Granny Buttons

BCN toll clerk Will King's story

The story of Will King - a Black Country canal toll clerk - Black Country Bugle

Here's a fascinating story of the man who came to be toll collector at Brades Hall, and other toll offices on the Birmingham-area canals.

The Black Country Bugle is a wonderful oddity, a local newspaper that only reports on old stories and reminiscences.  With stories like this, it really shines.

That's enough Boat Inn Coseley - ed.

Bitter end for declining local pubs - Express and Star

The Express and Star is just one of the media 'outlets' recording the demolition of the Boat Inn, Coseley, before Christmas (although its picture shows the building still standing, in the background!)

(My earlier post here, and follow the links back.)

Efforts by supporters came to naught - probably because they were focused on preserving the building, instead of what comes next.

A sad end, but sadder still is the lack of discussion about:

• What is to be built in its place.
• How it might fit into its canalside setting - a setting potentially glorious for the waterways.

Coseley's not rural or picturesque, that's true, but it's accessible to road and rail as well as canal, and a natural stopping point on the long, lockless pound between Wolverhampton, Tipton and Smethwick. 

Furthermore, since it's at the Bradley Loop Junction, it would make a dandy halfway house for any canal business.  It has so much development potential!  

Which reminds me - what happened to the BW Bradley workshops around the corner when they were closed a couple of years back?   The Bradley Loop remains one of the few small sections Granny has yet to see.

The BW 'fit for purpose' blog

I've been trying to catch up on Allan Richards' blog about BW, British Waterways - are they fit for purpose?

This is new to me and I found it heavy going.  It seems to be a spin-off of articles on Narrowboat World (I can't find the originals) and has generated a deluge of stuff on the forums (e.g. on Yahoo Groups and on CanalWorld, where the last thread has almost 80 posts with the usual mess of quotebacks that make forum reading so tedious). 

His points are a bit quicker and easier to understand when made as a blog.

I think he wants to know if BW director's bonuses are dependent on their getting more money out of boaters' licences and moorings charges, and if the directors have a lucrative personal incentive for simply raising these charges.  He also makes a sly accusation, posed as a question.

Here's the first post from Nov 21st.

Usefully, he's added a short list of links to key posts, called 'What you must read!', including 'the article that started it all - Salem's lot'.

My own instinct is that while the 'bonus' culture is all very good for getting results quickly out of a public, profit-oriented, business, it surely can't be good for creating civil servants with a sense of pride in their organisation. 

But what do I know.   The canals were founded as hard-nosed businesses for shareholders looking for sharp returns.  Perhaps they are going to be turned back into hard-nosed businesses once again.  That would be heritage of a sort, I suppose.

Will I be able to clean this lot up?

Following my new year's resolution to collect much more of other people's rubbish from the towpaths and canals, Ray Oakhill sent me the photo below.  He asks:

I wonder if you could cope with this little lot left on the GU Canal earlier this year by some Pikey Boaters. I wonder if they had a current BW licence?

 

I'll be fair and say that the owner of this lot probably just nipped over to the water point, and was going to come back and clear it up, honest.

I say 'I'll be fair' because it reminds me of my bedroom when I was a teenager.  My mother always seemed to come in and witness the squalor just after I'd gone out, and always before I'd had a chance to tidy up.  She was SO UNFAIR!

Two short clips of crossing the Llangollen aqueducts

Flickr user Wez Smith has put up two good short video clips:

1. Crossing the Chirk aqueduct.
2. Crossing the Pontcysllte aqueduct. 

These aren't videos so much as brief 'motion pictures', each a minute or so in length.  Flickr now allows you to upload these clips - up to 90secs at a time - and they can demonstrate more than a still photo. 

I suppose you can do the same with a YouTube video, but the Flickr system allows you to mix your still and movie pictures together, so you can decide whether to use one or the other to demonstrate your point.

And the Pontcysllte clip shown here certainly demonstrates the vertiginious and unprotected 120ft drop down to the River Dee better than any still photo could.

Well, I suppose it depends on the photographer (and the caption or narrative, don't overlook the importance of the accompanying words) but you get the point.

Contrails on a winter's day on the Stort

Global warming, like war and decay, can be quite beautiful and irresistibly photogenic.  I love the cold, clear, bright winter days where aircraft paint elegant jet contrails across the sky.

(So does everyone else.  There are over 62,000 contrail pictures on Google Images.)

There's no great trick to photographing them - you just have to spot the unusual opportunity in advance, and then click your shutter at the right moment. 

It's rare that I'll criticise my camera for poor quality and making me miss a shot.  On this occasion I was steering Granny Buttons on the Stort below Parndon Mill a couple of weeks ago, and saw an aircraft heading straight for the moon. 

As I slowed to find the right position, the aircraft seemed to remarkably 'steer around' the moon.  I wanted to catch the moment when the plane was 'alongside' the moon, as though it had taken deliberate evasive action.  And then, dammit, the bushes were obscuring my view. 

By the time I was in the right position, I found the wrong lens was on the camera, it wouldn't focus properly, it took several more moments to set the focus to 'manual', and I'd missed my chance.  Oh dear; just another contrail photograph.

The Stort is a great vantage point for contrail photography because it's close to Stansted Airport and yet still remarkably rural.  Global warming looks very beautiful from this viewpoint. 

Choose a full moon in December or January, an hour or two before sunset, for best effect.

Granny B decoupaged as Christmas card

Thank you to Brenda Scowcroft of NB Mr David for her special handmade Christmas card showing Granny in the snow at Hertford. 

Back in September I asked "Why isn't Granny Buttons represented in decoupage?"

Decoupage is "the art of decorating an object by gluing coloured paper cutouts onto it in combination with special paint effects, gold leaf, etc." says Wikipedia.  The effect is charming, hand-made and unique.

I didn't mean it as a hint.  I was thinking of getting one done myself. But Brenda took the hint anyway and last week this charming, hand-made and unique Christmas card arrived.  

Her source image was the photo of Granny in the snow at Hertford, taken by John of Alacrity a couple of months back.

Note how the the different layers of the photo give it a striking 3D look. 

This must be extremely time-consuming, and either you'll have to pay a bit more for these cards or else you are getting a labour of love.

Other cards like this are available from Brenda's ArtyMiss online shop, where you can bid for them at low prices, or from her new Misi store, where she sells them under the name 'Tillergirl'.

Jim Shead's Waterways Information

Jim Shead, of the legendary Waterways Information encyclopaedia, has just sent me a warm, congratulatory Christmas note.  Apparently Granny is top UK boating site over Christmas, on the 100 Top Boat and Marina Sites. 

Heaven knows why.  Clearly the people looking for useful information are taking a break over Christmas.

But after all, I'm still No. 11, below Toledo Bend Lake, and well under Sailing Texas (with ten times the readership).  It reminds me that we British inland waterways boaters need our table.

Who's going to set it up?  Remember, whoever does is going to get all our traffic combined.

Other blogs and RSS feeds are available, including (in the current top 100) Pennine Waterways, No Problem, Mortimer Bones, Gypsy Rover, Maffi, Hadar, Debdale, Lucky Duck, Marmaduke, Derwent6, Seyella, Lazy Days, Herbie, Alacrity, Windsong and Epiphany.

Along with a few non-blogs (e.g. Canaplan) that means nearly one in five of the top 100 boating sites are about the UK inland waterway sites, a pretty impressive ranking.  We deserve our own chart.

Interesting prop cutter test on video

Motor Boats Monthly has an interesting comparative test of propeller rope cutters in its latest issue:

Six of the biggest rope cutter brands on the market took part in the experiment - Stripper, Gator, Spurs, Plastimo, R&D, Prop Protector and Shaft Knife.

We threw everything at them: polypropylene and nylon rope, monofilament and nylon netting, heavy-duty tarpaulin, copper cable and finally steel wire.

They made the article riveting by filming the tests with an underwater camera, and uploading the results to YouTube (below).

You'll need to buy the magazine to find the results - or subscribe to the digital edition. 

The video shows that some of the units are remarkably efficient at chopping rope, cable, mesh and plastic bags into little bits. 

However, it also drives home the point that what's left behind is an artificial mulch, which is - whether inert or noxious - much harder to collect than before. 

When I clear out my prop, I get a bagful of rubbish to dispose of neatly.  With a prop cutter, presumably, most of the rubbish clogging a propeller is scattered to all corners of the canal without you even being aware of it.

The cutters seem to work well, and MBW's review makes great reading. 

But at what cost?  I'd be interested to know the views of BW's ecologists and the various canal cleanup organisers.

Mercia Marina newsletter

Supersized (600+ moorings) canal basin Mercia Marina has produced its first newsletter, the chatty Mercia Mercury (pdf).

I'm not sure how marinas usually communicate with their boaters, although probably the larger the site the more likely they are to have newletters. 

Mercia's website also features a forum - forum.merciamarina.co.uk - where residents can sound off amongst themselves, and it's 'public', in that outsiders can also read it. (This is an improvement on the 'members only' forums that one or two other marinas have.)  But I still think a marina should use a blog to communicate - it's a much more 'open' format. 

If they did this, they'd follow in the well-trod footsteps of Pillings Lock Marina, whose Wordpress-based blog/site sets a terrific example.

The Shilsole Blog is an even longer-standing example.  Shilsole Marina, on the US West Coast in Seattle had a thriving liveaboard community that used the blog to interact online. 

I say 'had' and 'used' because Shilsole's gone unaccountably quiet in recent weeks. 

The Grand Old Boat of York

60ft semi-trad The Pride of York "has been described as the finest boat of its type by professionals in the boating world".  

(That's a grand claim, a grand old claim indeed.  I'm not sure who those professionals are, but it only needs two of them, speaking honestly, for it to be a technically accurate statement.)  

The Pride of York appears to be a new private shared ownership scheme from David Clarke of Cut Above Narrowboats - described as 'cabinet maker'.  

(Is that the same David Clarke who's the long-established boatbuilder who used to be the 'D' of R&D Fabrications?)

It looks an impressive interior, very swish and stylish.  What caught my eye was the rather spartan, undecorated interior, and I had the impulse to cover the bare walls in pictures and frame the windows with curtains.  Without the extra decor, I'd find it bare and cold.

And this made me wonder: 

What's the etiquette when a new shared ownership boat gets taken over?  Do all the women trot off in feminine conclave to a tea room and agree decorously on the extra furnishings?  Or does everyone meekly accept what's given?  It would have to be the women; it would be a brave man who insisted on tagging along to tell them what they should do with the interior. 

(I'd certainly be that man, but I'd make a terrible co-owner of a narrowboat.  I'd hate everything my fellow-owners did, but I'd act all passive-aggressive and not say anything about it directly.  I'd find fault elsewhere.  I'd be a pain.) 

The Pride of York is the first boat I've seen which has 'signage design' rather than signwriting.  It's by Rob Oldfield Design Associates, 'leading specialists in the design and production of museum exhibitions and heritage centre interiors.'

Boat signwriting used to be a manual skill acquired by years of labour and apprenticeship, but nowadays they probably give degrees in 'signage design'. 

Mike's Choices

I like the idea of the new Mike’s Choices agony-uncle website. 

I spotted it when he blogged about a morning's light canal boating (which took him a week and seems to have exhausted him):

Have just spent a week moving a narrow-boat that is to be a friends live-on house boat from Devizes ... so am totally knackered having done some 25 locks so far!!!

‘Doctor Mike’ says he is a real doctor (a cardiac anaesthetist) but he offers far more than just surgical advice.

If you have a problem or dilemma, be it medical or social or drugs related, I can't tell you what to do, but I will give you choices. I will tell you what my choice would be, but give you other choices that are evidence-based and you may not have considered.

… This website is NOT about medical advice only, but IS about making decisions where the answer is not clear (to you), whatever the problem, be it family, friends, career, drugs advice or medical advice.

He says (in bold) that it is aimed at young people.  My  heart sank at that, because I can’t think of any young people who want advice on choices more than I do.

You can submit your question on five types of dilemma;  Family, Friends, Career, Surgery [medical] and 'Pharmacy' [i.e. drugs – well, he does say it’s aimed at young people].

On the face of it, Dr Mike’s training is in surgery.  But the rest of it is more about wisdom than career expertise, and that's cool; the mistakes y0u make as part of your own life experiences can make a far bigger difference to an agony uncle like  Doctor Mike.   And his own training in anaesthesiology must come in handy when assessing the relative merits of various drugs.

He has a neutral, non-judgemental attitude – witness the answers he gives to drug questions and his bar chart of dangerous drugs in order of danger (in his opinion).

Here's a question for him:

Dear Dr. Mike,

I have a friend who spends a lot of time on a canal boat and feels most relaxed when taking it a few miles down the cut every few days. 

He's getting on a bit now, and wants to have experienced psychedelic drugs before he dies.  Would you recommend he does them when he's happy on his boat, or on the bank in a conventional house?  Any other tips for me him on safe canal boat trips?

My New Year's Resolution for 2009 - recovered

You know that New Year's Resolution post I lost?  I found it again!  Here it is:

My New Year's Resolution for 2009 will be to leave the canals cleaner than I found them.

I will gather more rubbish and clean up as I go along.  I plan to get a bin for my front well deck, to store rubbish that unthinking jerks have left on the towpath.

Dogdirt might be for Christmas, but rubbish, it seems, is for ever.

For example, a couple of weeks back, at Sawbridgeworth Lock, I spotted four small plastic bags of dog dirt.  Two were lying on the towpath like discarded condoms, while two others were hanging from the lock-gear like Christmas tree baubles (or unfeasibly packaged testicles). 

FANCY THAT!   Fancy picking up something biodegrable and wrapping it so it lasts for generations, and then LEAVING IT FOR SOMEONE ELSE to dispose of!  Whoever did that is a piece of dogdirt himself.  Lord, it makes me so angry I could spit. 

I didn't pick it up myself, I'm ashamed to say.  My pockets were already full. 

(The perpetrator probably made the same excuse, but I would assume he, at least, lived locally.)

I should have picked it up myself. From next month I will. 

What's your New Year's Resolution going to be? 

It would be nice if BW's resolution was to provide more public waste bins. 

Except that it should really be the local councils installing them - and emptying them.  

Since the towpath is now almost universally accessible to the public, this is an issue for local communities - and volunteers picking up more than we drop - not British Waterways.

Diesel splits problem on the Lee & Stort

I really like the Diesel Splits page that Sue of No Problem has set up.  Please keep reporting to her the price split at which boatyards are selling red diesel.

Granny's been on the Lee and Stort the last six weeks, most of them trapped by the lock repair at Waltham Common.

I refuelled with diesel at Lea Valley Boats at Broxbourne at the end of October, the last weekend before red diesel became fully taxed.  They charged 85p/litre, which wasn't too bad.

One month on, and I was running short of fuel for my diesel heating stove.  There are just three canalside places to buy diesel on the Lee & Stort.  

• Lea Valley Boats
• Stanstead Marina, at Stanstead Abbotts
• Hallingbury Marina at Hallingbury Mill. 

I rang them all to find out their diesel pricing policy.  And found that NONE of them would sell me fuel for my heater at the low-tax rate.