The Omphalos

This is me, setting off on such an early voyage, from the beach at Aldeburgh.


This tiny craft
was of galvanised
tin construction
without keel
or rudder,
and as such it was certainly
not designed
for travel through space
in what we currently call
reality.
But through
another kind of space
it was
most excellent
transport.

Shush! Never tell me I was posing for a photograph!

Such a vessel is no more nor less useful than, say, a bronze horse,
promising triumph whilst never twitching a fetlock.

Where are bronze ponies available for imaginary treks?


When they make me king
I shall have the previous rulers
who observe our metropolis from horseback
carefully dismounted.


I wont have them melted down to make canon,
they would probably like that,
I shall have them buried
head downwards
in the pavements.


This would not only serve as an example to wananbe heroes and warmongers but also as useful places to park your bicycle.




Their mounts
left unmounted
free to gaze
(not graze)
from their
lofty plinths
being
themselves
far nobler
objects of
our admiration.


Of course as King I shall no doubt have a very fine equestrian statue of me commissoned, to meet the demands of protocol.

However I shall have the horse placed on Parliament Hill, trotting towards Highate Ponds, where it will serve as a climbing frame for children.



and my own effigy?
That can be buried
head down
in the sandpit
near the swings,
by the railway line
where I played
as a child.
A homage
to the legless boatman,
and a word of advice. Hide the parts that don't work.



There I go, with self-deprecation again


In the real world I can only expect an imaginary monument.

I was born on Parliament Hill. This is a drawing of it from distorted memory. Later I shall make this drawing look nice but for the moment it has all the information there: The house where I was born, the hill, the kites. the erotic gerkin that wasn't there when I was a child and the GPO tower that was.






The lions of Trafalgar Square are always giving rides to children.

They make a strange commemoration for a naval battle,
the commander of which
stands impossibly detatched
from them in the sky.

There were no lions at the Battle of Trafalgar.
People who say there were are not telling the truth.
They have not been widely used in naval warfare,
although their sudden deployment
would have given Neslon the advantage of surprise.

"Unleash the big cats!"

















The ship I am building however is not a warship. It is a houseboat, or an ark.

I am perfectly serious about it.
I may be building a real ship in an imaginary world
or an imaginary ship in the real world.


Or both simultaneously.

This is the very first
and simplest design,
which I drew
one Easter in Poland,
jealous of a jowka.

It is not in dry dock, it was never intended to get wet: I planned to build it in a field somewhere,
ideally one planted with lavender
amongst wolds and bosks
poetically oblivious to planning permission.

When the man from the council comes around and asks if I have the right to erect a residence on the site I shall explain that it is not a residence, it is a boat.

"Are you aware, Sir, that we are seventy four miles from the sea?"

"I'm waiting for a flood." I shall say.


That is presumably what I was doing whilst I was sitting in the tin plasterer’s bath on Aldeburgh beach.




AN APOLOGY
I may previously have given the impression
that beaches were a desirable place to be,
when in fact the opposite is the truth.

If you sent a probe to investigate whether
a certain planet was suitable for colonisation,
and your probe landed on a beach,
it would send back very discouraging data:



“There is plentiful water, but it is poisonous. The soil is completely barren and rocky. A small boy has been discovered sitting in a galvanised metal tub but when his brain was scanned it was found to be elsewhere. Message ends."


The probe that landed on a sandy beach in Zanzibar sent back a frankly unreliable report before its sensors, clogged with sand, gave up.




It is thought that it may still be there,

buried in the sand.