The Last Supper by Ella Guru

The Last Supper by Ella Guru

Originally uploaded by roast_cat

The Last Supper

On the 10th anniversary of Stuckism, here is a portrait of the first 10 years, through my eyes anyway..

There are 13 people in a coven. 13 in Da Vinci’s last Supper. And there were 13 Stuckists in the original group.

I did a watercolour and pencil drawing over the summer, substituting the apostles for Stuckists. Followers of Charles Thomson have been sometimes referred to as ‘disciples’.

Then Elsa Dax had a dinner party, and the digital camera with the photo of the watercolour sketch went round….the general consensus was that I had to do it.

I was about to start two other portraits. But a small watercolour sketch was not enough for the Last Supper.

Almost as soon as I had stretched the 120 x 190 cm canvas, I was told that I had to move studios – to a smaller room. Panic set in, and I painted until my arm fell off to get it done before the move – only just.

I feel that this painting is very Stuckist – there is a lot I could do to improve it but I have tattooed fire-eaters, Edwardian Gentlewomen and eccentric New Yorkers awaiting their portraits. I had to stop; this is the Stuckist Last Supper. It is imperfect. To really do this properly could take years. So I leave it as it is; a passionate sketch in oil on canvas.

To take a tour of this monstrosity… the 13 original members are at the table: Sheila Clark, Sanchia Lewis, Charles Williams, Billy Childish, Wolf Howard, Sexton Ming, Charles Thomson, Philip Absolon, Joe Machine, Bill Lewis, Ella Guru, Frances Castle and Eamon Everall.

There was some thought about who would play Christ. Billy was the first to be photographed for the painting, and was very pleased to be Judas. Wolf and Sexton are grouped with Billy, as they also left the Stuckists.

Philip, Joe and Bill Lewis are together as they are all Medway based, though Philip has since moved to Norfolk. Frances and I were friends when we joined the group, so we are together with Eamon who used to corner us and tell us how he wanted to have babies with as many women as possible.

Sheila, Sanchia and Charles Williams are grouped together because they are the relative unknowns – they were there in the beginning, but little has been seen or heard of them in terms of Stuckism for some time. They are also the only 3 that did not sit for me; Sanchia sent a photo; I found one of Sheila from mine and Sexton’s wedding; and Charles Williams’ photos in the Stuckist Punk Victorian book happened to be the prefect position. (Philip was also not photographed; we will see him next week anyway, though I made up his portrait for the painting).

I cycled to Medway to photograph Bill Lewis and Wolf. Eamon came over; Frances lives nearby. Charles was at the L-13 with Billy Childish and Joe Machine.

The animals across the front are there because I like animals in paintings; Harry is muse and performer Amanda Mae Steele’s dog (nothing to do with Stuckism but I thought he’d look good and he does); then my cat Roast; a fox symbolising Bill Lewis’ familiar; and Pippa of the Stuckist Centre at Lewenhagen, Germany.

Lewenhagen is also in the window at the back of the painting.

Dancing near the window is Emily Strange, who modelled for Paul Harvey’s painting for the Punk Victorian show, at the Walker Museum in Liverpool in 2004. Emily is also a Stuckist.

Paul Harvey and Philip Absolon’s paintings are on the back wall. I wanted a deeper interior than the original, which is fact too shallow for the people to even be sitting around the table. It seems that Leonardo made a few mistakes, not just in painting on dry plaster rather than wet fresco.

I went through several books of interiors to find the right one, and then drew it by hand, using perspective books from the children’s library. It wasn’t until later that I checked what the interior is actually is based on – it’s Windsor Castle.

On the balconies on the left of the painting there are the Stuckist protests at the Turner Prize. John Bourne is first, then Charles Thomson and Elsa Dax, then a group including Elsa again, Ella (Ella, Charles and Elsa appear twice in the painting), Annie Zamero holding her painting “Tony Blair turns Catholic, (after Velasquez)”, Fanny, Charlotte Gavin, Katherine and the other “giggly girl”, Rachel Jordan. And a few more clowns.

The next lot of protesters include Damien Hirst’s godmother, Margaret Walsh (RIP), then another group with Remi Noe (Maidstone Stuckists), and finally at the far corner, arms outstretched, is Gina Bold. I hadn’t intended to include her for any reason, but her pink trousers and glasses were just too good to leave out.

On the right of the painting, in the windows, in rows form the top:
Top row: Jonathan Coudrillle (guest artist); Tony Juliano (Connecticut); Darren Udiayan (Cambridge); Edgeworth Johnstone and Shelly Li (the Other Muswell Hill Stuckists);
Second row: Jesse Todd Dockery (Kentucky Stuckists); Dan Belton (Brighton); Regan Tanmaui (Melbourne); Jane Kelly (Acton); Michael Dickinson (Istanbul);
Bottom row: Terry Marks (New York); Mark D (guest artist); and Paul Harvey (Newcastle).

There is a blank window over Bill Lewis’ shoulder, representing the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square. No, not really. There are huge numbers of Stuckists left out; this window is for all of them. I counldn’t possibly include every single Stuckist, and what determined who was in or out was more about who would look good where, and who I knew. I realise some key players are not in the painting. Maybe someone else could do another version?

Re objects on the table – I asked some of the sitters what they would like. Others I gave cups of tea or drinks or tubes of paint. Bill Lewis requested the menorah and the shoe. Wolf has his pinhole camera. Frances has a computer; this is her tool nowadays, rather than paint. And Charles has a phone, not a mobile but a nice, old fashioned phone. Stuck in the past? Perhaps, but then again perhaps not….

Ella Guru
12. 10. 2009

Ella and Lucy’s day out in Deptford

Day out in Deptford, 27 Sept 2009

Sunday 27^th September. Lucy and I search for Deptford Beach, and visit the Museum Clausum.

A few weeks ago, a staff member from a homeless project in Peckham reported that one of her residents said he had been swimming on Deptford Beach. I was excited to hear that the Thames surf haven had reopened, but also wary that, high on crack, smack and booze, the hostel resident may not have even left his or her hostel bed that day.

We had splendid weather once again. Where was all that warm sunshine when we were on the much better known surfer’s paradise, Croyde Bay, in north Devon? On our way back home today Lucy asked, “Mummy, what are we doing tomorrow?”  And was disappointed to hear the next day was a school day. It felt like summer, I explained, but in fact it was autumn.

We set out at 11 am on the dot, passed my studio at 11:20 and reached the playground near Canary Wharf in just 40 minutes. In

Nurse Lucy in Docklands playground, March 09

March we did this exact same route, from Victoria Park to Docklands, with Ashley and Ida. I asked Lucy if she remembered that day, when she wore her nurse’s outfit. We had walked the long canal path; now cycling, it was much quicker.

Lucy’s new word for the day was grotty. At one point slightly before docklands, the towpath gets bumpy and the water bit smellier. “This is the grotty bit,” I told Lucy. Throughout the day she would expand on the word, which is a very useful word indeed if one visiting Deptford. (“Is that poo in the bottom of the boat? Grotty!”)

Grotty, however, is not the word to describe the glossy skyscrapers of London Docklands. There is little left to see of the Isle of Dogs in its grottier, and grittier days.  The peninsula of East London has few old brick buildings left amongst glass and concrete, looking almost like museum pieces next to all the cold modernity.

When I recently cycled to Medway, I got lost in docklands. My map is well out of date; but any map of this area would be out of date the minute it’s been printed. Such is the level of construction around here. At one point Lucy was climbing on the playground while I had an early lunch on a park bench,  dreaming of an iphone, so I could just log into the google satellite picture and get instant SavNav. But even that would not have contained all the closed roads, new footpaths and construction sites; Google satellite pictures were taken at some indeterminate point in the past, as one cal tell by the bare winter trees when one looks at our own building online.

Lucy made a few little friends on the playground, and from the father of one toddler, I got directions to West Ferry Road. This was invaluable; had it not been for this man I would not have even know there was lift (elevator) that we would have to take us up to the road.

We followed the man’s directions, under an arch, and around a labyrinth of footpaths leading to, and along, the river Thames. The canal opened into a vast city on water, unlike the London we’d left behind only minutes before. We cycled as far as we could and took the lift up to another street level.

The worlds worst traffic light

Down a ramp we approached a roundabout with a traffic light in the middle. Well, it was more like a tree of traffic lights. About 20 traffic lights in fact. Some were red and some were green. I shrugged and waved one arm around as I navigated the busy intersection, noticing the car drivers appeared just as confused as I did by this ultra modern multi-traffic signal. (Ok, actually there were only two cars, mom, but “busy intersection” sounds better).

Later, on the way home, approaching from the south, there was no such traffic light tree; it was obscured by real trees. In other words, there was not a traffic light at all. The structure that I took for a traffic signal was in fact a SCULPTURE. Tourists stood under it, in the middle of the round about, taking pictures of the absurd object as if it were Michelangelo’s David.

Once on West Ferry road, it’s a straight line to the Greenwich foot tunnel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_foot_tunnel). Opened in 1904, the tunnel is every bit as Victorian as one would expect. There is a lift (elevator) on either side of the     m tunnel, operated by a bored looking lift operator eating fish and chips from Styrofoam packaging. Lucy was worried about going “under the river” until she saw that the tunnel was in fact dry inside.

Once at Greenwich, we headed along the river in search of Deptford Beach. Two years ago we had also looked for the famed sunspot in vain, finding it obscured by the construction of luxury flats. It seems “Greenwich” was being expanded so that property developers could make more money. The contrast between Greenwich and her less fashionable sister Deptford is quite striking.

The property developers only partially succeeded. We found a new monument outside the sparkling new luxury flats. A bronze throne and 2 characters, perhaps an explorer. There were two scruffy teenagers drinking cheap lager (at mid day); I thought they looked like the types to know where Deptford Beach might be. But I thought better of asking them.

I was just about to look for a sign explaining the monument when I noticed that the steps leading up to it were covered in vomit.

The monument steps were covered in vomit

“Greenwich” indeed. We were in Deptford now.

We quickly got away from the drinking teens and puked-covered monument, inching our way long the Thames. Lucy was walking now, or skipping and peering out through railings at our mighty river. We’d also stopped to admire Deptford Creek, which was at low tide and fully exposing a vast array of shopping trolleys, old bicycles and car tyres. A heron perched in the muck. Lucy thought it was a statue.

The scenic shopping trolleys in mud continued along the entire stretch of sand and silt exposed by the low tide. As we looked out at the flashy docklands across the river, and looked down at the gravel and muck below, I got excited. This was not THE Deptford Beach I knew and loved, but it was indeed a beach and it was indeed in Deptford. The New Deptford Beach! Maybe my band could even be the New Deptford Beach Babes!

The old Deptford Beach was a tiny strip of cement and gravel leading out from between 2 factories. It was about 30 feet wide; with 30 foot high cement walls either side, topped with barbed wire and yellow “Danger of Death” signs. Someone had spray painted “Depford” inside a heart on the wall. Mike, Mary and I, the original Deptford Beach Babes, had our first photo shoot on that very beach. It was known and loved by locals, mainly locals who had dogs on strings and drank cheap cans of lager. The sort who were now puking on the new monument in “Greenwich.”

Once notable feature of Deptford is a complete lack of people. Lucy and continued into the backstreets, away from the river a bit,

Shopping trolley in the mud, Deptford Creek

still looking for the original beach. There was a boating club and then some more construction, or rather demolition sites, from what we could see through the fences.

We came to a small housing estate. On a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon, there was not a soul in sight. But there was a traffic light, on a deserted cobbled street, by a wall erected to keep children out of the demolition site. There was no even a crossroads; just a single traffic light, going from red to amber to green and back again, for no traffic.

Lucy insisted on going into a little park where there were some rocks and a pond. I didn’t like the look of the pond; there was no fence around it, it was covered in algae, and one could easily have fallen in. The tall trees were pretty and the park was quite nice really. I like Deptford. I much prefer the leafy, empty cobbled streets to the throngs of tourists and overpriced cafes and crowding of Greenwich.

The world's second stupidest traffic light

There was a little tin rowboat on some grass. Lucy wanted to play rowing, but the Museum Clausum would be closing soon so we had to go. But again there were no people. Like some kind of sci fi movie, as if everyone had been vaporised and we didn’t yet know we were the only people left in Deptford.

On our way out, approaching from the familiar direction, I worked out that the boating club’s launch was in fact the original Deptford Beach. It was the right width, the right length, and even though we couldn’t get through the locked gate, I recognised the high brick wall still standing on one side of the beach. There was a new mural for the boating club, dated 2006. So this is what became of our beloved surf-haven.

“Look! People!” Lucy called out, as some humans appeared, walking towards the Thames. Well done! We were no longer in the Deptford Twilight zone.

Deptford Creek - some of this debris could end up in the Museum Clausum

We cycled just about 5 minutes to the Laban centre, where the Museum Clausum was having a temporary show as the Deptford Maritime Museum. After all that dereliction and destruction, cobbles and traffic lights to nowhere, the Laban centre is like a weird piece of Docklands floated over to the banks of Deptford Creek. The modern glass structure and sculpted hills outside look nothing like the surrounding area. We locked our bike and went into the large modern building.

The Museum Clausum is a collection of local artefacts. This latest exhibit was about the maritime life in Deptford, and objects related to persons living in or from Deptford.

Of particular note was a vest worn by a 22-year-old Deptford lad killed in Iraq. Unlike Nelson’s blood stained clothes in another museum, this vest had been washed and folded.

The fun of the Museum Clausum is in guessing what is real and what is made up. This is what happens when a German spends a prolonged period of time in Britain. It’s not humour as you might think of humour, or maybe I’ve got it wrong as I’m also a foreigner in this land, but I find Clausum’s tales funny in way though also very truthful. The point is that they COULD be true. Many soldiers have died in Iraq. That this is not really the vest of one of them is irrelevant. “Did you cut a hole in it?” Lucy asked. Klaus nodded.

There was also a Barbie torso from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch). The torso was not in fact from the plastic sea (“How did he get it?” Lucy asked when I read her to story of the 200 million tonne sea of plastic in the Pacific) but the pollution is real.

And there was a watch that a British soldier had removed from a dead American mercenary in the Falklands. Again perhaps not the actual watch but does it matter? My great-grandfather was a mercenary, fighting battles for which he had no conviction, only a wage.

Ok… those are not funny but I’m sure its last instalment, the Museum Clausum included stories about strange goings on to do with ceramic trinkets from charity shops, empty photo frames and debris dug up in back gardens. Ok…  maybe not funny. But puzzling. Perhaps like Deptford itself.

Lucy was insistent on running up and down the pyramidal hills outside the Laban building. The heat was searing as the glass

"Go ask Lucy... when she's 10 feet tall"

reflected on the grass and all around us. A Laban worker brought us out some ice water in plastic cups.

Still making the most of the day, Lucy and I walked through the busy streets of Greenwich with Klaus. Perhaps this is where everyone had come from Deptford for the day? In total contrast to Deptford, you couldn’t move for people in Greenwich.

We met Yorrick with 2 small dogs in Greenwich Park, where we lounged in the grass atop the hill, near the observatory, watching parrots frolic in the trees.

Too soon it was time to catch the last lift in the Greenwich foot tunnel, and lucky we did as the South lift broke down by the time we reached the north side – in the north lift they posted a sign to that effect.

As we had not been on an actual beach yet, we stopped and went down to the Thames near Canary Wharf. Nowhere on the New Deptford Beach had there been any way to access the river itself; just as well, as skeletons might have joined the shopping trolleys in the mud, if the cheap-lager-drinkers had really had access to that beach. But up by Docklands, where life is all chrome and concrete and perfect, people from luxury high rises can safely be allowed to potter about on imported sand while the waves of the Thames lap gently on the shore. Well maybe not that perfect… a bit of debris float over, pieces of plastic and metal worn down to become unrecognisable but still obviously man-made.

Suddenly the sun started to smudge in the sky and I realised we just about had time to get back to Hackney before dark. Back up

Thames beach by Docklands

past the world’s worst traffic light “sculpture”, down the lift, along the river, past massive shiny yachts and small narrow boats, past the playground and up the canal, to Broadway market.

We finished the day at a warehouse party, hosted by a grown-up Lucy wearing shiny red clogs, on the top floor of a live-work space building overlooking all of London. Banjo, trombone and accordion players greeted us with songs on the balcony when we arrived. Chef Yusef had learned that arty types are mostly vegetarian, and cooked a wonderful Quorn mince Moroccan curry, which even little Lucy liked. The band played again, indoors now, but it was getting past bedtime, so we headed home in the dusk, happy after a long and sunny day in Deptford, Greenwich and Hackney.

two links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Crisp – did you know my painting is on the wikipedia page for Mr Crisp?

And..someone sent me this,  a blog:

http://deerdeerclo8.blogspot.com/2009/01/drag-queens.html

Nothing to do with bike trips but I felt like putting this somewhere other than a bottomless repoistory of bookmarks…

That is even more stuff than I carry on MY bike!

AND he is on the phone!

[from the blog of the esteemed Elyse Sewell: http://is.gd/gqGl.]

Plans and endings

(I started to write this shortly after returning to London in September)

It took 2 1/2 weeks, 2 boats, 4 trains, 2 vans and a lot of miles of pedaling to get to Lithuania. Add another 2 trains and more miles to get to Vilnius.

I wanted to come back by train, through Poland, but 1. The only people I know in Poland are in the south, and 2. The only way across Poland includes either spending a night in Warsaw or changing trains in Warsaw station in the middle of the night. Neither of which appealed. So we flew. It took 3 hours.

When I’d first planned this trip, before I knew about Mary’s wedding, I was going to go for a month, just to Lithuania, after Lucy ended one nursery and before she began a new one. Just relax and spend our days at a lake I remembered – an idyllic place where 1950s families paddled in clean water and frolicked on sandy shores.

Marius’s new house was great – the only possible drawback might be that my acquired sauna addiction means I’ll be seeking one out in London, though there will be no decking to sit on in between bouts of sweat – no tall trees rustling gentling while KLF’s Chill Out album plays on speakers installed for outdoor listening pleasure.

However, the lake was another story…my memories of that lake near Vilnius were of a family forest paradise, maybe with a little wooden Tiki playground like the ones on the coast. Children were impeccably behaved. No running, no splashing, no shouting. I have pictures of Agne and Ruta in the water with their dad, in little inflatable plastic rings. They were 5 and 7; it was 1998. My little memory even included a little café where we got ice creams.

Now, 10 years later, as we approached the lake there was only a boarded up building. Was that once the café?

The lake was further from the main road than I remembered. The forest was still beautiful; trees untouched by passing time, unaware of a country’s transition to Capitalism.

I have barely touched the surface of my fatherland. My friends Marius and Birute are not typical Lithuanians; they never were. Though Vilnius has its own Frank Zappa monument, Marius’ taste expands to the Tigerlillies, Lee Hazelwood & Nancy Sinatra, and bands whose names I can’t remember. Marius has imported a house from Poland to build on his allotment. He drives a company car from Germany. The girls attend the best schools; Ruta spent a year studying in Holland, adding Dutch to her repertoire of fluent languages. Agne and Ruta were model toddlers, and have been model children and now teenagers, each time I have met them. They spoke fluent English from the age of 13. They are Lucy’s new best friends, as they drew and coloured and watched children’s telly with her.

So my ideals of Lithuania are slightly tainted by this perfect – yet still rock and roll – family. Were my memories of the lake also hazed into some kind of perfection? Or maybe had it really changed?

Now there was no playground, only a rusty water slide with no water on it. The ground was littered with crisp packets and plastic bottles, mixed with charcoaly remnants of bonfires. There were cigarette butts everywhere – on the grass, the sand, even in the brown, murky water. And in the public changing booth, as well as more plastic and empty crisp packets, there was a soiled sanitary towel, upended, no attempt made to hide what it was or even fold it over. I felt sick. Who would leave that there, just like that, for all to see? Yuck. And why wasn’t there any rubbish collection? There might have been a trash can somewhere, but if there was, it hadn’t been emptied in years. It was if they wanted to show their new capitalism with the packaged food, but couldn’t be bothered to clean up afterwards. It was depressing.

Lucy was desperate for friends everywhere we went. In Holland and Germany she sometimes succeeded in transcending the language barrier. But I am sad to say it was not so in Lithuania. Scruffy girls in underpants or, at best, the saggy, faded bottoms of third-hand bikinis, looked at little Lucy as if she were from Mars, in her short Twiggy hairstyle and Hello Kitty bright pink ruffled swimming costume.

We went to the other side of the lake, hoping it would be better. It was a glorious sunny day. Again the last sunny day, after a week of last sunny days. Our last day in Lithuania.

The second to last day had been spent sorting out tools to take the bike apart for the flight home. I pedaled along steamy main roads, riding on the pavement to stay out of traffic, or taking the bike path by the river. From one modern shopping complex to another. We ended up in the Lithuanian equivalent of B&Q. They really DO have everything here now. So different that it was 12 years ago.

But the tool shopping proved pointless. I had already ignored the first rule for packing bikes for planes: “make sure no parts have rusted.” 13 year old bicycle, been out in all sorts of weather, why would it be rusted? Ha. All the burly Lithuanians with all the country’s tools couldn’t get those pedals off that bike… But it ended up all ok in the end; they took the bike on the plane, though they nearly didn’t take US – again they wanted to see Lucy’s birth certificate, which I did not have with me.

Anyway, so, the last day was for the lake. And the other side of the lake wasn’t much better. A very tiny little bit of shore where people could go in. Maybe half a dozen people. Little girls just as unfriendly as ever.

And then I needed a poo. I know this comes under “too much information” but I just have to say what a lovely, thoughtful daughter I have…

Faced with no outhouse and only a forest, I commented to Lucy that I didn’t even have a shovel. Not that I have ever really dug a hole in the ground, crusty-camper-traveler style.

“You can use this!” Lucy said, holding up a plastic toy bowl. Yes, that would work, in the soft ground under the thick trees.

–

So, over a month after our return, we are off to Plymouth tomorrow, by train. No bike.

I feel like I should write something deep and meaningful here, but, in fact, I have things to do, so, will just end like this… to sum it up… the trip was a great time of bonding for Lucy and me. The bike was too heavy but already I have tinted memories, already nostalgic for things like chocco-coffee packets and sleeping bags. When I got back and saw those coffee packets in the supermarket, I was sad not to be beginning another trip. And I can cycle up hills –without luggage – much faster than I ever could before this trip.

Gay dogs on a hot summer night

(7 September 2008, Vilnius)

“Is your dog male or female?” I ask, knowing that only male dogs pee with their leg up.

“Male of course,” Marius replies.

“He’s just been sodomized.”

“What?”

There’s no word for buggery in Lithuanian it seems…

–

I was thinking, it’s the last night, what possibly go wrong now? No more cycling, no camping, no trains to catch. We’re done. We’re going home in the morning. We can relax.

But instead of relaxing I am on a dusty road, sweating, in a rapidly descending dusk. The air is so warm this could be Africa: an uneven, unpaved gravel road, dust kicked up by passing cars. The smells of real cooking, no additives, no instant microwaves meals: it’s open fire cuisine. And all around, behind fences, huge dogs are barking, while I desperately try to control my friend’s dog. Other also unleashed dogs approach. One large boxer comes along and I’m terrified there will be a fight and my friend’s dog will be killed.

–

The walk started off pleasantly enough. I even believed that dogs transcend language – it’s your tone of voice they understand. This dog was obeying me as if it spoke fluent English! “Just to the lake and back,” Marius had said when I said I wanted to walk the dog. I’d been on that walk only once, and might find the winding roads around the allotments difficult. No problem, I was reassured – both the dog and my three-year-old daughter had been on this walk many times. They knew the way.

So there I am on a walk being led by a dog (who was trained in Lithuanian) and a three year old. I still believe nothing can go wrong. The dog is even obeying me! I call its name and it stays! Even with no leash I am sure everything is fine.

So we set off amongst the allotments. Not a city or even a suburb, but allotments where people have started to built big houses alongside gardening shacks. Bumpy, half-built tracks wind around the half-built dwellings. A ramshackle, home-made neighbourhood: the bush.

We find the lake and all is still going swimmingly…until the dog decides to go up a dark path into a forest. I have not been up that way before. I have no idea where the path goes. It’s getting dark out. There are no streetlights. There are not even any streets here.

Suddenly the dog does not pay any attention to my voice. He dose not understand after all, does not transcend English, and has only one thing in mind: disappearing up a dark wooded path.

The dog is on a mission. I beg and plead as it gets darker and the path more sinister. Now Lucy is crying; at first she said she had been this way but now decides she has not. I have to carry her while I run after the dog. We nearly lose him in shadowy trees and bushes.

I can barely keep up. I remember the dog in Germany, the one that followed us for miles. How would its owner have ever found it?

Then we are out of the woods. There is a dusty gravel path like all the others. I have no idea where we are. I keep running after the dog, arm sore from carrying the child. Lucy still wants to turn back; the dog is still on his mission to forge ahead. He is out of control, sniffing at fences where massive Alsatians dribble and bark at this little terrier. Dobermans and retrievers join in the chorus. Doby is inciting a dog-riot.

“Ne mano suo!” I call out to perplexed dog owners and passers-by. “suo mano drauge!”

One little dashund mounts the terrier, and starts humping. And this is a country where homosexuality is still well in the closet!

I finally see a familiar sign: road number 24. I know my way from here. I relax now. The dog knew where he was going all along. And he seems none the worse for the attempted anal rape.

In fact Doby is still out of control. He runs up to a family eating al fresco on a balmy late summer evening. “Ne mano suo. Suo mano drauge!” I call out again, hoping they would at least get the gist – that it was not my dog, but my friend’s dog, hence my lack of control.

I later learn that I was actually saying was “It’s not my dog. The dog is my friend.”

And we do all make it back in one piece. Doby with a sore bum and me with a sore arm. And so ended our last adventure in Lithuania.

The Epic Movie

Here is the entire trip in 6 1/2 minutes -

31 August: Orvydas Garden & Lake Plateliai

My mom was right – why would I need fibre pills on a cycle tour? Even when I’d taken a load of codeine after being stung by a wasp – usually a sure recipe for being bunged up (codeine, not a wasp sting) – even when there was this horrible outhouse with only a plank and hole in it and I thought, “well with all that codeine I won’t be needing that outhouse” – even after all that, I awoke in the tent in the morning and like clockwork rushed out to the bog, making it just in time to squat over that hole.

I won’t say if I missed. I will say that the only other people on the ‘campsite’ moved their van to a field well away from that poor little wooden excuse for a loo…

–

Lucy takes a thumb break, at the campsite, final morning of the cycling part of the trip

We had a great day. For me the best part was just walking around the lake. It’s a new place, a place I have never been to. And it takes no effort. Just walk along a path, stop, and paddle in the water. The late afternoon sun was warm, through the trees.

The morning jaunt to Orvydas Gardens was good, too, but:

1. A much hillier ride from this direction than from the Palanga approach I had taken in ‘96 (and 20 k each way)

2. it rained and

3. I lost my map. Not that I needed it any more. I knew where Orvydas was, and the way back, and the way to Plunge. It’s just that I paid 17 Euros for the map (in Amsterdam) and it was the only decent map I’d had the whole trip. Everything was well marked, in it’s proper place, easy to follow. I only got lost twice in Lithuania – once because of not paying attention to directions from tourist info to the Plateliai campsite, and once when looking for a shortcut back to the Plateliai road from Orvydas – which wasn’t exactly lost – I could see where we were – I just wanted a shorter way to get where we wanted to go. I didn’t want to go all the way to Salantai, and then almost double back on the other road – they were at sort of a V shape, almost parallel. But the ’shortcut’ was through fields, mud and piles of rocks. Impossible to walk, let alone push a bicycle. That’s me, always making life more difficult than it has to be. Typical.

Orvydas sculpture park

I was last at Orvydas in 1998 with my brother. It has changed a lot. The small cluster of trees was once a sanctuary for relics of the forbidden necropoli. Jonas Orvydas collected gravestones and religious memorabilia outlawed in Soviet times. Hippies used to live in ramshackle houses around a pond at the centre of the site. Altars made of rock piles were around every bend in the crooked path. Half finished wood carvings leaned against stone huts – Virgin Marys with open mouths and clenched fists, like Edward Munch’s Scream painting. You could imagine all sorts of strange pagan rituals here.

But now, 10 years later, we arrived to find a newly paved car park, a tourist map and a ticket booth. A builder was working on a new house; signs in Lithuanian, Russian and English asked for donations for the new cafe and guest house they were building. Bus loads of visitors would soon flock to what was once a sacred pilgrimage for outsiders. They had one of those paintings that you see at the seaside, where you can put

One of those boards you put your heads in

your head through a hole and it looks like you are a mermaid or a pirate.

As we entered the park I wondered if anything remained of the spooky place I took Art to in 1998. It was all very orderly now. The rock piles like little cairns showing the way were pointless, as there seemed to be a new gravel path and no chance of wandering astray. The stones covered in esoteric and kabbalistic diagrams were so neatly lined up now they seemed almost boring.

But I would not be disappointed. In time Lucy and I came to the old Orvydas house, and the labyrinth of stone doorways and piled arches that led to the center of this magical park. The old ramshackle houses were still there. The scary door (see the video!) was there, as were the old wood carvings. Lucy wandered and explored, climbing every rock, checking out every nook and cranny. We reached the houses by the pond just in time; we watched the rain from a tiny wooden house. Lucy ate a sweet bagel and sang a song.

Orvydas sculpture park

Lucy enjoyed the discovery, but I have to say for my third time here I was tired. I enjoyed filming Lucy and watching her explore. But I felt done, like I’ve seen this place enough now. Also, even though we were cycling without luggage, the 20 k from Plateliai to Salantai was hilly and hard going. I should have enjoyed the cycling but the clouds on the horizon were always there; rain was always imminent. And the tyres still felt just a tiny bit soft.

–

(back at Plateliai) There was once a castle on one of the islands, with a bridge to the shore. Now only scuba divers can view the remains of the 400 year old structure. I found one diver who spoke English. I didn’t have my PADI card, but would love to dive. “No problem, we can look you up on the computer,” the guy said. The dive centre is a wooden shack that looks like it wouldn’t even have a toilet, let alone a computer. But I couldn’t go diving – there was no one to look after Lucy. I gazed wistfully at the islands as we dined again at the yacht club.

–

Our last morning we awoke to glorious sunshine. It was the only morning of the entire 2 weeks of cycling that we awoke to blue skies, and not a threat of rain. It was a cruel trick of nature; this was our last day.

I was freezing all night, in all my clothes, in my sleeping bag. JULY is the time to be in Lithuania. Now it was too late. When we arrived at Plateliai, there were bugs galore. But by our second night, they were creepily absent. As if they had frozen to death? Only a few woozy wasps remained as we packed up the tent on our last cold morning. I threw out all the stuff we would no longer need, like the torn Wellie boots and the Camping Gasz cylinder that we would not be allowed to take on the plane.

We made it to Plunge in just one hour and 15 minutes. Blazing sunshine made all the difference. Even the hills were ok. Or was it because this was basically the last bike ride? We had another week in Lithuania, but this was to be spent in the luxury of Marius’ flat and house, Lucy with her feet up on the sofa watching telly, and me on the computer writing this journal.

On the train to Vilnius I made lists..

• Useful for this trip: anything waterproof, map, compass, instant coffee packets, Ortleib panniers.
• Not needed: fiber pills, most of Lucy’s clothes (she only wore fairy princess dresses)
• Could have done with: better shoes! after all that fuss about a tent and jacket, I basically had suede slippers. Also could have used a milometre, to help work out how far away things were, not just how much (or little) we did each day. Binoculars for bird watching but that would have been more weight.

I loved the Lithuanian trains. They were like the Indian 3-tier sleeper trains. And I loved how empty the country is. There just aren’t many people here. And still no billboards by the roadsides. But what I did miss were the haystacks. This time there were no Van Gogh haystacks. Modern agriculture has made it to the old country. We didn’t see anyone milking cows either. I missed that, too.

I have two final journal postings to do after this one. It’s hard to write now, over a month after we got back. Memories fade and we get caught up in day to day life. Work, school, social lives. It’s easy to forget the simple life on the road. The wet grass by Plateliai, the warm sun, the sounds of tyres on pavement and all those miles of trees, lakes, trees and more trees.

Orvydas sculpture park

More info about Lake Plateliai here. More about lakes in the Zemaitija park here.

Orvydas movie

Story coming soon. But for now, here is the movie:

30 August: Juodkrante to Plateliai

I like being with Lucy; seeing stuff; camping; cuddling up with Lucy. And cycling with Lucy and no luggage. With her wearing wellies instead of carrying them on the bike, and with less food to carry, the balance of the bike is fine; I don’t feel like I’m about to topple over. But I hate the weight. I hate cycling.

If we had just gone to Lee Valley for a trial run, I’d have known – it’s too much weight. Camping is fine. And it’s not the tent – the tent is only 2.1 kilos. For twice as much money I could have got half a kilo lighter. But it’s the mats, sleeping bags, clothes for 2 people (I shouldn’t have bothered with Lucy’s clothes other than the Snow White dress and pyjamas), toys, magazines to entertain Lucy, camp stove etc. It would have been better to just splash out on B&Bs. But once we stop and look at stuff I’m happy. Even if its just the little taxidermy museum at Plateiai. Away from the two-wheeled monster and everything is great. It’s the bike I hate.

And I wonder about the tyres. Victor said they should not be rock hard or they might burst. But the German pensioners in Klaipeda seemed to think that my tyres were too soft. The tyres seemed fine when we didn’t have bags; but it was always such a  struggle to move with the bags, as if cycling through jelly or treacle. I stopped several times around Plunge, asking for “oras” but I guess Lithuanians don’t pump their tyres at gas stations.

We were up at 6:30 am after a fitful sleep in the Juodkrante hotel. It was so quiet that the dripping tap woke me up – but the tap wasn’t dripping. It must have been rain on the roof or something. And the fridge motor kept going on and off.

The morning bike ride was 20 k, in less than 2 hours, always watching the skies, spotting the vertical gray of sheet-rain the distance. Three was something almost primordial about that process of looking and seeing different kinds of clouds, trying to gauge the speed and direction of the wind and how long it would take the rain to get to us – or us to get the rain as we would find the next day. This was how people used to forecast the weather before tv, radio or the internet: stand on a hill and look all round. Feel the wind. See the clouds. See the rain. And RUN LIKE HELL. Only in our case: pedal like hell…

At first we took the road from Juodkrante,. I couldn’t face that big hill back to the other side of the peninsula, where the bike path was. For the first half hour only 2 cars passed us. I’d been on this road so many times in cars or buses. It was great to cycle as I’d longed to do back then (before I knew Neringa had it’s own cycle paths, amongst the best in Europe!).

Traffic increased as rain threatened. By now the car road intersected the bike path, and we were back in the nature reserve as rain started to pelt down. Beautiful as the reserve was, dare I say I was bored with it? Or just bored with the bike, and the rain?

We made good time to Smyltyne and the foot passenger ferry. Lucy was very grumpy about getting up so early. She usually slept til 10 when we were camping. We briefly poked around Klaipeda old town market, buying some fruit and getting given just as much fruit for free  because the market sellers thought Lucy was cute.

We attracted a crowd of babushkas at one point, all prying at Lucy’s pink sweater and saying “Shalta! Shalta!” (cold), but Lucy refused to wear anything else. Not wearing a coat was one of her  many power struggles. All she would wear was the light, pink fluffy sweater that Nana gave her last Christmas. And the pink camouflage poncho – but only in the rain.

Now wonder the grannies had been concerned – we soon passed a digital clock saying it was only 12 degrees! (C that is).

I texted Birute about the forecast for Zematajia National Park and the region around Plunge. If it were due to piss down I would just get the train to Vilnius now, and forget the Orvydas Garden. I couldn’t face another day of rain. I felt a bit crap having only used the tent 5 times out of 25 days. But I would almost be glad to call it quits now.

But Birute texted back: the forecast was 17-18 degrees and “no rain” at all this weekend! So we bought a ticket to Plunge rather than Vilnius, naively believing that Lithuanian forecasts were more accurate that British ones. (Like I said, the only way to predict the weather is to stand on a hill, or at least in a clear area with no trees, do a 360 degree turn, decide which way the wind is blowing and how fast.)

As I took our already moulding raspberries to the trash, a stinging cramp went up from the crook of my thumb. Ouch, what had I done? It was several minutes later that I realised it was a wasp sting. I hadn’t even seen the wasp. Panicking, I texted everyone in the world (or UK and US anyway) to ask what to do. I was now on a train, headed to the middle of nowhere, with a hand gradually succumbing to more and more pain.

Train from Klaipeda to Plunge

We’d had a huge hassle getting the bike on the train; 2 young guys helped. There was a normal people-compartment that had had the seats ripped out to make room for bikes. There was a tiny narrow corridor that we had to get the bikes through, no easy feat with a child seat on back. It hardly seemed worth it for an hour-long train ride.

The pain in my hand was unbearable cycling from Plunge to Plateliai. To top it off we had a strong headwind. The route was hilly and I didn’t not enjoy it at all. A small dog chased us, as is a Lithuanian tradition, and I freaked out and screamed, waking Lucy up from her afternoon nap. After the wasp, I did NOT want a dog bite to add to my misery.

I was tired, in pain, and fed up, and as usual Lucy comforted me. We got to Plateliai tourist info, had a look round the mini-museum of stuffed local wildlife, and headed for the yacht club, where we were meant to find a campsite nearby.

We started up the hill from the club house, and found a wooden sign with the Lithuanian word for camping

Camp Plateliai

on it, but nothing else. Just an empty field. I’d read that most Lithuanian campsites are just a field in a beautiful setting with no facilities. But this field didn’t even have any tents in it. Or any evidence that anyone had camped here. Ever. There were no dry patches on the long grass, no tent shapes matted to the ground. I asked several people around the yacht club just to make sure before we put the tent up, just so we wouldn’t have to move it. The view was incredible – a lake with little islands and a forest behind us.

Later on a couple of Dutch pensioners turned up and “camped” in their van, but otherwise we had the entire field to ourselves. And it was free. No one came to collect any money. It couldn’t be more opposite to the 5-star campground at Holten, our very first campsite, with it’s myriad of swimming pools, playgrounds and local entertainers doing the Dutch version of Duck Duck Goose. Here was a field, nature, insects (lots of them) and… a wooden outhouse in the woods: a plank of wood with a hole in it.

We had dinner at the yacht club, as there wasn’t exactly much choice. Lucy ate a generous amount of chicken and I had pear cider and carp from the lake (I hoped it was from the lake anyway – that would make sense). It was lovely overlooking the lake but it soon got too cold, so we went inside the yacht club, where they were playing horrible disco music.

After supper we walked up the hill behind the campsite. A group of children aged 6 to 9 were running around an empty car park. There were no adults in sight. The children were all thin.  I doubt Lithuania has any problems with childhood obesity the way we do in the UK and the US. The children running around free like that reminded me of my own childhood, when I was 8 and played outside with my friends all the time. Nowadays no one lets their kids out for fear of kidnappers. It’s all video games and junk food.

Near Plateliai

But my idealism about Lithuanian childhood would be shattered the next day. In her desperation to make friends, Lucy approached another 3 year old, who was with her family in the picnic area downhill from the campsite. The girl had 3 older siblings. Her family lived in Plunge and had come to the lake for the day.

As I said before, most people on this trip looked at Lucy and me as if we were weird. We don’t wear denim. Even I dressed like an elf in black leggings and baggy black shirt-dress. Normal people of all other nationalities wear JEANS. And I usually had a compass round my neck. I don’t know about Lithuania, but the Dutch certainly thought that in this day and age I should have SatNav, even on a  bicycle. No one uses compasses any more.

So, people see this elf with a compass round her neck and a little girl that they assume I dressed up as a fairy princess, because European children all wear what their parents tell them to wear.

I mean, it’s not all bad. Actually Lucy did play with a little girl the first night at the yacht club. A local girl. But here goes some non-political-correctness… I’d never really thought of Lithuania as having a class system.. but the people dining at the yacht club, and those cooking outside, might be on different levels of income. And the perhaps better educated yachters might be more open minded about funnily-dressed foreigners? No, I shouldn’t make such assumptions: at one point the guys at the next table were farting so much and laughing about it that we had to move tables. And the chav-mum at the picnic area did try to be friendly and chatty, as much as she could when she spoke only as much English as I spoke Lithuanian. But she could not control her dog, or her children. The denim-clad 3-year-old with food all over her face just pulled and pushed Lucy around the picnic area. She was very rough, but no matter how much her mum said to stop, she just kept doing it. Lucy would go try to make friends again and it would start all over.

Lake

We eventually went on a really nice walk, and had a paddle in the lake, getting away from the denim-clad, Lithuanian chavs.

And so, Saturday night, we settled into our tent in our exclusive campsite, and fell asleep.

Next: Orvydas Gardens- finally!