We continue our Guest Blog feature from The Dead Rat Orchestra who are currently undertaking The Cut, a canals and waterways tour which, based on their tour dates places them at Bath. This is the homeward straight of their 273 miles journey along the inland waterways from London to Bristol. Their final gig takes place this Saturday at the Arnolfini Art Centre where I will be. They are also performing on Friday at BATH Museum as part of the Bath Folk Festival.
I have to say, I’ve really looked forward to these posts and I’m going to genuinely miss them. They provide a brief escape and a lovely sideways glance into a slowed down world.
So far we have had musings from fellow Dead Rats Robin Alderton and Daniel Merrill, you can read their offerings here. This new entry is from Nathaniel Mann.
Observations from abroad the Gemini II
{A compendium of waterways thought}
1: Of Terrapins & Coconuts.
Two striking sightings from the canals of West London were the Terrapins and the Coconuts.
We spotted several pairs of Terrapins basking on the branches and floating jetsam of these grubby waters. Aside from moorhens, coots and swans these were some of the only wildlife we saw around London’s locks, before they gave over to the geese, kingfishers, grebes and herons of the wider Thames.
The Coconuts became a conundrum. These dark sodden husks regularly floated past us on the Paddington Branch down to Brentford. We first guessed they were from a stall selling them as refreshments down at Camden. Until we realised that Camden was upstream, so their mysterious source must lay further West….
Out on the tidal Thames and beyond no further coconuts were seen until our return trip through Abingdon Lock in Oxfordshire. There our favourite Lock Keeper plucked one from the weir and offered it to us as a trophy, “I thought you boys might like this” – (he’d clearly got the cut of our gib – we did like it!).
This small hairy mound traveled with us back down to Reading and up the Kennett & Avon, drying and developing a pungent musk as we went. It was our brief companion until it was jettisoned at the mouth of the Bruce Tunnel – it’s smell simply grew too strong.
2: Of the Slowness of Cows: Waterway boat names.
Our own sweet vessel is named the ‘Gemini II’ – a name that is not of our own choosing – it was like that when we found it – but we’ve grown to love it.
The canals and rivers are the preserve for the classic British pun – nowhere more so than amongst the cruisers of the affluent Thames around Windsor and Eaton. With knot-puns a plenty; from ‘Forget-Me-Knot’ to ‘It’s Knot Unusual’, it seems like the higher the cost of the boat, the more groan-worthy the name; exemplified by the mammoth cruisers XtaSea and Seaduction.
Some of the wordplay is so forced and overworked that it barely seems worth the effort; Turnothworld.
Despite all of this, here is a list of my favourite (non-pun) boat names:
Slowness of Cows
Churn
The Merry Dance
A Ladies Smock
Intolerance
Gentle Highway
Wayfarers All
The Wee Dram
3: Mouth to Mouth – The Inland Navigation.
Today, for the first time, it dawned on me that we really are crossing the entire country – from river mouth to river mouth. From Father Thames to the gaping Avon.
– Seen like this; its quite a feat.
4: Ambition: Time Scales.
After over a week on the water we arrived to Oxford, and having traveled over 100 miles to get there, it genuinely did feel like a very long way. I then realised that over the past few years I’ve made a day-return commute to Oxford many times. The same journey that’s taken us a week.
Traveling by waterway is truly linear – there is no rupture in the journey – the sense of scale and pace is preserved. Suddenly trains, motorways and planes seem almost like time travel – after a while seated you burst out somewhere else, with no real sense of journey or landscape.
Somebody we met in Braziers Park suggested that we ‘expand our ambitions’ and head North on the canals too – that the project could be bigger – and after a weeks journeying by waterway my sense of scale had shifted so much that I couldn’t quite get his point.
5: Caen Hill Observations
Caen Hill I
The Caen Hill flight of 16 locks has been an important focal point of our journey. An integral part of of our progress and process – and something that we never even consider to share publicly.
Myths about this formidable challenge float up and down the waterways – and tales of breaking Caen Hill’s back are met with warm smiles and further anecdotes.
During his research Dan discovered that this entire flight of locks in fact constitutes a costly and unnecessary detour – that a flatter route was available, requiring less locks – however, local representatives in Parliament forced the canals’ route through the town of Devices. In some senses this great flight – now a site of national heritage, stands as an absurd monument to political strong-arming.
Caen Hill II
Doing the Caen hill flight feels a little like performing some rite or ritual. Its a process, a pilgrimage. The repetition of patterns, rhythms and stages. Movements planned and define in the minds of those who designed, engineered and created these locks centuries ago.
It felt like we were realising a score. Perhaps an absurd Fluxus composition or process work, in which stages must be repeated and repeated to no particular end = its the process that counts.
Of course we advanced, we reached the bottom of the flight; to no particular end other than to carry on our journey. Only, at some undefined moment of the future, to return and undo those steps – to rise again to the summit of the flight in a reprise performance.
Cean Hill III
A loop of rope pulled around the mooring pin and, with windlass in hand, I leave the chug and turn of Gemini II’s engine behind as I make moves to set the lock.
The great gates and a mass of water wait silently and I’m made to think of the silence of canals before days of diesel engines and coughing outboards. The loudest things on the pound must have been roaring of the lock water itself. The poor old horses heave and step – but the barges themselves drift in quiet, floating awe across the surfaces of the canal.
My windlass key slides onto the sluice gear spindle and the tap and clank of rising paddle begins.
A rush of water sounds from deep below as the breach’s currents pull and pour. The windlass twists beneath my grip and a deep howl and hiss fill the air – collapsing all sense of space around the lock – the countryside ceases to exist for a moment – everything is sucked in her. She reaches a steady crescendo as the second sluice is opened before eventually retreating towards quasi-silent drips and trickles – the landscape opens out around the lock again – the wind returns to the trees.
A guttural clunk is the nod of the cap; the gates are ready to open. A braced back against the arm and the mitre is shorn – each loose gate glides through the water, creating fleeting, twisting eddies.
Gemini II chugs into earshot. A nod and (when needed) a shout – a rope flung. The gates enclose her and I, with windlass, again to the lock-gears. The same rising tap and clank, the same sense of releasing, of folding space, of gushing, shifting strength and depth.
I run forward into the silence of the next waiting lock – ready to set the the whole thing in motion again.
Nathaniel Mann
Dead Rat Orchestra – The Captain’s Apprentice (live in Sønderho Forsamlingshus 28.07.12)
A Stopmotion videoclip for the song “The Owl & the Pussycat” by Nathaniel Robin Mann from a poem by Edward Lear.
Tour Dates
August
14 – AVONCLIFF The Crossed Guns (Bath Folk Festival)
15 – BATH Museum of Bath at Work (Bath Folk Festival)
16 – BRISTOL Arnolfini, Bristol / £5/ www.arnolfini.org.uk
Dead Rat Orchestra
http://deadratorchestra.co.uk/
http://deadratorchestra.tumblr.com/
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Read all of the Guest Blog features for The Cut here