Robert Lenkiewicz, a treasure hunt and a forgotten cannonball

I recently walked down to the Barbican to look at Robert Lenkiewicz's quickly deterioring mural, located close to the premises of the South West Image Bank. It seems a shame that the council didn't preserve the artwork or allow it to be restored while Lenkiewicz was still alive.

I met Robert Lenkiewicz only twice and he was a man of a few words and was always accompanied by a girlfriend decades younger than himself. One meeting was in the queue for the ABC cinema in about 1989. It was evening and he was dressed in his familiar black smock and red scarf, complete with young girlfriend. I think the movie showing was John Cleese's 'Clockwise' (which was awful).
The first time I met him, though, involves a far more interesting (and ridiculous) story. It was about 1981 and I was still in my teens. My brother worked as a black cab taxi driver and said that he had had someone in his cab who was a film director. He was making a film, supposedly, about a treasure hunt featured in a booklet and, apparently, the clues led to Plymouth. He asked my brother if he knew anyone with a metal detector and he remembered that I had one so, without telling me, he sent him around to my parent's house. Anyway, an overweight man, with straggly grey hair and beard, a nylon mustard-coloured polo neck jumper, and a huge gold medallion around his neck, arrived in a clapped-out Mini. He looked all the part of a film director and, after he had a cup of coffee (with six sugars), I located my metal detector and we set off to the Barbican. Of course, now, with hindsight, I can see it would have been better to tell him that I was too busy! So, we drove towards the Barbican and he told me about the book and how the author had hidden buried treasure somewhere in the British Isles. He also told me that his company had filmed Mari Wilson's (long forgotten) first video. So, we arrived on the Barbican and parked by Lenkiewicz's mural (you could park anywhere, free, in those days). The film director (I don't think he ever did tell me his name) explained that the clues suggested that one of the characters in the painting pointed to the location of the treasure which, in this case, was the flower bed directly in front of the mural. At this point, Robert Lenkiewicz appeared (complete with young girlfriend) and it became apparent that he and the film director had some sort of history. As their conversation progressed, I learned that the film director had been digging in the flower bed the previous night, someone had called the police and he had ended up spending the night in a cell. Lenkiewicz thought that this was great fun, although he said little else. So, I was asked to turn on the metal detector and I waved it over the flower bed. Straightaway, I got a very loud signal and clearing away the dirt, discovered a cannon ball which measured about 4 inches in diameter. It was obviously hundreds of years old and must have been in the soil when the flower bed was first constructed (the flower bed appeared to have been built some time in the 1950s or 1960s). It would have been good to keep but the director 'bagged' it for himself and said that it would make a good paper weight for his desk back in London. By now, Lenkiewicz had got bored and had gone back to his studio. I was bored too but the director wanted to try one more location which was in the flower beds in Frankfort Gate. I refused to metal detect in the middle of the town but went with him anyway. He happily dug around one of the trees and some kids laughed as they went by and shouted, 'Look, it's Percy Thrower!'
After that, he dropped me home and set off to London in a Mini that didn't look like it would complete its journey. It seemed a very long day and I was very relieved to return back.
I never heard anymore about the director, the proposed treasure hunt film, or the cannon ball, and didn't meet Lenkiewicz again until I was behind him in the cinema queue in 1989.
This story is certainly ludicrous and I'm not sure how many people will find it interesting but it's the only Lenkiewicz related story I have!
Incidentally, I'm sure someone with a metal detector will think that the flower bed in front of Lenkiewicz's mural is worth checking out. I never went back to it and I'm sure no-one else, apart from a council gardener, has ever dug further than a few inches. Of course, I wouldn't suggest digging up council property so any secrets therein will, probably, remain hidden.
The moral of this story is, of course, never talk to strangers (especially if they tell you they're a film director).