Granny Buttons

Through England's Waterways

Steve Parkin on NB Albert has just written a great review of a book he bought for a five-pound song on ebay.

It was Through England's Waterways, by Montague Lloyd, published in 1948, and he concludes:   

It certainly has been the best £5 I have ever spent on a second-hand waterways book and I am not talking about its resale value; I notice that the only copy currently on Abebooks is priced at £25!

What's especially great about Steve's 900-word review is that it's now the definitive internet link for this rare book.  This is what I had in mind when I enthused about blogs for waterways users.

I hope my link helps.

Google ad leads me to a baronet

It's amazing what you stumble on with the web.  Searching for I-can't-remember-what, I noticed a Google ad for

British Waterways -
Squandering our Inheritance?
BW action forum investigates
BritishWaterwaysActionForum.co.uk

Curious, I followed the link.  The 'BWAF' appears to be Nick MacWhirter of  Intermodal Solutions [and whose army?] and he starts with a cannonade of leading questions:

BW - Navigation Authority or public sector property speculator?
BW - Pocketing the Project Funding?
BW - Consultation or Con?
BW - Two-faced on Water Transport?

I presume Nick MacWhirter exists, because he's paying for Google ads (including my click).  Hunting to find out more about him I stumbled on:

Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee
British Waterways - Seventh Report of Session 2006–07

In this long report, someone called Sir Adrian Stott, Bt. mentions 'Mr Nicholas Macwhirter', scorns him as having an axe to grind, and describes many of the BWAF website's accusations as "false, incomplete, or obsolete." 

(Personally, I don't mind that too much, so long as one is sincerely mistaken.  Far worse is being sour, not open to comments, asking leading questions, preaching only to the converted and - worst of all - being unwitty). 

Anyway, can this be the same waterways expert Adrian Stott of the Dutch Barge Association, who has quite a few interesting, intelligent and idiosyncratic opinions about the waterways? *    If so, I never realised:  A baronet! 

I remember being passed by his barge Onx at Cowroast on the Grand Union in 2001, when its drag bent my mooring pins, and I shouted "you're going too fast",  and he laconically replied "oh no I'm not".  When I followed him to the next lock, someone else there was also fuming at him.

In early 2005 I finally caught up with Onx near Hertford, and had tea aboard (my log entry here), and I apologised and agreed that I'd not moored up properly that day (and that most people don't, these days), and he graciously accepted my apology, and we parted on good terms and I was most impressed with him. Back in 2001 I didn't realise how noble he was.  I would have never raised my voice if I'd had known.

Baronetcy is the lowest level in the hereditary scheme, but - like owning a starter flat - at least it's a rung on the ladder.  So I've instantly taken an extra linking to him.  (The ghastly truth is, I'm serious!) 

The only fly in the ointment of my humility is that Sir Adrian insists on measuring out his world in metric and scorns pounds and pints, feet and furlongs.  I don't know where I go from here; when the aristocracy abandons tradition I feel rudderless and I hyperventilate.  So I hate him all over again, but only for that.  I'm sure he's a good bloke otherwise.  Although 'bloke' is hardly the appropriate word for a baronet.

----------------------
* Here's Adrian's suggestion about the Save Our Waterways issue - quite interesting, I thought. 

(Hello, Will Chapman of Quidditch, I knew you'd pick this one up!  Best of luck with your meeting at Foxton on Dec 1st.  Are you going to blog about it?   Silly question, sorry I asked :-)

Where was Clare's canal trip?

Claire Sudbery, who blogs as Boob Pencil, is putting her adolesecent diaries online in blog format, which I think is quite a neat idea.  It's wonderful to look back on your old diaries and I think hers is sweet.

Her record of a week on a hire canalboat was fun.  It starts on Friday 21st June 1985 in Part 26  and ends the following Friday in Part 27. 

Can you work out where they went?  They set off on Friday afternoon, then went through 12 locks on Saturday.  On Sunday they 'got right to the end of the canal and turned round'.

On Tuesday they got back to the boatyard again, then on Wednesday they went through Harecastle Tunnel, and by Thursday they were at Stone, and then went for a tour of the Wedgwood factory.  On the final Friday:

... We all got up v.early ... went  through loads of v. grim industrial stuff, which I drove us through... Went through the tunnel again after lunch.  Sally wasn’t scared any more and drove it a bit, and becos I was at the front in the light, I found it v. boring.  After that we all cleaned the boat and I banged my head on a doorway and cut it open!  It bled quite a lot and I got made a great fuss of.  It doesn’t hurt any more.

Was v. relieved to be home tonight and in my own bed, but Mum’s thrown Cyril the spirogyra out cos her and Dad thought maybe it was a tapeworm! (?!?!?)

22 years on, why does she call her blog 'Boob Pencil'?   Yes, I thought that too.  She explains:

I’ve just written my second novel, and I can hold thirty-one pencils under each breast.

I think we can assume that the blog name doesn't refer to her second novel.  I spent much of last night on her blog looking for photographic evidence of her talent but couldn't find the proof, sorry boys.

But I know how she feels.  When I was at school there must have been at least thirty-one of us boys who were nicknamed 'pencil-willy'. 

It was a boys-only boarding school, and in our dorm the only girl we knew who was familiar with the bike sheds was a local lass colloquially known as 'Flat Pat'.  I well remember dorm captain Kirk proudly announcing that Hamilton (surnames only, in our school) had lost his cherry to Flat Pat, and although memory can play tricks, I don't recall him having a pencil-willy.  She was a girly who wasn't part of the school, so she had a first name. 

Ah, happy days!  I'd forgotten completely about this until I trawled up the memory of pencil-willy.

Going down at Upton

Ill-fated narrowboat goes down 'like a submarine' - Worcester News

A narrowboat moored in Upton-upon-Severn sank after becoming partially marooned on the steps.

The boat was attached to moorings by the steps opposite The Plough pub, but as the river level dropped on Thursday its bow became wedged on the bottom step and the stern was in the water.

This is the second narrowboat in a week to sink on this stretch of Severn, after the one that sank last Monday (Google maps link to the location here).

Gosh, I remember mooring at exactly this spot overnight in 2004, in an earlier narrowboat, Wanderer.   

Too ignorant of knowing the dangers of mooring alongside river steps, we spent a pleasant night there, on the inside of a big white plastic gin palace called L'Ambiance, whose luxurious interior stunned me when they invited us aboard for drinks later.  The water level didn't change, and we lived to tell the tale. 

But the risk ignores the fact that it can be tricky to find moorings on the river - especially if the boat is a long narrowboat - and sometimes you are tempted to take risks.  L'Ambiance only moored alongside us because they couldn't find other moorings on the river that afternoon, and it was getting dark when they arrived and asked to breast up alongside us.

Terence Edgar's back door diptych

During his narrowboat trip to the Kingdom this summer, Canadian Murray Popoff chose a rather unusual souvenir.   

Instead of the usual roses teapot or wooden spoon, he ordered some narrowboat cabin door panels from Braunston canal boat artist Terence Edgar.

Murray's mounted them on special panels, and they must look quite a talking point in his home in Saskatchewan.  The panels are slightly smaller than standard canal boat doors, but not so's you'd notice unless you actually stopped admiring them and tried to open and walk through them. 

It occurs to me that mounted on the wall as a pair (ideally together, with a hinge) this would make a genuine diptych.  And even more cleverly, you could mount them as doors on a small cabinet or wardrobe.  Terence paints these panels in sets of six for a far-t00-reasonable price of £85 (at that price his website could well be out of date) so perhaps one could call it a sextych.

Murray says that the next time he takes a narrowboat he's tempted to bring them over and hang them on the back door to add a bit of ye olde atmosphere to a hire boat. 

Well, it would certainly make a change from the Maple Leaf.  Why are Canadians even more likely to fly the flag than Americans?  Have you noticed?  Americans love their flags more, but Canadians fly theirs more on canal boats.

I have my own controversial theory for that, but this particular post is Murray's own little sovereign patch of Canada and I'm a guest on it, so I'll not posit my thesis just now.

Granny across the web

Last January I wrote (here) about Lifting The World, a novel published anonymously as a blog.  The writer called herself 'Granny P', a name she apparently took from The Archers (and not from, ahem, me). 

I only just noticed that Granny P was 'outed' last April by the Guardian in an article 'Getting published by the blog door'.  (The P stands for Penelope; her real name is Penelope Farmers-Bridge-Junction):

I wrote anonymously, as Grannyp - a spur of the moment name, stolen from the Archers: (oh the irony - having declined to be called granny by my grandchildren, I am known as Granny across the web).

I had no expectations of a wider audience. But as I wrote I began to wonder about other blogs and to look them out.  I added comments to some. The writers of those blogs began adding comments to mine.

Hey, she's mistaken, surely?  If anyone's known as 'Granny across the web', it's me!  

Actually I'm No.3 on Google for 'granny', underneath the YouTube rapping granny, and www.goodgranny.com, which appears to be a front for Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall.  And I was above both of them until only recently.  I wish I'd taken a snapshot of me at No. 1.

Granny P, join the queue, you - you - you - pretender!

Amazoning and Googling the dream

I notice that Trevor Pavitt has republished Living the Dream, this time with self-publishing phenomenon Lulu. 

It's now available on Amazon, a first for a self-published canal book, and you can also browse selected sections of it on Google Books here. 

I've done an honest review of the book on its Amazon page, although I haven't seen this new edition.  At time of writing it ranks 175,767 in sales.  Let's see how it does in the coming weeks - I've never 'followed' a book on Amazon sales ranking before.

My earlier posts about the book are here (and follow back the links).

Weston Marsh

Newish blog: Canal Photo Blog.  Does what it says in the title. 

Some nice photos, from someone called 'Weston Marsh'.  He seems to be based around the Burton-Fradley area on the Trent & Mersey. 

He begain blogging very soon after Ralph Freeman of nb Grey Nomad (aka Fred Hall of nb J-Omega) stopped.  For some reason Ralph chose to stop blogging immediately after I praised him for his efforts - see my earlier post Freeman of the canals).

Mr Marsh (can I call him Weston?) looks like he's filled Ralph's gap in the blogging landscape, with similar camera, subjects, photo style, neck of the woods and circle of friends.

Curious name, Weston Marsh.  I presume he took his nom-de-blog from Weston Marsh Lock, the point where the navigable River Weaver links to the Manchester Ship Canal. It's a lonely place, and few people go there except to say they've been there, done that.

Anyway, welcome to the boatroll Weston, and well done!  Here's a picture of your very own lock to make you feel at home on Granny Buttons.  Granny's just the other side - you can just see her roof - and that's the INEOS Fluor chemical works in the background.  I wrote here about this lonely place when I visited in September 2003.    Gosh, I'd only been writing this blog for a month at the time.  I'm over four years old now, but you wouldn't think it, would you?

Pickles does a No.2

Pete has started his blog NB Pickles No. 2 with a compelling premise: 

The aim is to fit out a sailaway 70' narrowboat in thirty days, then move aboard.  Living afloat whilst still working.  Should be quite easy really.

... The boat will not be finished for at least a year (if ever). We'd rather the £800 it takes to keep our rented house ticking over went on our boat and not into our landlord's pocket.

It's immediately shaping up to be a really interesting read, not least to see what can be done in a 30-day deadline, and then to follow the build as he actually lives aboard. 

Pete doesn't say what the original No. 1 was, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was some sort of 'Rosebud', like a much-loved family pet or an old rowing boat of his childhood. 

The 30-day clock begins counting down when the boat is delivered as a sailaway, which is hopefully before Christmas, and Pete is then under starter's orders to turn it into a liveaboard.  Or at least a campaboard.   I think this would be a great excuse for a webcam.   

Sue of No Problem and Maffi were first to mention Pickles No.2.  Well done chaps - you are more alert to new blogs than I me. 

I'm honoured to see Pete has immediately listed Sue, Maffi, Granny Buttons and four other usual blogging suspects in his blogroll.

Pete says he's a bowyer, which sounds fascinating and must be quite a conversation-stopper at parties.  (He'll have a lot in common with Andrew Smith, who's part-owner of NB Sojourn, and who lists archery amongst his hobby.  Incidentally, Andrew's just started a blog himself, called bowsnboats).

I wonder if Pete's ever worked with erstwhile BW Chairman David Fletcher?  I look forward to his account of when Pickles No.2 finally reaches Branston Lock No.8.

Towpathing portmanteauly

In the latest edition of Waterways (the official IWA journal)  editor Harry Arnold has an interesting article called 'A Take on Towing Paths'.  It's all about towing paths (in case you hadn't guessed). 

'Towing path' (two words) is the official and correct terminology as the "IWA towing path policy" shows. 

But most of us now call them 'towpaths'.  Indeed, so conventional is the term that there's even a magazine called Towpath Talk.

This oneword/two-word split is continued in the argument about narrow boats/narrowboats.  I'd argue that, as with 'narrowboat', 'towpath' is a more practical term in the age of internet search.  It's a single word, which makes it easier to find on the web.

Harry Arnold doesn't mention 'towpath' at all in his article, so it clearly it sticks in his craw as much as 'metre' does in mine.  Or perhaps some IWA functionary has gone through his article with a red felt pen (redpen).

Modern English is full of such historical contractions.  These are called 'portmanteau words' (although technically portmanteau words are those fused together more intimately, such as smog, brunch or motel).  Want 2-become-1 examples?  Here are some from Harry Arnold's own pen, which I've split into their original forms:

• Water ways
• Multi(ple) function
• Over grown
• Infra structure
• Bye laws

So 'towpath' it is for me.  I think it's gomoglish (good modern English).

NB Albert's drydocking and blacking

Following my post about the blacking of Valerie and GrannyB, Steve Parkin pointed out that he wrote about the drydocking and blacking of Albert a year ago.

Steve is full of praise for Baxter's of Yardley Gobion.

Thanks, Steve.  I was interested to see your 'guided tour' of Albert, including the boatman's cabin and Ruston & Hornsby-flavoured engine room.  It's a lovely boat.

Granny's cratches

 
Side by side by Streethay, Granny Buttons' old (left) and new cratchboards, April 2007.

The new one has a triangular drop-down table, with glass front panels.  The old one was a more traditional tongue-&-groove jobbie, but after almost eight years the boards in the middle had started to buckle and come apart.

Granny's got a slightly taller cratchboard this time.  It gives a little more headroom in the front deck (I believe it's called the well deck, but I call it the cockpit.  Christine calls it the poop deck). 

There's just one bridge where Granny might stand a little too proud (that is, the cratch might stick out too high and thus require dismantling).  That's a bridge just below Langley Mill Lock, the final lock on the Erewash Canal.  I think it's Anchor Bridge.  Golly, it's low!

Narrowboat sinks on Severn

Man rescued from sinking boat - Worcester News

Ouch.  Narrowboat sinks in Severn.  No lives lost, luckily.

The story says the emergency services were 'called to the boat' at 7:30pm, which was three hours after sunset.  I'd be interested in learning more.  Was he navigating at night?  Had he anchored?  Had the boat sprung a leak?  Was it swamped by a passing big barge?  Did he have much time before he called the fire brigade? 

The story says he was trying to bail out, which suggests a slow leak.  If it was fast, perhaps he wouldn't bother but would try to steer to safety. 

I've often worried about it happening to Granny Buttons. Fortunately I've had no worries on the Severn, although the Thames was worrying, especially when big boats passed me.  It was worse when they came up behind me, because I couldn't steer straight into their wake, but rocked about like an unseaworthy rubber ducky.

Swan swam in. Swim, swan, swim! Swan swam out again. Well swum, swan!

Nic on Silhouette has posted a fascinating time lapse video.  Headed downhill on the Grand Union Marsworth lock flight, they found themselves sharing Lock 41 with a swan.  Sensing an easy passage, the swan then joined them at the next lock, 42. 

At Lock 43, Silhouette was joined by the swan's whole family - cob, pen and cygnets all together.  This is the sort of story I would have 'yeah-righted'.   Except it's here on the timelapse video.  Swan swims in about 1 minute in.  Well caught, Nic!

I've shared a lock with fighting swans, and compared it to a cockfight.

It's dramatic and entertaining, and if you were an impresario you could probably attract quite an audience to a swanfight in a lock.  Not to mention a few bookmakers. 

But BW are wise to this.  A couple of years ago I came upon this warning on the Caen Hill locks at Devizes.

Swans quietly hitching a ride - especially en famille - must be rarer.  And families rare resort to fighting on journeys. Unless you know better?