Granny Buttons

A doctor writes - about feeds vs blogs

When you mostly read blogs via a 'feed reader', where everything is formatted the same, you miss out on the individual designs of the blogs. 

I read over a hundred of the blighters (I'm mad).

Today I caught up with the 'look' of The Green Man, the first time for a while, and was pleasantly surprised delighted.  The first picture shows how The Green Man is 'supposed' to look, and the one below shows it in a 'feed reader'  (Google Reader, in this case, but all readers are anonymous).

I don't know if the girly look is exclusive to The Green Man - or who drew it - but I like it, and it reminds me that sometimes it's good to visit a blog via its  'front door'. 

It's the difference between patients streaming to the surgery, and the doctor making house calls:  You can learn so much more from your patients when you make house calls, even though you can't visit many of them.

As a Class-A curmudgeonly single male I love coming across these expressions of femininity.  They are all the wife I need; just a few minutes of this and I'm content in my singlehood again.

They remind me of Loobylu, the blog of the wonderful children's illustrator Claire Robertson.  It's perhaps ironic that - in the very day I tell you how good it is to read a blog in the original Greek (so to speak) - she writes a post telling you how good it is to read feeds in Google Reader, and how she discovers the 'Next' button:

Pip revolutionized my life today by introducing me to the Next button in Google Reader… read her instructions and enjoy! I was totally overwhelmed by all the blogs I subscribe to in my reader, and will often just return to my 10 - 15 oldest and dearest because looking at everything is just too much.

But now I have started a-fresh. I haven’t gone the whole hog and deleted everything like Pip has done, but I have marked everything as “read”, and will enjoy hitting “next” from now on to flick through the most recent updates from all of my 236 favourite blogs (I can’t bear to delete a single one!).

I have found so much inspiration in just one day using this new method. I am hoping this sense of being all sorted will last.

Tall stories of Saul

I’ve been reading Saul Stories, the book I was sent a few weeks ago. 

It’s four vignettes – in 1962, 64 and the summer of 66 – of a young lad growing up with his granny in the Forest of Dean and on his grandfather's boat at Saul Junction on the Glos/Sharpness Canal.  

It reads like a roman a clef  (fact rewritten as fiction - examples of this type of literature include Primary Colours and Tender is the Night).

However, the author claims it’s more a weaving of stories heard second-hand from canal boaters.  If that’s true, a better comparison would be Ramlin Rose by Sheila Stewart. 

Bryn is an orphan, born of a schoolgirl who died in childbirth and brought up by his grandparents.  The grandparents have separated – the granddad lives on his narrowboat at Saul, and Bryn spends his week divided between his birth home with his granny, near Plump Hill and on the boat with grandpa.

A good book, I like to say, should ‘take wing’;  that is, the pages should fly by, almost turning themselves.    Saul Stories did that for me, but it took a little while - perhaps at the point where Hedge told the true story of Philip Fog and Jack Skeleton's disappearance.  

One reason for this is that it isn't stressed that Gran’s home is actually Bryn’s home too – that  it’s where he grew up, where his heart is.  It’s always described as ‘her cottage’, but surely he would call it ‘our cottage' if he really belonged there? 

This made me wonder until late in the story about who he really is.   But as the story unfolds it becomes very tender, and has a wonderful denouement as the boy reads old letters and discovers more about his mother.

I like the way the author ‘Gwilym Branch’ peppers the stories with placenames, some of them fake, some real.  There’s a veritable litany of pubs mentioned, and one could build a pub crawl out of it if so many of them weren’t nicknames.  I mean, there’s no ‘The Smoking Dog’ pub in the area, but the stories bring it alive and it must surely be based on another, real pub.

The stories are largely based on the area south of Gloucester known as the Arlingham peninsula, where the lower Severn snakes around the compass. It occurs to me that there are many places like this in Britain, tongues of land that are lonely, rarely-visited destinations, rather that stops on the way to other places.  And so many of them are communities, places with pubs.  The pub is the focus of the community, more so than the church now.

One of the biggest weaknesses of the book is the typography/layout.  Line and paragraph spacing makes it much harder to read.  The drawings, by Jane Fryer, are quite charming and make good chapter headings, but the more-frequent photos don’t really lend anything to the storytelling.  I'd like to have seen maps of the area instead, and I wish all the locations were given their real names to add to the sense of place.

(Trivia: Rock legends U2 make a cameo appearance.  Guitarist The Hedge is one of the main characters, while Bonio appears as the love interest of the dog, Nog.) 

The book’s been published to aid fundraising for the Cotswold Canals Trust, and it’s pretty hard to obtain otherwise – there’s not even a ISBN number to allow you to buy it online or borrow it from a library.  And that's a pity; this  book describes with charm the Arlingham peninsula, one of the more overlooked parts of Britain, and deserves wider circulation.

Towpath Talk joker's pun about Vatman's red diesel

Bob alerts me to a ‘nib’ (news-in-brief item) in the latest edition of Towpath Talk.   Although short, it’s a tale to stir the heart of every boater.  

The magazine says that Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs:

… confirmed that they now intend the lower (energy) rate of 5% VAT to apply to the whole supply of red diesel, whether used for domestic energy consumption on a vessel, or propulsion, rather than the general rate of 17.5%.

A ‘red letter day’, TT calls it (a pun, geddit?).  But they are playing The Joker to HMR&C’s Vatman and Robbin, and not only by inflicting punishment.   They are referring to the VAT element, and not the fixed duty of 43p per litre, which will still be charged come what may.

So their news, though true, isn’t good.

The option to self-declare how much is going on propulsion and how much on domestic still exists, but some boatyards are apparently not willing to allow this.  Not because they won’t believe your declaration, but presumably it means too much paperwork for them. 

Sue on No Problem has done us all a service:  She’s put up a page showing which boatyards are willing to accept a different self-declaration than the standard 60:40 of propulsion/domestic – and which boatyards are refusing to do so:

http://www.choiceforum.co.uk/blog/links/diesel_split.htm

Thanks, Sue!  Presumably she relies on your updates rather than emails from boatyards, so when you fill up, if you find the boatyard’s attitude different, please let her know.  Let her know anyway, just to reassure her that the facts haven’t changed.

Two types of PR for BW, two Parliamentary answers

In Parliament this week, Nicholas Hurd MP asked the Waterways Minister Huw Irranca-Davies:

… what payments British Waterways (a) has made in the last 12 months and (b) is contracted to make to Cavendish Public Affairs; and for what purposes.

The minister replied:

British Waterways has paid £58,309.28 + VAT to Cavendish Communications in the last 12 months.  Future payments to Cavendish are dependent on levels of support required, and this is due for consideration by British Waterways in early 2009.

Cavendish has provided a range of support services to British Waterways over the last 12 months including Select Committee preparation, parliamentary events management, and advising on building links with local authorities.

I'm interested to know why Nick Hurd asked this question, and why the minister gave a reply about Cavendish Communications (a telecoms company) rather than the unrelated Cavendish Place Communications.  Presumably a slip on both their parts . 

It follows on from last week, where Lord Cope asked how much BW paid to outside PR consultants. (Answer:  £40,425 'in this financial year')

It's strange that BW's fees to Cavendish are separate from those paid to 'PR consultants'. 

I would have thought that Cavendish are PR consultants, of a kind.   The client description on their website (pictured) describes what I'd call PR consultancy work. 

By my book, that's nearly £99,000 in PR fees from these two questions alone.   Is this too broad a sweep?   What else is under the carpet?

I look forward to the next Parliamentary question and answer, and I'm curious as to why they are asked. 

Embedding videos vs 'theft'

In an earlier post, I embedded a YouTube video and wrote about what it showed.   The author 2cvbloke commented: "er, it would have been nice to have been asked permission to use my video on this site!"

I replied by explaining what embedding is, that I considered YouTube encourages us to do it, and that you can disable embedding when you upload if you want.   We clearly differed on the etiquette of it all.  So I researched for him on how to disable embedding, so that his video wouldn't show.

'Jack May' (possibly a pseudonym - he left a false email address) takes exception to my reply to 2cvbloke, says I was being 'patronising', and accuses me of 'stealing content'.  He went on to make a comparison with someone taking a pole off my boat and saying that would be OK if I didn't know how to lock it up. 

(Jack, that's a category mistake.) 

Rise of the articles about the rise of the eco river gipsy

Canal boat living: Rise of the eco river gipsy - Daily Telegraph

After the Independent yesterday, there's yet another article about liveaboard canal boats.   This one's got an 'eco-theme':

Living on Britain's inland waterways is becoming increasingly popular for the freedom and sustainable lifestyle it offers – but the humble narrowboat could also pave the way for greener shipping.  Jimmy Lee Shreeve reports.

This time Bruce and Sheila of NB Sanity gets centre-stage.  They paint  a delicate, responsible picture of life afloat:

When you have a shower, you turn the water on, get yourself wet and turn it off. Then you lather yourself and turn the water on again to shower yourself. Wasting water would be unthinkable – and you certainly don't leave a tap running when you clean your teeth.

[Update: Bruce corrects me - the quote is attributed to another person in the story.  Sorry]

Hmm… well, I leave the tap running.   And I have a separate diesel tank for my heater - less trouble than a wood stove.  But I take the point.

However, I don't 'forage' for food as suggested in the article - mainly because I can't cook anything which doesn't have instructions on its skin.  Quite a few boaters are similarly culinarily challenged, and rely on the butler Mr Tesco to serve them.   One such boatrix is Sue of No Problem.   She regularly orders online from Tesco and has him deliver to the boat.  

Here's Sue's page on how to order your groceries from Tesco when you are a continuous cruiser. 

In the article Jimmy Lee Shreeve mentions the experimental fuel cell boat Ross Barlow, built by the University of Birmingham team (mentioned in my blog post of Sept last year).   It sounds romantic and futuristic, but as I mentioned then, fuel cells will be a long time coming, if ever.

The picture of Sanity in the Telegraph article (and stolen to put here - thanks for the permission you are going to give me tomorrow, Bruce!)  is the one used on Bruce's blog, nbsanity.blogspot.com.  It's taken at Great Barford on the Great Ouse, I think before he started his blog two or three years back.  

Great Barford is a wonderful overnight mooring especially in the summer, and I have fond memories of a night there in August 2002, on the way to Bedford. 

My own photo of Barford is below - one of far too few, taken in the days before I rediscovered sex photography.   It was a peaceful summer evening, so gentle that I moored Granny for two hours on just the breast rope, which hung slack for a long while.  On a river, too.

Golly, didn't Granny look sexy in those days, just a couple of months out of the paint shop.  She's more faded now.  This is just an old scan of a rough print; one day I'll scan these film negatives properly - they haven't faded - and make a beautiful, colourful record of my boat in it prime.

Phoney war generates renewed vigour

Roll up, roll up for the national fire sale - The Times

Crikey, the world's falling apart.   It has the feel of a 'phoney war' right now, doom-mongering in 5.1 multi-channel.  On all four sides comes evidence that the world economy is falling apart.  But somehow, the loudest noise is right in front of us, of things continuing as before, in deep, solid mono.

The government is talking of selling as much as it can to pay for restoring confidence.   From a boater's point of view, that includes canalside property sales that would previously have aroused a cacophony of protest. 

But yesterday the IWA actually welcomed news of government spending plans:

British Waterways would be getting a £5 million capital injection to spend on network infrastructure as part of a £535 million 'green stimulus package'. 

The capital is to be brought forward from 2010/2011 to 209/2010 budgets and will be part of the Grant in Aid that British Waterways receives from Government.

[But] we must not forget that British Waterways is still grossly underfunded and is still in need of a further £25 million on top of this cash injection just to maintain the existing network. IWA will continue to press home the case for improvements in navigation authorities’ funding, unabated and with renewed vigour."

I guess that means the government is simply bringing forward spending, in the hope that it'll stimulate the economy.  And we'll pay for it later out of the renewed vigour.

Renewed vigour is the same sentiment that I feel when I go overdrawn:

Oh, to hell with it, I've always wanted that item.  It's a necessity, after all, and I've been good for so long about putting it off to save money. 

BW must have had the same sentiment earlier this year, when it began the national program to fit bollards at all narrow locks. 

They'd been meaning to do it for years, and they probably thought "It's been needed for ages, it's necessary now, oh to hell with it, let's just go at it with renewed vigour, or it'll never get done."

Rural marinas are 'profitable diversification'

'Rural property consultants' Fisher German have a brief but interesting article about how farmers and other landowners can developing new rural land into canal mooring basins, creating thriving businesses in the process.

The article, 'Inland marinas are a profitable diversification' discusses how to counter objections and start getting a steady income from idle canalside fields by turning them over to boats.

It draws on the experience of Fisher German's Stephen Rice, who helped a local farming family develop the forthcoming Yelvertoft Marina, one of the dozen or more due to open on the canals in the next year or two.

Much the same ground is covered as in BW's Marina Development Guide, but in a single page and more rosily, without a single accounting figure to spoil the view.

This is all part of the Granny Buttons theory of crop rotation:  A new canal basin can add fertility and value to a field, so long as the hedgerow is retained. 

At the bottom of the page Fisher German help you explore a few other related modern rural business opportunities, such as converting farm waste into sustainable energy, and 'log cabin classrooms for a greener education', whatever that is.

No barges in Independent article today

Take the plunge: Canal boat living - The Independent (property supplement)

Well, I'll be darned.  Granny Buttons gets a namecheck (and link) in the Independent today!   So does Nick Corble, amongst others.   I think it's the first time Granny's featured in a mainstream newspaper.

And no mention of the dreaded word 'barge' either, nor any confusion between canal boats and river/houseboats.   Well done, Jimmy, pretty good!  

I was interested in the photo they used.  I'm rubbing both my neurons together to think if I recognise the boat in the photo.    Could it be Ebony, near Lower Heyford on the Oxford Canal?

Uncovering the construction of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct

BBC Wales' Hidden Histories TV series has just covered the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct.  Or rather, uncovered, in the sense of explaining how it was built.

Here's a wonderful computer animation of its construction, as deduced by Louise Barker and her team at the Royal Commission (on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales).

[Pontcysyllte Aqueduct Visualisation - See3D from Dan Gray on Vimeo]

(This is actually a greatly enhanced version of the animation I wrote about last year - 'Pontcysyllte Aqueduct construction animation'.   One major difference is the way they've worked out how the construction materials got across the valley, via the wooden 'roadway' that spanned the pillars as they rose.) 

Another key difference is that it's now in full, glorious HD on Vimeo, and if you can spare the bandwidth I recommend that version, full-screen.  The only failing is there's no soundtrack.  This stunning HD version could really do with a narration.

The Royal Commission pages about the restoration are here.   But you might prefer to watch the BBC Wales programme about it - originally broadcast on November 4th.  At time of writing you can still watch it here.  The Pontcysyllte section is the first ten minutes.

I particularly enjoyed it when Louise Barker of the Royal Commission (who researched the reconstruction) and her colleague (boss?) Dr. Peter Wakelin looked down from the aqueduct, and Louise says "and when you look down, we're over 40 metres high here…" and Peter interrupts firmly "120 feet in my money." 

In the programme Peter stubbornly continued to use feet and toes, for instance describing the thickness of the cast-iron aqueduct trough as "three-quarters of an inch thick", in terms familiar to Telford.   

Bravo for his sense of history.   He's eminently qualified for his job.  The technocrats,  in working it all out in gas-meter sizes, distance themselves in another way from the minds they seek to explain.

See also: 

• The restoration of the Aqueduct (Nov 2004)
  
• PDF of elevation of stone piers
  
• 3D fly-bys of Chirk Aqueduct and Scotch Hall Bridge (links at bottom of page)
  
• Book about the 'Aqueduct and Canal' (cover pictured) describing the reason for World Heritage nomination.

Washington Post recommends "stately 5mph" UK canals

In Britain, go with the flow - Washington Times

Eric Funk of Falls Church, Virginia, asks:

Q.   Two couples want to take a canal boat vacation in the United Kingdom next spring. We like the idea of leisurely daylight travel between close-together towns and villages, then sleeping on the boat moored. Any recommendations for a route, a boat charter company and a land-based tour afterward?

Travel editor K.C. Summers starts her reply ominously with

A.  You've got the "leisurely" part right: Canal boats travel at a stately 5 mph through the British countryside. …

She then tips this question into Visit Britain's lap and they suggest the Llangollen canal.

If you want leisurely daylight travel between close-together towns and villages, I'm not sure the Llangollen is the right choice. 

Granted, 5 mph would 'bring the towns and villages close-together', but the scope for putting on the throttle and overtaking other boats would be limited - it's probably the country's most crowded and congested vacation waterway, one of the shallowest, and perhaps the most likely to raise its collective fists in their wake.  It won't be leisurely, nor relaxed;  not at 5mph!

I'd choose an out-and-back route on a less-crowded waterway.  Perhaps, the Grand Union canal, or maybe something in the Birmingham area.   They'd also need to decide whether they want an activity holiday (i.e. lots of locks) or something truly more leisurely.   But be warned: still not at 5mph.  Judge your distance and speed on Canalplan. 

If Eric can bear all 52 locks (x2), Birmingham-Worcester would be lovely.  You've got the charm and history of Worcester at one end, and the amazing city of Birmingham is at your disposal at the other.  And in between, a nice rural mix between long pounds and the many-locked flights. 

If you want to avoid the locks, the long stretch of the North Oxford, Coventry and Ashby Canals would provided forty-odd miles with few locks and much history.

As for the hire company, which ones have boats that can be pushed to a 'stately 5 mph'?  Ideally it would be a very large fleet where all the boats look much the same.  That way,  if you are seen proceeding in 'stately' fashion you won't be recognised so easily.

Charles Ikins - also from Washington DC - spent two weeks on a Canaltime boat two years ago.  Here's his story about the trip from last year's Washington Post, which travel editor K.C. Summers unaccountably missed when she tipped the question over to VisitBritain.   Charles loved his fortnight so much that he's considering coming back to live afloat.

(He originally submitted it to Canal Boat magazine, at my suggestion,  but they turned it down.  The Post was quicker to accept.)

Golden Daze by Nick Corble

Nick Corble is perhaps best known for his waterways books that rival the others (e.g.  Fruit doesn't fly like a banana, Not the RBOA's Living Afloat)|.

Now he's produced his first novel:  Greater than Fever Pitch.  

Oh, all right, I'm just yanking his chain.   It's called Golden Daze, and it has nothing to do with canals or walking.

Instead, it combines football with a year in the life of a 21 one year old who graduates on the day of the 1983 General Election to become one of Margaret Thatcher's three million unemployed. 

As he ponders his future and begins to work out what he wants to do with his life his football team, with whom he has grown up, begin the most fantastic adventure in their history. 

As they edge closer towards an FA Cup Final at Wembley so he too homes in on the secret to life, work and women.

I haven't got a clue about team sports, I'm not interested in football, and this book has nothing to do with the waterways. 

But I'll give it a plug just in case it develops a following and Nick becomes famous and rich off it, like his namesake Hornby.  Then he might buy me a drink some time.

In Memoriam - The Boat Inn, Coseley

On one one of my photos of The Boat Inn, Coseley,  Flickr user Letterlad comments:

November 2008 ......sadly demolished now.

Sad indeed.  Not for the demolition itself, but for lack of news of what might follow.  Will the site  now be redeveloped with sympathy to truly embrace the canal, or turn its back on boat with lofty disdain.

Of course, we think we know the answer before it’s asked.

Except of course now we don't.   In the present economic climate who knows, in the next year, what will really happen to canalside development.

Impounded boat hogs a visitor mooring space

Twocvbloke records a video of an impounded canal boat.

I'm not sure where the video was taken, but it shows the boat tied to canalside mooring bollards. it strikes me that by 'impounding' it, BW are just tying up another visitor mooring space - or even a lock approach.  Couldn't they have moved it?  Perhaps they could just tie it to a tree with a bit of blue string, the way they do with their workboats.

With the 'home wharf' of Darwen written on the side (under the name - or boat name - ARC Scott), I'd assume guess this was somewhere on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal..