Granny Buttons

NB Kazi Mingi

Avalon - Dreamcatcher - Living The Dream - Grace Dieu - Moore2Life - One Way Of Life - Epiphany.  The canals are full-to-brimming of boats with lofty and aspirational names.

So you have to cheer when a boat with a more prosaic, more cynical, more amusing name comes along, don't you?  And that's what I did when I spotted Kazi Mingi at Snarestone last week.

Kazi Mingi, smelly toilet, geddit?   

I asked the owner, and he smiled politely and distantly, and said yes, how appropriate.
Except ... I get back to my computer, sniggering, and I look it up, and ... NO!   Kazi Mingi, it turns out, is as lofty and aspirational a name as any.

The Kazi Mingi Foundation build, funds and maintains orphanage schools in Kenya.  Who can say that's not aiming high?  And the name itself means 'much work' in  Swahili.

Which means I need to go to the bottom of the class and do my homework.  I clearly have kazi mingi to do in learning not to laugh at what I don't understand.  I ought to pay for my chortling with a donation. 

But then, I'm sure the orphans won't care so long as I contribute.   Pecunia non olet, as the hard-working Romans said.

TheCanalBoatersTV

Leonard Boord, of the online TheBoatersTV, laid a comment on Granny Buttons this week:

We would like to create some canal boat segments. If anybody has video that we can show, we would love to have it.

TheBoatersTV is American, and has a conventional 'tupperware' focus, so any English canal boating would probably be seen as quirky ethnic colour and probably not understood properly by the audience. 

But if you've got some interesting canal video, why not contact TheBoatersTV and ask them for a link in return. 

(If you haven't got a blog/website of your own, be a good girl and ask them to link to me, will ya?)

Winding at the top of the Ashby Canal

Valley Cruises hireboat Colne Valley winds (turns) at the head of navigation, Ashby Canal, near Snarestone, 16th June 2007. 

Mark (from the One Way of Life blog) is on the left, offering advice.   I think they needed a bit - it was perhaps their first time, and it's tricky to wind a 70ft boat at the best of times.

Here, rain clouds loomed before us and behind us, but the sun came out in time to make the scene dramatic.

Bones looks on the bright side

Mortimer Bones had a very interesting blog post last week about the allocation of moorings by tender or auction.

(This 'tender' process - described here on Waterscape - is not as tender as many boater would like!)

The pseudonymous 'Mortimer' is an entertaining read.  She (I'd guess it's a she, a very educated and sensitive she) is almost unfailingly optimistic and almost carefree, as deliriously happy with life as I am miserable about it. 

(Or she would be if she wasn't worrying about mooring costs). 

All the world loves a lover, and this blog is infectiously happy. Mortimer seems to looks on the bright side of everything.  She even loves the rain. Rain's something I also love, but mainly I love it before or after, not during.

Come to thing of it, looking on the bright side is a gift almost like magic when the skies are dark.  Many of us could have done with a share of Mortimer's sunny disposition this week.

[Thanks to Cosmos for drawing attention to Mortimer's blog post - I missed it first time round when I declared feed bankruptcy.  Cosmos's thoughts on the subject are briefer and less relentlessly cheerful, but also worth considering]

Barbara Corcoran's Granny-love

Granny just got a plug on the Barbara Corcoran blog.  

Barbara Corcoran is a consultant and TV correspondent in America on matters real estate - a sort of super-Sarah Beeny I think.  With knobs on, because they can afford more knobs on American houses. 

Anyway, moving to the UK and living on a boat is something a number of Americans have done (and many more are thinking of doing), so I put her researcher in touch with one or two who've done it. 

It's a good, long post, introducing the English canals to Americans, and with a lot of link-love to Granny.  Thanks!

BW workers' housing - a comparison

Re my story about Trevor Skoyles, Hanham lock-keeper, a few weeks ago. 

Compare and contrast these two stories:

Lockkeepers's bid to buy cottage - BBC Bristol

Bosses slammed as houses lie empty - Highland News

Is the difference anything to do with different funding arrangements for BW in England and Scotland?  Is the similarity anything to do with British Waterways as a whole?

Holly in deep field

Stephen writes:

It occurred to me today that with the amount of rain bits of the UK have had over the past few days, many parts of the Midlands and South Yorkshire must, by now, be far more accessible by narrowboat than usual.

He sends a photo bylined 'Worcestershire County Cricket Ground, New Road, Worcester', and asks:

HOWZAT?

The boat in the middle distance (with the umpire on the counter) is clearly Holly, which I pictured the weekend before last in a previous rainstorm at Shackerstone. 

The boat's a fair distance from the picture, so it's hard for me to be sure exactly where it is on the field, but I think it's covering deep mid-wicket.

Historic Boat Inn 'blighted'

Following Paul Raybould's earlier comment on GrannyB about the canalside Boat Inn, Coseley, Wolverhampton, he's had a letter published in last week's Express & Star [link]

... The building has great historical features, beginning with the walk up the steps from the canal to the back door. This building is important and could be made into so much more with its connection to the canal.

While I believe the council will yet again be proud to boast of its government target on building new houses and therefore pass a demolition order, it will only be when the building is gone that many Coseley people will regret its passing. ...

I don't want to sound so one-note and obsessed about such a minor subject, but no one else seems to write much publicly about it in the press, so it's worth lending a hand when they do.

I wish I wasn't boating

MegaPixie has a nice line in 'caption competition' style photos.  While I enjoy reading the results of caption competitions, I don't enjoy having to think of the captions myself. 

So MegaPixie (Brenda Keens) kindly saves me the trouble by doing them herself, from photo to caption to distribution.

Here's one from (presumably) last weekend's Braunston Historic Narrowboat Show, with a glum-looking adolescent on (I think) Kildare giving us a few old pennies for his thoughts. 

Pylonscape on the Ashby Canal

The first few miles of the Ashby Canal nest under a cats-cradle of electricity pylons.  It needs a better photographer than me (or at least, one better equipped than me or with more time) to record this extraordinary electrical web.   

See the location on Google Maps here.  Is this better or worse than a wind farm?

Moving afloat isn't always 'getting away from it all'

Tragic end for boat enthusiast - Wiltshire Times

A narrowboat enthusiast who was left devastated by the break up of a relationship wrote suicide notes to loved ones before hanging himself, an inquest heard.

Many people think that a life afloat is a way of getting away from your problems. Many boats are named in reflection of this longing.  Think of how many have words like 'life' and dream' and 'escape' in their names, for instance.

But it doesn't always work that way.  Sometimes, in the lonely, dark claustrophobia of a canalboat cabin, your demons will catch up with you. 

Balmaha's citizen journalism

Last night near Brinklow, on the northern Oxford Canal, a large ash tree in All Oaks Wood (now there's a misnomer!) toppled into the canal, blocking its passage.  Despite not being reported until mid-morning today, it was cleared by contractors by this afternoon.

I know this because Mo on Balmaha was there, an eyewitness, and he reported it before 6pm this evening: 

But although not reported until after 9am this morning a small team of contractors were on site by road before mid day. With just two 4x4s, a plastic dinghy, a chainsaw, steel hawsers, strops and a boat-hook our team of four guys had it licked.

This is 'citizen journalism' in action, and it's excellent.  Even faster than local TV could have done it!  Thanks, Mo.  I wish I was always on my boat and could report as well as this.

Kudos to Allen Groundcare, whose LandRover is visible in Mo's pictures.  (I presume they were responsible)

Google Maps location of All Oaks Wood here.

Recycling bins go AWOL on the GU

I mentioned last year about how impressed I was that there were recycling bins on the central section of the Grand Union Canal - around the Milton Keynes area.  I also noted that they were often overflowing.

This week NB Sanity writes that the recycling bins have gone missing:

We’d got a lot of recycling built up in the boat.  Last year, this bit of canal, from Stoke Bruerne south, had some basic recycling bins made out of oil drums (appropriate) at each sanitary station.

This year, possibly because the waste contract has changed to Biffa, they’ve all gone. MK has a recycling facility in one of the Centre car parks, so we lugged several big bags of stuff over there

What's the story about these recycling bins?  Were they kosher in the first place?  One hears stories about how recycling bins are rubbish anyway, as it were.  Have the ones in the central Grand Union area gone, or were they never really 'there' in the first place?   Perhaps someone threw away some old oil drums, and people simply thought they were recycling bins? 

Can the local BW office in Milton Keynes explain?

Boaters - God's naughty boys

God thinks we'll all been naughty boys on the waterways and he's taking appropriate action. 

First, the Saul Canal Festival been abandoned.

Today I heard from a reporter on the Ely Standard that the Great Ouse at Ely might be blocked for several weeks months by the train derailed on the river bridge last week. 

(The Ely Standard is probably running this story as its front page lead this week)

This is the main route - the only practical - route - from the canal system to this year's IWA Festival site at St Ives. 

Closure of the Great Ouse at Ely  will cripple the festival, severely limiting attendance by the 'enthusiast' boaters, who make up much of its charm and character. 

Furthermore, one drawback to the St Ives Festival site is its location on the town's wonderful meadow (Google Maps location here).  It's a first-rate site for a great festival, but there's a good reason it's St Ives' beloved recreation area and has never been built 0n - it's on a flood plain. 

Sounds familiar?