Funny looking road

Here's a rather interesting story from our local paper, the Sussex Express. There was a slight degree of minor consternation a few months back when it was announced that some sort of drink/drive limits were going to be imposed on boaters. Well, if there's anything in this story, then they won't need to bother with new regulations.

In short, the captain of a ship delivering aggregate was suspected by customs officers of being drunk some three hours before his ship was due to leave Newhaven. The customs officers called in the police, who attempted to breathalyse him. So far, so good - being drunk in charge of a ship is presumably a crime under maritime law. But when he refused, he was charged not under any maritime law but under the Road Traffic Act, according to the report 'after prosecutors were unable to find a more relevant charge.' Apparently this has made legal history, his defence lawyer saying that there appeared to be no precedent for it. Well, there is now.

Having been kept in custody for four and a half days, the ship's captain pleaded guilty to refusing to take a breath test, so, sadly, the use of this law was not tested in court.

Whatever the evils of being drunk in charge of a ship, it is nonetheless worrying that someone can be charged, kept in custody, convicted and fined under a law that was never intended for the purpose. Not really surprising, though.

Laden with trinkements

It was a lovely sunny day today, the first in a while, so naturally I spent it at the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre in Westminster. I could see Big Ben and the London Eye out of the window, but could feel only an air conditioned chill on my skin. I did get to ask a question of the Minister for Communities and Local Government though, and to hear Boris Johnson make a (disappointing) speech (Ken Livingstone turned up at an event I was at last week, so now I've got the pair). And I managed to introduce the boat into three conversations, although two of them were with people on the Lee Valley Park stand, which is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel.

I have also added to my fine collection of trinkements. Trinkements are the freebies you can shamelessly collect at conferences from people desperate to tell you about their products and services, and to press their shiny leaflets upon you. The word came about when John at Huddersfield was so speechless with envy at the calling card case that I brought back from the Higher Education Academy conference that he didn't know whether what he was coveting was a trinket or an ornament. Trinkement collection can be quite competitive. Today I got my first memory stick (English Heritage) and a shiny new card holder (GLE ... something to do with economic development); some mints from Thames Water (what's that all about then?), and a notebook and badge from Lee Valley Park. Pens hardly count any more; as a seasoned collector I ignored them this time, although we did get a wooden one (!) in our oh-so-eco-friendly cotton bag. This is the latest conference trend. No one wants to be seen to be handing out nylon laptop bags any more, it's cotton shoppers from now on.

Obviously politics and local government conferences are pretty small fry. For the really serious freebies, apparently, it pays to be in medicine. That surely tells us something, although I'm not altogether sure what.

I was going to write about something else entirely tonight, but I've written so much now I think I shall save that for tomorrow.

Harder stuff

Oh dear, things are escalating.

No, actually, I saw sense and after a few minutes decided to pass this straight on to someone else. But if I see any more, of course I shall still have to buy them.

The picture is called 'Steam Revival' so the juxtaposition of modern boat and old train isn't as incongruous as it first looked. Any idea if it's a real place?

At long last (in more ways than one)

Yes, at long last we got Warrior signwritten, and at even longer last, I think I can post some photos, most of which were taken by Jim, but thanks to John for the ones taken from the bank.

I have given up on Webshots this time; it randomly refused to upload about three quarters of the photos (which needless to say were all the same type and size of file), so the signwriting photos are on Photobucket, here. Whoah! Read the story first...

The original plan had been to have the signwriting done by Dave Moore. We talked to him about it, and he did the temporary writing that served us for a year. I still feel rather guilty actually for switching, although he was very nice about it, and I'm sure isn't short of work. It would of course have been the absolute ideal to have Dave do it, with his flair, experience, training and reputation, but a few factors conspired to militate against that in the end: distance, cost, and the arrival at Bill Fen of the piratically named Black Boat John, who historically did all the Shotbolts' painting and signwriting.

He has done a good job. The main difference, I sense, is that we had to tell him exactly what we wanted. He couldn't give us any guidance. Unlike Dave, who chalked it out freehand, John plans it all on paper first. Most of what he has done hasn't been very traditional, whereas we wanted quite a plain, 1930s, sort of appearance. Of course there were lots of disagreements between Jim and me along the way, and every time I thought we'd agreed, it seemed he either changed his mind or it turned out we were actually visualising it differently. Changes continued to be made right up to the last minute, when I wasn't there. The plan had been to have all the writing in that very plain, sans serif, quasi-Grand Union style. Jim then read (or reread) Tony Lewery's book and thought that Warrior should be writting in a slightly more ornate style (or possibly much more ornate; maybe slightly more ornate was the compromise we reached)

It was also from this that he was inspired to have a vertical panel of diamonds under the drainage hole in the handrail. This I must say I like very much.

As you might gather, overall the scheme is a shameless pastiche of various aspects of old boats. It's not a replica of anything in particular, but hopefully it hangs together visually as long as you don't think about it too much. Our starting point was the age of the engine - 1937 - and the thought, what would we do if it was 1937 and we were just setting up in the tug business.

We were going to have both our names on it, but Jim decided either that that wouldn't look right (though actually the spacing would have worked well) or that he preferred to remain anonymous, so that is why only my name appears. Jim can be an honorary son. Feels like that sometimes anyway... The line under '& SONS' was in the initial plan, with both names; my idea was that in the later version the lettering should all be the same. However, John was working off the original sketch, and as I wasn't there... I'm not sure whether I prefer it or not, so I guess that means there's not much in it.

The address is the genuine address of Bill Fen, where we moor of course, and very near where Warrior was built, and it has a lovely ring to it, I think. Factory Bank runs alongside the High Lode going into Ramsey where the lorry breakers etc are, so is suitably gritty. I am slightly bothered by the thought that if one was setting up a tuggage business in the Fens one wouldn't necessarily have a narrow boat, but maybe someone could find me a precedent.

Wisbech was a genuine registration authority (they're listed in the Spring 2007 issue of NarrowBoat mag); and we just liked it better than Peterborough, which was the alternative 'local' one. Clearly if we plied our trade between Wisbech and Northampton and beyond (hence the narrowness, it's all starting to come together...) then we'd have to live on it.... (this may be what Emerson was referring to when he said that 'a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds'. On the other hand, he might not have been thinking of boat painting schemes. Who knows.)

Why this is not about signwriting

I did fully intend to do a big post tonight, with lots of pictures of the signwriting and a blow-by-blow account. But know what? I'm too knackered to do justice to it.

Jim came back yesterday after a week in Ramsey, rubbing down and overseeing final painting and signwriting. I spent yesterday on a selection of trains. Well, most of it. I went to Harrogate (about 280 miles away). For the day. This came about because my former Huddersfield colleague, John, submitted a paper in our joint names to a prestigious but very expensive conference there. Not only was the conference expensive, but you have to pay for your own accomodation on top. I resented this, so resolved to pay the cheapest possible day rate (£195!) and travel up by train (£11 each way). So, six hours there, lunch, half hour paper (my bit = about ten minutes), an hour to kill, then six hours back again, arriving home at eleven. I didn't even get the tea at Betty's with which John had bribed me to attend, as he had to leave even earlier to come south for a validation in Canterbury.

And so it was that just after leaving the office today I got a text from him saying 'are you still at york, I'm on my way through London, do you want to meet up for a drink' York? I thought, that was yesterday, you fool. Then I realised that this was merely overenthusiastic predictive texting, and he meant was I still at work (though whenever I've tried to text 'Yorkshire' I get 'workshy'...). So I rang him up from the train, just about to leave Victoria (I know, just like young people, it's terrible), and he was in Westminster, so we met up for a couple of pints, and then I came home, and now I'm going to bed. Sorry.

Signwriting pictures tomorrow... oh, except perhaps not, because I'm going to a local government seminar at the LSE and there's a wine reception afterwards...

I was right about the cat

But I finally finished the damn thing, despite feline 'assistance' this morning. Anyone want a nice jigsaw puzzle? Hardly used, complete, slightly hairy?

Heaven

No trailing fenders


No bowthrusters


No ropes on tiller pins


No semi trads

Bated breath and bitten nails

Not exactly; I've never been a nail biter. I may be bating my breath, but as I have no idea what that actually means, I can't say for sure. What is certain is that I am in a state of somewhat nervous anticipation, for Warrior's signwriting has commenced today, and I am (quick Google) 157 miles away and unable to see it. Now, of course we agreed, long ago, what sort of scheme we wanted. And then changed it and agreed again, and again, and again. It went from very fancy with red and blue, to very plain in cream and black.

Jim went up to Ramsey on Wednesday to rub it down so that John could do a final topcoat, including moving that errant border three inches; that is now done. Right up to the last minute, Jim has been having new ideas. One, that 'Warrior' should be written in a fancier style than the rest, i.e. with serifs (thanks Tony Lewery!), and two, that there should be a vertical panel of diamonds at the end of the painted part of the cabin. Both of these I can see could work, but last minute changes always make me uncomfortable... I am desperately fighting my control freak tendencies.

I probably won't see it now before we go up at the end of July to set off on our hols. I'll have to start a countdown soon. But in the meantime, I have the most splendid treat to look forward to. Guess where I'm going tomorrow...

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.