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.

Ghost ship

Yesterday I was due to go out as crew on Tarporley for the first time proper, so I was very excited at the prospect of getting some boxes ticked off on my training sheet and starting the process towards becoming a Community Boating Association qualified steerer. So I left home bright and early to catch the rail replacement bus (oh yes), thinking I would be there in plenty of time for a ten thirty briefing and eleven o'clock departure.

Only the bus driver couldn't make the turn into the station car park and we had to go round again, and by the time we had disembarked the train had gone, and we had to get another, much slower one (I've lived round here for nigh on forty years and I still had no idea there were so many stations between Brighton and Victoria). So, having left the house at half past seven, it was twenty to eleven when I finally arrived at Kings Place full of apologies to David the day's steerer (I cannot bring myself to say skipper - I'd be going aye aye cap'n next) and fellow crew member Graham... but no passengers.

After an hour and numerous attempts to contact the customer, we decided that as it was such a nice day we would go anyway, to Little Venice and back (a stoppage in the other direction made this our only option, but I wasn't about to complain - I'm just about becoming familiar with the route). Shortly after we left we learned that the booking had been cancelled, but was going to be re-booked... and by this time we were well on our way.

The weather was perfect - the sun even struggled through a bit, my fellow crew members were excellent company, and standing at Hampstead Road with the sun on my back, waiting for the lock to fill, smelling the food (etc.), listening to some rather nice Peruvian nose flute music, and watching the people watching us, it occured to me that if there's anything better than taking a Grand Union motor boat through Camden Lock on a sunny afternoon, then it must be pretty damned good.

Once we got to Little Venice and spun round the island I took over the tiller and brought us all the way back to Kings Place without hitting anything (lock gates not included but I didn't hit any very hard, even when I did momentarily forget which way the throttle turned. (Tarporley = volume control (thanks Moomin); Warrior = tap). I even managed to put the boat in various correct positions to pick people up and made a reasonable fist of parking when we got back. In many ways the big boat is easier to handle; the steering is more intuitive (if physically more demanding) and it is more likely to stay put, at least as long as it's not windy. I love the Grand Union gear wheel, and suspect that I'm more ready to use it, and thus make better use of the gears, than Warrior's push/pull control - now I've thought of that I shall try harder. So all in all a most enjoyable outing and a great confidence booster.

Just wish I'd remembered to take the bloody training sheet with me.

A painted boat

Before I'd even had a proper look in Tarporley's back cabin, I was perturbed to hear that 'it needs redecorating'. When was it last done, I asked. Probably in the fifties, was the reply - how serious, how accurate - I don't know. Certainly the graining is in a bad way, but if the painting's anything like that old it would have done well to survive as intact as it has. Probably nothing special - I would have to leave that to others to judge. But worth preserving? Yes, why not. Whenever it was done, and whoever it was done by, it's a little bit of the boat's history, and if it still looks good then I'd say it's well worth keeping. I'd have to agree that the rest of it could do with a bit of a seeing to though.

Museum musings

Today in the course of my marketing duties I visited the London Canal Museum - not to look around the exhibits, but to talk to the chap in charge. This is all getting very heady. Especially as they are closed on Mondays and I had to knock on the door and gain special admittance. Well, I'm supposed to be marketing Tarporley, but here is a plug for the museum. Did you know that you can have your wedding or Bar Mitzvah or indeed any other party there, or a conference? And they have a very good website too. From past experience I can also tell you that they have a good shop with an excellent selection of books. Oh, and some exhibits too.

Meet the new...

... Marketing Officer of the Camden Canals and Narrowboat Association. Yep, as of last Tuesday I am officially a committee member with responsibility for marketing Tarporley both in its primary function as a facility for community groups, and also to private hirers to subsidise this core work. On the plus side, I know, from my previous political life, a bit about dealing with the media, writing press releases and so on. I guess I can scrub up and glad hand with the best of them. And I do of course bring terrifying enthusiasm to the job. On the other hand, I shall be on a very steep learning curve when it comes to identifying and working with community groups in London. There's also the rest of the committee and the organisation to get to grips with, and I need to have a few ideas worked out to report to the committee at the next meeting on Tuesday week.

But it will all be worthwhile because this Saturday I get my mitts on Tarporley again, when they are running another training session. Once my CRB check comes through I shall be able to go as crew on hirings and start to tick the things I can do off a list, and when I've ticked them all off (I think this is how it works) I can take a test and get qualified under the auspices of the Community Boating Association. With this qualification you can only skipper a maximim of twelve passengers, but the alternative is the MCA professional qualification which would be over the top, and presumably far too expensive for an organisation like CCNA. And probably not nearly as much fun. I've been very pleasantly surprised so far by how laid back it all is - no lifejackets, for example, thank goodness.

Then two come along at once...

I went to a reception last night. It was for the relaunch of the Raphael Samuel History Centre. I'm not a historian, and I'm not really sure why I went, except that I thought there might be decent grub (there wasn't, although the wine was about two grades above the usual paintstripper).

But as the various speakers introduced the centre and what it does, and the archive and what it covers - among other things, East End history - light bulbs started to come on in my head. My first thought was, maybe they have some canal-related stuff. My second, when they started talking about their work with 10-14 year-olds, trying to get them interested in history, was could this be my first marketing success for the Camden Canals and Narrowboat Association. After the speeches I made a beeline for the education person and pitched her the idea of taking their schoolkids on a historic boat through historic east London. My geography, hazy at the best of times, was already sufferering the effects of the wine, but I managed to throw in casual mentions of Hackney and Limehouse and she seemed to think it was a great idea.

Then I was looking at the display boards about the historian's life and another woman engaged me in conversation about who I was and why I was there, so I mentioned my interest in that side of things, and she said, oh, you must meet my mother, her partner has a share in an ex-working boat. It turned out that her mother was there too! So I had a lovely chat with her (as far as it was possible to chat given the dreadful acoustic in the room; I was quite hoarse by the end). The boat in question was Fulbourne, which has long been a favourite of mine; I like its unshininess. Anna seemed quite keen for me to come along as a bit of female company next time she was out with the boat, which is a rather exciting prospect, if it comes off.

Such things as dreams are made of

For most boat bloggers, the dream come true is when they finally get the boat of their own. To be honest, that wasn't something I ever got much time to dream about; it just sort of crept up on me. Certainly, I've whiled away many happy hours thinking about how I would alter a boat, or wondering what it would be like to own this one, or that one. Certainly I dream of living on a boat again (for real this time), but that - at least for now - really is more of an idle dream than a realisable ambition type one.

But one desire that has long burned within me was, suddenly and unexpectedly, fulfilled yesterday. I GOT TO STEER A TOWN CLASS BOAT! OK, it wasn't a Big Woolwich (yes, totally irrational preference, I know), but it was the very next best thing. (Oh, it wasn't unconverted either, but at least I still have something to look forward to.)

This is how it happened.

Last Monday, less than a week ago, my friend and colleague Clementina was telling me about going to the opening of Kings Place, the (actually rather nice) new development at Kings Cross, which backs onto the canal and Battlebridge Basin; in particular about the trips they were running on, and the possibility of hiring, the Camden Community Narrowboat. Oh yes, I said; Tarporley, and reeled off a few of its vital statistics. I later sent her the photos of Warrior and Tarporley in the lock together last August. But I didn't know you could hire it privately, so I had a quick Google to check their website.

Before I knew it, I was clicking on the 'volunteers' link, and five minutes later, emailing them. Usually, when you email a voluntary organisation to offer your services, you hear nothing for weeks, if at all. I initially offered to help with admin and paperwork; and maybe a bit of cleaning so that I could actually get to touch the boat. I'd kind of thought that steering would be reserved for a time-served elite. Well, I got a reply within the hour, saying firstly, that they were looking for someone to help with marketing, and would I be interested in that - now that was a stroke of luck for a start, because that's something I reckoned I could probably make quite a good fist of. He went on to say that they had been planning a 'hands-on' day for Saturday, but that it had been cancelled owing to gearbox problems.

But then on Friday, an email arrived saying that the gearbox was fixed and the 'training day' was now back on. Such was my excitement I could hardly sleep that night. I turned up at the appointed hour, and made my way through the very swish cafe/box office area of Kings Place (I suppose it's no wonder I feel kindly disposed towards it) and out through another set of doors onto the canalside, where Tarporley has returned to its permanent mooring after an absence of three years. If you look at the aerial photo on their website, this would be on the right hand side. And there it was, large as life and with Dave sitting in the well deck. It turned out that because of the earlier cancellation, only one of the other new volunteers was able to come, and as the second crew member called in sick at the last minute, there was only Dave, Kerryn and me. How enourously fortunate was that, from our point of view? To cap it all, the sun shone all day.

Our training trip took us from Battlebridge to Little Venice, taking in four locks and the Maida Hill tunnel. As Kerryn had very little previous boating experience and none of manual locks, I did the locks on the way out. When we got to Little Venice and were about to tie up in the Pool (in the privileged spot where it says 'No unauthorised mooring'), there was a brief crisis when Dave put it in reverse and the throttle stuck. This was eventually remedied with a sharp kick, but not before I'd seen my chance of steering flash before my eyes.

I got there in the end though, and I was in heaven. I had warned Dave that my steering was generally reckoned to be fairly abysmal, but the practice has obviously done me some good as at least I knew what to do. In fact, it was no more difficult, technically, and possibly even easier, than steering Warrior. Where it was harder was in simple terms of the physical force and strength required. At first Dave was handling the controls and I just the tiller, but I asked if I could have a go of the controls, and once he let me do that, and I could actually stand comfortably on the step instead of behind him, it was a bit easier. I liked the gear wheel a lot once I got the hang of hauling it round; the speedwheel was sort of familiar, but turns the opposite way to Warrior's, and there's a lot more play before it starts to take effect, and rather less after. But I was very pleased by how quickly I made the transition, and it didn't feel at all odd handling this great beast of a boat once I got myself comfortable.

Does life really get much better than steering a Big Northwich through Camden Lock on a sunny Saturday afternoon?