My mother likes to tell the story about a mud bath at kindy. We were invited to bring old clothes to play in the mud pit. I was the only girl who took up the offer. Aged five and already a mud wrestler. What can I say?
Perhaps this is why I stopped for a brief chat with this bloke who says everyone calls him only Bob Mud. I stopped for a brief chat but Bob Mud wasn't going to let me get away with that.
It was Sunday and Bob was going to give me a sermon, like it or not. Fortunately he was a man with a lot of interesting things to say.
I only asked him about the bizarre instrument (it's called pan bottles, apparently) he had created by caking mud over different sized water bottles.
He picked it up. He started to play and he told me his story.
Every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday, 70-year-old Bob Mud conducts free workshops for kids at the Northey Street city farm.
His classes involve music, art and pottery - all involving mud.
"It attracts the tiniest of kids. They are attracted to the mud and water and it's so good for them. It's so good for their immune system," he says.
"This is a real school. The way you enrol is to show and interest and if you don't have an interest you don't come."
It's obvious that Bob Mud gets as much out of the classes as those he teaches.
"It's just as important for people my age to have fun, more important," he says."In this lovely, beautiful country we are full of complaints. It's crazy."
That's as close as it comes to Bob Mud throwing mud although I can't help but think he'd be up for a mud fight given half the chance. The name comes from somewhere and as they say mud sticks.
Bob Mud looks like one of life's characters. I bet the kids have a wail of a time in his mud school! Was his mud music any good? Thanks for linking to Country Kids
ReplyDeleteEveryone should meet someone like him at least once in their life
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