The vigilante route

I PARTICULARLY endorse Penny Schenk's plea not to go down the vigilante route, writes Neil Trevithick.

Stupid and dangerous

I was moored up at Kings Cross in London recently, quite legally to mooring rings, when another boat moored half alongside me and put a mooring line over my roof attaching it to a steel mooring peg hammered into a crack in the concrete towpath. This was a stupid and dangerous thing to do but there seemed to be no-one on the boat in question to ask about it when I returned from work.

Shortly afterwards a well-dressed elderly gentleman on a bicycle stopped on the towpath and without saying a word to me took out a camera and orientated himself so that he could photograph the peg in the concrete with my boat's name in the background.

Refused to speak

I asked him if I could help and he refused to say a word to me. I explained (to his back as he remounted his bicycle) that the peg was nothing to do with me and that I hoped he was not going to start bandying about ‘proof' that my boat was illegally moored and whacking pins into cracks in concrete making it dangerous for cyclists.

The gentleman gave me a venomous look and, still without a word, cycled off.

I should perhaps add that my children were on board at the time and my daughter particularly was upset at this man's behaviour. ‘Why did that man not like you Daddy? Why was he taking photographs? Are you in trouble?'

"No darling, he's just made a mistake that's all."

Archives of mistakes

But I wonder if there are hundreds of people around the country building up their little archives of mistakes that will eventually lead an organisation like CaRT into trouble if it ever starts to use such amateur material as ‘evidence.' If I ever see the photograph my self-righteous cyclist took on some slide show of misdemeanours shown by any canal interested organisation then that is a libel which I shall pursue.

Be clear—I have no argument with the idiocy of the peg in the concrete but there are currently too many people in boats and on the towpath bringing pre-conceived opinions to the table and looking for proof of their prejudices rather than engaging in conversation.

There's a lot of talk of volunteering in the ether at the moment but when volunteering becomes surveillance the world begins to look an increasingly nasty place.

Of course I might be making my own mistake here. The gentleman might have been deaf...........?