The blue boat

In the current climate where we know the cost of everything and the value of nothing (Tory Britain) it is good to take time out and reflect. I have visited this boat often, drawing and painting it lots of times. Over the duration of my visits many equally beautiful boats in the same location have sunk, been dragged out for burning or just rotted away.

Wooden boats are expensive to maintain even without the cost of mooring fees and insurance and this kind of vessel seems invariably to be owned by people with little spare cash. As a past boat owner myself I became familiar with the comment "you must be rich because you have a boat", when "because you have a boat you must be poor" would be more accurate.

I would like to start a pressure group to force the National Trust to subsidise all traditional wooden boat owners for the cost of their maintenance. These are every bit as important to our heritage as the self indulgent country houses they lavish their funds on. Every visitor who has been sickened by the Trust guides' opening line 'Lord Ponsaby Moneybags built this in.....'. In one sentence eradicating the existence of the hundreds of highly skilled, underpaid artisans and workers who really did build it should join this pressure group. The working class built these boats and the working class crewed them.

It will not be very long before all these craft disappear and visitors to our coasts, lakes and rivers may realise too late that something is missing. The picture postcard views are not quite as picturesque when there are only white plastic boats in the viewfinder.