12:

Another Newhaven, late eighties, scene - there's random for you. One of the old fishing stages on the West Quay, obviously still in heavy use. Behind me as I took this would have been waste ground, scattered with more nets, fish and ice boxes and paraphernalia, where now are the delightful 'West Quay Lawns', or possibly a desirable waterside apartment.

Again, the Christmas Caption Challenge is open to all comers.

11: Red nosed*

I fear I have set myself an impossible task, in setting the precedent so far of having a Christmassy quote for each picture on the Warrior advent calendar.

This one defeats me, so I am opening it up as a competition. What line (or carefully cropped selection of words) from a well (or lesser) known Christmas carol, song or poem could entitle this stirring sight? The occasion was the birthday party of CanalWorld's Moley, back in February; the location Stoke Bruerne, and the boat, I was subsequently informed by my dining companion Carlt (that's short for Carl T., by the way) is the tarboat Clent.

Tomorrow we, wisely or not, will be heading east.

*Title courtesy of Mike. Simply inspired - I wish there were a prize.

10: Merry gentlemen

Now this was at Christmas, last year, as we set, off full of hope and good cheer, on our ill-fated voyage up Holme Fen.

9: Snow had fallen

At last! A suitably Christmassy picture! Taken, naturally, last Easter.

8: The holly and the ivy

I'm not entirely sure there's any holly here, but there is ivy, and one lonely poppy. Appropriately, November last year, on the way to the Rainbow at Ramsey.

7: Deep and crisp and even

Can you guess what this furrowed snowdrift actually is? At the risk of sounding indelicate, it's the inside of Helyn's bottom. When the day comes to finally sell her, we'll have photos to show how thick and tough and clean it is down there.

Progress on getting Helyn ready to sell has been held up by frustrations over the steering. We had to replace the cable, and it seems that you can now only get them with a maximum 9" throw, whereas our engine is set up for eleven. It has caused much furrowing of my brow, and I refuse to believe that it isn't overcome-able.

6: Happy dawn

Bill Fen, one morning in late September 2007.

You know how sometimes you forget to open your advent calendar and get to open two the next day? Well, it's just the same with this one. I was off with Tarporley again yesterday. That's the third taster day I've been on now. This one went without a hitch, and the weather was beautiful.

5: All I want for Christmas

This is one of the few duff pictures from a super set of the North Quay. But random I promised, and random you will get. This does however show the parlous state of the wooden wharf structure. I've a feeling it might have undergone some repairs subsequently; this was a good couple of years ago.

4: Not a creature was stirring

Stretton Aqueduct in the distance, in the rain, April 2007. Must have been a rare shower, because this must have been the time we had Warrior on the towpath to do the painting, when it was first done all in raddle, and I recall the weather being fairly consistently warm and dry as we painted and rubbed and filled and rubbed and painted and oh god filled and rubbed again. So probably very glad of the rest at this point.

By the way, I never said they'd be good photos, did I.

3: O Little Town

This is one of the photos I took of Newhaven in the late eighties. This is clearly looking downriver from the swing bridge at high(ish) tide. The basic scene looks pretty much unchanged today, but there are loads of differences in the detail. The most obvious - and most trivial - is the absence of the giant rubber shag (sorry, cormorant scuplture made from recycled tyres) in the middle.

On the right, the West Quay, the most notable difference is the absence of building, and the unimpeded view of the cliffs - this was before even the first phase of the West Quay development took place in the early nineties. There's now flats nearly all the way down. Here, there are fishing boats in the foreground; most are now concentrated further down the river, and there are fewer in total. New landing stages have been built in the last ten years or so, and some of these have already been decommissioned.

To the left of the picture, on the East Quay, is Big George the crane. I have no idea why it was called this. That's been gone maybe ten years or so. I think that in front of the ferry you can see other ships which would have been in the process of being unloaded. A lot of fruit and vegetables still came into Newhaven then, handled particularly by a firm called Fishers, and Fyffes had a banana ripening warehouse on the East Quay. That too has all come to an end.

How still we see thee lie indeed.

2: I saw three ships...

Well, I might have done on this trip to the beach in July 2007, when I constructed my masterpiece, five foot long, scale model sand narrow boat. Perhaps my proudest ever sand-based moment.

The days of frolicking in the sand at Newhaven's West Beach are now, sadly, behind us all. Like so much else in the area it is Out of Bounds to the general populace, thanks to the litigation-shy Newhaven Port and Properties who are glad to have an excuse, in the form of a slightly crumbly concrete sea wall, to keep the great unwashed off their asset.

Further advent-ures

In order to be sure of posting every day between now and Christmas, may I proudly present ... the nbWarrior Advent Calendar. Just as when you open the little door on your advent calendar each day, you don't know what will be behind it (only I do, because I've had the same advent calendar since I was four, and you probably do because it's chocolate, but...) Well, in that spirit, every day I will randomly select a photo from the collection on this computer. It's a bit of an eclectic collection, because all the holiday photos are on the laptop, which keeps being borrowed by one son or another. There are thirteen folders of photos on here, one of which I will select on the draw of a card. Then within that, I will blindly hover my mouse and see what it alights upon.

Today we have 'Uxbridge 055', taken back in the spring in the course of my mission to purchase some injectors, via the Metropolitan Line.

If that's Belfast...

Here's a thing. Every week I look at the photo competition in the Guardian Weekend magazine to see whether the theme is one on which I might have anything to enter, and a fortnight ago, for the first time, it was: 'graffiti'. So I sent in the photo that I took on August 27th, somewhere between Clapton and Little Venice, so very definitely in London, of my favourite graffiti as featured here.

Now, I knew I hadn't won, as they'd have been in touch, so I was surprised to see that very same view featured amongst the winners today. I would show you, but they don't put the pics on their website, and I thought it might be a bit naughty to scan it. At first I thought that someone might have ripped off my photo, but no, it's not the same picture. As well as being a smaller part of the scene, it's taken from a different angle - more head on - and earlier in the year; the ivy hasn't grown so high as in mine. It is, however, without a shadow of a doubt, the same piece of graffiti, the same location.

Leaving aside the fact that my photo is, in my humble opinion, better (the winning one cuts out all the interesting trompe l'oieul that the graffiti artist has achieved with the white-painted brickwork), what really irks me is the accompanying caption, supplied by the photographer, and that I will quote (fair usage, I think): 'Among all the political slogans and sectarian murals prominent in Belfast, I loved the juxtaposition of this equally heartfelt statement.' Now that very definitely and deliberately implies that the photo was taken in Belfast, and that, I think, would contribute to its significance.

Yet I cannot be the only person who has seen this very 'mural' on either the G.U. or the River Lee (in fact, I'm sure someone will tell me which). Unless someone has painted exactly the same thing, on exactly the same blue-painted wall, in exactly the same alignment with the brickwork, with the same concrete and the same ivy below it, then that picture was not taken in Belfast but in London. What's more, the people at the Guardian presumably had my entry in front of them as well, clearly saying that it was in London, so one can only assume that they either didn't notice or didn't care. As always, the idea that it's Belfast makes for a better 'story', and the fact that a few readers out of hundreds of thousands might notice that this is actually inaccurate, matters far less.

Interestingly, in the 'meet a reader' column in the main paper today features my friend Donna, and they've spelt her name wrong.

Postcards from Ireland

My sister has been to Dublin and - as she always tries to do, wherever she goes - has sent me some canal-related photos. I know nothing about the Grand Canal, other than what I have read here, but - as I have never visited Ireland at all yet - perhaps one day I shall see it.

New view

This is what we will see now when we look out of the front of Warrior.

Light fantastic

Fast running out of light puns. It was a (nice) surprise to learn that Jim had done this job. Way way back we (he?) bought a pair of lovely solid brass bulkhead lights with satisfyingly thick chunky glass at some show or other. One of them was fitted in the engine room last year, and I thought it would look nice, as well as be useful, to fit the other one above the table cupboard (where one might more usually have a mirror?). The only light on the back cabin before was on the side wall towards the engine room end, and pretty useless at illuminating the end where you would most likely be sitting (although very handy for reading in bed, of course).

This second light is not perfect; it has at some point suffered a severe bash which has dented the brass cage on the front and broken the glass. But it's still lovely enough to use and enjoy, especially since we bought up a vast stock of bulbs when we finally found them, at 50p each, in the Ramsey motor factors.

The photo, as you can see, shows only the hole cut in readiness. There aren't any decent ones of the light in situ. But I'm sure you can imagine it.

Something to report

At last, there is news and photos. Many photos, which Jim brought back with him yesterday. He has finished the back cabin, and completed the graining in the bathroom; fixed the gear lever, and looked long and hard at the back boiler. He has used nearly sixty quid's worth of varnish alone - and that's not even at Craftmaster prices. All the dark bits, basically, are new. Everything without roses on has been redone. Some of these areas were previously done in that rather crude yellow graining, but all the framing - it seems so long ago now - had been painted over in a horrible royal blue. The initial plan was just to redo those bits but it sort of growed.

The photos provide just a tantalising glimpse of what has been achieved, and I have insisted that we go up again in a couple of weeks so that I can see it in the flesh. Then of course we will be going for Christmas too. Jim has heard a rumour from Moominpapa that Salters Lode may re-open ahead of schedule around December 18th, so Christmas in Cambridge might just be on the cards again. Or New Year, which would be even better.

Other exciting things to report are that Warrior has a new berth at Bill Fen with a more, in estate agent speak, open aspect (although I never minded looking out at Axe, even if it is somewhat unrecognisable from the side with its pearlescent purple cabin and upvc double glazing), handier for the pumpout and with closer car parking. For anyone that remembers, it's pretty near where our temporary spot was when we first arrived there. With the new mooring have come new neighbours who, from all accounts, are jolly nice.

Solitude

It's Saturday evening, and I only switched the computer on five minutes ago. I haven't had the radio on, or played any music, all day. I went to the market and bought some fruit and veg, and exchanged a few words with no.1 son this morning, but apart from that the only soundtrack to my day has been the whirr of the fridge, the gentle popping of the fire in the kitchen stove, the ticking of the clocks and the distant cries of seagulls. My word, this keyboard is loud.

Jim is still up on the boat, and Baz is off on some kind of philosophy field trip; it appears that the environs of Windsor Great Park are highly conducive to beard stroking and logical thought. He did send me a text last night, saying 'rubbish reception'; I wasn't sure whether that referred to the phone signal or the wine and peanuts.

So I'm home alone and loving it. There is a vast gulf of difference between solitude and loneliness. Sometimes, other people's company can be the loneliest place of all. I have spent a weekend which has been both delightfully indolent, and at the same time unusually productive. I can get up, go to bed and eat when I need to. The quiet, the lack of distraction and the ability to develop an unbroken train of thought have been fantastic for thinking and writing. I realise with amazement just how much time and energy other people - even with the best intentions in the world - draw from our reserves.

Now, for many people, and the accepted wisdom, that's a reasonable trade-off. Lots of people like and even need much higher levels of company and interaction. But I suddenly realise, with a blinding flash of light after all these years, that I am not one of them. I recall how solitary I was as a child, and how as an adolescent I invariably enjoyed my own company, and that of a book (not necessarily a good one, by any means), to that of my peers.

As a child, and as an adolescent you can generally absent yourself from family life without attracting much comment, in a way that you simply can't as an adult. Even to want to do so temporarily is viewed as somewhat pathological.

Coincidentally, I've been reading lately about people seeking ever greater quiet, or living isolated lives, and I've had an idea. What I would like to do is go up to the boat, by myself; stock up with provisions, and then go off to some little-frequented Fen or drain, drop the mudweights, and just stay there, completely alone, for a week or so, or until the milk goes off. Just to be alone with the quiet, and my thoughts. And maybe a book or ten. In the nicer weather would be better, so that I could sit outside. Even the landscape, there, is unobtrusive. To be able to notice ever smaller things, the things lost in the white noise of everyday life. To get to know myself again, like an old friend I've been too busy to keep in touch with for the last twenty five years.

Well, it sounds feasible to me, sitting here now. I wonder if it still will when I am no longer alone.

Right

OK, so I'm back, although I haven't been away. I haven't been particularly more busy than usual, and I haven't got fed up with it, so I don't really know why my posting has been so sluggish of late. I think you'd have to go right back to the beginning, to the post free May of 2006, to find such a poor posting record.

Admittedly, these are quiet months boating wise, but that hasn't stopped me before. I could have written a review of Water Gypsies by someone whose name I've already forgotten, which I just took back to the library today. I could pass on Jim's reports of graining and varnish fumes. I could tell you about my last outing on Tarporley, although the fact that I know a number of the committee read this might constrain me from my habitual bitchy style, and thus take all the fun out of it. Nonetheless, here is the bare factual version:

There were four of us. Three had never worked a lock before so I had to do them all. It poured with rain. I got to steer for a bit but I didn't get to control the speed. We were going quite fast trying to get back before dark. This made steering extra difficult and I hit a bridge and missed the bend at Cumberland Basin. The others all found this quite amusing. When we got back to Kings Place we had picked up something major on the prop (subsequently discovered). And the wind got up, blowing us away from the mooring and onto the towpath. There were no long ropes. Eventually, by dint of tying ropes together, running dripping and muddy through Kings Place, and with the help of the friend of one of the crew who fortuitously happened to be a tug-of-war competitor, we got tied up after an hour and a half. Did I mention that it rained constantly?

Now, given that I am meant to be marketing officer, can I say that?

Or I could just burble on about nothing in particular. It couldn't be more boring than a blank page.... could it?

Where do you think you've been?

I can't believe it's more than a week since I last posted. Nothing earth shattering has happened, it's true, but I have waved Jim off to Bill Fen with a long list of jobs (a list compiled by him, not me, I hasten to add); I have been out on another Tarporley training session which was sort of eventful, and very wet, and last night I was officially appointed to their committee as marketing officer. The meeting was held at the Wenlock Arms, which is a highly regarded real ale pub, which demonstrates the right priorities. In an early flush of enthusaism on their part, I was bought a pint or two and a half by other committee members.... some of whom read this blog, it turns out.

Mmm. Must try harder.