Granny Buttons

The Wayback web

Have you wondered how a web site looked a year back, two or three years back? The Wayback Machine might help. Type in the address of the site you are interested in, and it will hunt its database for old versions.

I found this stunning. When I typed in www.grannybuttons.com I was transported back to a version from early 2000 that I'd entirely forgotten about. It's spooky, like a wife who never forgets your mistakes and flings 'em back in your face just when you thought you'd put your past behind you!

The Pennine Waterways site shows tremendous evolution over four years. Its earliest archived incarnation is in February 2000
and while very useful then, it's a lot more professional now.

On the other side of the coin, there's been very little change to www.narrowboatworld.com, and records of it exist only from June 2003, and the site looking exactly then as it is now, no design change. Only the content was different. Good or bad? For me, that was a disappointment. NBW presumably has a very basic template, with no archiving, no development, no outgoing links and no interaction with the wider web, which is a shame. I'd be interested to see early versions of NBW, but I get the feeling that the site's creator/updater, Tom Crossley, doesn't have any streak of the historian about him.

You can put a bookmarklet button for the Wayback Machine in your browser links bar so that any time you want to see an archived version of any site just click the button.

The Wayback Machine is now officially the largest database in the world, adding 12 terabytes (12,000 gigabytes more every month. But it's not a search engine; simply an archive. In fact, the company behind it is officially (and grandly) called 'The Internet Archive'. It's possible to ask them *not* to archive your web efforts, but you might be grateful, one day, that they did.

Why do all this? Because, says the Internet Archive...

Making the website mountain come to Mohammed

You can visit a web site like this every day to see what's new. Or your computer can collect it automatically and have it ready and waiting for you when you have time to read it (or ignore it).

This feature is called 'syndication', also known as 'RSS', and it can save you a lot of time. It's effectively like email, because it comes to you. But it gets around the problem of spam and giving out your email address to others. You are fetching it, rather than passively accepting it, so it's a lot easier to stop, too!

Media Insider, a PR-devoted website, has an overview of this. It's aimed at the PR person, but the principle is the same - it's as good a definition as I've found anywhere.

You need an RSS reader first. Soon email software will include the RSS technology automatically, but in the meantime there's a huge variety of readers available, many free. I like Newsgator, because it becomes part of Outlook in Microsoft Office (but it costs $29).

On the sidebar of my website you'll see a link saying 'syndicate this site.
When you have your RSS reader installed, you can just right-click on this link and choose the option to add it. Voila! Every post I make will automatically be collected by the newsreader software. No tiresome visiting of web sites!

Ownerships are Go

Speaking with a guy at Ownerships today, he tells me that changes are afoot with the company range. The freshly painted boats that so impressed me at Stockton Top Marina are the current range, but by no means the newest. Les mentioned the picture off Wolverley on the Ownerships web site; it's almost 1mb in size (!), so I've downloaded it here and cropped to manageable proportions:

Ownerships will be launching a brand new range at Crick, which Les mentioned yesterday in his comment on my post. The facts are as he says, except there'll be no jacuzzi. That's perhaps one impractical luxury too far.

The nomenclature is more complex than either he or I suggested. The previous generation ran through the O, S and other initial letters, with no great scheme in mind. The current generation are named after various picturesque places on the S&W, Oxford and K&A canals. (Wolverley is one of the prettiest of locks on the S&W, and waterways writer Graham Booth is lucky to live close by, canalside, in perhaps the most gorgeous setting I've seen,).

The next generation, starting with Apperley, will be named after sites on the Leeds & Liverpool canal.
They are being built by - oh, heck, I've lost my notes. Someone close by Stockton, anyway. But not Kate Boats.

Grand Canal goes west

According to the BBC today, Somerset Council has turned down a plea for more finance for restoration of the Grand Western Canal.

'All Or Nothing' and 'Baccante'

'Coral' saw this web site and writes:

I would like to know about two boats - perhaps you may know what happened to them or someone does? They are "All or Nothing" and "Baccante".

"I have been away from boats for about eight or so years would like to contact anyone that perhaps remembers me. I'm just not sure how!?

"I had two little boys a big dog called Sian and a husband called Dave. All has changed since and am now remarried and have four kids altogether, and now live in the Highlands. I would appreciate any info and thankyou for your time."

Going for brokerage

You want to buy a narrowboat and live aboard the canals. You've got the money burning a hole, from Granny's legacy, and you are choiced to decide: get in line to one of the reputable builders and take delivery of your dream in two or three years, or find a boat on sale from someone who wants out of the canal boat reality. Or perhaps from someone who's selling their old dream and having another built.

So naturally, you look at the boats for sale. And that, mostly, means a brokerage.

Some say that the best boats are never openly offered for sale. If you have a boat for sale (goes the reasoning) it's too hard to part with it to strangers, and anyway, a really good boat is always a good investment, so you'll get a good price for it from friends. Or their friends.

But most people will be trudging around the estate agents of the waterways - the brokers.

For me, there's only one broker, and so so many of his boats seem to reek of class. Is it the boats people bring to him, or is it the way he presents them?

I bought my boat from Andy Burnett five years ago, and while I bought a dose of buyer's remorse, it wasn't his fault. He gave me plenty of points at which I could back out, and at one point even suggested I might like to. I wouldn't hesitate to buy or sell from him again. I've watched his web site in the last few years, and it's never ceased to fascinate.

Andy Burnett worked for the brochure department of Rolls Royce early in his career, and I think it shows. There are no more finely detailed narrowboat brochures on the canals, and if you buy one of his boats you'll want to frame the brochure.

If you want to see how the other 0.1% of people live in brick houses, you read Architectural Digest. And if you want to look inside other canal boats, you browse Andy Burnett every couple of weeks. Most of the boats you'll struggle to afford; many of the others will be beyond your budget. The others will perhaps be in your dreams. But none are any more expensive than a cheap flat, after all.

But there are other brokers, of course, and your dream boat will quite likely be with them. I've listed a few brokers and other sources in an adjacent list (which might come and go, depending on my whim). One of the most interesting is the whimisically named Apollo Duck, a multinational site that allows you to advertise your boat for free in a basic level, and for £25 with more details.

Of course, advertising isn't the same as putting it through a broker. You are on your own with Apollo Duck. It's only a board for you to pin your ad on, with a certain level of traffic promised - or rather, suggested. You might get better traffic and value by simply starting your own blog, and putting the ad up on that.

If you are buying, just type 'narrowboats for sale' into Google, and see what pops up. Interestingly, Apollo Duck comes third in the results, which is encouraging.

Beer for breakfast

'Funkypancake' asks on his blog "Is it ever appropriate to have beer for breakfast?"

There was a time - Tudor times and before - when people always drank beer at breakfast. Indeed, in medieval times the water wasn't safe to drink, and drinking a liquid breakfast, whose alcohol would kill the germs, was paradoxically the only way of ensuring one would excrete solids later.

Now, here's the relevance to waterways: On Funkypancake's blog post a commenter called bignoseduglyguy adds that he once spent an entire ten-day narrowboat holiday '"not sober".

"On day two after a heavy first night in the pub, I decided that I needed a 'hair of the (sea) dog' pint whilst steering the boat with nine slumbering chums. This tasted so good that I continued to have a morning pint each and every day."

I've always said the waterways need more heroes!

Evelyn Waugh's life as a student at Oxford was saturated with breakfast drinking, with "A vastly expensive career of alcohol", as he related in his diary.

December 8 1924 started off with an early morning visit to 31 St Aldates:

"...where I found an enormous orgy in progress. Billy and I unearthed a strap and whipped Tony. Everyone was hideously drunk except, strangely enough, myself."

St Aldates was home to the Hypocrites, one of the university's many Hogarthian drinking dens. The popular drink of the Hypocrites was an earthenware tankard of red Burgundy, and the standing house rule was 'gentlemen may prance but not dance'.

Ownerships new livery?

Ownerships has for some time represented a fairly standard sort of narrowboat, typically designed and decorated, usually navy blue and maroon colour schemes, and most of them with names beginning with S (e.g. Saros, Slipstream, etc).

This weekend I passed a stream of boats coming from the direction of Stockton Top Marina, all looking similar, looking brand new, beautifully painted a dark blue, and each named after attractive places on narrow canals the Oxford Canal (e.g. Wolvercote). I asked one of the boaters which new hire fleet it was, because I thought it looked "very smart for a hire boat". I raised an eyebrow when he told me it was the new look for Ownerships.

I've hunted for a picture of this, but the Ownerships site still shows the old livery. Stockton Top Marina is now run by the burgeoning Kate Boats business. If I've identified correctly, these new Ownerships boats seem to use Reeves shells, perhaps no surprise considering Reeves is based at nearby Napton and makes solid, and very attractive hulls. You can tell the standard Reeves shell from the very low profile of prow (not a sea-going design!) and the characteristic half-moon hasp for the breast rope.

I was impressed by Kate's fitouts at the couple of shows I've seen them. Are they building for Ownerships now?

Waterways glossary

Blogs have a huge range of applications, and I've just thought of another. I mentioned earlier about waterways glossaries, and how there's not an easily searchable one - i.e. where you type in a word, and up comes the individual definition.

Jim Shead does an excellent one, in terms of content, but it's not very practical to search, being split into four pages. If you know the name of the term, fine; if you only know the definition, not so useful.

Roger Fuller has a less compendious, but no less useful, 'jargon buster' on his Five Towns website, which also has a load of information about historic boats.

There's a boating dictionary on Marisafe.com, but this is American and inevitably is slewed away from the ethnically peculiar UK waterways. Although, interestingly, they do include such an odd term as 'gongoozler', a word that most British canal boaters feel they own spiritually.

I just realised that it's easy to create one with this technology, complete with photographic examples, so I'll start soon, a definition a day.

In the sidebar on this site you'll see a list called 'Categories'. Clicking on one of the categories filters the blog posts to include only those for that particular category. So click on 'Waterways glossary', and you'll have a list of only the glossary posts. Given one word a day, why, it should be finished in scarcely a twelvemonth!

Warwick to Newbold

My original plan was to make Coventry this weekend, but inevitably I fell short, only reaching Newbold. Still, it's a fine place to spend a few days, with a mix of visitor, 48 hr, 14 day and long-term moorings, two interesting pubs, and of course the glowering portal of Newbold Tunnel ahead.

The route from the Saltisford Canal Trust included a stop at Braunston Marina, where I pumped out, bunkered up, rinsed down the paintwork and paused at the finely equipped Midland Chandlery for a couple of spare. At Braunston I picked up my friend Ray, with his two black labradors, who bounded along fully half the way to Hillmorton. Indeed, they even swam a few hundred yards of the length. I was churning inside whenever the dogs leapt in the canal, to be honest. It's alright for Ray to say they are fine, but I don't feel that, and it feels like my fault. Besides which, I have to worry about the inside of the boat when they are wet and cold anout outside, and I worry about the inside of the boat when they are warm and wet and inside.

Incidentally, I ran my route this weekend through Canalplan for a two-day passage, and it selected Birdingbury Wharf (The Boat Inn, Stockton) as an overnight stopping point for the first night. True to my nature, I didn't really look at it closely until I'd tied up for the night.

Quite spooky to realise that Canalplan was spot-on: It said that I should stop at Birdingbury Wharf, above Stockton Locks, and Birdingbury Wharf was exactly where I'd chosen to halt on the first night!
Tied up for the second night at the park on the Boughton Road. I spent Sunday fetching my car from Warwick, finding a nice place to spend the coming week and tidying up the boat.

Tolkein's two towers

The canal guides mention Perrott's Folly, a 94ft tower built about 1759 by Mr Perrott, reputedly so he could gaze on his wife's grave ten miles away. They keep mentioning it, and in the ten weeks I spent in the Birmingham area, damned if I could see it from anywhere on the canal.

So I sought it out a couple of weeks back, before I left Birmingham. It's there alright, and it's almost jokingly out of place, in the middle of a rather dubious modern housing estate. Tolkein lived near here himself once, and Perrott's Folly is reputed to be the inspiration for the towers in Lord of the Rings.

There's an interesting description of Perrott's Folly (and lots more about the locality) in 'Rotton Park and Round About', an introduction to the Edgbaston and Rotton Park area by John Morris Jones, a local headmaster.

Actually there are two towers here; the other is a Victorian edifice, part of the Edgbaston waterworks for Rotton Park Reservoir, and you can instantly see the inspiration - if inspiration it truly was. I can place myself in a teenage Tolkein's shoes in an instant.

Of course, two hundred and fifty years ago, Mr Perrott's delightful gothick whimsy was in a far more rural setting - and as a new building, then the tallest in Birmingham, it was doubtless very familiar to Brindley as the canal engineer paced out his new waterway and feeder reservoir nearby.

Sending Granny to Coventry

I've been sheltering in the Saltisford Arm this week, since descending the Hatton Flight last Saturday. The Saltisford Canal Trust is a well-organised charitable haven for boats. There's about nine or ten residential boats and a few others wintering (including three pairs of hotel boats). I think I'm the only visitor this week.

I was intimidated at first, worried that the charges for visitors might be a little stiff, like certain marinas I've recently visited. No worries. Saltisford allows free overnight mooring, and reasonable day-by-day of £3. Its a respectable, fairly secure place to leave your boat unattended.

Now I'm off to Coventry over the weekend.

Floating achitectural hazard

caterer-online.com reports today on a floating Chinese restaurant fined for food safety breaches.

It's said to be the 'first river restaurant' ever prosecuted as a health hazard.

But the real disappointment isn't that the Lotus Restaurant was fined - every restaurant can suffer that indignity from time to time - but that it's not really a 'river restaurant - it's simply a giant, ugly, squat red floating pontoon.

I'd fine the owner and close the darn thing down for that egregious offence alone! Brings back memories of the infamous 'Chinese Junk' in Gas Street Basin five years ago.

Boat Swap

"Boating Without Borders". It's a neat idea, if it works. www.boatswap.info is where you go to offer your precious boat in exchange for another, elswhere in the world. "Exchange your boat and discover new waterways and boating areas" (it says here).

There aren't too many boats listed on the site at the moment, and the parochial peculiarity of English canal boats stand out - they are listed as 'motor boats', and there's only one conventional narrowboat. There's a river cruiser on the Trent, and a tiny little Screwcraft boat - at under 12ft, it optimistically 'sleeps 2'. But then, if you are already a narrowboater that won't worry you - you're more interested in where the other bloke is based and what he's got.

The site is subscription-based. You can browse for a boat, but have to join to see the contact details. The subscription is a hefty 25 Euros a year (what's that in Her Maj's coin - £18?) which I think is a bit stiff considering they claim it's not a commercial site, considering their aren't too many boats on the site, and considering their responsibility ends once they give you the other bloke's email address. There's an awful lot of financial information, bank account details, and so forth. They make quite a meal of the payments, but they don't seem to have heard of PayPal.

It's a Dutch site, so I presume that if anything went wrong you would have to sue in Holland. But who hasn't wondered about swapping your boat with someone else from time to time?

I think I'd be a bit more positive about this site's ambitions and accomplishment if it didn't start off with some cheap, infernal music that led me to scrabble furiously with the speaker off-switch.