Do you know what that is? Of course not! Even so, I’ve spent the best part of two days reviving my acquaintance with it. Let me tell you why.
This is all a result of my current (intermittent) effort to tidy up life by sorting out old correspondence. Back in 1986 I initiated a project to have reconstructed, and to bring back to this country, an archaic fishing boat from Lake Ohrid, in Macedonia. I first encountered this unlikely-looking boat on my first visit to Yugoslavia in the spring of 1967. By then the local fishermen had abandoned them in favour of cheaper, more easily handled, and motorised vessels. The one I saw was an abandoned wreck in a reed-bed.
The idea came to me in 1983, when I was stuck for a topic of conversation with a politician from Skopje, but it grew on me, and the following year, after visiting for the first time the Exeter Maritime Museum, I wondered if it might be possible to install one of these unique craft in the museum. After enquiring with the authorities in Skopje as to whether it might be possible to find a craftsman who still knew how to do the work, I launched a campaign to bring the boat back to Britain, and in 1987 the completed boat was hauled across Europe behind a camper-van driven by young volunteers from the youth charity Endeavour Training, and installed in the museum.
It was a crazy idea, but one of which I am really rather proud. It has been really interesting to reacquaint myself with it today, sorting through old photographs and documents, and putting these into order in two albums. The plan was a useful one, because had it not been realised the knowledge of this unique vessel would have disappeared for ever.* Sometimes very silly ideas turn out to be really worth pursuing. A lot of my art is like that.
*It certainly is unique. A press commentator at the time christened it the “coffin-boat”, which is actually not a silly description.