Granny Buttons

Globetrotter blogs

I only just realised that Mike Beveridge is now blogging from his boat Globetrotter.   And has been doing so for almost a month, with very interesting and intelligent posts.  I only noticed because he posted a comment on Granny Buttons.   Memo to self: stay more alert.  Memo to Mike:  keep it up!

Mike works in IT, and he's got a really good and succinct mobile internet FAQ page of what you can do to get online wirelessly while on a narrowboat. 

He has a BT Openzone wireless £25/month (+VAT) subscription like me, but unlike me, he recommends it.  I don't. I'm planning to discontinue mine, because I simply can't find wireless access points on my cruising  (which is why I'm slow to update when I'm on the move).   And I find the helpdesks poor.   But the wireless scene is changing fast and who knows how it'll improve.

Castlemill 'yardies' evicted

Mike Beveridge comments today that the Castlemill boatyard protesters have finally been evicted.   It's a fascinating eyewitness report, and I'm glad to have it.  Thanks Mike! 

He's in chorus with my point that the 'yardies' weren't really fighting this eviction, but the next one.  The real issue now, I think, is for the lessons learned to be carried through, and for BW and boaters to communicate more.  And for BW to communicate less by press release, and to encourage their co-developers to do the same. 

I'm thinking of making a nuisance of myself with some of these developers.  In the nicest, most intelligent and constructive way, of course.  Just to get some reality behind the press releases and Flash websites, I mean.  I wonder if I could get past the receptionist at Urban Splash or The Cube?   I guess it's barely worthwhile asking that question about Bellway, though. 

Fun with Dick and Jan: The friendliness of the Grand Union Canal Race runners

Tonight at the gym I did 29 minutes on the running machine at 5mph.  I wanted to experience just a sixtieth of the 2006 Grand Union Canal Race, which was won this week by Matt Giles in 29 hours and two minutes, an average of almost exactly 5mph.

It was the third fastest time in the fourteen-year history of the race.  (Is he the same Matt Giles who once had an embarassingly full bladder at the start of the London Marathon - as related here on the BBC Sport website?)

I'm fascinated by this race.  They run from Birmingham to London non-stop, in what the boaters of old called 'fly'; that is, barely stopping.  Actually, there are ten waypoints where you can pause for refreshments, and I called in at Birdingbury Bridge and went down the Stockton flight of locks.  Those tall white tubular paddle housings are emblematic of the Grand Union Canal, and I feel are the perfect place to photograph the race.

When I arrived around 11.4oam, a few runners had already been past.  But I captured lots of them.  Ian Harding was the first, and I snapped him eagerly filling his bottles with isotonic stuff.   At this time he'd run 36 miles, but he was hardly panting.

Halfway down the locks I photographed a dark-haired lady and asked her name.  She said 'Alicja Barahona' (I'm spelling that with hindsight, you understand).  "Hey!", I exclaimed with enthusiastic recognition; "you won this race once, didn't you?"

"I won it twice", she replied tartly.  "But I had to retire last year.  Hypothermia".  Our exchange reminded me of Norma Desmond:  It's the pictures that got small.

Hypothermia?  I questioned her more.  She's a remarkable lady.  Says she's run 'ultras' in the desert.  Run one in Alaska in winter, "40 below".   

"I run the Grand Union to cool off", she added with a smile.  "Perfect weather", she added underneath her rain cape.  I think it was about 58F when we spoke, and the rain was lightly spotting my camera lens.

There's a remarkable story here of Alicja winning the Trans-333 race (a 207-mile ultra-marathon in the Mauritanian Sahara) in 2001.  Not the 'ladies race'.  The race.

Alicja's record for the GUCR course is 33:06, but she came 8th this year, a time of 35:47.  Good grief, that's still over 4mph, which is the official canal speed limit!

Why does she do it?  Why do they all do it?  I didn't have time to frame the question before my breath gave out and I photographed her leaving Stockton Top Lock with her long pigtail swinging behind her backward-facing baseball cap and her face in a smile.  I was momentarily in love.  There's nothing sexier than a fit woman - what a lockwheeler she'd make for some lucky guy!

I photographed several others coming up the locks, and met Dave Bellingham, who was supporting his friend Bob Brown, who finished second this year.  At the time Bob wasn't in sight, and Dave went back to the checkpoint to wait for him.  Bob might be one of the ones I photographed coming up the locks later - I don't know.  They all looked the same to me; the men gaunt and often balding and greying, the women pigtailed and none of them youthful, but often hard to tell them apart in their flimsy raincapes.

I met Dick Kearns, the organiser, and he gave me the potted story of the race.  It was the brainchild of Bruce Harding, BW local manager, in 1993, to celebrate the opening of the whole towpath, and the 200th anniversary of the canal.  BW provided the first trophy, a traditionally painted water can.  Nominally that was a prize-to-keep for Dick, the first winner, but he decided that it would be awarded to every winner, in the manner of the Wimbledon trophy.   The winner gets a brass something (looks like a horse brass to me), and every finisher gets a replica Grand Union Canal Co. medal.  Someone (whose name I didn't catch) kindly held them all up for me to photograph.  Dick was too bashful to be pictured.

I met some other runners at the checkpoint, including the parents and wife of a guy whose name I didn't catch at the time, but who appears (from his number) to be Ed Milbourn, responsible for www.ultrarunner.co.uk.  But here's a photo of them feeding him a quick carbohydrate-rich hash.  Bear in mind he'd already run a marathon-and-a-quarter when they were feeding him! 

I loved the atmosphere of this race.  It's a celebration of the canal.  I wish there were other races like this around the waterways.  How about a lockwheeling championships, because lockwheeling combines the best of exercise: the aerobics of the run between the locks, combined with the weighlifting and pushing of the work between the locks.

Earlier this month a team 'legged' the Standedge tunnel, and the following week Hercules Nigel Dix legged it on his own in a shadow over three hours.  Apparently Nigel himself partakes of ultra-marathons.  I see a whole new sporting pentathlon emerging from the canals: 

1. Running the Grand Union canal
2. Lockwheeling the Hatton Flight (with every lock set against you).
3. Legging the Standedge Tunnel
4. Bowhauling the standing mile (this is the sprint), and - er,
5. The yard of ale at the pub, at the end of each race. 

Well, why not?   The only dispute would be which pub, and perhaps which ale.

Phillip Pullman's 'dark deeds on the towpath (inc George Monbiot)

Phillip Pullman writes today in the Guardian about the Castlemill Boatyard.  The protesters must be delighted to get his support.

If [British Waterways] have their way, scenes such as the one any stroller along the towpath can see every day in Oxford will soon vanish entirely. The Castle Mill Boatyard and all its useful work will be wiped out and "developed" into a cluster of identikit houses and flats that look exactly the same as every other development in the land; a valuable open space and view will vanish from the city; and British Waterways will count its cash and go on to wipe out another boatyard somewhere else.

There's much wisdom in his article, but quite a few inaccuracies too, and I think he's allowed his sentiment for the place to cloud dispassionate argument.   The boatyard is, after all, where he set a key part of the story of Northern Lights, and where he got to know local boaters when writing the story.

But it's a complex subject, and I haven't got the time or energy to argue the toss on behalf of BW - much as I'd like to.  Meanwhile, many a few other points are going unargued, neglected or conveniently overlooked by both sides. 

My most recent post on the subject (with key protesters Matt Morton and Adrian Arbib adding their replies) is here.

Update:  'revjph' , who is apparently a priest and lover of canal life and who writes the 'Of course, I could be wrong' blog from a strongly Anglican viewpoint, has an interesting riposte to Phillip Pullman's article here.

I've asked BW PR people before why they don't say anything when they see a statement online that they disagree with.  They say that they don't like to draw attention to it, or to dignify it with a response.  I think this is a BIG mistake.  In the age of the internet, and especially the blog, if you want your point of view to prevail, you must draw attention to it and rebut.    The sooner you rebut, the less work you'll have later on.   

As I've said before, I think the Castlemill protestors have lost.  However, it's clear that they aren't fighting this battle, they are fighting the next one.   They have a head-start, mainly because by not 'dignifying them with a response', BW's head is in the sand. 

Tip to BW:  Join in the 'conversation' now.  Comment.  Comment anywhere you can.  But most of all, start your own bloody blog, link to what you disagree with, and comment on it - and allow others to comment on your own comments.  I believe that if you do that, no-one will win or lose, you'll all come to agree.   The problem with all this development is that it's done as a battle, not as a conversation.  Only the lawyers are winning at the moment.

Update on castlemillboatyard: Now George Monbiot weighs in.  And he repeats the factual errors Phillip Pullman made as if they are holy writ. 

And he doesn't ask the tough questions - including "What is being done to create new boatyards?   I don't just mean by BW, I mean by the people who are asking for the boatyard.  They must have known a year ago that they'd lost, but they spent the year digging in and going to court, instead of staking out the new boatyard and going to planning.

There doesn't seem to be much conversation here - just unthinking trench warfare.  I know it's a lot more fun to protest than to sit down and plan, but I'm digging in on BW's side, even if I have reservations about it.   I get the feeling that I could talk to BW, because I'm willing to listen to BW.

Enslow to Aynho

Enslow to Aynho in one day.

Set off 10am, met Kate Saffin at Baker's Lock, in the flood of the Cherwell.  I wrote about her last year, when she was doing her one-woman show at the Edinburgh Fringe.  She says she's doing it again this year.  It's always such fun to meet people I've written about when they recognise my boat name - there's that hesitant pause where I wonder if I was rude about them and they are going to punch me on the nose.  Not in her case, luckily.  I gave her some chocolate buttons, just in case.

Winded below Baker's Lock, at the canal's junction with the River Cherwell, now lively with all the rain.  Returned north quickly.   Christine always stays below on leisurely days until mid-morning, and surfaced when we were neared Pigeon's Lock. 

At Pan the Floating Farm Shop Christine nipped inside and bought me a Steak & Kidney Pie.  I had it for lunch, and it was one of the most glorious, most flavourful meat pies I've ever had.  Wonderful.  Quite pricey at £4.49,  but it's the only organic one I've ever had as well.   And considering that there are four medium portions, two healthy ones, it's not bad value at all.  We lunched back at Heyford visitor moorings again. 

Quick dash back to Aynho, if only to get this blinkin' cruising log over and done with. Arriving about 5.30pm.

Aynho to Enslow

Left Aynho with Christine, about midday.   Stopped at Lower Heyford Wharf about 3pm where I refuelled with diesel.  60p/litre - good grief.  Around 125 litres - doubleplusungood grief.  Said hello to Chris Houston on Sirius at the Wharf. 

Stopped at Kirtlington Quarry, scrambled up the bank to take photos, while Christine patiently held in Granny in her inimitable style.  This former cement works quarry, now a 'country park', is a wonderful place to overnight if you have everything you need inside the boat and want to get away from it all.  But it's limited by the lack of mooring rings, and the old concrete shoulder in some places - and crumbling bank in others - makes it a tricky place to put mooring stakes.

We paused near Enslow Wharf to chat to Julie on Greyfisher.  Granny formed a bond with the Bedell couple - I met them a year ago on the K&A when the boat was brand new out of Reading Marine, and Granny shared the first couple of locks with them.

We passed Lady River Mouse, and I noticed the cute 'Beatrix Potter-esque' picture signwritten on the side and puzzled about the sweet name.   

Tied up at the Rock of Gibraltar once again (as I did a couple of weeks ago).  And again it was Sunday, and again there was no food in the evening.  Of course, every chef's entitled to a night off, but when a pub's open but they aren't serving food, it feels a little disappointing.  I wonder if there's room for a Chinese, Indian or Thai couple to come in a couple of nights a week for a different flavour to the menu, or why not freezer foods?   Better than going back to the boat and resorting to packets. 

Lady wants late-summer job working on the canals

Brook Hayes is interested in working on the canals when she returns soon from travels in Central America.   She sound exactly suited for working on a hotel boat:

I wonder if anyone you know of is looking for crew?   I will be available from 5th August for as
long as necessary (no job or house to come back to).

My family has a boat which I spend as much time on as possible. I am a confident and able driver and lock winder and I can cook and clean.

I am currently working on a remote eco-hostel in Nicaragua so I have current experience in dealing with guests, managing human waste, cooking in a basic kitchen and the strength to haul 20 buckets a day from a 10-metre 33-foot-deep well!  I also speak intermediate Spanish if that is of any use to anyone.

I really would like to ease back into UK life on the canals so if you have any ideas whom I could approach for work afloat I'd be very grateful.

The thing that impresses me most is the ability to clean and cook.  Also, her level-headed understanding that she doesn't expect pots of money. 

Speaking intermediate Spanish is (I grant you) not much use on the English canals, unless you happen to get a booking from Spans.  But 'managing human waste' is a special skill.  It's a truth universally acknowledged that when two or three narrowboaters get together, the talk soon turns to managing human waste.  And the ability to haul it up 33 ft is a talent.

One other thing that's going for her?  She's educated; she used 'whom' correctly.  As I've said before, I like it when someone knows when to who and when to whom.

Interested in hiring Brook?  You can write to her here. 

Want a list of available hotelboats yourself?  Try www.hotelboating.co.uk.  It's a spin-off of canals web specialist Canal Junction and has a good list of hotel boat operators.   I've not seen this website before, and I'm impressed with it: quick, comprehensive and easy, it should win a prize for getting to the point.

But as I've said before, the life isn't romantic or easy on a hotel boat.  The two best books I've read on the subject are Precious Cargo (Robin Smithett's history of hotelboats) and Katie Fforde's novel Life Skills. 

Perhaps there are canalside jobs that allow you to stay in touch with your inner lockwheeler or steerer?   There have got to be, surely?  I guess managing a hirefleet or a shared ownership base might count.

Milestone: 200 a day

A small milestone reached today.  There's now been an average of 200 daily 'hits' since I started this blog nearly three years ago. 

The '200' means 'pages downloaded', not 'readers', and it means the average over that period; it took me a long time to get to that level. And it doesn't mean that everyone of those visitors read me.

For example, 'granny' is a US se*x industry term for an older woman, so I get a lot of unsavoury visits from people searching on Google and stumbling on Granny Buttons for something that they don't really expect. They are usually gone in much less than sixty seconds.

When I started this blog, nearly 3 years ago, I used to be thrilled if anyone visited at all, and I remember clearly a few weeks later when one day I hit 16.   

Sixteen!  I'm all a-fluster if I have to speak to two people at once! So that was quite sobering.  It gradually turned into worry that I had 'an audience', and that I'd have to turn up at the keyboard and find something to write about even if I wasn't in the mood.  Which usually I'm not, to be honest.  And I really hate the cataloguing of my cruising, because it doesn't allow me to run away and think about other things.  I've got to write about what happened.

Incidentally, I really admire Sue on No Problem for her wonderful blog, just  a few days 'younger' than Granny Buttons.  She really does keep it up beautifully, complete with photos.  I always recommend her if you want to know about the benefits and tribulations of living aboard a continuously cruising narrowboat on the canals of England.   Don't forget the other bloggers (see my 'boatroll') but Sue's the longest running after me (I think) and just has to be one of the best. And her 'Feedburner' readership is three times mine (Feedburner is probably a better counter of what your loyal daily readership is up to).

If you are reading this, Sue, then yes, I think you are fab, and certainly a much better cruising log than Granny, by lock-miles!  But I still think Granny's older than you :-)   

What I adore about the interweb is that it's easy to find something to overcome writer's block.  Such as today, when my counter tipped over to average 200 daily hits over three years, and prodded lazy-little-me into commenting about it. 

SS Gt Britain wins Gulbenkian prize

I was interested to see that SS Great Britain has won the Gulbenkian Museum Prize for 2006. 

I lived in Bristol for a couple of years in the mid-1970s, and I remember going through the empty shell, looking at the assorted gimcrack hull repairs and thinking 'what's the point?  This'll never float again.  Why not build a brand new replica instead?' 

It's now a truly magnificent attraction, a real credit to Bristol, and it deserves the prize.  Although the money's perhaps a drop in the harbour compared to the cost of maintaining it - let alone the £10M it cost to save and restore the rotting hull before it disintegrated and the whole kaboodle fell to the floor in a shattered, rusty heap.   

I once watched an old narrowboater work in drydock on the hull of an even older boat.  I saw the roof and sides almost rusted through, and clouds of smoke from the engine.  "Shouldn't you be working on the engine?" I asked. 

"I'll get around to that", he said.  "But first I have to keep the hull sound.  If it floats, it's a boat".  Made sense to me.

No longer.  Nowadays, it's still a boat even if it only stands up in drydock.   

I last went inside SS Gt Britain about 1996, when it was halfway to being restored and was impressed with the progress they'd made. 

Most recently I saw it last July from the outside, when Granny Buttons stayed in the Floating Harbour for a fortnight.  It was the anniversary of something (Brunel's birthday?  The launching of the ship?) or the launch of something else (bid for the Gulbenkian prize?) and the masts were bedecked with bunting and pennants.  It looked so sprightly and elegant compared to the dark, brooding rusty shell of the mid-1970s.

As I motored past I was sorry there wasn't anywhere close by for a visiting narrowboat to tie up alongside.

Actually there is a mooring alongside.  But the single space is reserved for John Cabot's ship The Matthew.  This isn't the original Matthew, it's a replica, so it does float.  In fact, so accurate a replica that even the diesel engine is identical to the Tudor original.

A few historic narrowboats have been restored as intensively, so that there isn't really anything left of the original except for a few bits of cast iron bracing. 

The most notable restored canal boat is Raymond, and if you look at Raymond now you see something as glamorous and new as anything on the cut.    But it was rebuilt rather than preserved, so Raymond actually works.  Not that there's any use for it these days, sadly.  They can't find the replica horses to draw it.

Hey, the official photo of SS Great Britain, the one I've nicked that shows it from the front (at top of this post) is an identical pose to one I took in 1976 in b/w.  I must root out my original and post it here so you can see the difference thirty years can make.

Plea to the SS Great Britain press office:  OK, there you go, I've written about your blimmin' boat. Please can you take me off your blimmin' press release email list now?  Your 'unsubscribe' button doesn't blimmin' well work!

Drought, drought everywhere, and...

Rain rain rain.  The Crick Boat Show might not be a complete washout (dryish on Saturday, drier and sunny spells on Sunday, rain on Monday) but the reservoirs are filling nicely in the Midlands and North.  However, the boat show car park might likely be a field of mud by Monday.

Strewth, what happened to the drought I seem to scaremonger last year (March and September)?   And that everyone has been scaremongering this year?

The Environment Agency pages on water supply and reservoir levels are here.

The Crick Boat Show

I said I'd write about the Crick Boat Show, I did say that.  OK, it's the Crick Boat Show this weekend.  What else do you need to know?

The official show website is quite helpful and comprehensive and includes much that you need to know.  On the site plan map I loved that they've named the main marquees after BW reservoirs.  Clattercote, Boddington, Tring - you can take your pick as to which muddy morass you wade through!

I've long felt that Crick shouldn't be called a boat show.  It's really the biggest of the canal culture shows.  Only narrowboats can get there - which keeps it ethnically pure - and while boatbuilders exhibit there (indeed, narrowboat builders mostly consider it the main showcase), the atmosphere's determinedly Middle-England, and the seagoing and rivergoing element is kept at bay.   This is an 'ethnic' show, a gathering of a Minority.

But I go for the atmosphere, not the chandlery.  I love the portly, bearded 'scouts' (and the unbearded lady scouts)with their short trousers who give bizarre metachronal 'goodbye waves' to buses as they depart, I love the beer tents, I love the focus on narrow canals, the Mikron or Daystar travelling theatres, the this and that.  I don't know why I like it.

Oh, yes, I remember why I like the Crick Boat Show.  Any year I've been there, since I first went in 1999 (when it was at Braunston), Andrew the Magic Dude has been there.  He wanders around the show doing basic street magic, but so artfully, so skillfully, and the kids flock to him. He's why I go to Braunston.  I enjoy watching him at work, and I enjoy watching the kids' eyes widen.  I'm just an ordinary dude, but he's so entertaining, he's magic! 

If he's that good, though, why can't I find any mention of him elsewhere on the web than the Crick site?  From his voice I'd guess he's South African, or at least from somewhere Anglo-Saxon south of the equator.  From his performance, though, he could only come from Crick, nowhere else.  The kids love him, even the older ones like me.  Crick is his show.

The loneliness of the Grand Union Canal Race runner

There are at least two prominent events on the Grand Union Canal this coming Whitsun Bank Holiday Weekend.

The Crick Boat Show starts on Saturday morning, and runs through to Monday afternoon.  More about that shortly. 

The Grand Union Canal 145 Mile Race also starts on Saturday morning, in this case at Gas Street Basin, Birmingham.  And this one runs... and runs... and runs... and runs, but only until Sunday afternoon.  And it runs... and runs.... and doesn't stop until it gets to Little Venice.  The GUCR has been going for a decade, so it might not be the longest-running race in Britain, but it is the longest running-race in Britain.

Catching the race can be tricky, and not because they can run faster than you (the course record is only about 5.27 miles an hour).  It's because there are about 84 runners, and they'll straggle out very quickly, and the further from Birmingham the longer you'll have to wait to see just one runner. 

There are nine waypoints where you can watch officials and runners together, plus the start at Gas St Basin and the finishing tape at Little Venice. 

You need to see a runner at a waypoint, because a runner on his own, without an official or an audience, and without even another jogger alongside, looks (let's face it) rather like a jogger.  And there's not much point in driving miles to see a jogger.

The start is at 6.30am, so that's the best time to see them. Not just because everyone else will be in bed, but also because it's the only time you'll see all 84 runners together.   Will there be any good photographers stationed near The Mailbox - and at Old Turn, and down Farmers Bridge Flight - to capture the snake of runners?  I've alerted Birmingham newspaper picture editors, so if no one photographs it, it won't be my fault.

Running has never been a spectator sport, and I suspect the further you get from Birmingham the duller this race gets.

Here's all the checkpoints, with the distance from the start and the time the lead runner reached it last year.  Each link is to the Canalplan gazeteer entry, so you have all the information you need to get there - even pub phone numbers!  Be at the checkpoint a little before these times, and you'll surely catch a runner or two. 

  7:38am  - Catherine de Barnes Bridge (11 miles)
  9:28am  - Hatton Locks, Bridge 54  (23 miles)
  11:43am - Birdingbury Bridge - (36 miles)
  3:31pm  - Weedon Station Bridge  (53 miles)
                   - Castlethorpe Wharf, Bridge 64 (70 miles)
  9:46pm  - Bridge 99  (84.5 miles) (this link is actually Bridge 98)
  1:48am   - Grand Junction Arms - 1.48am (100 miles, Sunday morning, bar closed, sorry, BYOB)
  6:30am  - Springwell Lock, Bridge 176 (120 miles)
  9:07am  - Hambrough Tavern, Bridge 20 (133 miles)
  11:09am - Little Venice Toll House (145 miles)

Last year, heroic stragglers were still arriving after midnight on Sunday, so you might still have something to watch from the Little Venice Bridge Tavern (or the Canal Cafe Theatre) at closing time.

I'm not quite sure why this race gets so little publicity.  It's remarkable and we should be proud of it.  Perhaps it's because it's not a spectator sport.  In fact, with 25 finishers last year, coming in on average  at one every half an hour, you might almost say it's like watching paint ... well, like watching paint run, so to speak.

The most drama of the race came in 1998 when ultra-runner Sally Adams was struck by lighting while running over Braunston Tunnel.  She survived, but was shaken and retired.  Not surprisingly she was known thereafter to the ultra community as 'Sparky Adams'.

But 'ultra running' has a loyal following, both here and around the world.  Try Briton Ed Milbourn's www.ultrarunner.co.uk for a start. 

Yank Dean Karnazes is the world 'Ultramarathon Man'.  I wonder what his knees are like?  Mine are frail after just twenty years of 10-miles-a-week jogging.  Wish I'd stuck to hobbling.

In Earnest in trouble

Mick of Hinckley Boat Club draws my attention to the BBC Derbyshire story of the poor old (young?) bloke who had to be rescued yesterday when his narrowbeam Dutch barge was overwhelmed by floodwaters on the Trent near Sawley.  (Photos here nicked from the BBC site, taken by Simon Lewis - thanks in arrears Simon!)

The BBC asks if this is the first time that anyone has had to be rescued from a narrowboat.  It's almost certainly the first air-sea rescue.   I hunted on the web for details of the unfortunate boater and his splendid-looking vessel   According to Jim Shead, who's posted the entire BW register online, the boat is:

IN EARNEST  Built by DAVID THOMAS BOAT BUILDERS - Length: 62 feet 4 inches (19.01 metres) Beam: 6 feet 10 inches (2.09 metres).  Metal hull power of 43BHP. Registered with BW number 508976 as a Powered. 

43hp is a good power for a narrowboat, but getting out of trouble in a river in flood, it also depends on the prob and gearbox.   Granny's own BMC 1.8 puts out around 40hp, but with a prob the size of an egg whisk, I might have been in the same sort of trouble.

The luckless owner was pictured on the BBC site holding his head in his hand as he waited for rescue.  Rotten luck to be stranded, rotten luck to be pictured.

Sawley is the home marina of Narrowboat World editor Tom Crossley, so we shouldn't be surprised that Tom quickly had a good in-depth report on this story - far more detailed and immediate than anyone else, and with his own photos. 

However, I don't read NBW much nowadays, because it has 'link rot' (i.e. the links don't stay live, but vanish quickly) and it doesn't have feeds.  I like my links to be good for a long time.  But for a week or two you can read the story on NBW here - in good detail but with quite a few factual differences from the BBC.  Who's right? 

Who cares, when you see the sad face of the benighted old boater. Tom gives his name (I wouldn't in these circumstances), so you might like to ask around at Sawley Marina and buy him a drink on my behalf to comiserate if you meet him.

There's a gloating edge of 'har har serves you right' to Tom's story, with gleeful warnings of nullified insurance.   He seemed to enjoy reporting the misfortune.

Was the boater right to go out onto a river in flood?  No one better to ask than Terry and Monica Darlington,  who are shortly to leave for America with their narrow dog Jim and their thin boat Phyllis May.  They will have to make that decision almost daily themselves, on rivers fiercer than the Trent near Sawley.   I hope to see them in a week or two, so I'll ask them. 

But I know the answer Terry will give.  You've got to have a little adventure in your life, and you only learn from your mistakes, he'll say.   Ian Fleming put it in haiku:

You only live twice
When you are born and
When you stare death in the face.

Old Tom will probably die safely in his bed, never having known the thrill of being rescued.

SF Chronicle article supplied by readers

When I wrote the week before last about the San Francisco Chronicle article about London's 'villages' , I mentioned that I'd like to have seen the original article.

Well, Californians like to look after their Grannies.  Manny Taylan immediately offered to send me the whole Travel supplement, and it arrived the following weekend.

Meanwhile, Jerry Coleman (of Belmont, CA) sent me a scan of the article a couple of days later (above). 

Many thanks to both of you.  Your credit's good for a drink or two if you ever pass this way!  (Not forgetting a tip of the hat to Canal Keeper for pointing me to the original article)

I was interested to read all the other articles on London's villages from Manny's copy.  The complete supplement gave a much more balanced picture than a small vignette could have done, and reading it on paper, of course, was more convenient than online. 

The picture of Little Venice was standard fare, as seen in a zillion postcards, so here's a rather different nocturnal pic I took myself from the same spot during the Cavalcade.   

I might write to the journalists concerned and suggested they venture further out of London next time - perhaps six articles about different waterways in a single issue.  Nope, that's hoping a bit too much!