Slow progress

Now, I would not wish in any way to mock, or indeed to sit in judgement upon, those people whose idea of fun is doing a jigsaw puzzle. But. Oh my god, what is the point? It's the same with Airfix models. All that eyestrain, fiddling about, losing bits, cat knocking it off the table when it's nearly done... when you could get a much better result, and cheaper, buying a ready made Hawker Hurricane/boat picture/etc.

I can see the value and the satisfaction in creating something from scratch, a picture, whether a drawing or a photograph; or a model made from raw materials. But to spend so much time and effort reassembling something that has been created and disassembled for that very purpose strikes me at the very apogee of pointless activity.

So why the hell am I doing it then? Very reasonable question. I've started, so I have to finish it. I won't let it beat me. And that, I suspect, is how these things - which surely can't be inherently enjoyable - become grimly addictive. It's the competitive side of it. Who can have the most, the best, the most accurate model aeroplanes? Who can do that 5000 piece Mondrian jigsaw?

You will notice that I have done the interesting bits first. The foliage is going to be really trying. And I must confess to having had some help from Sebastian, especially with the patterns adjacent to the name, which were getting me very disorientated.

It might have looked like a bargain, at 89p in Help the Aged, but once I started peeling the labels off, I discovered that at some previous point, I might have purchased it in the PDSA shop for 49p. Missed it that time around. Might have been no bad thing if I had this time too. At least I wouldn't be cross eyed now.

Epilogue. When we were children and were given jigsaws by kindly but unimaginative relatives, we would complete them - I think my mother probably did most of the work - and then she would turn them over and number each piece sequentially before taking them apart again. Then we would do them again at a later date, which this time entailed just sifting through looking at the numbers and sorting the pieces into order. I hadn't thought about this for thirty years, but now suddenly realise how completely mad this was. Baz, on the other hand, as a child, would refuse even to look at the picture on the box when doing a puzzle, having got the idea from somewhere that this constituted cheating. I think it can safely be said that as a family, we just don't get jigsaws.

Out of context

Look what caught my eye in the charity shop window on my way home this afternoon.

They were shut, but I shall go back in the morning and buy it. I haven't done a jigsaw for ages. Or a jigsaw puzzle, come to that.

Trans-Pennine ramble

When I lived in Huddersfield, I occasionally used to visit Manchester, which entailed catching a First Trans-Pennine Express train. There's a clue in the name there, but I never spotted it until my last (possibly last ever) visit to Huddersfield, when I actually travelled up via Manchester (instead of the more usual Wakefield or Leeds). I didn't consciously choose to, it's just the way the tickets came.

Now, I did remember that there's a long tunnel on this route, just outside Huddersfield. I remember in particular because one time the lights failed and we traversed the whole thing in pitch darkness. But last time, I happened to be looking out of the window as we approached, and saw a strangely familiar sight: a BW sign saying 'Standedge Tunnel: Diggle Portal' (no Andrew, it didn't have a colon in it; that's just a device for showing it was on a different line). And a canal, of course. Well, what my fellow passengers thought of me loudly going 'D'oh' and slapping my forehead, I can't say... but of course we were in the railway tunnel which runs parallell to, and is at various points linked with, the canal tunnel.

All my previous train crossings, of course, had been before we made the trip by boat, which might account for my never having made the connection. Even by train, it seemed a long way. I looked out to see if I could see anything, but the train was too well lit inside (this time) and moving too fast. We emerged at Marsden, and there were the tugs and the visitor centre (with a rather ominous 'To Let' sign on it).

I believe that one of the reasons that you're still not allowed to take your own boat through Standedge is that Railtrack object, on the grounds that you could hop off half way through and nip through one of the adits for a little light sabotage. That would seem to me to be an awfully roundabout way of going about things, not to mention slow on the getaway front, but who am I to argue with the counter-terrorism expertise of Railtrack.

Shall I digress? These days, it's suicide bombers we're meant to be trashed about, no? (as J.G. Ballard says in one of his dystopian epics (I don't think I shall be reading the others), people are at their most dangerous when they have nothing left to believe in except god). So why are we still getting our knickers in a twist about unattended luggage? The whole point of being a suicide bomber is that you don't need to leave your bomb unattended. In fact it would defeat the object rather if you did. By the same token, there is no justification for getting rid of litter bins. People just leave their litter neatly stacked somewhere, we're used to seeing that, so that's where you could leave your bomb, if it was of the unattended type. The fact that we now have nowhere proper to put our litter, meaning that a whole generation of children has missed out on the Keep Britain Tidy message that made such an impression on me in the 1970s and now think it's OK to drop stuff where they stand, is the terrorists' first and greatest victory.

Fender etiquette

Feeding incestuously of other bloggers' efforts again (but I started it, so that's OK), Granny has posted again about the Naval Warriors. He was particularly tickled by this extract from a comment left by one of the Navy personnel who hired one of the boats:

Tickles me, thinking back, how we used without any hint of embarrassment to keep to the naval way of doing things.

Fenders were brought inboard on leaving the wall - woe betide any helmsman caught proceeding down the cut with fenders out: the penalty being to buy the first round at the first 'up spirits' stop - 8 pints, probably cost something like GBP2:40 in total then.

Now, is it just the jargon that's considered arcane, or the actual practice of removing fenders when cruising? Because I've always considered that to be good practice, and rather looked down on people chugging along with their side fenders trailing in the water - or even dangling just shy of it. I assume it's side fenders we're referring to here; the sort of things that 'real' narrow boats, unless I'm very much mistaken, never had.

Warrior's fenders live in front and back lockers, and only come out when moored to a rough wall or noisy piling, or tied to another boat, or sometimes when sharing a lock with the sort of boat whose owners look like they might appreciate not getting too intimate with our blacking. At other times, I feel much happier with them out of the way of the risk of getting snagged in locks, collecting debris and generally looking untidy. I've always viewed cruising with side fenders down as a solecism on a par with hanging the rope on the tiller pin; the preserve, of course, of Daily Mail readers who own semi-trads with bowthrusters.

There. That'll find out who my friends are.

Book review: The Boat Girls

Yes, I know, not Isambard's Kingdom, at least not yet. Despite some interesting snippets (Eton College unsuccessfully tried to get an injunction to stop the Great Western stopping at Slough because they feared the boys would escape; coots only feed one of their young) the style was just so boring, I couldn't take it in large doses. Maybe I will return to it in snippets. In the meantime, I have collected Minnow on the Say, but haven't dared open it yet, for fear of disappointment.

My usual practice, on visiting the library, is to randomly select half a dozen books from the paperback fiction section, and see what I've got when I get home. That way I occasionally uncover something brilliant that I would never have looked at otherwise (J.G. Farrell's Troubles comes to mind), I usually get something sufficiently mindlessly engaging for the train, and sometimes of course, tomes that are completely unreadable (no matter how good the author (sorry Kate Mosse, Hilary Mantell, Joanne Harris; even Daphne DuMaurier), I simply cannot engage with anything set during the French Revolution).

And there on the shelf in front of me (not having been to the library for a while, the first couple of visits saw me accidentally only looking in the historical fiction section. I'm not too keen on the English Civil War as a backdrop either) was The Boat Girls by Margaret Mayhew. Sure enough, the story of three eighteen year old women from different backgrounds who go off to work on the boats in the war. Women-in-WW2 is clearly Margaret Mayhew's stock in trade, judging by her other half-dozen or so titles, whose covers were reproduced inside. Women and Americans, women and Dunkirk, women in the WRNS, women in the WAAF, and women on the IW.

Well, it wasn't at all bad. I could cavil and say that the characters were somewhat superficailly drawn and not very emothioally engaging, but I've seen a lot worse, and anyway, that's probably not what Mayhew's readership is after. It was a bit of a shame that they all had to be the same age - Shy Prue, tyrannised by her suburban father, who escapes a lifetime of drudgery as a bank clerk by ultimately escaping to Winnipeg with a lost-and-then-found-again airman (oh, sorry, spoiler); Privileged Frances, tyrannised by her upper class RAF officer brother (her father having not quite been himself since the first war), who escapes a lifetime of drudgery as chatelaine of a crumbling stately home by nearly running off with a boatman before realising that it just wouldn't work and settling for an upper class RAF officer friend of her brother's instead, and Ros, the down to earth gritty one, forged in a lifetime of theatrical lodgings, who rather improbably gives up the casting couch for Frances' brother (Vere, if you please) who is so smitten with her that he throws his tyrannical morality to the winds.

Mayhew acknowledges her debt to the work of Woolfitt, Cornish and Gayford, and indeed, it's very clear throughout the book that she's drawn heavily on them not only for background detail, but also for stories, events and even characters. The trainer, 'Pip' is indistinguishable from Gayford, right down to the bicycle, and Frances is recognisably based on Woolfitt. She does it very well though; accurate, rarely heavy handed, always readable and usually clearly comprehensible. The focus is on the boats and boating life for the largest part of the book and the atmosphere and imagery are perceptible if not quite palpable. Someone who came to this as a fan of Mayhew, or of the plucky home front heroine genre more broadly, would go away with a good idea of the Idle Women's experiences - well, as good as they'd get from Woolfit and Gayford, at any rate. And a coherent, undemanding and instantly forgettable story as a bonus.

What were the publishers thinking of when they approved the cover illustration though? All the books in the series feature a photo of a woman (looking fiery, pensive or determined as appropriate) in uniform or forties dress and hairdo, superimposed on a suitable background (airfield, battle at sea etc). This one has a rather modern looking woman, albeit in obligatory too-big shirt, corduroy breeches (both very clean) and big belt, with a hairdo like nothing I've ever seen (perhaps it was supposed to look unkempt and lousy?), foregrounded against a lock. With, clearly visible in the background, a modern leisure narrowboat, and some kind of Dutch barge. It seems a shame, when the author has clearly gone to some lengths to do her research and get the detail pretty much spot-on, that the publishers couldn't at least dig out a picture of some old boats, or even better an old picture. Hap'orth of tar, anyone?

Why is no one called Isambard?

People give their children the strangest names - not just these days, they always have done. The births column of the Daily Telegraph is, I find, always good for a laugh (Mimi Magenta Poodle being a favourite that I recall).

But I have never, ever, come across someone - a real live present day person, that is* - called Isambard. My sister works in the Passport Office (boo hiss) and encounters beautiful and outlandish names on a daily basis, but she confirmed to me last week that even she has never met with an Isambard. I find this incredible. Not only is it a name with a noble and heroic history, is is also really a very nice name. It has a splendid ring to it. It is simultaneously both exotic and down to earth. It even offers the possibility of being shortened to Sam, should an adolescent Isambard wish for something a little more anonymous.

I'm reminded of this as I'm about to embark on a library book called Isambard's Kingdom: Travels in Brunel's England by Judy Jones. I've had it for a while and wondered if I would actually read it, but it looks like a readable and probably interesting travelogue, of a 500 mile walk 'from Paddington to Penzance to explore the legacy of his railway revolution'. I'm not a big rail freak, but my paternal grandfather (whom I never met) was a boilermaker on the Great Western, at Swindon, so I've always had a mild interest from that perspective. I think there's a bit of canal stuff in there too.

And before you ask why I didn't call one of my sons Isambard, if I think it's so great, the answer is that I didn't have the nerve twenty two and a half years ago.

*There is a character of that name in Mavis Cheek's Patrick Parker's Progress, named by a Brunel-obsessed father.

A motto for our times

I first saw this on a poster in the window of a bookshop in Lewes. I wanted one, but (skinflint that I am) baulked at paying £4.95 for it, which is what they were asking. And forever after I was kicking myself. Then shortly before Christmas I used the wonder of the internet to track down the original supplier, and this time I got three posters - one for at home, one for the office, and one as a present for Dean, our wonderful School Administrator. (£3.60 each, if I recall correctly).

The story is that an original poster was found in a box of books delivered to a second-hand bookshop. They were very taken with the slogan and reproduced it. Supposedly around half a million were printed during WW2, using a specially reassuring typeface, and were being kept in reserve to be rolled out in an absolute crisis - which never came, so they were eventually destroyed without ever being deployed.

And I thought how great it would be to have it on a T-shirt, because it's just the sort of thing I'm always saying to other people, but I sometimes need reminding of it myself too. So I searched around, but could only find very expensive versions, and I thought it was a bit mean, too, others piggy backing on the efforts of the people who found and reproduced the original. But when I had another look at the weekend, I discovered that Barter Books (for it is they) also now sell T-shirts, and mugs, emblazoned with this sound advice - and at half the price (£12.60 - still not cheap for a T-shirt, but worth it) of other suppliers. So if you want one, give them a ring on 01655 604888 - it's easier than using the website, and cheaper than their ebay shop, I'm sure the nice man won't mind me telling you - and they'll put one in the post the next day. Surely a must for every boater.

A rather uncanny thing happened a couple of weeks ago... we had a meeting at work at which it was announced that we are going to undergo a very big and far-reaching reorganisation, and we all left reeling a bit, and when I got back to my office, my poster had partially detached itself from the wall and was hanging by half its blu-tack. I can only imagine that this was in order to draw my attention to it and note its soothing words of wisdom.

My other favourite motto, by the way, attributed to Roosevelt, is 'Nothing matters very much, and very few things matter at all'.

Spotted again

In a roundabout way ... interesting how these blog thingies (as a caricature Prince Charles might say) link up. I was just browsing Granny Buttons, scrolled down his list to have a quick look at Bones, and she's posted that Caxton have posted about Warrior. With some lovely pictures taken at the IWA Festival last year (even if they have got me in).

So when there's no boating, and no painting, and even no boat-related reading being done, we can still all post about each other.

Caxton is one of only two other boat blogs I know that use this template (think theirs is the later version). The other one was Hagley, but it's now even more sadly neglected than when I wrote about it over a year ago (note Richard's comment there!) - so much so that Andrew has expelled it from Granny's blogroll. Come on Richard, some of us cared! Is Hagley still afloat?

Micro banter

I asked Sebastian yesterday if he would care to come up sometime and dabble in my HTML, to update the links list (sorely needs it... Pete?). He sighed heavily and said, 'Mum, I've shown you how to do it.' 'I know,' I replied with commendable honesty, 'But I wasn't listening, because I thought that I'd just get you to do it.' 'I'll charge', was his answer to that. So the list remains un-updated. I was thinking of adding a link to CanalWorld, my favourite forum. As they say, other forums are available, but as they're not as popular, there's less new stuff to amuse me when I log on every half hour or so.

Sometimes people off CanalWorld (although not, it seems, the History 'n' Heritage section) meet up in the real world and call it a banter. And sometimes a few of them meet up and call it a mini-banter. Today I met up with Black Ibis and FadetoScarlet (aka Amy and James) for a micro-banter, in a cafe by Old Street tube. Amy also has a blog, confusingly utilising the FadetoScarlet brand (great name). They're in the process of buying a boat to live on near Cambridge, and were running out of people to talk to about it, so I was happy to step in.

I'm not quite sure how our paths might cross this summer as we are mainly heading in the same direction, even though they're coming from Birmingham to Cambridge and we're going from Cambridge-ish, but hopefully I'll get the chance to have a look at Lucky Duck when we go back east, whenever that may be. It sounds like an interesting and ingenious boat - and no one knows who built it. I like a nice mystery.

Earth has not anything to show more fair?

I rang my sister up on Wednesday, just because I thought it really had been quite a long time since I last made the effort, and she mentioned that she was going to be in London today, and might be able to meet up if she wasn't too hung over. I'm not quite sure why, but she suggested we meet at Embankment Station, so we did, strolled across Hungerford Bridge to the South Bank for a spot of lunch, and then wandered up to Westminster Bridge.

It was funny to be in the thick of tourist London, and odder still to encounter the - ahem - street theatre that fills the space between the Festival Hall and the London Eye. Imagine meeting someone and in all innocence asking them what they do for a living... 'oh, me? I stand on a box dressed as a policeman in a tutu. But - and here's the really clever bit - I stand very still.' Or 'I dress up as a stone wizard and move about very slowly, terrifying small children.' Quite impressive actually, the stone wizard. But ... why?

And then we walked on to Victoria so that she could catch the coach back to Wales, but there's no waterway in that (although we did watch two coots try to drown a duck in St James's Park).

Imagining being on a narrow boat on this bit of the river is quite mindboggling. It's not so much the width or the depth or the currents and the tides - although they would no doubt scare the hell out of someone saner than me. No, it's the size and speed of the other boats. It's really strange to see boats going fast.

Minnow on the Say

When Philip came to the single rose
Over the water
The treasure was taken where nobody knows
None but my daughter

OK, I might not have remembered it exactly right, but it must be well over thirty years since I read Minnow on the Say. I was constantly reading as a child, so I must have read hundreds of books, but very few of them have stayed with me. This one has. I can see the scene in my imagination as clearly as if it were a memory, of the bridge with its stone-carved roses, and the boy in the canoe beneath. Of course, in my mind's eye, the Say takes the shape of the stream that I used to cross every day on the way to school, where sometimes, very daringly, I would scramble down to the water's edge.

I haven't re-read it yet, but I roughly recall the plot as lonely boy spends long summer holidays solving Elizabethan riddle to find long-hidden treasure. It's the atmosphere and the vividness of the imagery, rather than the plot, that made it so special. And maybe, with hindsight, the river setting.

What I didn't remember was that Minnow on the Say, first published in 1955, is by Philippa Pearce, author of that other haunting favourite, Tom's Midnight Garden. It was her first book, and it's still in print. I was tempted to buy a copy from Amazon, but I think first I will see if I can borrow it from the library, as I did all those years ago.

Cock o' the walk

Went for a stroll round the Bill Fen site with Carl and Sean this morning, and saw parts of it that I'd not seen before.

And we saw one of the peacocks, in full display. Now, I've seen peacocks strutting their stuff before, but this was something else again. I didn't have the camera with me, but that's just as well, as a little photo taken through a wire mesh fence (he was visiting the hens) could not do this justice.

His tail must have been six feet across at ground level. Those distinctive 'eyes', one of which adorns the end of each tail feather, formed a perfectly spaced pattern of staggered circles across the surface of his tail. At the base of this, rising from his back, was the impression of scales, lapping over each other up to a height of about eight inches, of an indescribably beautiful green. In front of this, his neck and breast, in that unique, iridescent peacock blue. All his wing and body feathers were fluffed up too, rich brown, mottled and fluffy black. And he strutted around like this for ages, while the chickens pointedly ignored him, and the peahen rather irritably scuttled in front of him (could just imagine what she was thinking).

But then he did a most extraordinary thing - I apologise if the ways of peacocks are known to you of old, but I had never seen the like. He sort of shuddered and rattled the whole edifice, with an unworldly sound, maybe like the wind in the reeds but much louder; almost like gravel being poured onto a tin roof. It was mesmerising. Unlike the supremely indifferent chickens, I couldn't tear myself away.

Boatguests

At long last today we played host to Carl and Sean, our next door neighbours from home. We'd nearly got all the brass finished by the time they arrived. They were delighted with the Bill Fen CL, and we were impressed with their new caravan.

Of course, we went out for a boat trip. It was a beautiful sunny day, so we thought we'd better make the most of it and set off straight away, making and eating sandwiches on the way. We went out onto the Nene Old Course and past Floods Ferry, where Carl and Sean came with the caravan once. All were agreed that it's not what it was, and Carl in particular took a dim view of the addition of static caravans. Then we turned round and came back past the marina and on into Ramsey to introduce them to the delights of the Rainbow before returning to Bill Fen. On the way back Carl got me into Bad Ways, and we were both sitting on the foredeck trailing our feet in the water. It was lovely. So nice to feel the sun on my back at last.

It's just getting dark now, after a beautiful delicate pink sunset, as I write this; Jim is asleep, and I'm sitting in the back cabin with the doors open, listening to the plaintive, demanding calls of the peacocks. Earlier we saw a kingfisher, not just the usual fleeting glance, but over and over as he flew and settled, looking just like one in a picture book, and flew and settled again, always just a little ahead of us. And there was a hawk, hovering low and completely stationary as we went past, again, the closest I've ever seen one.

Carl and Sean are hooked, of course.

Ready for inspection

Carl and Sean arrive tomorrow. Their house is spotless. Their cats are impeccably trained. And sleek. When Carl feeds our cats while we're away, Jim always makes sure to wash the kitchen floor first. Carl has a very damning way of describing people as 'a stranger to bleach.'

Ever since we first got Helyn, Carl has followed our boating progress with great interest. He is the only other person I know personally who has not only watched all of Narrow Boat, but also Locks and Quays (which I've never seen). A lot of honour is at stake here. This is why we had to come up a day early in order to get all the brass done and the whole boat shipshape. It has taken me all day to do the back cabin, but I have polished everything. I have washed don all the walls and scrubbed the floor. I have blacked the stove. And coiled the rope. I've also removed the blue velvet-upholstered fitted cushions, and am now sitting on the bare grained side bed. It looks so much better, I don't know why I didn't think of it before. The cushions required for the bed all (just) fit in the bed cupboard, so I think it can stay this way. It's so much more practical, as well as looking brighter and less cluttered. The side bed is used far more as shelves than seating anyway.

Really, we should have a visit from Carl and Sean every spring - it's such a great incentive for getting ready for the summer.

The river at Lewes

We went into Lewes last night. Ostensibly, we were going to check out the Snowdrop, our formerly absolute favourite pub, now under new management having gone downhill and being closed for a while.

We didn't need to go in though; the sign outside saying 'DJ tonite'; the tracksuited clientele getting out of their souped up Astras outside, and the range of shiny new lager taps glimpsed through the window were sufficient to prevent us wasting our time and energy (and hope. Farewell Snowdrop; you were a lovely pub, but to everything its season. I wonder what's happened to the bust of Plato, latterly covered in glitter, which used to grace the window.)

However, my main reason for driving into Lewes, rather than patronising the Prince of Wales, our genuinely local local down the road, was that I wanted to get a closer look at this narrowboat moored on the Ouse near the pub, which previously I had only seen from the train. Walking a little way back along the main road Baz and I were able to find a path down the riverbank, from where we could just about see the boat. More exciting was to recognise the scene from that picture I mentioned a while back of a sailing barge in the early sixties. We were standing at almost exactly the same spot as from where that picture was taken. The gasometer has disappeared from the background, but much else remains the same, and the narrowboat is, I think, tied up to the same wharf as the barge was. How they get on and off other than at high tide is a bit of a mystery, but I must say I do envy them a bit. They're almost in the heart of Lewes, secluded from the road and pretty much the only boat on the river.

Magic smoke

Moominpapa, I'm sure he will not mind me saying, is a very very clever person. He programmes big computers and he understands eckeltricity. He explained to Jim that electrical devices (and possibly some other sorts) work because of magic smoke. All is well as long as the magic smoke is contained within the device. But sometimes there is a bang or a phut and you can see the magic smoke escape. Then the thing doesn't work any more. That's the kind of electricity I understand.

I bought a 12v car charger for my beloved phone. I tried it on the boat, and it didn't work. Oh dear, I thought, obviously duff, shouldn't have bought a cheap one. Although it was proper Nokia I bought it cheap on the internet, deriving some unjustified comfort from the fact that the supplier was based in Eastbourne, i.e. local, despite the fact that I kept no record of their address or contact details. So when I was in Maplins last week, I bought another one; a universal one this time that will charge everyone's phones. This time we tested it in the car first and it was fine. Got to the boat, plugged it in, went phut and the magic smoke escaped - saw it happen that time. That had me worried of course, that there was something wrong with our 12v system (although the vacuum cleaner worked fine, at least as fine as you'd expect a 12v one to work, and so did a little LED light we have).

So I asked Moominpapa. He said, maybe the polarity is the wrong way round. That immediately made sense, because for all these things we've been using an adapter, from our three-pin sockets to a car-type one, and of course the three pin plug was wired the wrong way round. MP demonstrated this by poking it with Jim's multimeter, and I then put it right. Next time I visit Maplins I will buy a third 12v charger and hope for the best.

Jim, who has missed his vocation as a careers adviser, is determined that Moominpapa should retire from crunching the human genome and become a boat electrician.

Shiny shiny stripey stripey

Warrior is all shiny. Out it sailed from the paint dock on Saturday morning... I stayed behind to pull the dock back in to the bank - you have to swing it out to get a boat in - and walked back along the bank, alongside warrior. The boat looked fantastic, and I had such a brilliant view, from above, at the top of the steep bank ... without the bloody camera. We trundled over to the pumpout, where I did get a picture, but nothing like the view from the bank. Then we went off for a little run, up the Nene Old Course as far as the junction with Whittlesey Dyke. For those unfamiliar with the terrain, it's not like a canal where you can just hop on and off; the banks are high and steep (and private); it's pretty hard to stop anywhere, so no photo-opportunities here either.

It has not all been quite plain sailing. Wandering around the boat for about the sixteenth time in the paint dock on Friday, cooing admiringly, I suddenly let out a little squawk. 'What is it?' cried Jim. 'Nothing, nothing', I said desperately, but he wasn't fooled. I had to break the news that where there was a one-inch gap between the two panel-framing vertical stripes, there should in fact have been a four-inch gap. There was much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth over the weekend but I think the final upshot is that if there is time, it will be redone. It's an absolute bastard, but it'll be the right thing for the long term. That painting's going to be there a long time.

Paint progress

I'm back in Ramsey and I've bought the horrible weather with me, contrary to what the forecast for here promised. Still, no matter that it's freezing and pouring with rain, because Jim has done an amazing job over the last ten days with the painting. I really can't believe the time and effort that's gone into the three extra undercoats and the three topcoats, including stripes that had to be masked separately with every coat; the handrail, the hatches various, the elephant's toenails at the front and loads of other bits, in this paint dock which must have been like a greenhouse in last week's heat. So naturally I was very impressed when I turned up last night.

Work continues; even as I write Jim is giving a second coat to the roof hatches. These are red; I'm not 100% sure about the red myself (shades of the saga of the injectors); it has turned out to be a particularly virulent vermilion which is great for the handrail but perhaps best in small doses, but he likes it and as he's done all the work, who am I to argue. I am certainly more sawyed by the argument that he likes it than by the other one he's proffered, which is that we've got a whole tin of red paint and need to use it somehow...


This morning I helped mask up the fore end with some special bendy tape I bought on the offchance. We are going to have the name on there (sorry Dave); technically we need it for the Thames and it'll be nice to have it done properly. I think it should look nice too. I'm not quite sure what the objection was; whether it was a matter of aesthetics or convention, but I can't really see a problem on either front.

Anyway, having done that I was ceremonially handed a tin of blacking and an old brush and reminded of my vocation. All very well but this was the final inch and a half of two year old blacking, with the consistency of black treacle - until I got it slapped onto the boat, when it suddenly developed the ability to run quite fantastically. Still, I know my place, and didnt rest until the entire contents of the tin (at least, those that still moved about) were transferred to the hull. I have a feeling that were this boat's steel to mysteriously be vapourised by some kind of alien deathray (hmm, apart from the baseplate) it would continue to be perfectly serviceable as a boat made entirely from paint and blacking.

Tomorrow we vacate the paint dock - which has actually worked very well. Then at last I'll be able to see Warrior properly, from a distance, in all its new glory. And be able to light the fire.

What's happening then?

It's not that there's nothing happening; it's just that I'm not there, my presence having been required elsewhere last week (and this). A lot is happening, in terms of painting, but communication links between here and Ramsey (well, between Ramsey and anywhere, to be honest) are not excellent; however, the latest update is that Jim finished three coats of undercoat yesterday and this morning started preparing for the topcoat. All the undercoat is black, which was thus relatively simple, but the top coats are black and grey, so that will be rather more complex. It's a bit too hot really for doing it, and I imagine that the paint dock is like a tomato house. He started painting yesterday at five in the morning.

I'm kicking myself for bringing the digital camera home and not leaving it with him. It was because the batteries had run out, but of course he could have got some there. It's a little bit of a walk to the shops but Moominpapa has been lending Jim his car!

We decided that it wasn't worth my going back up to visit this weekend, but I will go on Thursday, and then we'll both come back tomorrow week. Then at the end of the month, Carl and Sean are bringing their caravan to the Bill Fen CL, so we'll be back up there then, hopefully to take them on a little boat trip. They've been listening to us going on about the boats for so long, it's about time they actually got to see it in the flesh. It would be nice to think we might even get the signwriting done by then, but I'm not sure how and when John will be able to fit us in for that.

Twenty Questions

Don't you love those questionnaire things that celebrities (or worthies, depending upon your publication of choice) answer in the Saturday and Sunday papers? Don't you always go through them answering the questions yourself? Or is that just me?

Well, as he reported on his own blog, Granny Buttons' Andrew is the respondent to this month's Canal Boat Twenty Questions. Naturally miffed at not being asked myself (I didn't get a column either, grr), I swore that I would answer the self same questions here, and would like to suggest that other boat bloggers do likewise.

One little thing though, just to make it more interesting (and less arduous, and with less risk of copyright infringement), I thought I would just put my answers here, and not reproduce the questions. So you can either read it in conjunction with your well thumbed copy of Canal Boat, or, if you like an element of mystery, you can guess at what the questions might have been. You may even find it amusing to mix up the questions and answers randomly. I recall this was something I used to find unconscionably funny as a child. The answer 'Wiping it with bread' can still reduce me to helpless laughter. So here goes:

1. The Huddersfield. Stunning views and seventy-four lovely locks.
2. The Nene. Pretty views and thirty-something horrid locks.
3. Someone calm and quiet who doesn't shout.
4. Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris. Random library choice.
5. Dawn.
6. Daily Mail readers.
7. Now. But second choice, the thirties. For the boats, obviously, but also the silk underwear.
8. I'm afraid I haven't, yet.
9. Barrister.
10. Have more money but be much poorer.
11. Generally superior to a random cross section of society.
12. Beer. Of course. Mind you, I had a bath once, and that was nice.
13. Bloody minded boaters.
14. Are you lost?
15. Portholes.
16. Pump out (but it won't fit in my Walkman)
17. Canals. Rivers are pretty, but canals are canals.
18. On a boat.
19. Too early to say.
20. The ability to steer.

Suddenly, it's summer

Suddenly, it's still light at 9pm (granted, BST); not only that, but I'm out in the garden in a sleeveless vest, feeling only slightly chilly, hanging out the last of the woolly socks and tights for the year. It's been a long time coming, but surely, at last, summer has arrived.

Baz and I drove back from Ramsey this afternoon, leaving Jim up there, brave and carless, to make a start on the painting. It now looks as if the paint dock won't be vacated until Wednesday, but it'll still be worth it. Kevin and Vicky are in there at the moment with Star, which is looking lovely. They painted it themselves, and Black Boat John (for that is the name by which everyone calls him) has done the signwriting, and we're very impressed with it. We'd seen a lot of his work around the place, obviously, but most of it was in a style we didn't really like - too fancy, or novelty-ish. But Star's signwriting is very plain, exactly how we want ours, and it's fantastic; not too perfect; just right. So it looks as if we will be getting him to do Warrior.

After looking at lots (and lots and lots) of boats we have decided to go for just two framed panels on the cabinside - rather than two written ones and two smaller empty ones, or some other combination. After waving Jim off to the Rainbow this morning to stock up with food for his sojourn, Baz and I equipped ourselves with tape measure, pencil and 2" masking tape to see how it might look. Imagine the tape line in black, on a dark grey background, with cream and black signwriting and a red handrail...

I can not believe this...

We have had a lovely day. We went off happily this morning to the RN open day, there to meet Steve who is returning our pistons, liners and con rods. It was a bit disappointing to discover that Compo wasn't there but apparently he has been getting his knees done too. But it was nice to meet up again with Brian and Allister and David of RN, and drink some rather nice bottle conditioned specially brewed RN beer. There was a barbecue too, at first just inside the works, until it got a bit smokey. The works was looking pristine and Brian's speech made it sound as if there are exciting hings happening there. For a start they are in the process of producing an engine which isn't destined for a boat, but for a domestic combined heat and power unit, that will run on almost any sort of oil. I do think it's still a bit optimisic though, to think that we'll all be able to run our boats on chip fat and waste engine oil, because once the raw suff has run out, I think we'll be at the end of the queue for the substitutes.

Then Steve followed us back to Bill Fen and finally saw and heard the engine in action, and stayed and chatted for a while, then Kevin and Vicky came over, and then Simon and Anne (the Moomins), and then Steve went home and we went over to Melaleuca to look at Simon's engine and couldn't drag Jim away. Then finally we came back to Warrior, sat down with a cup of tea, and I said, did we get our bits back off Steve before he went then?

Did we buggery.

Now how the hell did we manage to forget that, the entire point of the exercise? It kind of puts forgeting oner liner in the shade.

Brasso Boy

And it's raining, although it was sunny when we arrived. Quiet sounds of cheering have reached us over the course of the afternoon, from the boules tournament, and Sebastian has been over and reported that there is a marquee, with beer (and, Jim adds, cider, which Baz is quite partial to) and a large barbecue waiting to be fired up. Slightly worryingly, this was before the heavens opened so I'm not sure what the barbecue situation is now. Also, we forgot to bring Baz's sleeping bag or quilt, but he assures us that he will be all right with two blankets.

As Steve is coming to look at the engine tomorrow, the first job was to clean and polish the engine room, and the engine itself. I bravely led the way, and polished about two things, before generously allowing Baz to take over. He has done all the brass and copper and Jim is now in there doing the engine, I think. I have to do the blog now because Brasso Boy needs the laptop on so that he can charge his ipod.

Transport

Well, tomorrow we're off, for Bill Fen fun, RN open day and painting. We won't be going in the new car:

because I've just spent an hour banging my head on the keyboard failing to insure it.
Instead, we will be taking the old car:

To ensure my stress levels don't drop too low, the local evangelical church, two doors down, is hosting a discotheque, just to let us know that summer has finally arrived, and I'm knackered from shifting tons and tons of stuff/crap/heirlooms about.

I am self-medicating with chocolate.

Shame

I don't really do proud or ashamed to be British - for a start, Britishness is an artificial, political construct that it's hard to feel any affinity with (Englishness, on the other hand, with its cultural and linguistic hinterland, I'm quite fond of).

But last night I saw something that I did feel ashamed to be associated with, no matter how tenouously:That's a fifty per cent increase, overnight, on an already outrageous charge for facilities that are mediocre at best. But it gets worse. To compound the obscenity a hundredfold, there was this:

Now, when CCTV was first introduced, you might have been one of those people who thought it was a good idea; that it would catch major criminals, rescue kidnapped children, deter rapists, and all in all make your world a safer place. On the other hand, you might have been a sceptic from the start, concerned about the civil liberties implications of the growing surveillance society.

But either way, did you ever, in your wildest dreams or your worst nightmares, foresee the day when the technology would be deployed to terrify little old ladies into paying six bob to have a wee?

And it was sad and frustrating to see people practically queuing up to fed their notes into the change machine, and their change into the insatiable maw of the turnstile. Is there no human need so basic that a profit can't be turned from it? Will I have the nerve to continue sneaking in without paying (as an act of political defiance, of course, not meanness)? Well, I'm pretty sure there are no new CCTV cameras, and I never got caught before - and it would make an interesting test case (micturition martyrs, anyone?).

What everyone ought to do - male and female, young and old - is just stop outside the turnstiles and piss on the bloody concourse.

But we won't of course.
Because we're British.

Stuff

Idly rambling through the interwebs this afternoon I came across a blog describing a couple's (rather testing, as it turned out) experience of selling up and moving onto a boat. A couple of sentences leapt out at me: Years and years of rubbish which we had just collected and stored. We were paying a mortgage just so we could store our crap.

Now I know I claim to have lived on a boat, but I haven't really done so properly because I have always had somewhere where I could store my crap, do my washing. But I would like to, and I think I could. I was talking to a colleague of about the same age as me last week, and we agreed that we'd both reached the stage where we were fed up with accumulating stuff and wanted instead to start getting rid of it. I fear that this is intimations of mortality, in the form of 'you can't take it with you.'

There are things that I really, really coveted, and was enormously pleased to acquire, and have loved for ten, fifteen, twenty years, and still love, but I can now face the thought of giving them up with some degree of equanimity. I find myself thinking, perhaps now they could give someone else the pleasure that they gave me when I first acquired them (law of diminishing returns comes in here).

None of this, however, applies to the boat - or at least to the concept of a boat. That I will fight tooth and nail for; the house would go first. So maybe it's a change of priorities rather than a sudden epiphany. But it is still, perhaps, the letting go of one phase of one's life in order to move on to another. Life is way too short to spend all of it doing the same thing. Part of me would love to give up the predictable and the secure and plunge headlong into a new adventure. But solid suburban lower middle class conditioning is hard to shake off, and I haven't done it yet. Sometimes I'm suprised by how adventurous I apparently seem to other people; to myself, I still feel very staid and cowardly.

Anyway, we are in the process of clearing out an ENORMOUS amount of accumulated junk in order to create some living space for Number One Son to return home in a sort of semi-detached, offspring-annexe sort of way. All the jumble sales that yielded up the treasures that I've occasionally mentioned, also yielded up vast quantities of stuff - stuff that turned out to be crap; stuff we never got round to fixing; stuff that seemed like a good idea at the time; stuff that has served its purpose. Plus the stuff that we ended up storing for other people, plus all the old stuff that I thought I was sentimentally attached to but it now turns out I wasn't... chipped blue and white china, babies' shoes, chairs, dinner services, pictures, picture frames, broken glass; a canoe; cast iron bathroom scales, bookcases, clothes, clothes, clothes; things the children made and have forgotten about but will remember the instant I put them anywhere near the dustbin; three (three!) old school desks; a gentleman's travelling wardrobe, two enormous laundry hampers; a doctor's case that smells so strongly of liniment it can't come in the house... a box full of old stirrup pumps; wooden planes, a model railway layout with rusted rails and crumbling papier mache hills, a 1930s typewriter... and that's just what I can remember. We really ought to ebay some of it, but it's too much hassle, so mostly it's going on Freecycle, or to the charity shop or tip.

And it feels good, sloughing off the past like that; getting rid of the burden that possessions can all too easily become - the burden of being responsible for them, of the mental energy required to hold onto them. Just the real treasures, the most precious, most loved, most beautiful things, remain, and at last can get the attention they deserve.

And after spending the day downsizing our accumulated possessions yesterday, we went out and bought a new car.

A picture of Lewes

A couple of years ago my sister gave me a picture book for Christmas - one of the enormous number put together from the photographs of Francis Frith who, if the blurb is to be believed, was a Victorian photographic pioneer. His collection would certainly seem to be a reliable moneyspinner in the twenty first century, and his empire has clearly outlived him, as he died in 1898. This particular edition was Canals and Waterways, and it has a voucher in the back whereby you could send off for a free print of one of the pictures in the book (presumably in the hope that you would then be unable to resist ordering many more at forty four pounds a pop. I resisted).

Anyway, even though the voucher was out of date (my sister at the time worked in a remainder shop....) I sent off for, and got, this picture (albeit rendered in artificial sepia) of a sailing barge at Lewes c. 1960. The book tells me that the boat is called Federation, but nothing about what she might have been carrying. This wharf is in Lewes itself, and today there is a lone narrowboat moored at about this spot (I would love to know how it got there), which is handy for the Snowdrop pub. The pub, incidentally, is not named after a flower, but an avalanche which killed eight people in 1836 (or 1829, 0r 1830, depending on what source you believe. I'll go for the Argus's December 27th 1836, which seems to be the most popular).

We found a nice oak frame for the picture in our jumble sale collection, and have really only been waiting (ages) for me to get around to getting a nice mount cut for it. I've now ordered one from a shop in Lewes - it's nearly a tenner, so it's as well the picture was free and the frame was 20p - and it should be ready on Friday, so hopefully we will be putting it up in Warrior this weekend.

Whither Andante?

Before I went to see Mike yesterday, I got an email from him drawing my attention to this. Thanks also to Michelle, who emailed me about it from North Carolina. Andante is for sale again - apparently already under offer. So when Mike saw her go through Newbury the other week, it looks as if she was on her way to Whilton.

What a bastard, my first thought was, changing her bloody name - then getting rid of her! The chances of a new purchaser realising her real name and changing it back are pretty slim, but I hope that might happen. There's nothing wrong with Saxon as a name, but it's not Andante's name.

I grudgingly concede that he's tidied the engine room up quite nicely. Very impressive actually. And the ad gave Mike his first opportunity to see the changes I'd made - most of which are completely unaltered, down to the china duck, and he thought they looked nice (I think).

I hope she finds someone who'll keep her this time. Keep an eye out for her everyone....

Mind you, Sebastian was always pointing out that those quavers ought to be tied.

Visiting Zulu Warrior

I've had a lovely afternoon today. I went to Winkwell to visit Mike (ex of Andante) and see his latest purchase, Zulu Warrior. See the interesting link there? It's funny, I've met Mike about twice now since he sold me Andante - last time was two years ago when he saved my life by showing me where to find the decent pubs in Reading (and there are some) but he feels like an old friend. We keep in touch by occasional email, but often not for months at a time.

Zulu Warrior has an interesting history; as I understand it (and Mike will correct me if I've got this wrong), it was one of two narrowboats owned by the Navy and made available to Navy personnel for holidays and adventure-type activities. The other one was Viking Warrior. The Warrior connection is that the Navy had (and may still have; my in house Naval consultant is not quite up to date) a stone frigate (i.e. a building) called HMS Warrior, named after the original warship HMS Warrior, after which our Warrior is also named (do keep up!). Zulu Warrior is a 1973 Harborough boat, and possibly started life as an early Anglo Welsh hire boat - Mike's still investigating that bit of her history along with a friend whose family were closely involved with the company.

So realising I had a free afternoon today, I emailed Mike and asked if he was at home to visitors, and was made most welcome. I got the train from Euston to Hemel Hempsted, crossed a park and joined the towpath at the Fishery Inn, and had a very pleasant walk in the newly emerging sun up to Winkwell, where Zulu Warrior is currently on the bank having some welding/replating to the hull. I did think the yard was a bit glitzy - they had concrete hardstanding and all, and hard hats... and a big crane with a very big spreader... Which we got to see in action as they were about to move Mike's boat about. So we retired to the Three Horseshoes for a nice al fresco pint of Black Sheep, and watched from the towpath while the boat was moved a few yards.

Then I could finally go on board. The interior of the boat has been done really nicely, and recently - amazing really, when the exterior and the hull were crying out for attention. But they're getting the attention they deserve now from Mike and I'm sure this lovely - and historically interesting - boat is in very safe hands. I look forward to hearing from Mike again once it's back in the water and going for a run. It looks like a lovely stretch of canal. Thanks Mike, for a really enjoyable afternoon, and very best of luck with your fantastic project.

Holiday excitement begins

Two things have happened to tell us that the summer is going to come and Warrior will leave the marina this year: firstly our tickets for Cropredy have arrived. There's still something very exciting about having proper paper tickets (with a nice design printed on them) in your hand. Secondly we have held the traditional temporary licence telephone conversations with navigation authorities various.

Yes, I know we were going to get a gold licence, but we didn't, and it's not worth it now whichever way you slice it. Apparently. I didn't do the sums, but then I'm not very good at sums anyway. This is how it adds up: Nene, three days; canals, about five days; Thames, about a week; canals, as long as we can get away with..... Nene again to get home. Eventually. So, what's the most cost effective way of doing that then, given that we currently don't have any licence at all?

New knees

Hang on a minute, those aren't Jim's...

I may have mentioned in passing that Jim had a bad knee (he's been telling everyone down the supermarket about it, so I'm sure he won't mind me telling the world); it was a very longstanding thing, caused in part by rather foolhardily making a habit of jumping out of aeroplanes many years ago, but it started to get a lot worse last summer, to the point that it was proving a significant hindrance to working and, more importantly, boating.

So, to cut a long story short, and certainly to skip the details, he has had it 'done', last Thursday, and (touch wood) it appears to have been very successful. In vain do I implore him to sit down with his leg up; he is already leaping about like the proverbial gazelle. This means that barring any other unforeseen events, we WILL be painting the week after next.

But there's more. Over the May Bank Holiday weekend, Bill Fen host a weekend of fun and frolics for the Peterborough IWA, with games, music, barbecues and beer, so we (including Sebastian) will definitely be up for that. And on the Sunday, Russell Newbery have their 'Open Day' (I put that in quotes, as an examination of the small print reveals that this 'day' runs from 12 noon to three p.m.) and we are going to go to that. 3D Steve will be there, and hopefully Allister, David, and above all Compo. Jim tells me he has lots of questions to ask them. I have one: why didn't you tell us our skin tank was too small?

Sadly, after the fun and frolics finish, and before the work starts, Sebastian and I shall have to return home - he to college and me to work. But we will go back the following weekend to do our bit. So we're all very impressed with Jim's new knees... (You can see where this is leading, can't you) ... Do you think I should have had him rebottomed?

We've had our chips

Funny things, chips. They've got to be right or they're wrong (just like that other English institution, the cup of tea). Chip shop chips are often something of a leap in the dark - although this is nonetheless preferable to the guaranteed, homogenised, quality-controlled-to-within-an-inch-of-their-lives chain fries. Will they be soggy or dry (they shouldn't really be crisp, well, only the little bits); will they be frozen or made from real potatoes? One would hope the latter in Ramsey, at the heart of potato-producing country. That, of course, is before you even got on to the fish.

I used to live in the flat over a fish and chip shop (the Newhaven Fish Bar, it's imaginatively called). They were - and still are - pretty good. At the time the fact that all my clothes and furniture smelt of chips was a small price to pay for post-marital independence. Go in there and there is quite a long price list, detailing the cost of, say, cod, haddock, plaice, skate, huss and so on. Most of the fish is fresh, as it should be, given that this is a fishing port and the fish are landed a few hundred yards down the road.

When we were in Brighouse, once, unexpectedly (this is when the prop bolt first sheared on Andante and we didn't carry a spare), we ended up in a chip shop. The price list said:
Fish - £1.95
Special - £3.95

That was it. After waiting for the chap in front (who was bemoaning the fact that he'd been down south, in Sheffield) to be served with chips and mushy peas in a bap, Jim asked, what are those nice big portions of fish there? Oh, said the lad behind the counter, that's the Special. So we had two of them. I think it was cod. The chips were awful. We were very depressed. But all was well in the morning because we got some nice new bolts from the lovely people at Sagar Marine. And Brighouse Basin was very nice. As another aside, I mentioned this to someone at work in London a while back and they said, oh, is Brighouse a real place then?

Anyway, I sometimes have what is here called huss, and which must be the most multiply-named fish in the country. It's often also called rock salmon. (And is it possibly the same thing as hake?) And apparently, in the Fens, rock eel, because that's what I had from the Madeira Fish Bar on Great Whyte the Friday before last. I was hoping for real eel, as it happened, on the grounds that it might be local, but no luck. I am happy to report, however, that the Madeira's chips were very good, and the Moomins think so too.

Jim came back from his hunting expedition with the thought that the proprietors of the Madeira Fish Bar might be Portugese, on account of they weren't speaking English and appeared to be Benfica supporters. Oh yes, I said, and the name might be a bit of a clue...

Talking of football, which I wasn't, Lewes have today assured their promotion to the Conference, and finally, after years of frustration because their ground, the splendidly named Dripping Pan, didn't meet the required standard, can now take their place in the national league. So three cheers, and raise your pint of Harveys to the Rooks, and now let's hear no more about it.

The beer cupboard

The most important cupboard on the boat, naturally. Looking as it should, fully stocked. The Co-op in Ramsey is a pretty good source; their own brand strong ale is good and the organic ale they have made for them is one of my favourites. The most surprisingly good shop for beer was the little Spar at Brewood. Many a very pleasant evening was spent running the stocks (theirs as well as ours) down last summer.

Wooo! New cupboard!

I know, this is all unbearably exciting, isn't it. We have a new cupboard on Warrior. Well, OK, it's an old (oak) cupboard that (surprise surprise) came from a jumble sale many years ago and until last month was in Sebastian's room housing his hi-fi. Following a minor shake-up in his accommodation arrangements, the cupboard became vacant; Jim started eyeing up the space on the boat where we had the other little cupboard; rubbed all the horrible dark stain off, varnished it, and hey presto, he now has somewhere (other than a bag on the bed) to keep his clothes.

You will note the attractive matching saucers, both of which subsequently contrived, in separate incidents, to get themselves broken, but having been superglued still serve adequately as coasters.

Also, there's a new batten on the wall for the table. The table was originally meant to go on the other wall, supported by the fitted cupboard that was already there. This was fine, until the sofa was made to go on the opposite side, and left very little space to squeeze between the corner of the sofa and the corner of the table. It made sense, and was easier, to use the table on the same side as the sofa, and we've got into the habit of doing this, with the table supported on the smaller (but taller) free standing cupboard, spaced to the right height with a suitable book wrapped in non-slip matting. Worked well, looked really good; easy to sit at and didn't get in the way. We could leave it up for days at a time in that position.

So using a nice iroko offcut finished with a spare bit of ash from, I think, the old kitchen, Jim put the batten up so that we can now have the table properly this side; it's got a hole so we can use its securing pin, and the cupboard is low enough under it to provide a useful extra surface.

Knobs and latches

Another little job - my word, I am spinning this out, aren't I. It seems to me that the means of keeping doors closed on boats are often somewhat crude, tending to involve ball catches and/or bolts, and little else. Why should this be, I wondered; why is it not possible to get rim latches like we have at home, only, ideally, smaller? These have the inestimable advantage that once shut, the door can be opened from either side, which is a great boon in a door.

Small rim latches are available; they're intended for bathrooms and have an integral bolt, which is handy (for the bathroom, at any rate). So we bought three of these from the estimable Wades in Ramsey - a splendid shop; a sort of mini-GUM - fishing tackle to ironmongery to greetings cards to electrical goods, all under one slightly winding roof. I'm going to write about Ramsey's shops another time; they're really pretty good. Not quite Atherstone, maybe, but in some ways perhaps even better.

So, we have these three latches. Now, obviously, they need knobs on either side to operate them. and a shaft that goes through the middle - and this is the slightly tricky bit, because of course these doors are thinner than your average household doors, so the shafts have to be cut down, and if they have a thread on them or indentations for a grub screw to hold the knob in place then it complicates matters somewhat.

Of course, we chose to make things harder by utilising a selection of old knobs from the old doorknob drawer. More little bits of history incorporated into Warrior. The very small ones which we used on the bathroom came from the cottage of our splendid friends Glen the philosopher and his wife Linda, whom we scarcely see since they moved to Scotland. I have met their daughter Laura, but never their son Attila... (Glen's first book was dedicated to Linda and Liam; the second, after Laura's birth, to Linda and Liam and now Laura. Liam was the dog.)

The ones attached to their mounting plates were on Andante, attached to the top of the cupboard presumably as a nod towards traditional decoration. I took them off because they were in the way, but now they find another boaty home fulfilling their proper function. The last pair are off one of the doors which we got out of a skip and which now grace the upstairs rooms of the house.

So, fitting them was, in the end, a bit of a struggle, but in the now-familiar phrase (of one who didn't actually do any of the work) well worth it. We now have doors that can be opened from either side, and which shut with a marvellously satisfying clunk, and more decorative brass to polish.

More light entertainment

Jumble sales are definitely not what they were, but over the years we have built up quite a collection of treasures which, gradually, are finding homes. Those that haven't got a home in the house are getting a second chance on the boat.



This genuine gas light came from one of the jumbles we used to attend regularly in Plumpton. It's absolutely beautiful, isn't it. The shade we must have had for well over a decade, before it found its perfect partner. The initial idea was to convert it to a 12v light, but it proved impossible to get the wireing through the valves, and there was no way we were going to try taking it apart or drilling it. So it's basically just for decoration. I did stick one of those little Dot-It LED lights inside, but it fell out and broke the other saucer (just after having mended the first one). Although it's over a cupboard, we have developed a tendency to knock it with our heads, so will have to learn to be a bit more aware.

Decorative it may be, but it does have a function, discovered fortuitously after the event. When I'm sat in the corner of the sofa of an evening, reading a book, it shields my eyes from the glare of the light over Jim's chair, which in the past was something of an irritation.

I hear from Steve that he's going to stick with his pistons and liners, as ours have been rebored at some point, and his still have scope for doing it, which is what he's going to do. Hopefully he'll come over to Ramsey next time we're there to drop them back off and have a look at and a listen to the engine. I'm quite pleased really. It was the right thing to do, offering them, if they could have been of use to Steve and if they could have been used, sort of for their own sake, but I'm glad in the end that we get to keep them.

Shine a light!

The new light in the engine room. Isn't it gorgeous? And with its 21w bulb, pretty useful too. A vast improvement considering there wasn't previously and lighting in there. Emboldened by this 12v success, Jim now plans to install the other, similar but sadly with cracked glass, light in the back cabin above the table cupboard, and a 12v socket in the table cupboard, alongside the 240v socket already in there, thus turning the cabin into a mobile office and the table cupboard into a high tech work station. Now all I need is a 12v phone charger that works - yes, I know I should have kept the bloody receipt. As it is I'm constantly going, please can I turn the inverter on, I want to charge my phone ...

Should have swept up the sawdust before I took the photo, shouldn't I.

Frantic updates

I have no excuse for not posting from Warrior other than the general torpor that engulfed me shortly after climbing aboard. I proved to myself yesterday that it's perfectly possible now, provided one ritually sacrifices a saucer. Of course, I didn't realise at the time that the photo had uploaded, as I had forgotten that I had asked Baz, as I usually do, to get the laptop to not download pictures or software updates when I'm doing the coffee spoon bit with the megabytage. Then I looked at it on my phone later and there it was. I note also that using the laptop appears to have had a somewhat deleterious effect on my spelling...

You may recall that we were planning to start painting Warrior 'at Easter'. Easter dawning as it did in somewhat Siberian fashion, this was deferred to this week, and indeed, when we turned up the weather looked set fair. We has planned to buy plastic sheeting of some kind for the paint dock before leaving home, but sort of forgot, and I said, oh what the hell, I'm sure we can get some there. Fortunate as it happened, as when we arrived it was to discover that the previously resident Bill Fen painter, who had been living in Spain for a few years, has returned for the summer, was in the process of repairing and sheeting up the frame, and had lots of work lined up for it.

Naturally, this information represented a bit of a blow to our plans, and one of us in particular (to paraphrase the wonderful Nancy Banks-Smith, who I think in turn was paraphrasing someone else, it is not difficult to distinguish between a ray of sunshine and Jim with a grievance) was struck quite miserable by the prospect, but I said, let's wait and see, who knows, things may turn out for the best (then I whistled a happy tune etc.) and lo they did, I think, insofar as John the mysteriously surname-less painter has done a good job of the paint dock, and has to go back to Spain (some municipal ordinance means he has to go and mow his lawn, apparently) at the beginning of May when the weather should be perfect.

But. Did I ever mention Jim's Bad Knee? Which started being bad last summer and has not really improved its behaviour much since. Well, it is supposedly being sorted out this week, and as such things naturally get worse before they get better (you will forgive me for eschewing the details) there is a fighting chance that it won't be better enough in time to be leaping about like a gazelle, up and down a 110 degree bank and balancing on a narrow ledge within the requisite three weeks. The paint's arrived though!

I finally did some work today and we sorted out all the accumulated Stuff in the back cabin and I gave it a bit of a clean (haven't touched the brass yet though, got to leave myself a treat to look forward to) and we got the brass runners for the coal box down. They do help! We do move the box quite a lot to look at the bilges and get at the stern gear, and this weedy modern vinyl probably isn't up to having a big wooden box full of coal dragged over it.

Catching up

Oh dear, I have been very remiss. I feel like someone who hasn't done their home work. Here I am, on the boat, loads of photogenic little jobs done to report on, loads of megathingiess of Vodafone's generous (well, it as they gave it to me for free) allowance left, and ... oh bugger!

One thing I was quite pleased with was I found another saucer at home that matches a lot of the china we have on the boat. That made two, so we were usung them to put our mugs on on the new cupboard (of which more later). Now, picture the scene, if you will. I am perched on a footstool, the laptop on a little cupboard by the front steps, the phone, connected by the longest but nonetheless not very long USB cable that I possess, on the roof, and suddensly everything goes dark and the laptop tells me its battery has run out and I need to switch to mains power NOW!!!! or the world will end. So I drag the mains cable from behind the sofa cushions where it's neatly stowed, give a sharp tug to release the transformer, which promptly lands on the new found saucer and breaks it in three. Ho hum. I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the laptop needs a new battery which I bet will swiftly transmute into the need for a new laptop...

Anyway, given the large amount of upload capacity which I seem to have at my disposal (I have been very careful with it so far, measuring it out in coffee spoons, but I think I can afford to splurge a bit now), and the fact that the signal seems a bit better now, (weather? the fact that they've just dismantled a local wind turbine?) I thought I would have another try at a photo. What I haven't yey mastered is the art of reducing photo quality/file size, so mine are still all ridiculously big for blogging purposes (i.e. 1 to 1.5 Mb). Still, I will have a go. If it works, it's Willow in the back garden last weekend - huh, not so white now, are you my boy? If it doesn't, then nothing lost.

Stoke Bruerne

Until a couple of months ago I had never been to Stoke Bruerne; it was a mythical place, a place of wonder; a sort of canal shangri-la... the very name, redolent with history and adventure. Then we went there for Moley's birthday, and it was actually just a nice little canal village with a couple of pubs. I suppose I expected it to be bigger and more industrial because it is home to one of the three National Waterways Museums (or is it three branches of the National Waterways Museum?).

We went to the museum on that first visit and it was very disappointing. It might not have been, had our expectations not been unrealistically raised by their publicity and above all the prefix 'national'. I have been in many far, far bigger and better local museums. The collection is small and the presentation seems mainly geared towards children. There are some nice collections; of company seals and, my favourite, painted ware. There are some models, but I can never see the attraction of them; they look rather crude and lacking in detail. The working model of a lock wasn't working. There's a nice loop of old BW film which I watched a few times, and a waterways scene with stuffed (or possibly fake) birds, which seemed rather a waste of space. A few nice photos and a couple of old pub signs. The shop is pretty dire; on the second visit they were hard pushed to provide a pen and notebook (I now have a child's notebook with a large smiling ladybird on the front, and, a small indulgence, a pen featuring a moving (cruiser stern!) narrowboat which partly disappears under a bridge if you hold it at exactly the right angle). So half a cheer for the museum.

At Easter, the Historic Narrow Boat Owners Club holds a gathering at Stoke Bruerne. I am a member (second class, on account of not actually owning a historic boat; this is actually called associate membership but I know how I'd feel about people like me if I did have a real boat...) and was wondering whether to go along, but decided against it for precisely the above reason; I would have felt so inferior. Three things happened to make me change my mind on Easter Sunday afternoon: D3 Steve was going, so we could do the piston handover; I thought Andante Mike was there, although he turned out not to be, and, most tellingly, I hadn't left the boat for four days and I thought it had stopped snowing.

Well, it hadn't stopped snowing, but this meant most of the Historic Narrow Boat Owners were in the cafe or the pub, and anyway, I wasn't there as an associate member but just as a casual passer by. There were not many boats there, but enough to make it worthwhile, and I correctly identified a Small Woolwich (Dorado, as it turned out) from its fore end, which made my day.

I won't feel that I've really been to Stoke Bruerne, of course, until I've been there by boat.