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Morris Telford archive. Read about Morris's previous
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Day One
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Name: Morris Telford
Age: 33
DOB: 18/04/70
Occupation:Unemployed
Hobbies: Enlightenment, Philosophy, Bingo
Favourite
book – Ordnance Survey Map of Shropshire 1999 edition
Favourite
foods – Pickled Eggs
Favourite
film – Late For Dinner
Favourite colour – The delicate cyan of the dinnertime sky in
Moreton Say.
Favourite British County – Shropshire
Favourite Place – Moreton Say
Favourite Postal Code Area – TF9
Favourite radio
frequency - 96FM
Favourite sound – The gentle breeze rustling through the leafy
glades of Moreton Say
Favourite Clive – Clive of India
Favourite Iron Bridge - Ironbridge
Favourite
band – *(shameless plug)
Biggest inspiration –
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Is
Morris a madman, a genius - or both? Have your say on our
- and see what other people
are saying about him.
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As suggested by Deuan Jones, I’m on a plane, flying to Holland,
land of tulips, clogs, windmills and cheese.
My plane lands at Amsterdam Airport in a few hours so I am spending
the time wisely reading as much as I can about Amsterdam, its people,
its culture and its travel system.
It all looks very interesting and a location ripe for an infusion
of my special Shropshire blend of love and goodness.
I must admit that when I previously thought of Amsterdam it conjured
up images of shop windows with no curtains, with an overweight leather-clad
dominatrix on display in one and an emaciated scantily clad young
lady in another, all with a hazy, unhappy atmosphere of mind-altering
mist.
The brochures paint a different picture entirely; they talk of an
Amsterdam rich in art and culture, teeming with a diverse tapestry
of historical interest and "a city that overflows with architectural
style". Perhaps I was confusing Amsterdam with Devon.
They play a lot of dance music in Amsterdam, every car that goes
by seems to have it blaring out. While I try my best to embrace
all cultures and lifestyles in my bid to understand why so many
people choose not to live in Shropshire, I’m not a big fan of dance
music.
It’s very repetitive and always seems to be playing at too high
a volume. It’s not as bad as country music though. I hope no one
ever comes up with dance-country music. That would be truly terrible.
The insipid lyrics and sentiment of Country combined with the incessant
drumbeat of Dance. It would probably go straight to number one and
then get banned when people died trying to line dance to it.
I walked
the streets of Amsterdam today, soaking in the atmosphere and seeing
what injustices festered here that I could address.
I can sense a sadness in Amsterdam, a feeling around me that people
are trying to cram in as much as they possibly can into the city,
but ultimately they always fall short, they never quite reach that
perfect blend of spirituality, physicality and emotional resonance
that you feel the moment you set foot in somewhere like Oswestry or
Ludlow.
You don’t get this much loud music in Oswestry or Ludlow either. I
haven’t seen anything of the seedier side of Amsterdam.
My Mother called me and told me not to speak to any strange women
so I hung up on her immediately.
I met
a man
called Hans today. Hans looks like Jack Kirby drew him. He has a large
head, a brow overhang that juts way over his eyebrows leaving his
eyes in permanent shade, a thickset square jaw, wide mouth and hands
like industrial shovels. He must have been inked by Vince Coletta
though as his left thumb is missing.
Hans lives on a barge and from what I can gather, he makes his living
by fishing rubbish out of the canal and selling it to tourists. He’s
very inventive, in the past few hours he has sold a Vauxhall wing
mirror as an art-deco soap dish, what looked to me like a soggy old
bit of cardboard as a vintage Roman doormat, a lump of driftwood saying
it was one of the last remaining pieces of Amsterdam’s once famous
hand-carved pier, and a hubcap to a couple of Americans telling them
it was a renaissance Frisbee.
I’ve spent most of the day talking to Hans, his English is not great,
but better than that of some of the people I met in Birmingham, and
he has had a fascinating life. He was sold into slavery as a young
child and was raised at sea by pirates. When he grew too big to fit
in a barrel (I didn’t understand that bit either) he lived in the
Paris sewers making a modest living shining shoes and cleaning windows.
He saved enough money to buy a dinghy and once he got his foot on
the marine property ladder he worked his way up from dinghy to rowing
boat to motorboat to one-man yacht and now canal boat.
He says "If you know what I mean" in a thick accent at the end of
every single sentence, I just say "yes" now, partly to hurry the conversation
along and partly to avoid finding out if when he says shining shoes
and cleaning windows he really means shining shoes and cleaning windows.
Hans has promised he will visit Shropshire as soon as he buys a home
that will travel that far.
Spent
the day on the barge watching the world go by. Hans wanted to go "visit
my sick Uncle, if you know what I mean", and asked me to look after
his barge. I need a day off from saving the world every now and then
so I agreed.
I didn’t
sleep very well last night, the bed is constantly moving up and down
with the ebb and flow of the water. There was a terrible scratching
at around midnight and when I went on deck to investigate, there were
about a dozen rats running around the barge.
One of them, presumably the leader, was a giant albino thing with
teeth like knitting needles and eyes like Morris Minor brake lights.
Generally I wouldn’t touch a thing like that with a bargepole, but
I hit it with a bargepole and it went flying into the water.
I locked myself below deck and waited for sunrise and for the scratching
to stop. No sign of Hans. I tried to do what Hans does and sell stuff
to tourists.
I’m not terribly good at it. I found some old Nike trainers and offered
them as "Clive of India’s carpet slippers". No one seemed very interested.
The people
of Amsterdam definitely need help; in the past few days I’ve hardly
met anyone who knows about Shropshire.
Imagine being surrounded by all these museums and all this history
but not knowing about the place where all art and culture originated.
I try and speak to as many people as I can, but my Shropshire accent
does not seem to command the same interest over here as it did in
America and Australia.
I did try to tell a group of Dutch students how all great European
art is clearly influenced by the landscape and vibe of Shropshire.
It took me half an hour to explain ‘vibe’ to them. It’s a hard word
to explain.
Hans came back around teatime, his uncle is much better now apparently.
For some reason Hans is now wearing a three-piece suit and a bowler
hat, he told me "It is always a good idea to make a first impression
that is good to last if you know what I mean."
I’ll be very glad when I travel somewhere where everyone speaks English
as a first language.
He asked me if I had seen his pet "Pinky", I told him I didn’t know
what he meant, thanked him and bid him goodbye.
IÂ’m
staying in a hotel now; itÂ’s very pleasant with a king-size bed,
a Jacuzzi, multi-channel television, tea and coffee making facilities,
complimentary biscuits and a lovely view over the rooftops of Amsterdam.
I tried to get Channel Four on the television this afternoon to see
if Countdown was on but instead I kept stumbling across all sorts
of programmes that had nothing to do with conundrums or number puzzles
and had far too much nudity. I think I saw a glimpse of Carol Vorderman
though.
The
streets of Amsterdam are so full of tourists. Most of them have
loud shirts, shorts and cameras around their necks. I followed a
gaggle of them to see what they do and it seemed to mostly consist
of having their photograph taken in front of different buildings.
I left
the group at the Van Gogh museum.
Amsterdam
is full of museums but I was drawn to the Van Gogh museum as I am
quite familiar with his work, in 1997 my Mother had a Van Gogh calendar
and we used to have a tea towel with some Van Gogh sunflowers on
it until I used it to put out a chip pan fire.
They
are having an exhibition called The Musée imaginaire of Van
Gogh - "celebrating Vincent van Gogh's 150th birthday".
I had no idea he was still alive, I imagine he must be too frail
to paint now, they didnÂ’t have any of his recent work on display.
IÂ’m not sure if he still lives in Amsterdam, if he does it
might explain all that ear mutilation business, he was trying to
block out the dance music.
There
was an old lady in Moreton Say called Edith Romford who used to
claim she was well over 100 years old, no-one believed her until
she brought a ‘congratulations on your 100th birthday’
telegram from the Queen dated 1968 to a village meeting. She had
to fake her own death in 1989 to avoid all the "oldest woman
in Britain" publicity. When I left Moreton Say she was still
alive and could often be seen in Market Drayton hitting the "horseless
carriages" with her walking stick and complaining about decimalisation.
In
the museum they had a reading room with a bank of Internet ready
PCs, so I changed the homepage on all of them to my blog index on
´óÏó´«Ã½ Shropshire, and the screensavers to a scrolling message "Do
you like Van Gogh? Then visit Moreton Say, itÂ’s like one big
oil painting". You never know, someone might read that and
it could change his or her life.
I bought
a new tea towel for Mother at the gift shop; they didnÂ’t have
any sunflower ones so I got one with a picture of people eating potatoes
on it. IÂ’ll post it to Moreton Say tomorrow.
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