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mineral deposits under a bridge over the canal. otherworldly upside downs, showing the natural processes are ongoing despite human intervention. 

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I don't have any art to add recently. The last few trips out with Rich have been hands on, in that I have been learning to be useful, and growing in confidence as a result.
I have this burgeoning sense of something stirring inside, a desire to create, paint, sculpt, I don't know..to express something about the nature of this experience that is happening for me.

I always thought I would love canal boating. As a lover of being in and on water in general and having a historic confidence in canoes, canal boats were just another language I hadn't learned yet. Never visited the country beyond some casual tourism. Rich immerses me in the culture, although let's say it's been a slow and tender baptism, as I really haven't had that much to do.

Sometimes I wonder if the art will come from the external influences: the themes that I see as we move through town and country. Water patterns, wildlife, flora, fauna, activity on the margins.. or will it be something internal? You see this adventure is drawing me back to a place I remember before I was tied down by maternal responsibility. Sometimes when I'm with him, busy, finding myself ready to fulfil some minor task,  I find I am free of the restrictive stranglehold that self consciousness brings and just present, focussed on a very pleasant task. It is lovely to be trusted to take charge of the boat into a lock, or to know when to jump off and hold the rope. Trusting myself not to be an utter twat and fall in.

There is also the issue of the weather.. so far I have only known sunshine and breeze. Will this romance fade in the face of an inclement temperament?

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A rapid study of the ripples, boils, bubbles and waves behind the boat as we move

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The stretch of land through which the canal severs saltworks from suspiciously empty grassland marked the beginning of the journey on the first of July. As we passed through in the van, takeaway coffees recently acquired, for requisite caffeination prior to finding the boat, I noted that the flattening grasses and other vegetation had a coastal feel. We considered that maybe the combination of salted earth, blinding sunshine and flattening breeze gave the illusion of dunes.
The whole day I seemed to be interested in the waves that emanate from the boat. Whether the rising scent of rusty metallic silt drying on the deck coming in surges, or the reflected light rippling across the corrugated underside of the central roof, or the myriad coruscations and curves, cresting and lapping, in the brown water from the back. melting over and over, boiling, sinking, rowing, oiling upon those that came before, cross hatching those of other angles, of other currents, sometimes dancing in crisp rows in the breeze, other times running like swans in tandem against the bank, deep valleys and high peaks. The strange interplay of air against liquid, the pressure interface kept my attention for a long time, as I reflected on my position floating and moving across the surface of the liquid, somewhere I am not naturally evolved to be. Boat techno float.
Until there was a heron that stood sentinel on the bank, a grey dinosaur on a pole: it lifted as we approached and crossed the canal, leading me to lurch from one side to the other to capture a glimpse. Later I mentioned to Rich that I had seen it, and he laughed, yes, I know, I felt the boat tip as you leapt about to see it it. My face felt hot; I hadn't realised I was so transparent in my enthusiasm.
Later,  I listened to the wind in the reeds. Shall I say it? Shall I whisper hissing sussuration, impatient shushing, tired sighing, or shall I not? I don't wish to be a cliche here, but the reeds harbour mystery, with thin slice glimpses of nurseries and nests. Occasionally the light dapples and the whole scene is a barcode of beige and brown, the colour of tired mushrooms and old books, topped with thick brown fluffy rushes. They look like organic microphone stands, do the bulrushes. Sometimes there are warblers and buntings, but mostly coots and their soot sprite children, and on this occasion we saw a domestic duck and her incongruous white blonde child. Mallard ducklings are characteristically yellow with black stripes, and I only know the domesticity because of my own growing knowledge of ducks as a keeper, and it was meaningless knowledge as this duck is clearly not interested in being domestic at all, having run off with a gypsy boat drake and made her fortune on the cut at Northwich in the faintly brackish canal.

We had started our day tentatively, with coiled unspoken words threatening to bite or sting, but somehow they remained tame and the lulling joy of the day removed any venom. Before long we were sharing some tasks and smiling broadly at one another, chuntering over observed fly larvae, moorhen chicks and bridge graffiti.
Today I encountered locks and having watched the progress of one, was invited to take charge of another. Not yet the boat and its safety, for Murphy's Game is a precious fellow, but yes to the windlass and the paddles. It was slightly daunting, because I take these things seriously, but really I believe enough people have gone before me with fewer wits, and survived, so I was alright. The Captain.. looks so at ease, squinting into the sunlight. Give me a wave, I implore, for a photograph, it's all about waves today. He is reluctant, of course. His interest is never in himself, and he looks ahead all the time, planning, planning, strategising, doing, adjusting. It sounds so testing but he makes it look simple, and is a generous, kind teacher. I feel competent under his guidance, and I do not crash into the banks when he hands me the tiller once again.

When we tie up for the day, in Middlewich, it is opposite a pub where a band plays. Lots of faces that look to have been in the sun all day look our way but I don't make eye contact because it feels.. like we are some sort of attraction. I can smell hot chips and vinegar and see across the road the source. We catch one another's eye and his head tips suggestively in the direction of the chip shop. I say, we should get it when we get back with the van. For although it is 7.30 or close, we have a 7 mile bike ride back up the towpath to fetch the van.

The towpath ride this evening was tiring for me. I caught a willow wand in my rear wheel spokes at one point and had to stop to unravel the basket that self wove through the spines, and then later, slipped in mud, and later, was swatted in the face by giant hogweed, and later inhaled a fly, and later slapped a horsefly on my arm and almost shot into the canal. I felt it. He on the other hand, gloated about being able to cycle it twice. By the time we returned to the boat to replace the bikes, the chip shop was closed and we scowled, kicking the pavement in hungry disappointment.

Nonetheless, we finally found an appropriate (feels like) 'day at the seaside' fish and chips tea, and made it onto the road home. Peeing
behind a hedge purposefully stopped at, I stared at an enormous setting tangerine sun.  This pirate of the cut took me on another adventure and returned me at midnight.

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Reflecting this week about what it means to join Rich on this journey, as girlfriend, as willing pair of hands, as keen and interested companion, I came to the conclusion that I feel mostly to be the Observer.
He and I frequently mention my observational skills: as an artist, looking hard at things in order to express them in colour on paper is expected, it's axiomatic (another favourite shared term). I find myself thinking that I don't want to just paint pictures of the canal, lovely as it is. I am far more interested in the relational qualities of everything encountered and therefore a large amount of my time on board, or even in his company, is spent contemplating the relationships.
When we first encountered one another in the flesh it was predicated on a project about rivers. I was engaged in the Posthuman Research Methods with Rosi Braidotti's Summer school, and going on and on about stepping outside of anthropocentric perspectives, the rhizomatic connections of every network, growing, symbiosis, actualisation. Posthuman thinking about Life, as per Lyn Margulis & Dorion Sagan, does echo Carl Rogers' theory of the Formative Tendency: that the Universe unfolds as it only can, adapting to pressures and sustaining itself with whatever resources are immediately available. I enthused to Rich about the life that springs from a bend in the river, mineral deposits somehow shaping the thought patterns in local fauna, contributing to the human activity that I suppose at that point, I had full stopped, and reached the end of the line of thought (Fie on the anthropocentric bias!) But the river project has gone underground. Subterranean flow, as it meanders through my unconscious; how and where will that project manifest?

In the meantime, I am often marooned in the midlands on my island of family responsibility. This woman is an island, a single mother of three at home, disability contained. I, Robinson Crueso, have this rickety wooden shack to maintain. Every so often, Rich appears on his large blue steed of a transit van and whisks me away to the Mersey canal, where I can decorate the boat with my nonsense, running up and down with the go pro, or catching a rope and feeling accessory, because I don't know what I am doing. He is laconic; perhaps not much to talk about, maybe the skin of the water is his smooth expression, knowing the sediment of many days runs beneath. I can't see anything when I dip my waterproofed camera beneath the surface, it is too murky, but I know it hides so much Life. I am an observer, and I can see my own face, broken up by the ripples, reflected back at me.
I use this time to think about the art of what I am doing. Observation is not merely looking, not even looking with focus. It is understanding, seeing patterns, rhythms, silently absorbing experience and witness, formulating theories, making links. The canals are historical, aquatic, ecological, beautiful, ugly, rough, gorgeous, dirty, havens, wild, artificial. Places of contrast, places of stories, journeys, of thousands of bodies moving back and forth in a contained space. What then will I record? What am I doing here? How has the Universe and Life itself spat me out here, with my skills, my history, my connection, and what will I do with it all?
That's what I am working on. That's the art this week.

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What is a Novice Tiller like me doing in a place like this?

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What is a Novice Tiller like me doing in a place like this?

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You might know me already as the duck keeping, river swimming, arts and counselling woman with unruly children.
Last year, after a few years of virtual friendship, I discovered myself overboard in real life love with this fascinating person. I have lots of my own projects going on, with posthuman investigations, nature writing, psychogeography currently, endless art documenting the world as I move through it.. and this unique adventure with Mr Restless.  He's teaching me how to do the boating, and for the most part, doing the boating is enjoying the boating.

This Padlet is serving as a note board really, for something a little more structured ahead. If you enjoy it in this iteration, that's marvellous.

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Mr Restless doesn't know I am writing for him, rather, he thinks I am writing for my own enjoyment. Of course he's correct, as there is everything to be enjoyed about witnessing his passion for this project, and I could not be more delighted to share this adventure, as novice as I am.

I recall a winter's evening, several months ago, receiving a WhatsApp message that suggested an idle browsing had discovered a working boat. 'I'm thinking of buying a working boat and putting a forge on it', it read. It made perfect sense, this independent man, previously the blacksmith who loves boat life, lives on a boat: of course he would want to do this. I had never heard of this happening, but there was nothing that made me think it was strange. I realise subsequently that I am as open to novelty as he is.

It transpired that this was not happenstance at all, but the fruition of a long held conviction that it would happen. Mr Restless talked to me with passion about this being nothing close to a dream, no, not an ambition, but merely an expected stage of his life's journey. Deep down he always knew it would come to pass and now is the time. As a new partner, new girlfriend, I did not experience any concern, or difficulty with this decision; if anything, I felt I was witnessing a culmination of many years of personal therapy work. It is time to do the things that he really wants to do. It is a privilege to experience, as an observer.

Going to see the boat with his Dad on a grey cold day, making the initial decisions to go ahead. Scraping together sums of money in a cashflow crisis coinciding with a house sale. Committing, gambling, heart racing, and submitting the boat to a yard for some major repairs.

The Restless Forge, Murphy's Game. The naming was so important, the plan, the project, the commitment. A huge commitment in fact, the time it would demand to move. The first journeys were made in grizzly stints in finger chilling weather, coat collar high, face squinting into wind. I received photographs, documenting stages of the first leg, from one yard to another. The canal as blank and grey as the sky, surrounding trees and banks only just greening in early spring. It seemed, from the comfort of my home in the midlands, to be rather a valiant step. While a canal boat doesn't exactly 'set sail', it was an inaugural voyage nonetheless.
I took him out for a curry to celebrate.