Guest post by Emma Chonofsky, Marketing Executive at Bloomsbury Academic
If you were to walk along the towpath of England’s Grand Union Canal from London to Birmingham, you would, at some point, arrive at a 48-foot-long canal boat named Ethel the Unready.
This particular boat has Oxford blue sides and a green roof. If you enter down the uneven steps into the saloon you’ll find a chair, a fireplace, a desk, and piles and piles of books. Among them, you’ll find the Object Lessons series.
I have lived aboard Ethel the Unready for the last four years, and have loved the Object Lessons series since I discovered it. I see myself reflected in Object Lessons; there is a book, a philosophy, or a fact for almost every part of my life.
Shipping Container
“It is the priority placed on a standardized system that is so crucial to the history and power of the shipping container.” [i]
Ethel is a shipping container. Sort of. She’s not the kind that author Craig Martin is talking about here – the modern intermodal kind used for transporting goods[ii] – but she fits many of his descriptions. Standardised? Yes. Built originally to carry cargo? Yes. Quite literally, a container for shipping? Also yes.
Narrowboats like Ethel have standardized maximum dimensions (7 feet 10 inches wide, 71 feet long, 7 feet tall) to ensure they can safely traverse the UK’s centuries-old canal system. They were originally used to carry goods all around Britain, with carrying companies organising and maintaining the infrastructure; a microcosm of the world described by Martin. There are still those whose business is transporting goods via canal – a thriving fuel boat population provides liveaboards like me with diesel, smokeless fuel, kindling and chemicals year round.
The only cargo Ethel carries are the objects that make up my life. There are photos and paintings, chairs and blankets, and what feels like a thousand books. When it’s sunny, I open all the windows and bring fresh flowers inside. When it rains, I curl up by the fire and read a book. I would argue that Ethel’s cargo is just as important as the cargo carried by previous generations.
Waste
“Every place is a place of waste; it’s just unevenly distributed in space and time.” [iii]
I live much closer to nature than average, and have become much more aware of the litter and pollution rampant in England’s waterways. Canals are filled with it: there are overturned shopping carts, plastic bottles, rusting bicycles, and the occasional dead animal. The murky brown water is not safe to touch. There is dog poo on the towpath and I occasionally find myself boating through a diesel slick.
I wanted Ethel to be a waste-free haven floating above the detritus. With storage at a premium, I tend to only buy what I need. I repair my clothes rather than replace them, and go to refill stores instead of supermarkets whenever I can. For a while, I thought that made me less wasteful overall, and less of a tax on my environment.
But there is a duality to life on board. The waste I generate is carefully hidden from view. I can’t see the smoke from the smokeless fuel I warm myself with, nor can I see the exhaust from running my engine to heat water. When Ethel has an oil change, the waste oil is carefully removed and spirited away by my engineer. I buy single-use items – I don’t always have space to store their reusable counterparts.
Thill reminds us that “our waste objects must achieve a homeostasis with the clean and desirable objects of our lives”[iv], and that’s okay. I work towards that homeostasis.
Tree
“Can a tree be feral?” [v]
Matthew Battles spends most of Tree considering this question – finding meanings for ‘feral’ and ‘tree’ and elaborating on what might make a tree feral versus domestic. I’m not an expert on trees, and like all novices, I vastly overestimate my own knowledge. That being said, the idea that some trees are feral is obviously correct.
Most of the trees along the side of the canal are domestic. They’re carefully planted in the corners of fields, or along banks near houses, or are covered in unrelenting ivy. It’s hard to find feral trees in England – the country is so crowded that it can feel hard to find ‘wild’ spaces anywhere. It’s also important to remember that canals are, by definition, man-made. The vegetation that surrounds them likewise feels intentional.
But once you get far enough north, far enough away from London and pollution and pigeons and trains, then you start to see feral trees. They grow where they please – blocking towpaths and flopping over the canal haphazardly. They’re sometimes marked on canal maps with little red Xs to warn boaters about an underwater obstruction caused by the roots. They cause leaks and water level problems and wreak havoc on the canal system – and they are beautiful.
My favourite stretch of canal has feral trees. It’s a short stretch that feels disconnected from everything, but runs through a series of villages with names like Nether Heyford and Weedon Bec. Trees grow wild along this section, with reeds and water flowers sheltering in their roots. Ethel and I chug through it quietly, trying not to disturb the vegetation around us.
Lessons from Object Lessons
I could have chosen almost any of the Object Lessons for this (almost). A Blanket is vital, Dust is omnipresent, and Coffee needs no explanation. There’s Sticker and Luggage and Potato and Oil – these are all objects that make my life work. I look forward to one day in the far-off future when we publish Boat – it’s not yet in the works, but Ethel and I can dream.
2025 marks the 10th anniversary of the Object Lessons series! Explore the books in this article, and more in the series, on our website.
Citations
[i] Craig Martin, Shipping Container (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020)
[ii] Craig Martin, Shipping Container (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020)
[iii] Brian Thill, Waste (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015)
[iv] Brian Thill, Waste (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015)
[v] Matthew Battles, Tree (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017)