Granny Buttons

NB Rufford launched, already got its own web site.

Didn't take long for NB Rufford to get its own web site.  It was only launched last Friday at Stockton Top Marina. 

Rufford is the latest Ownerships showboat (shared ownership boat - I'll get a word of my own in this dictionary somehow!) - the third in a glamorous series that offers pretty much every mod con the jaded city dweller expects, from full-size bath to dishwasher. 

So far Rufford doesn't have a ships blog (give it a chance, it's hardly hit the water) but it has a bunch of useful links for people considering co-owning a boat, including a walk-through of sister-boat Apperley. thanks to a u-pix look-around.  You'll need a recently updated PC and a fairly fast internet link.

Ownerships is getting slicker in its presentation to interested parties.  It's got a full page of these nosey-parker look-arounds.

Nosey, exhibitionist bloggers

In New Kids On The Blog, Susan Mansfield in The Scotsman writes about the new culture of blogging: 

... Britons are ripe for blogging because of our inherent nosiness.  "Blogging is essentially a voyeuristic or exhibitionist activity. Britons traditionally love both, as demonstrated by our voyeuristic media being the strongest in the world." We enjoy reading blogs for the same reason we watch reality TV - we want to see a slice of other people’s lives, especially when those people are not so different from ourselves. Dr Dre’s Anytown NHS Trust is indicative: a good blogger is both full of personality, and an everyman.

I've just had a chat with Pat Bycroft, who with her husband is having a narrowboat built for a relaxing retirement.  Shell by Graham Reeves, fitout by Kate Boats (I've been pretty impressed by the boats they've exhibited at the Crick Boat Show in the last two or three years).  I'm encouraging her to start a blog of the build process, and then hopefully they could keep it going.   

As Sue Mansfield hints at in her Scotsman article, I want to see a slice of other people's lives.  And, as the article adds, a good blogger is both a personality and an everyman, a voyeur and an exhibitionist.  But that's my definition of a good neighbour too. 

Mobile phone booth

Here's a video of a portable mobile phone booth.  (not for viewing by mobile modem, sorry, Sue!)

I could do with one of these things, to drown out the cacophony of birdsong and (to a lesser extent) the noise of my BMC 1.8 engine.

Thanks for the link to A Welsh View, a wonderful aggregator of the strangest things on the web.

What the well-dressed canal dog is wearing this winter.

Seen at Hillmorton Locks, late November 2004.

Elegant and snooty-looking, this custom-tailored jacket had a snood that can be turned up in the wind to shield the ears, or turned down in drier weather for a splash of colour. 

Turns even the most dubious of breeds into quite the little pedigree.

Very Audrey Hepburn, very Chanel canal.

Harry the naughty.

You'll be wondering about the waterways angle on Prince Harry's 'fancy-dress Nazi' peccadillo.

What shocked me was how little was made of the lit cigarette dangling idly from the Prince's left hand.  What are we come to, when the heir second-presumptive portrays such a bad example for the nation's binge-drinking fancy-dress-partying youth?  And in an enclosed public place too.

Yes, you say, but what about the waterways angle?

I'm coming to that.  Well, I was also pretty angered by the poor condition of Harry's fancy dress costume.  It wasn't really a uniform; more of a safari suit with collar patches and armband.  The sort of outfit, indeed, that a penurious student might mock up for a rag week stunt.  It was scruffy, unstarched, unironed, and ill-presented in a slouching posture.  If he'd have been a real untergruffenbarkenfurhrer or whatever, he'd have been lucky to escape with a court martial.  He could clearly do with a three-year spell in the army to teach him that smartness + deportment = respect from your racial and tabloid inferiors.   

Furthermore, the party theme was 'native and colonial'.  I would have thought Harry could have come up with a better understanding of his Kingdom's place in the world than adopting a non-British identity.  His brother had better sense, coming dressed as the African chieftain The M'babwa of M'Gonkawiwi, complete with leopard skin clothing and spear. 

(Beachcomber relates, in his tale of colonial administrator Big White Carstairs, how The M'Babwa insisted on marching through London loyally at the Queen's coronation, accompanied by Ugli the witch-doctor, and Jum-Jum the sacred crocodile.)

Harry also could do with a better understanding of the history of the swastika.  Perhaps if he'd only worn it the other way round - with the arms of the symbol pointing left, rather than right, he could have argued that this was the peaceful, Buddhist, representation.

Yes, yes, but what's the boating connection?

I'm glad you asked, nearly there.  I was thinking the same myself when I heard the public furore.

The Joy of Tole

Call me ignorant, but I'd never heard of 'tole painting' until yesterday.  No, really.  If you haven't either, here's a definition. 

Specifically it's painting on metal with lacquer or enamel, but more generally, it seems to be classed as decorative painting, usually on utlity items.   The parallel with canal boat painting - roses & castles, buckby cans, scumbling, etc - is obvious.  At the Splinter Center in Medford, Oregon, they are running classes on the whole variety of tole. 

Not sure they'll cover 'roses & castles' with quite the waterways-history focus of the classes at the London Canal Museum, but they are the only classes in the US that I've heard of.   

When you come to think of it, 'roses & castles' is a rather rigid and formulaic decoration.  It's like those japanese watercolourists who'd spend their whole lives painting just one vase of flowers, seeking an illusory perfection that recedes faster the closer they get.

There's no reason another style or pattern of decoration couldn't be used on canal boats.  I haven't seen another yet, internally, but quite a few boats have tried variants on the external paintwork.   Perhaps Tole World magazine could suggest some new ways of decorating narrowboat interiors? 

Lost world of Mitchell & Kenyon

Starting tonight, Friday 14th Jan, BBC2 TV is showing The Lost World of Mitchell & Kenyon.  According to an article in the National Fairground Archive:

In a photographic shop, in a town in Blackburn, 800 original nitrate negatives sat in sealed barrels, unseen for over 70 years. Rediscovered by local historian Peter Worden in the early 1990s and subsequently acquired by the British Film Institute in June 2000 this collection has been the subject of an ambitious four-year restoration and research project. Described by film historians as the cinematographic equivalent of Tutankhamen's tomb - the Mitchell & Kenyon Project will be launched on Friday 14 January at St George's Hall Blackburn.      

Great article from the Guardian here. In strict theatrical content they aren't remarkable; just pictures of people walking about Lancashire factories and streets.  What's special is the quality and the moving glimpse they show into a world that's now beyond living memory.  Even the late Queen Mother (now almost three years dead, gawd bless 'er memory) would not have remembered this period, where the Boer War was still on the minds of men and their wives.

I mention it here because Blackburn - and many other Lancashire mill towns - relied heavily on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal.   It will be fascinating to see if any of the canal and the boatmen of old feature in Mitchell & Kenyon's plotless - yet hauntingly storied - movies.  If so, these are likely to be the earliest extant motion pictures of the waterways.

No Problem getting to the Boat Show

Sue on No Problem has just visited the London Boat Show.  I feel quite envious, and there's obviously a greater canal & inland waterways aspect to the show than I thought.   

Sue writes briefly but evocatively of the indoor watersports, including the windsurfing, driven - presumably - by wind machines. There's a Flash video of last year's Boat Show watersports here.  Looks more exciting than my weedy, delicate heart could stand right now! 

In  complete contrast to the brash and noisy muscularity of the watersports is the acre of the Inland Waterways section in a 'real' setting.  It features real trees, real grass, a real canalside pub, and real canal boats in an indoor marina.   The reality stops there - the marina is dry.  Not the canalside pub, though, says Sue; Canal Boat magazine was giving away vouchers for free half-pints apparently.

If you're MP3-savvy, and can spare the 1.6mb download, you'll enjoy the relaxing sound commentary (Richard Fairhurst?) and it's very well produced, complete with soothing bird song and plangent piano accompaniment.  Ever since The Fabulous Baker Boys I've been a sucker for pretty birds singing along sweetly to sad piano playing. 

Old links and out of date information on Granny Buttons

Just had an email from the editor of Narrowboatworld (now back online) saying that I have an old link to his site, one that is now out of date.  He suggests I might correct it.  The post referred to was made almost a year ago.

I'm not going to change or correct the old link.  Granny Buttons is a blog; that is, it's a series of 'diary format' posts.   All the posts are dated, and the information relates to the particular date on which it was written.  That particular post was accurate at the time it was written, and I don't want to rewrite history. 

Frequently search engines will unearth these older posts, and if you are not familiar with the blog format you might think the information is current, but wrong.  However, it's actually correct, but out of date, if you see what I mean. 

So here's how you can correct history yourself, on this and other blogs:   

Marine Web Awards not for inland waterways - yet.

I've just heard about the Marine Web Awards, the annual official Boat Show encomiums for marine web sites.    It's been running for four years now, and there's no award for canals websites.  But then canaloholics have long been the rustic, odd-looking relatives invited by sufferance to the London Boat Show.

The Awards are sponsored by international marine site boats.com, (slogan: new boats, used boats, we've got your boat), which doesn't carry any inland waterway news, nor appear to sell canal boats.  (It's got two second-hand narrowboats listed for sale today, but both of them are in Kent, far from the contiguous waterways system.)   None of the judges evinces any public interest in inland waterways, so it's little surprise there were no canal-oriented sites in the nominations and I'm not sure there were any in the original 125 entries.

The winning websites demonstrated "creativity in design, ease of navigation and up-to-date, relevant content".

I think inland waterways websites would find this order of priorities - content last - a tough regimen.  This is because few of them have much of a design, database or e-commerce budget and even the best (Waterscape aside) are labours of non-profit love where content is King.

Narrowboatworld back online

Narrowboatworld.com is due back online tomorrow (Tues 13th), after a break of nearly a month.  Writes the editor:

Most sorry for the break in up-dates, but this really was beyond our control, and Victor will be giving the explanation tomorrow!  In fact there will be a double dose of Victor together with the items that were on file when we lost the connection.

The five-week near-silence (caused by a switch to an alternative host) has thrown into relief the fact that there's still nothing quite like NBW for waterways news; nothing so independent and fast and regular.  And infuriating too, but I think editor Tom Crossley impishly enjoys that part. 

And - er, accurate too.   Others have criticised it for inaccuracies, but it's a lot more accurate than the towpath telegraph.  By which I mean the towpath telegraph, not the Towpath Telegraph.

I mean to work on Tom in the coming months to persuade him to switch to a hosted blog format.  This will get around his hosting problems at a stroke, as well as making it a far more powerful format.  But I'm not sure if that's too many new tricks for the old greyhound to learn!

500 Not (quite) Out.

Last weekend I made my 500th post since commencing this blog 18 months ago.  Seems ironic (or appropriate) that my life has paused a bit right now. I'll be posting a little less frequently in the coming days as I need to get a bit of rest.

Olly's narrowboat motorbike crane

At Briston, in the middle of north Norfolk, Olly and Anne Sagar are fitting out a 70ft narrowboat in their back garden, reports the Eastern Daily Press. 

Quite a few people fit out narrowboats in their back garden, but not many major newspapers report it.  I guess what makes this one unusual is that the Sagar's garden is not in prime canal territory - it's about 30 miles from the nearest launching point (Denver Sluice?) and canals could be viewed as an eccentricity in north Norfolk. 

Also, Olly Sagar plans to install an hydraulic hoist on the front deck to lift a motorbike in and out, despite the fact that his preferred model, an Enfield, won't fit.  It'll probably be the first narrowboat with its own derrick.  Oh, and he plans to make it seagoing, so they can cruise it across the Channel on the wide continental waters, in most of which the boat could turn without needing a winding hole. 

His wife hasn't talked him out of it yet.

'Buy to let' canal moorings?

In today's Daily Telegraph Property section someone writes asking about buying a canal mooring site as a 'buy to let' investment.   

I am considering buying an inland mooring plot to rent out, and would be grateful for any guidance on how to go about it. For example, likely mortgage options, pre-purchase searches etc, and whether the whole idea is a viable alternative to residential buy-to-let?

The journalist (Lorna Vestey) has done a lot of homework and makes some good and pertinent points.  She focuses a bit too hard on the residential moorings aspect, presumably being influenced by the questioner using the 'R' word and thus perhaps assuming he meant he wanted to find residential moorings.   

But worryingly for me is the thought of lots of buy-to-let investors, without any interest in boats or canals, descending on the waterways and raising prices.