Granny Buttons

Business blogging

Do you know what Midland Chandlers and Anderton Marina have in common? 

They are both prominent waterways businesses, yes.    But if you run a search for them in Google, you'll find old but unflattering posts from Granny Buttons around No. 4 in both sets of search results.  (When my posts were new, they were for a while even higher.  For a month last year I was No.1 in Google worldwide for 'Anderton Marina', giving me much schadenfreude.)

There's still nothing in the way of a web presence for Midland Chandlers (there's a personal email address, which I found on Waterscape, inshallah) and only an online brochure for Anderton Marina.

My point is, how can an opinionated minor squit like myself, with only one brief inconsequential thought daily, get such unwarranted attention against such important businesses in the search engines?   

The answer lies in blogging.  I still hate the word, though I don't know a better one.  But if you want a brief guide as to why a waterways business should be doing this themselves,  I recommend reading The rise of business blogging by Steve Rubel.  This (inevitably) has an American focus, and perhaps discouragingly a computer-industry focus, but bear with it. 

With the appearance of columns (is that a better word?) from small British businesses such as tailor Tom Mahon ('English Cut') and Butler Sheet Metal ('Tinbasher') that I mentioned last week,  a few good examples are finally being set. 

And even set aside the businesses, I wish the vocal waterways personalities would start doing the same.  They won't pay the mite that Waterways World can afford, if you need mites to live, that is.  And after all, you can always publish your thoughts to the blog the month after you post them on dead trees.

More on I, transatlantic narrowboat

Just had this info from Brian Crutcher, who built and sailed the 'I Frances', the narrowboat that crossed the Atlantic and is now on the English waterways. 

The I. Frances is named for my aunt  Isabel Frances Crutcher who died about the time the boat was nearing completion. She never called herself Isabel because that was her mothers name and they did not often see eye to eye. She (I guess he means the boat, not the aunt) is now out of the water near York awaiting our return.

Brian picks up on idle thoughts I had about taking Granny across the Atlantic:

If you do ship your boat to the Americas I heartily recommend the St. Laurence and Ottawa rivers as well as the Rideau Canal and the Trent-Severn Waterway. To the best of my knowledge there are no waterways in New England. The first entrance south of Canada to the inland waterways is via the Hudson River and Erie Canal. You may not like the Great Lakes because they are as big as the Irish Sea, but in the summer the weather is generally calm there are lots of interesting little ports and no noticeable tides.

Granny and frosty weather

Granny Buttons has a diesel heating system, and when I'm away from the boat for a few days I must often decide whether to leave it on, in case to a freeze-up.   This can cost me a couple of quid a day.  But as with any house, a hard frost can play havoc with your water pipes and other bits.  I normally check with the BBC Weather page, which allows you to check the five-day weather forecast for your particular town.

In the last few days there have been quite a few reports of hard weather.  North America has had near-record blizzards, and in Europe a man tried to 'pee his way out of an avalanche':

A Slovak man trapped in his car under an avalanche freed himself by drinking 60 bottles of beer and urinating on the snow to melt it. 

He said: "I was scooping the snow from above me and packing it down below the window, and then I peed on it to melt it. It was hard and now my kidneys and liver hurt. But I'm glad the beer I took on holiday turned out to be useful and I managed to get out of there."

Parts of Europe have this week been hit by the heaviest snowfalls since 1941, with some places registering more than ten feet of snow in 24 hours.

But here in the Kingdom this winter we've not often had a hard frost in the daytime, and rarely at night.  Is this global warming?  ('snow use asking me, if you catch my drift) 

Perhaps we should thank The Gulf Stream.  Certainly I feel happier that I've not wasted too much this winter on heating Granny Buttons when I don't need to.

To Hertford: For lonely-Herts.

Granny went from Broxbourne to Hertford today.  Seven locks, about ten miles, around 11am-7pm including 90 mins of assorted shopping and filling the water tank, and a further couple of hours tea and chat with bargemeister Adrian Stott.

Most of the locks on the Lee Navigation host pretty lock cottages, the euphoniously named Carthagena Lock being one of the most delightful and well card for.  Certain others, such as the less euphoniously titled Feildes (at the confluence of the Lee and Stort rivers) and Hardmead  Locks, seem derelict, for all the charm of their architectural vernacular.

It's five years since I came this way.   The Lee improves considerably above Broxbourne, and Ware is almost as delightful a riverside setting as any town can get. 

I stopped (by prior arrangement) in the big bend of the river where Adrian Stott keeps 'Onx', his 1927  Dutch Barge.  He put the kettle on and we had tea and a long introductory chat. I tried to ask questions and listen, something I'm not skilled at doing.  Usually I talk too much about myself.  Adrian is not only a leading light in the Dutch Barge Association, but also a campaigner in the whole waterways movement and displayed evident knowledge in every part of the subjects.  I don't think I'd care to cross swords with him.   I was impressed to find he's a Douglas Adams fan, and has The Meaning of Liff aboard. We were able to bat a few Liff words back and forth without needing to refer to the book. 

Spent the night at Hertford visitor moorings, by the allotments.   Granny will be here for the next week.  It seems a secure, friendly place, overlooked by respectable apartments, close by some deligthful townhouses, and with a lot of family pedestrian traffic on the towpath.

In the evening I walked a little around town and had a drink in the riverside Barge pub  (pricey and crowded, but with a wonderful Addlestone's Cloudy Cider and a fine selection of pretty young girls) and  the more traditional and less fashionable Ram Inn in Fore Street.  I only had a half-pint in the Ram, but the attractive landlady (barmaid?) bade me a friendly goodnight as I left.  I was haunted by this, and after a few paces down the street I turned round and walked back in to thank her.  I think I was feeling a bit depressed and alone tonight, and her valediction made a great impression on me.  The kindliest gesture all weekend.  For a few minutes, as I returned to Granny Buttons, I was a little bit in love.  I like Hertford tonight. 

Broxbourne to Hertford this weekend.

I'd meant by now to write about the new batteries Granny needs, and the rust spots on the beautiful paintwork that need attention, and the dull brass that needs polishing.  But it'll have to wait.  I'm not really fit to labour over it in the coming month.

Hope to get Granny to Hertford from Broxbourne this weekend, and then to Harlow and points north on the River Stort next weekend.  And stay on the Stort for a month while Roydon Lock is repaired.  Sorry, I haven't got the energy or wit to write more at the moment. 

But here's the waterways link, compulsory for every post on Granny Buttons.  This is the Lee Valley Boat Centre, where you can hire narrowboats and dayboats.  I hope they have diesel and gas this weekend, because I need them both.

Another hen's tooth for sale; chicken coop is half the asking price.

On Apollo Duck today there's a residential mooring + liveaboard narrowboat for sale in West London - "with own private garden. Secure gated marina".  The phone no. given is in Southall, though that might be a work no.

Boat is 50ft, 10 years old.  Mooring fees £250/month, council tax only £9 a month (!).  A decent enough spec for a liveaboard much like mine but a bit shorter, and it's got an AMC 1.8 engine just like mine; dull, but very reliable. 

But I suspect that half the £65,000 asking-price is for the plum location and favourable circumstance.  A good mooring can be a family heirloom.

Update:  Hmm, less than 24 hours later, this one's already been pulled. I wonder if the applicants couldn't form an orderly queue?

Sunday Times has narrow horizons about 100 holidays

I see a canal holiday came 81st out of 100 in the Sunday Times "Summer 100" holidays last Sunday:

One summer, one million holidays. So how do you choose? Simple: you let us be your guide. Mark Hodson cuts through the also-rans to find this year’s top getaways. All you have to do now is narrow it down to one and pick up the phone.

One can't help feeling that this choice has to do with a long-weekend whim last July by one particular couple...

81   Narrow horizons: keep up with the Indiana Joneses on a narrow boat in Wales. Last summer, Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart traded LA glamour for a 65ft barge and pottered along the Llangollen Canal. You can do the same, with Maestermyn Cruisers (01691 662424, www.maestermyn.co.uk). A week’s hire for four costs £788 in May, £1,048 in August.

But 81st?  I can't believe there are eighty better places in the world to spend a summer week.   Well, perhaps twenty or so, but they are all on other canals anyway, although you might find Black Prince at Chirk a good alternative hire to Maestermyn.

I was amused by the 'Wales' reference.  Only a smaller (OK, glorious) section of the Llangollen Canal is in Cymru.  But this is certainly a wonderful place to holiday, albeit somewhat crowded in August.  I spent Oct-Dec 2003 on the 'Golly', and it was a grand place to be in the off-season. 

For example, where else (and at what else time of year) could you leave Granny Buttons alone and open and untethered in the lock itself, and sit inside in the warm with a pint for half an hour, as I did at the Willey Moor Lock Tavern, near Whitchurch in November (left)?

(alert via Waterscape)

Writing about the English Cut

Here's a treasure of a blog:  English Cut.  It's the fascinating website of Tom Mahon, tailor, ("After more than twenty years experience of hand tailoring...one of the youngest on Savile Row"), and it's barely a month old, but it shows what a man with a skill and a specialisation can do. 

These shears were given to me by head cutter, Mr. Hallberry on his retirement, after forty years with Anderson & Sheppard. They were the original shears used by Mr. Sheppard of Anderson & Sheppard, which first opened its doors in 1905. Mr Sheppard gave them to Mr Hallberry, decades ago, when he retired. And doubtless I'll pass them on to some young turk when my turn to step down arrives.

Let's get the waterways connection out of the way.  Mr Mahon likes to sail a friend's ketch off the west coast of Scotland (that's the closest I can get, unless you count the word 'cut').  But what he loses in relevance to Granny Buttons he gains in relevance of setting an example to waterways craftsmen everywhere.   

Imagine, instead, he was a boatbuilder, an engineer, a coal-&-diesel boatman, a boat painter, a waterways artist.   All of them potentially as skilled as a Savile Row tailor in their own way, and I've met many who write very well.   I hope to hear their stories.

If you're Graham Reeves or Tim Tyler (both tailors in steel on 'the cut') and you want to see a slightly more relevant small-business blog, try Tinbasher.

(via Nevon)

Creative Commons

I've adopted a Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike licence for my own work here.  This means that you can copy anything of mine you like, provided you make clear it originated with me, that it's not for commercial purposes, and if you modify it in any way, you don't claim any extra copyright of your own on it.  On that basis you don't have to ask me in advance.

A lot of the images I use here are other people's copyright too, but even if I don't ask in advance, I always work on a Creative Commons basis, acknowledge them either directly or in the context of talking about them.   I hope that's OK too with you. 

Is it a trolley? Is it a vandal's canal toy? No, it's Supercart!

The discarded supermarket trolley is almost an iconic symbol of the derelict urban canal.   If you've ever had one of those wrapped around your propellor blades, you'll curse the lazy shopper, irresponsible yob and canalside supermarket as you spend half a summer's day sawing off the wires one by one down your weed hatch.  And you'll bless the assorted annual canal cleanups from folk whose idea of a good holiday weekend is standing knee-deep in mud, dragging old trollies from bridgeholes.

Some salvation could be at hand, with the Supercart, an all-plastic supermarket trolley that could be the most garish 'retail experience' to come out of South Africa since Nando's Chicken.  If they can persuade the UK's supermarkets to switch to this HDPE plastic alternative, the days of scraping your bottom on a trolley on a bridgehole or jamming your prop againsts its wires could hopefully be ending.  The Supercart would (hopefully) shatter. 

HDPE also has a specific gravity of around 0.96 (i.e. it floats), which would also make it much easier to recover (assuming the wheels don't add too much to the weight).

The chief drawback of this type of trolley is the execrable colours they can supply it in.  On the (superbly programmed) web site they offer a mix-and-match of your own choice of eye-popping colours to rival the worst that Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, La-La and Po ever dreamed up.  Can you do better (worse) than me?

But as the Supercart lady was eager to point out, supermarkets can easily commission the new trolleys in their own (likely even worse!) colours.

Trawlerblog Abyssinia

Trawlerblog (or "Ships Blog: The Adventures of Abyssinia and Crew") is the interesting tale of a very unusual 100-ton aluminium ship operating out of Seattle and up the Canadian coast as far as Alaska.   It's a genuine boat blog that's been running since last February, still updated dutifully.  And real UK inland waterways blogs are so scarce on the water, so this one jumps the queue and gets on my boatroll immediately.  It's pretty entertaining too; a great addition to my Bloglines subscription.

Abyssinia (the ship) seems to have been built partly as a commercial craft, partly as a home.  It was launched in 1999, although it was little more than an unlined sailaway and didn't get its shakedown cruise until 2003.  Its design and construction is chronicled on their pre-blog website.  The boat itself is a fully aluminium hull, like a giant Sea Otter, and is an intriguing design from a naval architect who seems to be thinking outside the box.   For example, the engine is right at the front, allowing 3 storeys of (quieter) living accomodation at what narrowboaters call the blunt end. 

At first glance (indeed, second) Abyssinia looks a candidate for my 'odd boats' album, although I daresay in Seattle they'd say the same about Granny Buttons.  The crew look pretty normal though.  Well, as far as dogs wearing souwester hats can look normal!

Cheshunt to Broxbourne

A gentle weekend, the first on Granny since I came out of hospital.

Saturday lunchtime my father and sister came for lunch, Roz bring boiled beef & carrots.  Daddy will be two fat ladies come next July 11th, and he is getting creakier and creakier, but he never ceases to amaze me with his determination to walk to the ends of the earth to meet up with Granny Buttons. 

It was the first full day of my return to Granny, and I had to go somewhere, do something.  So I insisted on steering up to the next lock (Cheshunt Lock) and turning around at the winding hole before returning to the same mooring and settling down to the same mooring pins - except facing the other way.

Local trivia: Cheshunt is the home of Tesco, of whose 15-strong board of directors, ten are now younger than me. 

It was also once the childhood home of Cliff Richard.  Ah, how tempora, how mores!  Perhaps ironically for the 'Peter Pan of pop', Cliff is now chiefly commemorated in Cheshunt in a McCarthy & Stone retirement development:

WINTER OFFER - Cliff Richard Court, Cheshunt: 
Reserve apartment 16 and receive either £5,000 discount off the apartment price, £5,000 worth of interior furnishings or £5,000 towards your moving costs. For more details telephone 01992 637851. Offer available for reservations taken on or before Friday 25th February 2005.

Charterline boats go under, website forgotten.

Report today from credit industry online magazine creditman.biz relates the demise of timeshare narrowboat operator Charterline.  It collapsed late last year, but I only came to notice it in the story today.  Yet another shady, dismal timeshare tale:

A high pressure sales operation marketing timeshare on narrowboats has been wound up following a DTI investigation.  Customers were recruited via cold calling and street marketing surveys to sales presentations at hotels in Maidenhead and Chester, having been tempted by offers of free overnight stays, food and drink.

Once at the presentations, sales staff made a series of misleading promises in a bid to win customers. They claimed that the timeshares were also an investment opportunity, as owners could opt to rent out their allocated weeks over the 35 year lifetime of the timeshare holding. The company had no means of supporting this claim.

The sales staff inferred [sic - I think they mean implied] that timeshare holders would own a share of a specified boat, when in fact the timeshare was only available for a pool of boats. It was also claimed that the boats would be replaced every five years, with contributions from yearly management fees allocated to a replacement fund. DTI investigations revealed that no such provisions had been made.

Although the company collapsed last October, and the towpath telegraph buzzed with the news quickly (including suggestions that a couple of the boats might be sinking, the company's fairly competent website www.oncharterline.com/ is still running blithely on autopilot.   Plus they are still featured on the River Thames Guide site.

Skipton Waterway Festival

Flattered to be on a BW mailing list alerting me to Skipton Waterways Festival next May Day bank holiday.  So I blogged it.  Sat Apr 30th-Mon May 2nd, around the Skipton Canal Basin.

Entertainment, competitions, “boaters’ bash”, craft stalls and children’s activities. For more information or to book a place for your boat, contact British Waterways on 01977 554 351 or Pennine Cruisers on 01756 795 478.

(What's a "boaters' bash"?  It's clearly a phrase better know in the USA than in the UK.) 

I won't be there.  Even if I was to leave the London area at Easter I'd be pressed hard to reach Skipton in fly-boat style and speed, but I'm sure the weekend will go fine without me. 

But I can think of at least one more good reason to fly to Skipton:  Stanforth's celebrated pork pie establishment.  There, they sell the pies hot from the oven.  And they are extraordinary.  As you bit into one, its jellied filling is still liquid and scalding, and squirts down your shirt.  And you don't even care, so good does it feel to eat.  Granny Buttons passed through Skipton eighteen months ago, and still my mouth sometimes asks me why we don't go back together.

Incidentally, Skipton Web (from whom I nicked the photos) is that rarity amongst local web sites, a real community treasure trove.  Recommended.  Hebden Bridge Web is another brilliant Yorkshire site.  Must be something in the Yorkshire water.  Or the meat pies.