Meerkats Anonymice

A sort of self-help group for folk suffering from S.C.P.S.

Supermarket Car-Park Syndrome.

By “self-help” I mean “group sui-kill pact”.

What, as usual, are we huddling together for? Warmth? Moral support?

The two in front of me moved – only to be immediately replaced.

nb Lakeland has re-appeared. Known to one and all for being moored for years sans human near a certain bridge on popular moorings in this area, I assume that the lovely wee beastie has been sold on by the C anal Company Ltd in order to defray the costs of selling it on and defraying the costs. Damned expensive things; selling on and defraying costs.

If it’s not already for sale then it soon will be. Potential abounding.

I had potential once. Now I just have carpal tunnel syndrome and hair in my ears.

Still, mustn’t grumble. I would move on but why bother when my fan club would just move with me? I have a perverse

sort of liking for these moorings. They’re close to a main road and noisy near twenty-four seven, but my goodness me it’s v.nice when mooring somewhere else… This place provides the contrast that makes me appreciate T.M.O.N.

The Middle Of Nowhere.

The pedestrian traffic in these parts is urban living dead. The sort who blink like rabbis on acid, unaccustomed to the daylight. Rabbits, damn it, I meant rabbits.

I failed a chemistry examination once. Question 3 was to write a thousand words on acid, but when I tried the floor disappeared and my pen became a gorilla.

Only joking. It was a small but perfectly-formed baboon, not a whole gorilla.

The Canal Company Ltd has been branching out into investing in artwork. This on one of its work-boats.

So many influences evident there. It began, I think, with the lovely old logo formed from bridge silhouette, reeds, and swan – the one designed and donated in perpetuity for free by genuine professionals many moons ago. Now replaced with the v.expensive and embarrassingly awful “half-sunken tyre”.

It’s sort of viking but if you look closely you can see Anubis standing in the boat, arm outstretched to the bow. I say bow thinking that perhaps the remains of the old logo suggest some sort of horse-head or dragon prow or figurehead, but it might be a rusty old oil-rig with a swan vomiting over the side into some reeds. Love the way that ‘…waterways’ is still legible. Time and tide wait for Gnome Man.

Gnome Man is an island.

That’s his “super-power” – they say that Gnome Man is an island, but Gnome Man actually is.

I wonder how much it cost, and whether one day it will tour the Louvre, the Uffizi, the Metropolitan, and the Tretyakov?

If it were ever to do so would Extinction Rebellion throw Andy Warhol’s works at it?

You know when you’ve been Campbelled.

Look at me, wittering on again. I’ve forgotten to take my Anti-Witter pills.

Had a splendid time today letting Mr Stove go out – it’s relatively mild atm – and then broggling out his flue with the boat-hook. Can’t have the little bugger coughing and wheezing for breath now, can we? Mr Chimney, barely two years of age (and never called me ‘Mother’) is on his last legs, although I hope that he’ll see the season out. The fumes from burning coal really can be quite noxious and corrosive, so much so that I wonder that they haven’t entered Parliament yet.

Perhaps they have?

We’ll re-light Mr Stove at evenfall. At least we’ve saved use of a day’s coal, too. 😉

The flue pipe was surprisingly clear, considering. Just a mild layer of soot and no large build-ups, no portals into otherworldly realms. The baffle plate (flame trap? whatever) was also largely unsullied by the passage of compacted dinosaur remains, a couple of dings with Mr Biggenthwacker and it was as clean as a Victorian chimneysweep’s whistle.

Baby’s First Axe (by TOMY) came in handy again today, splitting “small logs” into something that will actually fit into my stove. Whenever I chop up logs on the towpath – especially one with some foot-traffic – I like to wear a collander on my head and to shout ‘die, you bastard, die!’ with every chop of the axe. It discourages unnecessary conversation with strangers.

Actually I need some other way of splitting logs. I am wildly inaccurate with my axe-swings and a danger even unto myself. Has anyone tried one of those drill attachment thingies? I might be safer with one of those, if they work.

Well, it’s half three and yonder light is fading again. Time to assemble something tasty with which to light the stove, and to consider another caffeine drip.

Chin-chin Chihuahuaii.

Ian H., & Cardinal W.