Heart of darkness

It was with a vague feeling of trepidation mixed with the adrenaline rush of anticipation to which I awoke this morning. Dreams with an urgent realism flooded my waking sleep and the cold realisation that this was the day, the day when the idea became fact. In the instance of living this day I would turn the idea into a reality. I now write energetically into the early hours to give testament to, and leave a lasting record of, a powerful and evocative series of events. This brief glimpse, this moment, becomes part of our collective history - the Paddle paradigm is born. One of the great philosophical questions facing Rotheram Museums Service is asked by a journey, a journey which starts and ends within the same physical space. A space once empty and now occupied by a paddle. Wrapped in acid free paper and bubble wrap, and sellotaped with a printed barb wire motif, it sits, pushed to the back of a desk, challenging us all with its raw and obscured physical presence.

What started as a simple journey to Leeds has through strange turn of fate ended with a question. If a paddle is in a museum collection and nobody ever asks to see it or use it in any way for any purpose, does it really exist? Well, as I took it for a coffee in Woolley Edge service station I can categorically prove that it does. Or at least does now.

As I discovered this morning, this blog is open to any inquisitive reader. Type Chalmers and paddle into google and it's the first hit. The "are you feeling lucky?" box, which I never hit because I don't usually feel lucky and I worry about ending up at a strange site and getting stuck in a time warp of links which seem interesting at the time. Anyway because of this I thought it best not to use people's names so I will from now on refer to both my trusted travelling compatriots as Carl.

I'd commissioned a photographer to document our journey and asked him to try and take pictures which looked like police or private eye surveilllance shots as I think people associate this style with authenticity. I left him in the car at the museum and was greeted by Karl, curator of all sort of things, outside the museum shop. As he led me up the stairs into the open plan office I felt an atomosphere, it was the same ubiquitous museum smell, a combination of the exceptionally clean and the dusty and dirty, a complex hybrid smell like hospitals or youth clubs that you can't really describe but instantly recognise. I think that perhaps my reputation preceded me. I noticed, or more accurately, perceived a wry smile or a short cut giggle. The word was out. I had been rumbled. The paddle and its retrieval were common knowledge within the department. Everybody knew the reason for my visit, everybody was aware that in our collective quest for a paddle buried deep in the vaults of Leeds museum store. Danger, both phycical and ethical awaited us.

Francis, who I can't call Carl as she is a woman, spoke to me of the potential to meet the well known Antiques Roadshow TV celebrity Eric Knowles who is visiting the museum next week to talk about pots. She has now started introducing me as a conceptual artist which, of all the things I've called myself or been called, I'm most proud of. She must have got really good at explaining the concept behind the Paddle expedition as Eric had mentioned a friend of his who carries around a plastic Lobster and introduces it to people. This reminded me of a time when I purchased two plastic crabs and a large plastic Lobster from a car boot sale and the vender said, "Look at that! They sold again. I never have any problems shifting plastic crustacia, but you try selling plastic fruit! See that plastic pear? I've had that for months". My son called the Lobster Barney and dragged it around on a piece of string for a few weeks. Anyway, my first celebrity paddle person. Karl suggested that we should introduce the paddle and the Lobster. I think he is a closet conceptual artist.

My wife has just walked in with the shopping and I was accused last week of making her an internet widow so I will have to continue this story at a later date, it's edge of your seat stuff and we've not yet got out of Rotherham.