Granny Buttons

Granny says cheese!

Andy on Khyamanzi photographed Granny on his way past last week. 

Thanks Andy!  When I'm not around, it's always reassuring to know my boat is still afloat and securely tied. It's frustrating that all these familiar figures pass, and I never get the chance to stop 'em and say hello.

Actually, when I was tying up at Hawkesbury Junction, Sarah on Warrior did just happen to motor past (pictured).

As did a fellow on Ownerships boat Sojourn, but it wasn't Andrew Smith, the one keeping the log that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.

When I ran after Sojourn and chatted to the guy, I distracted him so much that he ran right into the bank on the other side of the canal.  Or maybe he was trying to avoid me.

Hello, little girl, would you like one of my cards?

Hunt for man who snapped child at canal - The Scotsman

Police are hunting a man who fled after taking pictures of a child beside the Union Canal.

The man is said to have used a "large lens" on his camera to photograph the girl who was feeding the ducks with her mother at Harrison Park at around 2pm on Tuesday.

The Scotsman allows you to comment on stories, and this one has already attracted 35, almost all saying this is hysteria, not news.

I've noticed an increasing tendency to paranoia about this in recent years.  I normally carry my Moo cards now, when I'm photographing on the canals, and hand them out like sweets. 

In fact, I bore people silly with my identity, on the assumption that it's not strange behaviour that worries people, but strangers.   

In the days when most people lived in villages they looked after their idiots, and were mainly on their guard against unknown people.  It's significant that the words 'strange' and 'stranger' are almost identical.

Tale of the river bank

Good, short and interesting point from Fred of NB J-Omega today about banking when living afloat: Liveaboard banking. 

Granny B on IWA home page

Hey, look at this:  The IWA have put a photo from Granny Buttons on their front page.  One of my favourites too. 

It was taken on the Rowington Embankment about 6pm on a frosty Saturday night on 14th January 2006.  I wrote about that day on my cruising log here.

I don't mind; I'm quite flattered. Ideally I'd like a credit, and I notice that when you hover your pointer over the picture, the credit is 'The Inland Waterways Association' and not 'Granny Buttons'. 

But not to worry; I'm honoured they think it's good enough for the home page.  And they are a charity, after all.

Green death on the Thames

I'm much taken with the blog of Valonia, who lives on NB The Green Man on the Thames near Oxford.  Green by name, green by nature, she's clearly devoted to the garden or allotment alongside her river mooring.   

This month she's has had to sit and watch her beloved garden drown, but she's catalogued the local floods with stoic resignation and I really enjoy reading the cheery 'mustn't grumble' blitz-spirit in this blog.

Today she had a roll-call of all the plants drowned in her patch:

Pak choi: deceased.
Courgette: deceased.
Tomatoes: deceased. ...

etc., 26 varieties in all of vegetable, herb and flower, with one or two survivors, and concluding:

Gardener's morale: deceased.

BBC: MPs GIVE BW AND IWA TLC

MPs' fears on canal funding cuts - BBC News

Funding cuts risk British Waterways - Guardian

British Waterways and the IWA must both be quite pleased with the report from the Parliamentary Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee:

BW is pleased because it can now close ranks with DEFRA and issue a joint, anodyne 'we are all friends now' press release, presumably on the basis that they don't have to put up with former waterways minister Barry Gardiner's 'outbursts' any more.  Stings in the tail of the committee report are as nothing in comparison to being able to work with the government again.

IWA is pleased because it felt the MPs were listening, were asking stiff questions and were making pertinent criticisms, such as in the 'tendering for moorings' issue.   

I'm pleased because the BBC's and The Guardian's stories summarised BW and the IWA's respective press releases so well that I actually began to understand them.

Dudley Tunnel chasing a little money

Seven stars for seven sisters - Express & Star

A crafty headline, but an overblown story.  (I think it's an update of this earlier story) 

Seven celebrities are backing a project which will see Europe’s largest underground tourist attraction created 230ft below Dudley.

The multi-million pound scheme will see the reopening of the Seven Sisters mines and canals under the Wrens Nest Nature Reserve.

The new attraction, set for completion by 2012, will take visitors on a narrowboat from the Black Country Living Museum along an underground canal created 200 years ago.

Reading between and behind the lines, I gather it's simply a plan to apply for lottery money, "bidding for £50 million on The People’s Millions TV show". 

£50million seems a lot for this Dudley Tunnel project.  In fact the TV show website says that "90 grants of £80,000 are up for grabs", and conversely £80,000 doesn't seem much.  That would barely pay for clipboards for the risk assessment team!

I've never been able to understand the labyrinthine process governing the distribution of National Lottery funds.  I don't watch TV, so obviously I miss a lot(tery), but this is the first time I've noticed The People's Millions.  I didn't realise the decisions are voted on, in a cacatopian reality TV show. 

I've taken an instant dislike to it, from the name 'People's Millions (smacks of Maoism) to the phone-ins that will charge people for the privilege of voting.  This is the modern opiate for the masses.

News from Ely, around the clock

John on NB Jambo pointed me in the direction of the latest news from Network Rail about the Ely railway bridge - online here. 

Some impressive photos alongside informative text.  Or at least there was.  It's offline right now.   I like the way there's 'a crane on top of a crane' in the picture above, showing how it's reaching right across the river.

It must be very frusting to have a boat at Ely right now, especially if you want to nip upstream for a couple of miles.   

You have to go all the way downstream to Denver (one of the the dullest stretches of boating in the inland waterways, let's be honest), book a tidal passage and then potter for 20 miles dead straight up the tidal New Bedford River, just as dull - for two days or more. 

A bit like the hour hand of a watch having to go anti-clockwise to get from 11 to 12, except four times as long.

Says the associated press release:

Around 20,000 tonnes of stone and plastic mesh has been brought in to build a stable and secure platform on which to place a 1,000-tonne crane and two smaller 250-tonne cranes to remove the wagons.

Network Rail Anglia Route Director Patrick Hallgate said: "Building a 1,000-tonne crane platform on deep boggy marshland is indicative of just what a tricky engineering problem the incident has created. Our engineers have been working really hard to get to this key phase of the recovery programme.

Once the lift is complete, we can get on with clearing the river, rebuilding the bridge and getting passenger and freight services back up and running as soon as possible.

Gosh, if it's so difficult, you can only wonder how the line was built in the first place.  Or perhaps this is the quickest (rather than the only) way of doing it.

Britain's Canals - a handbook

If you've just discovered the English canals and you want to come up to speed, you need a good book.  You can subscribe to the magazines and browse the web, of course, but for a good cramming course it's got to be a book.

There are several options, but mostly they tend to focus on one aspect or another.   Either it's too boaty, or there's too much about rambling or restoration in the latter part of the afternoon, or the history is just the wrong shade of pink.  That's usually good: people want something aligned with their own interests.

Nick Corble has just brought out a good one that's pretty balanced: Exploring Britain's Canals: A Practical Guide.

It's got about ten sections, from the history of the waterways to the revival, the idle hobbies and the passions, the frivolous and the earnest pursuits, the holidaymakers and the liveaboards. 

If you know nothing about the canals but you want outline advice on something, you're sure to find it here, from buying and building a boat to living aboard and finding moorings, tips on boat handling and fishing, cycling and nature watching, lists and fascinating facts; you get the picture.  (The picture won't be full, but that's not what it's for. It's a good introductory brief.)

There's even a bit about canal bloggers, and Nick lists ten of 'em.  [Declaration of interest: Granny's one of the ten, and I got this book free, so I'm singing for my supper here].  But the list shows how ephemeral these books can be, because only a month after the book's launch, and already three or four of the blogs seem to have stopped.

Nevertheless, if you want this sort of book, this is the book you need. It's 9.99 from the publishers, but only £6.59 from Amazon.  I wonder if the author gets shortchanged when you buy at a discount like that?

The illustrations are mostly in mono, with a few colour plates, which gives the book a slightly old-fashioned feel, a bit like the old Nicholson's guides before they went all ordnance-survey in the 1990s.  I wish more of the photos were in colour. 

I'm pleased to report that one of the colour pictures is mine - he took it off my Flickr grannybuttons photostream with my blessing.  And I got a free copy of the book, so my comments should be seen in that light.

Where to find Granny's pics

Most of the photos that appear on this blog are later uploaded (in high resolution) to my Flickr account (www.flickr.com/photos/grannybuttons).

However, if you are looking for my canal photos you might be a trifle bored by the stream of other stuff going up there - family photos, work images, assorted other dross. 

Instead, look for the 'sets', and especially for the Granny Buttons 2007 set, or the Granny Buttons Favourites (a personal selection).

That reminds me - I really need to refresh the Favourites.  They don't include many of this year's choice.

Paperclipguy gets a Porsche

The PaperClip Guy, James Shipley - who's trying to trade his way to a narrowboat - reports that he's now the proud owner of a Porsche 924. 

He swapped his previous trade (a speedboat) last week. Depending on what sort of boat he wants, he must be perhaps halfway there now.

Wow, well done!  I suppose you can add a lot of value not just from the product itself, but with the story of the quest too.  With each trade, he'll now get press coverage, as here in the Northampton Echo this week.  And - in a smaller but more viral way - here on GrannyB too, I suppose.

The password you need if you want to barter with him: "Shipley, you are my hero.  I love you and want to trade with you!"

My earlier post here.

Putting your back out

Church Lawton Locks, dusk, September 2005.

Ray Edwards demonstrates the worst way of pushing a lock gate shut.  You should ideally do it with your backside to the gate.

I wish I could link up with a personal trainer.  I'd like to do a series of photo shoots and videos on how to use the canals as your personal exercise program.

I've even got the name ready:  www.rosieandgym.co.uk

Newbury Waterways Festival

 Here's a fine dance, guaranteed to make the rain gods smile:

Canal set for fun weekend

Boats of all shapes and sizes sail into town this weekend, as the Newbury Waterways Festival returns to Victoria Park.

The 42nd annual festival will fill the park with craft stalls and fairground rides on Sunday 29th July.

The flotilla will fill the canal with barges, model boats and vintage vehicles.

Also entertaining the crowds will be the flamboyant Hook Eagle Morris Men and local 60s band “The Trends”.

And at 4pm, a thousand yellow plastic ducks will race down the canal from Parkway Bridge in the annual duck race.

Oh no, not another bloody annual plastic duck race!    Poohsticks is far classier. 

Incidentally, while Newbury's way of placating the rain gods is to fill the town's canalside with people, the people of Ekkalnatham Pudur, near Krishnagiri in India, do the complete opposite to pray for rain.  They vacate the entire village for a day.

More of our darkness lightened

Gosh, I never expected my Lighten Your Darkness post to generate 'entries' rather than comments!

If you recall, I took a rather dark photo from Canalplan (original here), in order to show that there's often a lot of detail in underexposed shots.  I started with this:

and using ACDSee Pro, I ended with this:

John Slee of NB Epiphany had a go too.  He says: 

I'm colour blind so I suspect you won't see this as I see it. I may also have sharpened it when I shouldn't have - but I played for a few minutes with Adobe Photoshop and came up with the attached. Please let me know your comments - I want to learn this game if at all possible.

John's effort, which is far brighter than mine:

PixelPixie was more determined, and is more experienced than either John or me.  He was also observant:

From the original I saw that there was an electric light shining, this suggested to me a certain mood to the light.

He used Photoshop Elements 3 for the Mac, although given the more powerful, professional Photoshop CS2, and the chance to work on an original, he reckons the photo could be compared to a sunny day and come up even lovelier and more temperate:

Peter's version has more details than John's version or mine, and is clearly far more accurate.  You can still see the "electric light shining", which my version had lost.  (It's lighting up the outside of the white building on the right)

I'd be tempted to brighten it a bit more, at the risk of making it less realistic.  You'll probably know I like to do that with my own photos, which are often a bit too 'showy' for their own good.

I wonder what the original photographer, Steven Fulcher, thinks of it all? Thanks for letting us play, Steven!