Lyra and her butty

I was entranced with Northern Lights and the rest of Philip Pullman's trilogy, 'His Dark Materials'. I've heard it described as "Paradise Lost for Atheists" and if I'm not sure about that, it's only because I don't really know what Paradise Lost is about - I know it only as a story and affirmation of Milton's faith.

Perhaps Northern Lights is the same for Pullman's faith. But relevant here is that it's the only heavyweight fiction I've found that uses traditional canal boat people as the heart of the story. The story, stripped bare, being that Lyra, a young girl growing up as a tearaway in a parallel-universe Oxford, runs away with a group of canal boaters, in search of other missing children and her mysterious uncle.

A year ago I discovered that there was once a canal butty called Lyra, exactly the sort of boat that was at the heart of the novel. Part of the old GUCCC fleet, it was built in 1935 as one of the 'Star' class, named after stars or, like Lyra, constellations. These were normally built as motor-butty pairs, such as Mike Stevens spotted in 1983.

I tracked down Lyra on the Grand Union, near Kingswood Junction. It's still afloat after 70 years, beautifully restored, and working in a pair with a new motor called Chine, for a fellow called Ken, in a canal haulage business called HTC Services.

I wrote to Philip Pullman about this last month, and he was "delighted". He said 'Lyra', as a name, just came to him out of the air, for no particular reason. The name was pure euphony. So it's perhaps poetic romance in the thought that the only Star Class butty still afloat and working just happens to be Lyra. He's promised to suggest that "if they ever get around to making the film they've been talking about, I shall suggest it [i.e featuring it in the film]."

Comments

[Job King]

Am so pleased to see the picture of Lyra! I was raised on the canals. When my sister Charity and I got too big for our family's boat, Freedom No4 a 72foot houseboat (formerly 1895 Joey, then later known as Plymouth before becoming a hotel boat in the 1960s). Think we bought it in 1991 from Warwickshire Fly Boats, and my dad finished off the conversion under the old covers. Charity lived here and I lived in the back-cabin. There we stayed moored at Long Buckby Wharf until my parents seperated in 2001 while I was at Loughborough University and Charity at Southampton. Mum bravely survived the winter alone maintaining both boats, before we reluctantly decided to sell up. As a family we were pretty unique to the cut (were only 3 others we knew), we appeared on Country File and in Good Housekeeping. Dad turned down an invitation to be family of the week on the Big Breakfast (which was of course staged next to the canal). Hope that helps to fill you in. Thank you for bringing back some brilliant memories. I will probably move back onto the boats at some point.

Job King