I was eating sausages when it hit me
- Sam Smith
- Jul 7
- 2 min read
Updated: Jul 16
I go to breakfast at the Ice Wharf Wetherspoon pub whenever I can. I love it. The view of the canal plus sausages is a winner. Can't be beat.

I was eating there on 12th June.
It was pre-the acceptable drinking time of 10:30 in the morning so there were only a few people around. I say hello to a guy who has just come over the bridge from the other side of the water and he replies "Do I know you from somewhere?"
"I worked in Camden for 5 years drawing portraits"

"Yeah ! He says"
We share our tales of woe and I tell him how hard it is to make a living as an artist in some elaborate way. He suggested I do portraits by the canal. I have hang-ups about this - red tape and being stopped. He told me about his lifestyle which sounded pretty good.
He says casually 'Get a boat', like I've got 20 grand in my back pocket! He told me you can get them on the cheap.
That night I was so excited I couldn't sleep until 3 in the morning. I was looking for old Fishing boats on Gumtree. One of them was perfect.
I went to see it that weekend and drove my Dad down with me.
It was a shit boat but it didn't stop the guy trying to sell it to me. We were both standing in 3 inches of water on the rotten decking, me holding my shoes and socks in my hand having just said 'I probably won't buy the boat as I don't think it should have water at the bottom like that'. His reply: 'It's a good boat, are you sure you don't want it?'.

I went to go and see another and although it was pretty, it was too small to serve my purposes of being an art gallery.

It dawned on me that it was going to be too expensive to get a gallery boat.
I decided I'm going to build one myself...
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