Granny Buttons: Piddling fears

August 2012

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Piddling fears

Fears of future of Ribble Piddler - Lancashire Evening Post

Has anyone got a photo of the Ribble Piddler?

The £21,000 oak giant – called Gauging the Ripple – has been removed from the side of the Millennium Ribble Link canal after five years of uninterrupted service.

Questions have been asked as to whether the statue has been properly treated to prevent against decay. A routine inspection before Christmas found damage, rot and a crack in the calf of the monument raising concerns over its safety.

Now experts will inspect the statue, which is nicknamed The Ribble Piddler due to its particular posture over the waterway.

Ingol councillor Bill Shannon said: "It's as iconic for Ingol as the Statue of Liberty. One hopes that it was properly treated before the sculptor started working on it

I suspect that if the sculptor Thompson Dagnall had piddled on the tree properly before he'd started on it, the wood would be in a better state.

I'm most intrigued in the comment that it's given the canal '5 years of uninterrupted service'. That's what Granny Buttons has been doing for the canals too, and no-one has interviewed me.

The video on the LEP website features the artist wearing full hi-vis safety gear - complete with helmet and visor - when talking to camera. Good grief. Did Leonardo need a helmet and protective visor against plaster flakes when he painted the Laughing Cavalier on the Sistine Chapel's Ceiling? Let alone when he had to stop and climb down for five minutes to talk to the Pope in camera.

The Ribble Piddler seems a Lancashire-lad's answer to the Manneken Pis. Perhaps they could install a little pee-pee pipe inside, and have it piddling at random into the nearby lock. Boaters could play roulette, with umbrella handy. It would add to the fun.