Photothon 26: Ozymandias

I love looking at the canal boat's names. Some are straightforward like 'Lucy Jane' others are jokey like 'Alibi' but in all cases there is a sense of people following their fancy. There is so much more freedom than in the naming a house: can you imagine a house called 'Lucy Jane' or 'alibi'?

You come to the waterways to discover something outside of the nine to five and the boat, the name, and the decoration all express this.

'Ozymandias' is an interesting choice. It comes from a poem by Shelley inspired by the broken statue of an Egyptian king. It has the theme that all power and glory will eventually decay into dust and there is an inevitable cycle for all civilisations. Its most famous lines are:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Now my guess is that the owners do not want to liken the Grand Union Canal to the sandy boundless dessert or their boat to a decaying statue. I doubt they even think their vessel is the 'king of kings'. Instead they want to affirm to poems message that the mighty will fall. They want to quietly get-on with their canal life whilst knowing that the flash, the pretentious, the overbearing, and the masterly can be safely ignored.

That is the spirit of the waterways. It is a mixture of the make-do and mend and the beautifully appointed, the rough and the shiny. Everybody goes their own way, on their own terms. It is also the spirit of running. We all do what we can within the limits of our bodies. Some are faster, some are not, but it doesn't matter. We are all just quietly getting-on . It is why I like running here - there is an affinity.