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.

Cold comfort

Browsing through G2 on arriving home this evening, my eye was caught by an article about people giving up their fridges in order to reduce their carbon footprint. Oooh, I thought, no fridge. Just like me on Andante. I wonder if there are any hints I might have benefited from.

Well, what a swizz. These people who have oh-so-greenly unplugged their fridges still, it transpires, have a 'small freezer' in their basement. Plus a 'cool box' upstairs. And this is still treated as an enormous deal. This despite the fact that within living memory, most people didn't have fridges (surely in fact, the electric fridge was invented within living memory). I mean, Jim isn't that ancient, but he remembers his family getting their first, second hand, General Electric model. People had larders, and meat safes. Hmm, and daily deliveries from the milkman and the butcher's boy.

Admittedly, I had a fridge on Andante - one of those little brown gas ones - but it didn't work. We took it all the way to Sowerby Bridge (we got as far as Brighouse by boat, but then had to turn round and come back and go by car. No, we had to buy bolts, turn round and come back and go by car) to get it decoked or whatever it needed, and oh the excitement when we finally (with much lying on the floor squinting into its little mirror) got it to light. Cautiously, I put the CO detector in close - possibly, with hindsight, too close - proximity to its workings, and watched and waited. Unbelievably, it seemed to be working. A few hours later I was wondrously poking at the thin film of ice that was forming on the top of the ice cube tray, when off went the alarm. And that was the end of that little experiment. Subsequently, Jim bought a 12v fridge - a full size one - on ebay, which was wired in just before I sold the boat.

So, all the time I lived on Andante, in short, I was fridgeless. When it was very hot, I would buy a bag of ice in Sainsburys, and put it in a tin tray on the top shelf. But mostly I just kept stuff in the gap under the foredeck, sitting on top of the pig iron ballast, where it was a bit wobbly, but always cool. This in fact was the original beer cupboard, and never bettered.

Here are my top tips for living without a fridge:
1. Don't eat meat
2. Don't eat fish. Unless it's tinned.
3. Eat up everything you've cooked so that you don't have any leftovers (the main reason, I think, that I left Huddersfield a stone and a half heavier than I arrived. But it might have been the pie and peas).
4. Take your milk to work with you every day and let it chill out in their fridge (cheat! cheat!) Or you could buy fresh every day.

How random?

Moominpapa suggests that my method of randomly selecting a number between one and four hundred, as I have been doing for recent photos from last summer, may not be all that random. He may be right, although I think it will be random enough for these purposes, where it isn't being used very often, and it's completely independent of the photos themselves. It's a pack of cards, so the randomness largely depends upon how well it's been shuffled and reshuffled and where it's cut.

I need to create a three digit figure, between 1 and 400.

So for the first digit, let hearts = zero, clubs = 1, diamonds = 2 and spades = 3

For the second and third digits, let 1 = 1 and so on, with 10 = zero and discounting picture cards.

This doesn't however give an equal chance to each number between 1 and 400; unless one had three packs or reshuffled the whole pack between each selection, it would militate against the last two digits being the same, and the latter two selections might also be influenced by the first if that were not a picture card.

So it may not, technically, be completely random. But it serves my purpose; it rules out the possibility of me exerting any preference, whether consciously or not, and above all, it saves me actually having to make a choice.

Platform one and three quarters

Whenever I visit Tarporley, or the Museum, or, for that matter, my friend Dean, I always make sure to make use of the footpath along Platform One at Kings Cross. It's actually a lot more pleasant, and I guess it must be quicker, than walking around the outside, but above all it is a Matter Of Principle. Because, I hear from a range of sources, although I couldn't find anything on the web, plans are afoot to extinguish said right of way as part of the development of Kings Cross and the surrounding areas. There were, I believe, people counting how many people used the route, as if that would have a bearing, although I suspect (and so does an Islington councillor I met at some event last year) that it's a forlorn hope. It is quite heavily used, despite the powers that be clearly discouraging it (by making the exit path very narrow and invisible for a start) but I hold out no hope that the great god regeneration will fail to see it off in the end. Which is a shame.

There is a certain glamour and romance about Kings Cross that you don't find at other stations. When the mist rolls into that great shed you can almost imagine that it's smoke and steam wafting about. St Pancras, lovely as it is, is too new and clean to convey this atmosphere, and Euston - well, the less said the better.

I have a soft spot of course for Kings Cross because of my weekly commute to Huddersfield over a period of eighteen months. London may be one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, and wherever you go - including the concourse at Kings Cross - you are surrounded by people speaking hundreds of different languages; dressed in myriad different styles, and of all hues of skin and hair. But the really exotic thing, the promise of romance and adventure, is in the big fat red faced GNER guard, who greets you in a broad Yorkshire accent. It's that that tells you that this is the gateway to new and strange places.

A poem

Jim found this; it's the product list of the Liver Grease, Oil and Chemical Company, founded in 1809. I hope they won't mind me reproducing it for its sheer evocative poetry. It reminds me a bit of this poem.

Aluminium Solar Reflecting Bitumen Roofing Paint
Anti-Scuffing Compound & Grease
Bitumen Paint BS 3416 - Solid Bitumens
Beechwood Tar & Pitch
Barbados Tar
Burgundy Pitch
Black Lead Powder
Black Annealed Wire
Creosotes: Types 1, 2, and 3
Caulking pitches (black and white; hard and brittle to soft) + Oakum
Concrete Mould Oil
Chalk Lump
Caustic Soda
Cotton Waste (white and coloured)
Colza Oil
Cardium Compound equivalent
Carbolineum BS 144 (1990)
Caulking Irons made to order
Cork
Cork Dust
French Chalk as powder or sticks
Disinfectant Fluids (black, white and pine)
Distillate Degreasants
Export products Empty Tins / Drums.
Fish Oil
Flux Oil
Graphites
Greases
Greasy (gland) Packing
High Temperature Silicone Grease
Iron Cement
Jointing Compounds: white graphite, petrol & oil resisting for pipes.
Linseed Oils (raw, boiled)
Low Cost Oil and Grease from time to time
Lead Powders (red, yellow, white)
Lap Compound
Lime (quick, slaked)
Lime Wash Constituents
Lysol (disinfectant)
Molybdenum Disulphide Powder, blended in grease, wax or oil
Naptha
Oakum (Swedish)
Oils:
Coal Tar - a thin tar.
Colza - a burning oil for hurricane lamps
Shutter - for concrete.
Drying - for paint making.
Fish - for decks & ropes.
Paint - for surface coatings.
Storm - for hotter burning, and also pouring onto troubled waters.
Pine Tar - industrial perfume, and also for hoof oil.
Soap Oil.
Pitches: Petroleum, Vegetable, Mineral, Coal, Caulking, Burgundy
Quick Lime
Roofing Tar & Bitumens
Rosins (gum and wood)
Stockholm Tar
Sodium Hypochlorite
Spun Yarn
Solvents (numerous)
Spirits
Soap Oil
Storm Oil
Slushing Oil
Tallow
Tar
Tarred Marlin
Turpentine (substitutes or genuine)
Toluene
Tall Oils
Varnishes
Wood Preservatives (brown)
Wood Tar
Waxes (bees and petroleum)
White Lead Paste (or in Tallow)
White Spirit
White Petroleum Jelly
Xylene

Request show

Oh dear, as you may have noticed, I've hit a bit of a lean patch. After such a good start, I've quite run out of things to say. Nothing has been happening chez Warrior in recent weeks, and my stock of ideas has run dry. So, in a shameless example of shifting responsibility, it's over to you. I am now taking requests. If there's anything you'd like an update on, or to hear more about, or see more pictures of, please say now! Or of you'd like to rent-a-rant, name a topic and I'll be happy to oblige. You could even dedicate it to someone.

A different kind of quiet

In theory, one of the beauties of a boat is the chance to get away from the noise and distraction of everyday life and get some real peace and quiet. In practice, of course, it doesn't always work like that. Boats are also great for working on, socialising on, and indeed living on - and bringing much of that noise and distraction with you. The days you can sit, alone, just looking out across the water, are few.

So you might think that having an engine like Warrior's, which could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be called quiet, would be anathema to someone who craves tranquillity and solitude; that it would be the cause of stress rather than relaxation. I possibly even thought this myself in the past, much as I love the engine. But on my last visit I realised how wrong that was. What stops you being alone with your thoughts isn't noise per se, but speech - conversation (even one sided!), or the radio, or other people's conversations overheard. Even most music, especially with words, demands attention and breaks the thread of your daydreams. Start the engine, however, and all that fades away, and you're surrounded instead by an entirely rhythmic and (provided nothing goes wrong) utterly predictable buffer of sound between you and the outside world. Lack of quiet, but not of peace.

Take two bottles onto the boat?

OK, we all know that on a boat, space is at a premium. So you don't want to be clogging your kitchen cupboards up with all manner of different bottles of cleaning products. Or your bathroom shelves, for that matter. Secondly, we all know that putting anything down the boat plughole other than super eco-friendly biodegradable phosphate free fish-respecting ethical stuff is not only very naughty, but liable to lead ultimately to a ban on putting anything at all down that particular plughole.

So in the light of both the above points, and in the service of boaters everywhere, I am conducting an experiment. To just how many different purposes can Ecover washing up liquid be put? After all, it's a detergent, and a mild one at that. So is shampoo, shower gel, general purpose cleaner, laundry liquid &c &c (See! I remembered). Do you really need more than that one bottle?

So far I have experimented, on my last visit to the boat when it was still warm enough to put water near one's head, with using Ecover Aloe Vera washing up liquid as shampoo. I did this three days running and with no discernable ill effects - lovely shiny hair. (My hair is, in point of fact, shinier than usual when I wash it anywhere other than chalky Sussex; on the plus side we must have the best tasting tap water in the country).

I've also used it (Ecover, not my hair) neat to clean the gas hob, with perfectly satisfactory results.

My next ventures will be to try it as shower gel, and for washing socks. I shall report back. Should anyone else wish to join me in this experiment, or indeed suggest other uses to which this product might be put, your contribution would be more than welcome.

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.

My favourite mug

I would like to take this opportunity to mark the passing of a very dear friend. My favourite mug suffered a tragic freak accident this morning when another mug fell on top of it. The other mug, naturally, was undamaged.

My favourite mug was made of white toughened glass, which in my view is the absolutely best thing to drink tea out of, as all good caffs know. It featured a charming, if not very right-on, illustration of a smiling tiger - who, I now suddenly realise, not having looked at it properly for years, bears an uncanny resemblance to Bruce Forsyth - and a very small Indian man - hunter or keeper? I never could decide - whose crudely drawn features manage nonetheless clearly to convey an air of baleful impotence in the face of the disproportionately big big cat.

I remember selecting it - in Woolworths, where else - some time in the mid 1970s. My sister and I got to choose one each. It has been with me ever since, a minimum of thirty, probably more like thirty five years. It has comforted me with tea on many momentous occasions, as well as making the odd racy foray into delivering coffee or cocoa. Tea is its real purpose in life however. It has stayed with me from house to house, from life to life. It is one of the very few things I would never leave behind. Other mugs - hundreds, probably - have come and gone, but this one I have used nearly every day. Every day for thirty plus years.

And now it's gone. I didn't quite shed a tear - I'm very good at not crying over spilt milk - but it's another little bit of my past consigned to the dustbin, and a timely reminder that nothing lasts forever.

An inch of ice on the fishpond

And believe me, in my back garden that's unprecedentedly cold. Here on the south coast, in the lee or the shadow, or the something of the South Downs, we have an unusually mild and dry micro climate, and in my tiny walled back garden, even more so. Is it not Eastbourne that lays claim to the most annual hours of sunshine in the country? Torquay, I believe, has higher average temperatures, but more rain.

I noticed the difference when I went to Huddersfield, in both rain and coldness. It's even noticeably colder in London, and as you go up on the train you can see the ground get frostier. I always try to bear this in mind when I'm tempted to up sticks and move to another part of the country - somewhere less crowded, more canal-y; somewhere different... somewhere bloody colder. So yes, reading the tales of people boating at the moment, I know I've got it easy. But I really do not like the cold. More than anything else, more than dark, more than wet, it's cramping and constraining. For me it's cold, not heat, that's oppressive. Heat is relaxing and expansive; cold constricting and repressive. It's OK if you're dressed for it - what a liberating discovery thermal undies were - but that only works if you're planning to be out in it for a significant time. If you're in the house, you're stuck there.

Anyway, I was meant to be going to Birmingham today. After a Tarporley committee meeting which saw me getting to bed at one a.m. following the consumption of large amounts of beer, dragging myself to a local government seminar in the frozen Midlands was just about exactly the last thing I felt like doing, but I'd forked out fifty eight quid for a train ticket so felt honour bound to use it. So Virgin/Railtrack have at least one customer who was very pleased to learn that there were no trains running out of Euston today. Having confirmed this on the website at six this morning I was able to go back to bed with a clear conscience and thoughts of a refund. There's always a bright side.

Gone to pot

And there goes another one. Wedgwood (or Waterford Wedgwood as we should now more properly know it) has gone into administration. Throughout my childhood, I had a green Jasper ware bedside light. It wasn't very nice, to be honest; the shade was horrible, but I used to lie in bed and stare at the base, with its bas relief of Greek figures. That's what Wedgwood has always meant to me.

But also of course, the company, and in particular its founder, were enormously influential in the development of the canals. Josiah Wedgwood was promoter of one of the earliest, the Trent and Mersey, for which the Act of Parliament was obtained in 1766 (yes, I have quickly scanned my Hadfield). It was impressive, coming through the Potteries with Andante in 2006, how much stuff was still being produced - despite there also being a lot of dereliction and even some regeneration. But surely this is a prime example of a product that can be produced as well, and more cheaply, overseas; how many of us, to be honest, care where our dinner plates come from? Mine are in fact (I've just looked) from Staffordshire, Bilton's 'Galaxy'. But they were probably made in the sixties. Biltons are (I learn from Stoke on Trent City Council's informative website) no more.

I need some....

Brown thread
Sellotape
Velcro
Clothes pegs
Envelopes
A saucepan
One of those things you hang your knickers on to dry
Plimsolls
A birthday present for a small child
Dye
Paper
A photo frame
Curtain rings
Shoe polish
Iron-on patches
Mugs
Needles
A tin for putting flapjack in
Light bulbs
A pay-as-you-go mobile
CHOCOLATE
Blank CDs
Pencils
Shoe laces
Elastic
Ker-plunk
A4 plastic wallets

I'll just nip down to W...

.... oh bugger.


.

And hello 2009

Nope. Still looks the same as yesterday. Anyway, my new year starts in October. But in time honoured tradition, I have made a new year's resolution, and I fully intend to stick to it.

In 2009, I will stop procrastinating.

I decided to do this about three weeks ago, but put off implementing it until the symbolic date. Of course.

My tendency to put things off, shove those little tasks into the darkest recesses of the back of my mind, where they gnaw and nag at me and assume monstrous proportions; or to write them on a list, and in doing so consider them at least half done, is, I am firmly convinced, the only thing standing between me and greatness. If I was not constantly being burgled by the thief of time, I would be superhuman.

And when I do set to and do things - as, to be honest, I have been this week - it's great. They're seldom as hard as they first seem, and even if they are, the only way to make them easier is to chip away at them by making a start. So I wrote a book proposal on Monday (the idea for which has been hanging around for years); updated my CV on Tuesday (needed doing since 2006); made a start on the most daunting prospect yesterday, my paper for the PSA conference in April (yesterday being the deadline for withdrawal, so I'm committed now). Today I will catch up with Tarporley business, and tomorrow, I promise, I will finally finish that proposal for a new course. Then I can go back into the office on Monday with my to-do list almost non-existent and wearing a smug glow.

So it only remains to wish all of you a happy, productive and successful 2009, and leave you with Diamond Geezers new year advice.

And so farewell, 2008.

It's been nice knowing you, but the time has come, as it always does, and to leap joyously into 2009 (well, I'm planning to leap no further than into the bath before settling down in front of the fire, having come to the conclusion that New Year's parties are actually usually terribly depressing events). So, lets dust off the archives, and look back over the treasures that 2008 brought us.

January
Brought reading of old Waterways Worlds...

February
Brought fun and frolics at Stoke Bruerne in honour of CWF's Moley. I have now eschewed CWF - on the basis of a couple of trolls and a rather worrying joke - since December 19th. Not so much as a peek!

March
Found us revelling in the snow at Bill Fen, and in a CWF banter at Napton. Other glamourous places I visited for the first time included Uxbridge. And we also met Proper Job Steve and the Moomins for the first time.

April
In April we panelled the engine room roof and fitted a selection of doorknobs and latches throughout the boat, and I sallied forth to Hemel Hempsted to see Zulu Warrior.

May
Saw us at the RN Open Day, where we failed for a second time to make a full exchange of engine parts with Steve And the first Warrior-related news of any note, as the paintwork was finally begun.

June
Braunston! Braunston! Braunston! With Jim still at Warrior I drove Baz and me up there for the day. A highly successful and enjoyable outing, marred only slightly by someone inconsiderately hiding the M25 on the way home. Also, I manage to upset a record number of readers with a relatively innocuous post on the evils of trailing fenders, and Warrior's signwriting got done.

July
I first meet the Lucky Ducks, Amy and James, before they set out, full of hope and youthful optimism, on their epic journey. And then, finally, we set off on ours, with one of its two sunny days falling in July - little knowing how closely out fates would be intertwined.

August
The rainy season, which coincided neatly with our 'summer' trip. We did get to London in the end. High spots included the Cropredy Festival (a high spot of the entire year, that was), Little Venice and... er, Brentford Lock (well, that was one of my favourite bits), and travelling from Little Venice to Limehouse with Craig and Vicky (Jim has already got Craig lined up for some two-man boating next year). Less favourite bits were most of the Thames and in particular Osney (through no real fault of its own); Banbury (heartbreaking) and the bloody weather.

September
Most of which saw me with the house to myself, as Jim continued with the Ducks for another three weeks.

October
Notable for my return to the voluntary sector, dragged back by the prospect of getting my hands on Tarporley. So I had my first go, finally, at steering a Big Northwich, and as a bonus, when we met up with Warbler and Stanton Jam 'Oling, I got a go on a small one too.

November
A month of great blogging torpor, but also of wholesale graining.

December
In which we decided not to go boating for Christmas after all.

So all in all it was another action packed year, and looking back it's impressive how much we crammed in. Helyn still awaits out full attentions, and the Ouse trip is postponed for another year, but still very much in mind (mine, at any rate).

Next year's plans for Warrior tentatively include coming across the Wash and doing a northern tour, taking in Sheffield and Liverpool and a circuit of the Rochdale and the L&L. Despite the rain, it will be hard to top the experience of this year's London bound trip though.

Hope you all have a very happy 2009.

Tending the stove

It occurred to me the other week in just how many ways having a solid fuel stove is like having a small child. You have to feed them - not too little and not too much - and clean up after them, and constantly check that they're still alive. They require all manner of accoutrements and paraphernalia which gradually take over the entire house (boat). They make an incredible amount of mess. And you still wouldn't want to be without them.

Card index

So, the evidence of the late festivities has been tidied away, and I have turned the roast potato fat into nutritious blue tit seed cake, and there are, presumably, no more cards to come in, and I have been moved to compile an inventory of the thirty five or so that our household has received.

Nearly all the ones I sent this year were IWA. I like them because they're nice pictures, on good solid cardboard, with no hint of religion or other supernatural beings (e.g. Father Christmas, hedgehogs wearing bobble hats), but are usually nicely wintry and old fashioned. I always order the surprise packs of whatever they didn't sell last year (the thrill!) and am left this year with a set that are resolutely narrow boat free, featuring some sort of sailing barge, that I've been slightly loath to distribute (although I have received one).

The other excellent thing about the IWA cards is that they are produced not only in Britain, but in East Sussex, by Judges of Hastings (the postcard people); a fact that I was not slow to point out to my friend David, Liberal Democrat ('think global, act local') leader on East Sussex County Council, when he sent us one, shock horror, printed in China.

I always keep our old cards, which after a while get recycled, with the help of pinking shears, into traditional gift tags, and have envelopes full now going back ten years, and it is possible to discern some changing trends. For example, over half of the ones received this year were for charities in some shape or form, and quality is generally higher - thicker card and better printing. There are more without any traditional Christmas - or even winter - content too.

So for the record, here is this year's inventory:
Non-charity various: 17
Generic/multiple charity: 5
Specific charities:
Cancer Research: 2
Oxfam: 3
Cats' Protection League: 1
Kennet and Avon Canal Trust: 1 (also by Judges of Hastings)
IWA: 1
Amnesty: 1
Marie Curie Cancer Care: 1
Foot and Mouth Painting Artists: 3

Now, that's a bit of a rum one. I remember they always used to send out packs of cards, unsolicited, with a request for payment if you wanted to use them. Of course I was thrown into a tizz; I didn't want to pay, and I resented them sending them and putting pressre on me, so I never sent them back. But it would have been too awful to use them without paying, so they languished year after year at the bottom of the Christmas box, doing no good to anyone, but making me feel guilty and resentful whenever I saw them. I stopped being sent them a while back, so maybe they have a different system now. But whenever I receive one, I have the nagging thought, did the sender actually pay for this...? This year's haul of three is a record, I think.

And we got one from the local fire brigade, reminding us not to burn the house down this Christmas, which was a nice thought.

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.