Comparing itineraries with a fellow boater in Sandford on Thames, I mentioned that I was heading toward Cambridge, and was looking forward to exploring the Middle Level Navigations when reaching the Fens. I envisaged big skies, deserted waterways, vast plains of barley, and some nice pubs.
He winced, then told me that the River Nene and the Great Ouse, which would be part of my journey, were lovely, but the banks of the Middle Level Navigations were too high to see over, so for hours at a time, I’d be observing the vanishing point of the sides of a drainage ditch.
His name was David, and I asked him what he did for a living. He said he was an artist, working from his boat (called “The Everyday Fantastic”), while continuously cruising. For eleven years he’d been Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy of Art and was currently finalising some paintings for his next exhibition.
Before he departed the following morning, he left envelopes for Jerome and me that contained prints of some of his paintings. “The Ghost of a Boater” was one. Being an atheist, and a sceptic with regard to supernatural phenomena, the closest I can come to a belief in ghosts is to keep an open mind with regard to the Simulation Hypothesis, which posits that consciousness might be a computer simulation.
A few days later, at The Anchor public house in Oxford, I put it to Jerome that it was possible he was either a figment of my imagination (as in the case of the friend of John Nash, the mathematician portrayed by Russell Crowe in the film “A Beautiful Mind”), or a virtual character in a simulation.
I half expected him to vanish in a belch of beer and vape fumes as his existence has always seemed improbable, a didgeridoo-playing South African, in possession of a highly analytical brain that struggles with basic arithmetic.
My assertion did not, as I had expected, prompt him to try to convince me of his own existence, or result in a counter-assertion that I was merely a character in his simulation. Instead, he said that he was interested in the topic, and suggested we collaborate in writing a book on it together. It struck me that if either of us was a virtual character in the other’s simulation, this would be a strange basis for a collaboration.
At Thrupp, on the Oxford Canal, some old friends joined me for a day on the boat. I asked them to help me recreate the image of “The Ghost of a Boater”, as the attempt at a sort-of-reverse-simulation would alert “The Simulation” to the fact it had been rumbled. It can be seen from the photo that, while in a hurry to get on with our journey to Lower Heyford, I forgot to attach the bed-sheet (representing the “main body” of ghost) to the cylinder of kitchen-roll (representing the “tail” of the ghost).
The simulation subsequently seems to have punished me for such a presumptuous act by making the Oxford Canal increasingly narrow. Whenever a boat passes, the water displacement causes all my kitchen drawers to fly open with a loud bang. The simulation may have a point with regard to my presumptuousness and ingratitude, when one considers the quality of banana and lemon drizzle cake that my virtual guests provided.
