Lockdown day 29 - Every picture tells a story...

so they say, and I think this one simply tells of a boat at mooring. It tells of a boater with a tidy mind, organised, particular.

In fairness to reality, this next picture will say nothing to you without a sound-track. To me, it tells the tale of my coffee ritual being disturbed by a loud, repetitive sound, loud enough to push past my earphones and the music they were playing to me. I paused the music, stood up and looked around. I recognised the sound now; a ukulele being strummed confidently through the same four chords over and over again.Turning in the direction of  the disturbance, I took this photo. I know who it was. I think he sang to his accompaniment from time to time, and was clearly enjoying himself. Good!

I sat down, unpaused my mp3 player and turned up the volume.

Looking out across the water from my pontoon perch, I cast my eyes across the many trees that line the far side of the canal. They're beautiful. I love trees. They're in bud and early leaf now, but I love them when they're bare and skeletal, too, perhaps especially when they're dead. This picture brings to mind my art lessons when I was at the Grammar School.

I was twelve years old, in the First Year, and Mrs Harris was my art teacher. Now, I'm no artist. I'm the one who had to pull out of a family game of Pictionary because Grace thought my drawing of a shoe was a cauliflower. (Naomi took my place, and the two of them went on to win.) Grace is the artist of our partnership. So you can understand my dislike of art lessons.

This came to a head, however, when the lovely Mrs Harris took the class out onto the school field one sunny day and told us to draw a tree of our choice. That would have been bad enough (I was anxiously looking around for a simple one; small perhaps or, better, reduced to very little by a lightning strike), but the problem got even worse when the mad woman told us to draw it "by drawing the spaces between the branches"! I don't think I actually wept tears, but it was touch and go for the entire, totally unsuccessful hour.

(I have since found a tree that I could probably draw quite well, though it wouldn't be by the "paint the gaps" technique.)

The story of this one is very simple on the face of it. But there are nuances for me. The story is of life on a narrowboat, a simple life and a largely peaceful one, often in places of great beauty. But the subtext is about distancing, isolation, restriction, uncertainty, sadness, and not a little anxiety. And we're not alone in this, of course. Many are far, far worse off.

What picture would tell your story?

Take care.