Fudo City

This is Nicola White, my favourite mudlark. (Yes, I have a favourite mudlark. I also have other mudlarks, who, while not my favourite mudlark, are also brilliant. If you don't have a favourite mudlark, what are you even doing?)

Ordinarily I unspool a mudlark video here and there for a bit of exotic foreign beachcombing. Because the seaweed is always greener on the far side of the planet. And let me tell you, us New Worlders are missing out; what Nicola finds in the Thames – midtown London, mind you – is better than anything I'll find in the North Pacific, ever.

But that's just the inescapable luck of the draw. Consider, for example, that I'd rather not dig clams there. Some things you got, some things you ain't. (Second Noble Truth, with a worldly-dharma chaser.)

But this one drove me mad. I'm talking physical pain. Because this time, my girl Nicola outed me as a bad monk, a self-righteous Buddhist, and a very strange man.

It starts about 1:40 – the video opens at that mark when you click on it – where, if you look carefully at the mud... you'll see a washer.

An old, rusty, well-abused washer.

The sort that makes a first-class fudo.

And boy, does that trigger my greed! You can see it right there. It's within reach. The camera places you right behind the hand. "It's right there! Just right! No, don't pan away!"

But that happens a lot in mudlarking videos. What is less common, happens next.

Another one. Just as good and just as near.

Then another. And another.

I counted at least half a dozen before Nicola wandered on, for a total of about a minute and a half of torment. And God knows how many other rings lie just out of frame.

Needless to say, she walks right past all of them. Because she's after, like, actual stuff. Interesting stuff. Thought-provoking stuff she can use in her artwork. (That's what Nicola is: an artist.)

So she doesn't need a pack of rusty washers.

She's probably got enough of those to hold the duration.

But if you're a fudo maker, that dreggy hardware shines, if only metaphorically, right off the gloomy muck. (Looking remarkably like ours, come to that. Amazing how similar the UK is to the North Coast.)

I'm telling you, that's powerful iron. Those guys contain enough disdain for suffering, each one, to make Mara incontinent for days.*

And I could reach out and take them, if my arms were 5,000 miles longer.

You're killing me here, Nicola.

*MaraisnotrealpleasedonotascribesufferingoreviltoasupernaturalbeingcalledMaraMaraisjustallegoryfordelusionformoreinformationpleasesitzazen.