Steering

In order to head off any criticism before it gets to me, I tend to announce up front (in circumstances where it is relevant, and sometimes when it isn't) that I am the world's worst steerer. At least, proportionate to the amount of practice, experience and effort I have put in; there might be small children who have never seen a boat (though they'd probably pick it up and overtake me within minutes) and creatures without opposable thumbs who find it as much of a challenge, but I can't be sure.

This, as you might imagine, is a source of much consternation to me. I love boats so much that it seems there should be a natural affinity between us, but no; it appears that this love is unrequited and its object responding only with a chilly civility. Fantasies of chugging nonchalantly along, coolly tweaking the throttle and adjusting the tiller are replaced in reality with a constant state of near panic and a horrible feeling of inadequacy.

Why this should be, I do not know. It might be partly just the way my brain's set up - learning to drive a car was a similarly dogged war of attrition between me and my inadequacy, marked by one (oh yes, there were many) instructor memorably saying (imagine this in a lazy Yorkshire drawl) 'I'd guess you're not very good at practical things... Academically you're probably quite average, but... not very good at practical things...' Naturally I was most offended at being accused of being academically quite average, but had to accept his verdict on the other front. I won that battle in the end though.

And I intend to get the better of this one as well. The thing is, I am quite good at practical things, provided they don't involve heavy lifting or power tools. What I am not so good at is doing them under pressure, whether that's the pressure of having someone breathing critically down my neck, or the pressure of being about to hit something hard with a big lump of metal. (Boating of course often provides both. Simultaneously.) It's in circumstances like that where I am still (very occasionally) wont to doubt my judgement as to which direction I should be moving the tiller, and, far more frequently, to forget entirely which way the throttle turns, or, in extremis, which way is reverse.

Nonetheless, I am not nearly so bad as I once was, so I am convinced that, even with diminishing returns, if I practise enough I will eventually reach a level of adequacy, even if I never attain the flair of which I once dreamed.

Ornamental

I was out on Tarporley yesterday afternoon, and tied up just below St Pancras lock was an ugly-as-sin widebeam (internal decor in the style of a faux-country pub)... and anyway, as we went past it for the second time a classic irate bloke leapt out and started yelling at us for going too fast... I was a bit slow on the uptake (thought we were having a friendly conversation with a passing cyclist) but apparently his language was none too refined.

We weren't going too fast, of course. He was tied up appallingly for starters, and no matter how slowly we go in a beast like that we're going to move a lot of water. When we were at Cropredy with Warrior last summer many boats passed us, some of them no doubt going quite fast, but the only one that made us move significantly was Chiswick. It might have been speeding of course, I was too busy watching open mouthed and going 'ooh, I haven't seen that one before' (And hopefully the week after next I might be having a ride on it).

Back to yesterday... as we came back (it was a short trip) I became aware that the aggrieved widebeamer was following us on his bicycle, shouting very aggressively all the while. He didn't look the sort that you'd like to cross, really - large, shaven headed, and very very cross. And for the first time I could make out what he was yelling: 'You broke my ornaments'

The wonder of Woolies' woolies

Returning to the Wellingborough wheat topic once more... One of the reasons I find this, the last days of the working boats, so fascinating, is that it falls - just - within my lifetime, and yet is still another world. While Nutfield was being bow-hauled down the Rothersthorpe locks, I was picking forget-me-nots and painting with water on the faded peeling maroon paint of our shed door in Thornton Heath.

And this is brought home to me all the more keenly by the feature in Waterways World. See there on page 66, the little boy sitting on the bollard, and again, in the bottom corner of page 67, trotting down the towpath. He must be about my age; maybe a year older, no more than that. But even more to the point, look at the jumper he's wearing. I know that's a Winfield jumper from Woolworths, because I had one exactly the same (only with the welts in blue not brown). They were made to last in those days; I still have it somewhere, after me and my sister, it was worn by my own children. A strange link with the past, but a link all the same.

Well, well, well...ingborough

When the latest bright shiny wipe-clean NarrowBoat magazine landed on my doormat half an hour ago, the first thing I spotted was 'Last Traffics: Wheat to Wellingborough'. Not quite coincidence, of course, as it's a Waterways World publication, and it was WW's feature last week that put the idea into my head. No more pictures of Tarporley, but lots of other nice ones and historical detail, and it really has whet my appetite.

I wonder of there is any enthusiasm among the historic boating community for setting up a trip (starting from Brentford, it would appear) - or indeed, whether anyone already is (I certainly haven't heard anything, although next month marks the 40th anniversary of the last commercial traffic). Or whether it's been done recently - I'm sure it has been at some point in the past.

Wheat to Wellingborough

The most exciting thing for me in this month's Waterways World (I can't tell you the page number because I've left it on the boat) was an article about the grain traffic in the late sixties, illustrated inter alia with a big photo of Tarporley - a Tarporley that had clearly seen better days, like most of the boats just clinging on at this time - but how facscinating to see the evidence that it had still been carrying so late.

Maybe because this is a bit of route that I'm relatively familiar with, my first thought was how splendid it would be to re-enact this particular run. The Jam 'Ole run is supposedly historically significant as representative of the very last long distance contract, but this is not universally agreed, and the re-enactment, brilliant as it is, is marred somewhat by the complete obliteration of the Jam 'Ole itself.

Whitworth's mill at Wellingborough on the other hand is very much extant, and still in operation. The starting point of the journey could fairly (possibly completely; I haven't researched this at all yet) accurately be Limehouse. Surely someone, at some time, has done this before?

Report from the Eastern Front

Jim is currently on Warrior at Bill Fen, mending oil leaks, fitting gauges and sorting out the bilge pump in preparation for our Easter trip to Cambridge, as well as extending the back cabin bed in readiness for his and Craig's June trip to Northampton. Until a couple of days ago the weather had been fairly good, but today he has had northerly winds, hailstorms, snow and lashing rain - and that was just by the time of the last update. What an adventure. Still, I hear that he is keeping warm by polishing the brass and now he also has the latest Russell Newbery newsletter for entertainment. It will all be worth it when we set off in a couple of weeks, glinting and glittering in the sun (it will be sunny then, won't it?)

A photo of my cat

Well, that's what the web's for, isn't it?

And here's a little something for people with very special interests...

Doing my brass

Whilst feeding Carl and Sean's cats last week I noticed (or so I thought) that Carl had been polishing his brass door furniture, which quite put mine to shame.

So today I set about attacking it with Brasso, scourer, rag and elbow grease, for - I'm ashamed to admit - the first time in years. I had to do a bit at a time and keep coming back to it - to have tried to tackle the whole task at once would have been so daunting I would never have started - and it's not quite finished yet but it looks a whole lot better.


And then Sean tells me that theirs hasn't been polished at all - they'd got a new letter box!

ASBOs for all

Is conversation soon to be considered antisocial behaviour, I found myself wondering yesterday. Is it, perhaps, already? Now, I like peace and quiet as much as the next person - more, in fact, I would hazard a guess. But that preference doesn't extend to thinking I have a right to peace and quiet wherever I go.

Have you noticed the proliferation of signs on trains - and now in the scrolling announcements too - reminding you to be 'considerate'? This includes not having your ipod turned up too loud, not eating smelly food (that one's on the tube, admittedly - and I did always opine, in the days of non-smoking carriages, that there should also be egg sandwich free carriages too) and not holding loud mobile phone conversations.

Now I have never really been able to understand why mobile phone conversations are considered more irritating that face to face ones. OK, it might be because it's frustrating only hearing one side of the conversation, but that's not really a legitimate complaint, is it. I suspect the idea set in in the early days of mobile phones when a. reception was patchy and people tended to have to shout and b. the only people who had mobile phones were the sort of flash gits who would have been extremely annoying anyway. My contention is that our current disgruntlement with people going hello, I'm on the train, is a hangover from that rather than having any basis in current experience.

On occasion in the past when fellow passengers have tried to make me complicit in their eye-rolling and tutting about people making phone calls, I've asked why it's considered worse than having an ordinary conversation, just like the one that we are having now, and often they haven't really been able to give a reason. But that just makes them more annoyed of course.

However, since yesterday I've concluded that this whole issue is having a sinister knock-on effect. I was on the train, and soneone was on the phone which, to be honest, I hadn't even noticed, when another passenger started berating them for having their conversation 'on a public train'. The caller remonstrated, and I joined in, saying, ' yes, what's wrong with having a conversation?' The phone call continued in a whisper and it was then that I realised that everyone else was sitting in silence. A carriage that was pretty much full, and no one dared speak.

Conversation itself has by extension come to be seen as an unacceptable infringement of other people's peaceful journey experience. Being sociable is now antisocial.

Sodden and unkind

Hmm. Hilaire Belloc. I was planning to follow up yesterday's post with a bit about how I rather liked Belloc because he had written a paeon to my local landscape, The South Country.

The Downs aren't butch and rugged and attention grabbing, but they were always nice to come home to, soft and billowy, with a bosomy hug and a scone out of the Aga. After a while the comforts of home pall and one longs for adventure again, but it's nice to think that the green grass and the white chalk and the bright blue sea will be there to come home to.

But then I went and looked the poem up and read it properly, and I must say I think it is the most dreadful, pass-the-bucket, sentimental doggerel after all, and I fear that it was Belloc himself, no doubt ensconced in a cosy corner of some Sussex hostelry coming up with this drivel (he never even gets as far as the East before he starts rambling), who best deserves the epithet 'sodden and unkind' for being so dismissive of the delights of the rest of England.

Still, he was French.

The last of England

When we went to Braunston last Saturday, we ended up in a pub in the high street called, I think, the plough. It was a perfectly nice pub (Adnams Explorer and Black Sheep), but I wonder whether, if it hadn't closed last month, we might have gone to the Admiral Nelson instead. I always thought I would, one day, visit this legendary canal pub where generations of boatmen had drunk; where Leslie Morton held court in the sixties. And now perhaps I never shall. Which goes to show that you should always carpe diem, for one thing.

The loss of one pub is only the tip of the iceberg though. According to CAMRA, pubs in Britain are closing at the rate of thirty nine a week. Once closed, most won't reopen. Some of the big 'pubcos' are even selling former pubs with restrictive covenants preventing them being reopened as pubs. Some of these might represent no great loss - but others are of historic or architectural significance, or are the heart of a community which has already lost its shops and Post Office. The reasons and the chain of blame for this sorry state of affairs is long and complex, and while this is probably the direst things have ever been, the issue is not entirely new. Hillaire Belloc wrote in 1912 (in a Sussex pub)

From the towns all Inns have been driven: from the villages most... Change your hearts or you will lose your Inns and you will deserve to have lost them. But when you have lost your Inns drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England.

Bearded. Did beer.

I am a great fan of real ale. It is refreshing and nutritious, environmentally friendly and socially responsible. I love beer. So it pains me greatly to have to report that I have never in all my born days seen such an unappetising bunch of individuals (male, to a man) as were congregated at the London Drinker Beer Festival this lunchtime. It wasn't just the fact that well over half of them had beards; I have nothing against beards. Many boaters have beards, albeit luxuriant, freshly washed and lovingly combed ones. It wasn't just the clothes, the decades old Scruttock's Old Dirigible* T-shirts that hadn't been removed for... well... decades. It might have been the smeared spectacles; it might have been the wobbling stomachs, and the shuffling trainers, the dandruff. This was not masculinity at its alpha male best, it has to be said.

But hell, I wasn't there to size up the talent. I was only there for the beer (and the commemorative glass and the T-shirt. Cos it's got a boat on it). In fact I wouldn't have gone at all but for the fact my lunch date cancelled and I got an email reminding me to support the event because CCNA (aka Tarporley) is the festival's chosen charity this year (although worryingly I failed to spot any collecting tins).

And what an amazing event it is. Turning up at the first session, a Wednesday lunchtime, I expected it to be fairly quiet, but the former St Pancras Town Hall was absolutely heaving; there was barely space to weave through to the bars that took up two entire walls of the hall - and that's without the cider (14) and perry (6) and the foreign beers, which had their own spots. It was - as these events usually are, for who would invite the inevitable opprobrium of doing otherwise - very well organised. There was food too - I had a very nice sausage; apparently they have a different one every day, which made up for not going to Carluccio's. I couldn't stay long (well, to be perfectly honest, I was running out of places to put myself) but I sampled two of the beers on offer; they weren't chosen entirely on the basis of their names, but one was called Navvy, and the other, brewed especially for the festival by Brighton brewer Dark Star, was Battlebridge (as that was 5.6% I thought I had better make it my last).

So if you can stand the clientele, it's well worth dropping in.

*With apologies and/or grateful acknowledgement to Alexei Sayle circa 1982 - it has stayed with me ever since. You may recall the distinguishing features to be found in the bottom of the glass; if not, I don't think I'll repeat it.

Wiggly lines

Whenever we go to Ramsey I'm struck by the similarity between the logo of Cambridgeshire County Council and that of our own dear East Sussex County Council. Given that ours - redesigned imperceptibly but at great expense many years ago when I was interested in such things - is meant to represent the chalk downs and the sea, shouldn't Cambridgeshire's be two straight lines?

The age of the train

It's probably just as well I don't do air travel, given how amazed I am by the potential even of the railway to whisk one into another world before you even know it. At seven o'clock this morning I was on the boat at Bill Fen, which feels like the quietest, remotest place in England (quiet apart from the peacocks that is, which I think could quite easily drive you mad if you were that way inclined); at seven thirty I was at Huntingdon station and even allowing for the train being delayed by overrunning engineering works at Stevenage, at half past eight I was part of the stream of humanity flowing up the Euston Road. At my desk by nine - unheard of.

It has been an interesting weekend, which I started writing about last night, but was just too exhausted, so I gave up and went to bed at half past eight. Must have been either the fresh air or the excitement. Yesterday I was laying on the grass next to the river, in the spring sunshine, working (!) on my conference paper, and on Saturday we went to Braunston for the HNBOC AGM and slideshow of photos of the BCN in the 50s and 60s. Must be that that wore me out I guess.

Apologies for absence

In fact, I'm only doing this now as a displacement activity because I should be knocking a conference paper into shape before we go away for the weekend... But though I have been busy, that doesn't usually stop me posting; no, this time it's been compounded by an ongoing... ahem... disagreement with Pipex, who without a by-your-leave took over the previously trouble free and really rather good Toucan a couple of months ago, lost any trace of our having paid them, and cut us off, leaving us in the position of being put on hold on a mobile for half an hour at a time to try to sort it out. Grrr. So as soon as that is sorted out it's bye bye Pipex, hello... Post Office? Virgin? Anyone got any recommendations? Also, soon I shall be in the market for recommendations for USB broadband, if anyone has any. I'd be particularly interested in hearing about genuine PAYG deals, as there will be some months I probably won't use it at all.

Ah well, back to work. Perhaps I'll just have another cup of tea first. And do the shopping.

Radio star

Jim has been off today getting his VHF licence (I meanwhile wrote 2,833 words not counting these). I am not sure precisely what he is planning to do with it, although the fact that he has been going around the house for the last few days muttering 'Trent Lock, Trent Lock, Trent Lock' under his breath is not necessarily reassuring.

(Isn't that an American senator, I wondered, delighted at the coincidence, until I realised a bit later that the senator's surname was actually Lott. I was at school with a girl called Susan Lott who was rather uncharitably known as 'Gibbon' because whenever she knew the answer (which was frequent) she wouldn't just put her hand up, but would stretch wildly towards the ceiling, bounce up and down on her chair, and go 'ooh, ooh, ooh'. Gosh. I hope neither she nor anyone who knows her is reading this.)

What it means in the short term is that Jim and Moomin will have new toys to play with at Bill Fen next week.

Three short years

To fill up the space when I can't think of anything to say during the month of March, I shall be reminiscing about our first voyage with Warrior, when we brought the boat from its mooring at Hargrave, on the Shroppie just south of Chester, to Stretton Wharf where it was to remain for the next year. This was just before I started the blog - at least in earnest - and I have raided my drawer full of shiny prints to bring you.... some pretty smoke rings, just before we set off. We began our journey - me, Jim and Baz - on April 9th 2006, after first having visited Huddersfield to replace Andante's window and clear up the broken glass following what must have been one of West Yorkshire's least productive burglaries.

I know what we did and when because it is all in The Red Book, a hardback notebook that I bought in Wilko's in Huddersfield to be our log for our new boat. So far we have kept it up fairly assiduously. It is interesting to note that on this day Warrior's engine was difficult to start and running very hot... which was solved by removing the thermostat. I suppose we should have known then not to put it back.

T-shirts and anoraks

Much excitement this morning as the latest HNBOC Newsletter dropped onto the doormat, in time for me to take it to read on the train, in the hope that someone will lean over and ask, do you like old boats too... Two copies, in fact, as the CCNA one comes to me as well, as I was the one who signed them up.

And the AGM is the weekend after next, complete with slideshow. I've never liked to go before, feeling a bit of an interloper as a mere associate member. But now, as the representative of a genuine bona fide qualifying craft I can hold my head up. Perhaps. It's all still a bit vicarious but I think I can cope. It was announced at the committee meeting on Tuesday that the Tarporley T-shirt order has finally been sent off, and the garments should arrive within a couple of weeks. I really really want one to wear to the AGM...

Anyway, I had tea this afternoon with a colleague, and asked him if he could possibly cover for me at a Saturday School on June 27th, and then explained why... and told him about Tarporley as well (marketing officers are never off duty) and I think he might have been foolish enough to look interested so the next thing was I had whipped out the Newsletter and was going ooh look, well that's a Royalty Class and...

... and he started rather pointedly looking to see where I had left my anorak, before giving me a copy of an article he'd written about the Labour Party's attitude to retailing between 1931 and 1951. It was very interesting actually.

Beer!

Much as I love beer, I don't go to beer festivals very often - in fact the last one was at the Star in Huddersfield, that's how long ago it was.

This is largely because , in the words of my most apposite, if not my favourite, Shakespeare line, 'I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking.' I've been working on it, over the years, putting in lots of practice, and I think I'm improving, but I don't really have the capacity for alcohol that full appreciation of a beer festival demands. Wimp.

But even if I don't go myself - and I might pop by one lunchtime. Or two - I thought I would put in a plug for the North London branch of CAMRA's festival, very conveniently located round the back of Camden Town Hall just off the Euston Road. During the course of the event they are going to be collecting money for charity - and that charity is the Camden Canals and Narrowboat Association, aka Tarporley.

If you're thinking of going, do let me know.

Spring in my step

Everyone, it seems, is full of the joys of spring, and I shall be no exception. The days are growing longer, the mornings lighter (harrumph, go the government, we shall soon do something about that) and I have broken out my spring footwear.

I don't have summer and winter wardrobes - that would require far too much planning and storage - but I do have a strict footwear rota. November, December, January, February - boots; May, June, July and August - sandals, and March and April, September and October, Sensible Shoes.

Which reminds me tangentially that when I was at primary school, the arbiter of whether or not there would be swimming that day was whether Mr Fletcher was wearing shorts in assembly. Those were the days, when teachers could come to work in shorts. I am not sure though why swimming was such a cause for excitement, given that the 'swimming pool' was something like a very large wooden packing crate lined with wrinkled slimey polythene, and full of cold green bitter tasting water, garnished with dead greenfly.