Aye Eye Captain

Friday started in a bit of a dither. A couple of days before I had been working at the laptop and suddenly developed a large, elaborate floating scribble in my right eye. I wasn’t massively alarmed. These shapes are called floaters (like the poo) and are pretty common occurrences with age. I had never had such a large one before, and although it faded away, it left me with a sort of persistent ghostliness flitting across my vision which bothered me, but not quite enough to do anything about it. I decided it would go away and ignored it, but on Friday when I woke up it was still there and I began to catastrophise somewhat. Still not enough to do anything but enough to drive myself witless.

In the end I decided that I would go on my walk because at least I’d be doing something interesting. Sometimes I am able to settle things in my mind as I walk. I was hoping to kill two birds with one stone.

I set off for a place called Three Mills Island, mainly because I kept seeing signposts for it as I criss crossed the area. It seemed that the council are keen to get you there, so I went. The first leg of my journey was decidedly unbeautiful. Outside the marina is a large roundabout that leads to other large roundabouts in the manner of a low level spaghetti junction. It’s where the A12 and A13 meet. It’s how you filter off to the Blackwall Tunnel. It’s how you get out to Essex and Kent and in to the city. I have only skirted the edges of it in the car, but I have wandered along, over and under it countless times in the last few days. Like a soot stricken Womble.

Near Bow station I was instructed to hop down onto the canal towpath, which I duly did. I could see that if I went one way I would join up with the bit of path I did the day before. I do enjoy linking the various places I go together. It’s like doing an infinitely satisfying jigsaw. Three Mills Island was in the opposite direction though and I set off to pastures new.

The towpath takes you to Bow Locks. It’s where Limehouse Cut, the river Lea and Bow Creek meet. There are two locks you can navigate depending on which bit of water you want to be on. Slightly further up there is another river called Channelsea, which is one of the sub rivers of the river Bow. It’s all very confusing and there are lots of bridges and paths to get lost on. If I was doing my boat cycling proficiency on that stretch I would surely fail.

It was quite spooky on that stretch of the river. Gentrification hasn’t quite made its mark there yet and there are drowned pontoons, the ghost of old boats and great sheets of algae covering the water. Some bridges are taped off, concrete jags up from the path and there’s hardly a soul about. Birds gamely push their way through the weed, leaving dark, inky tracks in the green that slowly ooze back to green again. A cormorant sat on what was left of a submerged pontoon, shaking its feathers out and out repeatedly, like it had sweaty bird armpits. Maybe it had. A baby moorhen crouched on a log, picking at the down on its fuzzy little body and a row of pigeons stood, eyeing up a coot on a nest like they were hoping to move in. The birds weren’t bothered by the squalor, so I followed their lead. Judging by what’s going on around, it won’t be like that for long. Someone with a lot of money and a plan will come along and neaten it to death.

A few minutes walk further along the river bank I came to Three Mills Island. The information board said that it houses the world’s largest surviving tidal mill and has been inhabited consistently since Saxon times. That’s a pretty impressive pedigree for something which in practice was rather low key. I got accosted by two girls who wanted me to go inside what was one of the mills to see five artists’ video interpretation of water and what it means to them. I asked the girls if they thought it would make me want to have a wee. They both looked very solemn and then one of them said ‘no’ in a very flat voice. No silliness today. Only water.

I went in, because I will turn up to the opening of an envelope. More so if it’s art, doubly so if it’s free. There were some interesting works to see but the building was very dark and very hot and I ended up having a hot flush as I sat on a small, plastic chair and had to come out before I slid off and hurt myself.

As I left, the girls pressed a leaflet into my hand which was about something called The Line. Now I already knew about The Line because I listen to the Talkart podcast with Robert Diament and Russell Tovey, where they, quite surprisingly, talk about art. One of their guests had a piece on The Line, which is basically a sculpture trail that goes through East London, from Stratford to Greenwich. Andrea and I had spent an afternoon wandering round the Olympic Park in Stratford the summer before, trying to find The Line and failing miserably. Now I found out I was on it and had been accidentally walking on it for a while. Armed with my leaflet I set out to consciously walk some more of it.

At this point I was only about a mile away from the Olympic Park so I decided to track the sculptures from Three Mills Island to the park and save the rest for another day. Even with the map and the clue of some stickers affixed to various lamp posts and other landmarks, it was pretty difficult to find everything. It didn’t help that the map doesn’t show you images of what you’re looking for, so the neon sculpture by Ron Haselden called Diver was largely guesswork due to the fact that it was turned off and broad daylight when I was looking for it. I did find it eventually, by accident and was pretty successful with the rest. The Arcelor Mittal Orbit and slide are the first two sculptures and they were super easy. I turned round and came back, making sure I saw Tracey Emin’s A Moment Without You before I stepped off the trail and went home. The Emin is a bronze consisting of five, teeny birds on poles. I love her bird pieces and was really happy I’d seen one in real life.

The artist I was most interested in had several pieces on the trail. Her name was Madge Gill and she was an outsider artist who claimed that her works were channelled by a spirit guide. She lived in the Borough of Newham and they hold the many thousands of pieces she did, across lots of different media. It’s strange and vivid work and I intend to hunt down more of her pieces because what I saw was so intriguing.

By the time I got home I had decided to go to the eye hospital and Jason and Oscar had come back from Leicester, so Jason hopped on the train with me where we went to Moorfields’ Eye Hospital. Apparently I should have gone to Whipps Cross, which is my local, but they let me stay when I confessed I had only been living in London for a week. My eye is fine. No detached retina, which was the fear. We celebrated by going home via Bone Daddies, where we ate brilliant ramen and listened to terrible rock music. It’s good for what ails ya.