sharpham on a fine evening, completely flat, the water just glows. You get this light different from anything on land, as if you’re keeping a different space, you’re in a more wobbly element like a wheelbarrow, you can feel the whole earth tipping, the hills shifting up and down, shedding stones as if everything’s a kind of water
Oceanides Atlanta Proserpina Minerva boat voices
yachts with their river-shaking engines
Lizzie of Lymington Doris of Dit’sum
bending the firey strands under their keels, sheathed in the flying fields and fleeing the burden of being
two sailing boats, like prayers towing their wooden tongues
Naini Tal, Nereid of Quarr
and the sailmaker grabbing his sandwich,
the rich man bouncing his powerboat like a gym shoe,
the boatyard manager, thriving in the narrow margin between storing boats and keeping them moving, costing and delegating, structuring deals and wrapping up proposals
the shipwright, the caulker, the countersunk copper nail
there goes the afternoon, faster than the rowers breathe, they lever and spring
and a skiff flies through like a needle worked loose from its compass
under the arch where Mick luvs Trudi
and Jud’s heart
has the arrow locked through it
six corn-blue dinghies banging together
Liberty Belle, Easily Led, Valentine, L’Amour, White Rose and Fanny
and there goes Westerly Corsair Golden Cloud and Moonfire
Windweaver Sunshadow Seawolf
in the shine of a coming storm when the kiosk is closed
and gulls line up and gawp on the little low wall
there goes a line of leaves, there goes winter there goes the river at the speed of the woods coming into flower a little slower than the heron a little slower than a make-do boat running to heel with only a few galvanised bits and a baler between you and your watery soul
there goes spring, there goes the lad from Kevicks
sailing to New Zealand in a tiny catamaran to find his girlfriend,
a wave washes out his stove, he’s eating pasta soaked in seawater
and by the time he gets there she’s with someone else
Troll, Fluff, Rank, Bruckless,
Bootle Bumtrink, Fisher 25,
Tester, Pewter, Whistler, Smiler
Jezail, Saith Seren, Pianola, Windfola,
Nanuk, Callooh, Shereefah
it’s taken twenty years, boatbuilder
every bit of spare cash,
it started as a dream, I did some sketches,
I had to build myself a shed to make it in
Freeby
Moody
Loopy Lou
every roll of fibre glass two hundred quid, it has to be sandwiched round foam and resined, the whole thing rubbed
I’m struggling now to find the really lovely stones I dream of: maroon stones, perfect ellipses – but it’s not just stones, sometimes huge bits of wood with the texture of water still in them in the plane of movement, a kind of camber.
I’ve made barns, sheds, chicken houses, goose huts, whatever I require, just putting two and two together, having a boat and a bit of space that needs squaring; which is how everything goes with me, because you see I’m a gatherer, an amateur, a scavenger, a comber, my whole style’s a stone wall, just wedging together what happens to be lying about at the time.
I love this concept of drift, meaning driven, deposited by a current of air or water. Like how I came by the boat, someone just phoned and said I’ve got this eighteen-foot crabber and one thing led to another. Here I am now with a clinker-built launch.
But it’s off the river at the moment, it gets a lot of wear and tear going aground on hard rocks and carrying a tonnage of stone around. I haven’t worked it for six months, hence my agitatedstate, I keep looking over my shoulder, I dream my skin’s flaking off and silting up the house; because the boat’s my aerial, my instrument, connects me into the texture of things, as I keep saying, the grain, the drift of water which I couldn’t otherwise get a hold on.
A tree-line, a slip-lane, a sight-line, an eye-hole, whatever it is, when you’re chugging past Sharpham on a fine evening, completely flat, the water just glows. You get this light different from anything on land, as if you’re keeping a different space, you’re in a more wobbly element like a wheelbarrow, you can feel the whole earth tipping, the hills shifting up and down, shedding stones as if everything’s a kind of water
Oceanides Atlanta Proserpina Minerva boat voices
yachts with their river-shaking engines
Lizzie of Lymington Doris of Dit’sum
bending the firey strands under their keels, sheathed in the flying fields and fleeing the burden of being
two sailing boats, like prayers towing their wooden tongues
Naini Tal, Nereid of Quarr
and the sailmaker grabbing his sandwich,
the rich man bouncing his powerboat like a gym shoe,
the boatyard manager, thriving in the narrow margin between storing boats and keeping them moving, costing and delegating, structuring deals and wrapping up proposals
the shipwright, the caulker, the countersunk copper nail
there goes the afternoon, faster than the rowers breathe, they lever and spring
and a skiff flies through like a needle worked loose from its compass
under the arch where Mick luvs Trudi
and Jud’s heart
has the arrow locked through it
six corn-blue dinghies banging together
Liberty Belle, Easily Led, Valentine, L’Amour, White Rose and Fanny
and there goes Westerly Corsair Golden Cloud and Moonfire
Windweaver Sunshadow Seawolf
in the shine of a coming storm when the kiosk is closed
and gulls line up and gawp on the little low wall
there goes a line of leaves, there goes winter there goes the river at the speed of the woods coming into flower a little slower than the heron a little slower than a make-do boat running to heel with only a few galvanised bits and a baler between you and your watery soul
there goes spring, there goes the lad from Kevicks
sailing to New Zealand in a tiny catamaran to find his girlfriend,
a wave washes out his stove, he’s eating pasta soaked in seawater
and by the time he gets there she’s with someone else
Troll, Fluff, Rank, Bruckless,
Bootle Bumtrink, Fisher 25,
Tester, Pewter, Whistler, Smiler
Jezail, Saith Seren, Pianola, Windfola,
Nanuk, Callooh, Shereefah
it’s taken twenty years, boatbuilder
every bit of spare cash,
it started as a dream, I did some sketches,
I had to build myself a shed to make it in
Freeby
Moody
Loopy Lou
every roll of fibre glass two hundred quid, it has to be sandwiched round foam and resined, the whole thing rubbed
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