Granny Buttons

Vodafone users can now send/receive Twitter messages free

Twitter is now supported by Vodafone mobile phones.

This means that you can send and receive all 'tweets' to and from your home for free – provided you've got a fone from Voda.  I trust other mobile companies will now follow suit, because it would be a crucial point for me if I was looking for a new contract.

Twitter would be really useful for coal/diesel boats, such as Brian McGuigan's NB Alton, Keith and Jo's Hadar, or Candlebridge's Archimedes & Ara. 

The latter are pictured right, refuelling Granny with diesel in January 2005 at Battlebridge Basin. 

As they go around the system, these fuel boats could send you their 'tweets' from their phones, with their single message being routed to the phone of everyone who needed to know.  Tomorrow's destination, price, shortages, special offers; all that and more could allow the boater to have his spondulicks ready and himself ready to stop the fuel boat and buy some.

I can't tell you the number of frustrating times I just miss them, or they suddenly appear from nowhere and I've got no way of paying them because I've got no cash on me and no cheque book.

But paying a fuel boat is a problem that Twitter can't solve, and it's worth a whole 'nother post.

Commons dinner honours a few of the last remaining Idle Women

A couple of weeks ago a few of the surviving original 'Idle Women' were honoured with a slap-up feast in the Palace of Westminster. 

This was courtesy of the Waterways Trust, and hosted by Huw Irranca-Davies, Minister for the Natural and Marine Environment, Wildlife & Rural Affairs.

Why Huw Irranca-Davies?   Because somewhere in that alphabet soup of a job title is 'Waterways Minister', probably a division of the Dept. for Not Frightening Bats.

(Actually, I think the Minister for Transport would have been a better host for this particular dinner.  It was under the Minstry of Transport, after all, that the IWs laboured.  There's an outline of the history in this Waterscape news story of the unveiling of a plaque last October to commemorate the Idle Women, although as I mentioned earlier, I think plaques to individuals are far nobler.)

But I was transfixed by the picture accompanying the press release.

Attending the reception, which took place on Tuesday 17 March, were four of the surviving boatwomen – Sonia Rolt, Emma Smith, Jean Peters and Iris Murdoch in addition to Andrew St Joseph (son of Daphne March) and John Monnington (son of Evelyn Hunt).

As time passes, photos like this are going to become much rarer, and we should treasure them before we all turn into ghosts.  In particular I am in awe of Sonia Rolt, a waterways living treasure.

But what haunted me was the row of walking sticks.  There were four original Idle Women, but five sticks.  One of those sticks, I was startled to notice, was used by the son of an IW.  My, how time does pass.

Canals all cleared up thanks to Lib Dem councillor

Towpath Tidy took place last weekend.  And first with news of its success is the fresh-faced Nicholas Coombes.  

Young Coombes is Liberal Democrat Councillor for Bathwick, as well as being declared 'Bath Chronicle Politician of the Year' (it says here) and 'a future MP'.  On his own blog he wrote:

Canal cleared-up:  Nicholas Coombes joined local volunteers and British Waterways to clear up the Kennet & Avon Canal in Bathwick.

The volunteers picked up 20 sacks of rubbish from the towpath and verges between the Bath Locks and Bathampton. Finds included a trolley and TV aerial both secreted in the vegetation below Sham Castle Lane. Marker posts and information boards were re-painted at the stretch opposite Sydney Buildings.

“Volunteering projects like this are really good,” said Cllr Coombes. “A few hours work for fifteen people has made a real difference to our area. It was warm and sunny which helped make for a fun, sociable morning.”

Well done, this is clever, in one sense.  Nick Coombes here positions himself as the leader/organiser of this part of Towpath Tidy, by the simple expedient of quoting himself in the third person.  This helps add gravitas in a press release, especially if you are young. 

However... 

"Writing about yourself in a blog as if it's a press release is a mistake," says former Waterways Blog Personality of the Year Andrew Denny.  Denny recommends that young Coombes doesn't quote himself in the third person, and doesn't write blog posts like press releases. 

Instead, the rising star of the Bath Lib Dems should write as if it was 'an email to the world'.  

"Third-person blog posts never work – they aren't transparent and simply sound self-serving," says Denny, who has been tipped as a future BW board member. 

Newbold Tunnel son-et-lumiere

Every boater must be tempted to whip out his camera to photograph the multi-c0loured lights in Newbold Tunnel, on the North Oxford Canal near Rugby. 

The £200,000 joint project from BW and Rugby Council must have seemed a great idea when it was installed nearly four years ago.  Here is Waterscape's original announcement.

I suppose it still is a great idea, although including it as part of Rugby Council's 2005 'Diwali' celebrations - complete with bhangra dancers - must have stuck in the craw of canal purists and seemed bizarre to the locals and boaters. 

But then again, it's great to see the contributions of the original Hindu canal navvies and boating people finally recognised after nearly two centuries - or 240 years, if you count the original Newbold Tunnel and canal as a whole.

Four years on, though, and it's looking a bit patchy in places, with some of the lights not working.  I think the lights were supposed to be blue/red/green, to form an overall white light, although when only two of a set are working, they seem to make a vague indeterminate colour to me – as if they are simply working hard to please.

Furthermore, to me they didn't display the intended 'circle of light' effect (as mentioned by the BBC at their launch).  I don't know if this is because I was on a boat and it only works on the towpath, or because some of the lights are out, or simply because I chose a bright day.  

Maybe the council turns off some of the lights in the daytime in these hard times to save money.  They turn them off completely at night to save bats, apparently.  A pity - the effect would be far more interesting at night.  But these days it's a criminal offence to frighten a bat. 

The most impressive part, for me, is not the overall effect, but the detail.  Close-up, the brickwork is picked out in a spooky son-et-lumiere, where the boat engine's rumble and the ripple of the propellor wash adds the sound to the colours.

I put my hand on some of the lights, and while not too hot to touch, the glass seemed rather warm.  How much do they cost to run, and is that the reason why not all of the lights are working?

Perhaps it's all a giant, subliminable subluminal subliminal promotion for The Green Blue.

1933 and all that

I'm increasingly fascinated at all the dates I see set in stone, metal or concrete on the Grand Union Canal.  Here is some of the concrete coping near Braunston Turn.

('Coping' is probably the wrong term; whatever, it's what they laid in the days before 'armco' piling. You'll know the correct term better than I)

Wikipedia tells us what was happening in 1933, but its record of the year doesn't mention the Grand Union.

Yet, while the world was in the slough of the Depression in 1933, this concrete represents the canal's most optimistic period.  From here at Braunston right through to Birmingham, the Grand Union was being massively upgraded, widened and dredged.

I can't find a detailed history online of the canal at this period.  Wikipedia, Canal Junction, Jim Shead and Waterscape all offer snippets, but that's not enough for me.  1933 was a big year for canal maintenance.  In the depth of depression the government increased spending on the canals hugely and I'd like to find out how it compares with today.

Fire and fire drill on the towpath

Nic Chilton says (in exactly 140 characters, well done!):

Sat in the boat watching the rain.  Just spent half hr watching firemen do a practice drill by the canal edge. Are there more canal fires now

Gosh, scarcely a month goes by now without a  tragic blaze on a canal boat.  Most of them seem to be of wood or coal fires run amok, and I'm grateful that the fire brigade are practising.

But apart from the boats themselves, I've noticed an increase lately of ash fires on the towpath, from stoves emptied before the embers have died.   As pictured here, on the Oxford Canal near Claydon top lock.

Ugly things, these, like cold sores on the towpath. Do they destroy or regenerate the grass?

Most of them quickly burn themselves out, but one hot, dry summer I'm sure we are going to see a conflagration. It's just as well that firemen practice. 

Although call me a cynic, but I can't help feeling that half of the fireman's practice consists of learning how to put on their lifejackets, just in case they slip on the mud churned up by their firehoses and fall into the treacherous, deep cut .

LED fantastic and Kestrel.

In my blog post 'Light fantastic', NB Kestrel comments

Ever since we bought her, Kestrel has been lit mainly by 20 watt 12V halogen spotlights which are horribly inefficient.

I have been planning to change these for 2 years but why do today what you can put off till tomorrow?

It was Andrew Denny's post "Grandpa Buttons and LED lighting" and the useful comments it received that finally kicked me into action and I ordered a couple of test replacements from Ultraled.

That's interesting; my original post was simply about a picture of daddy and me, but I always like to have a waterways angle somewhere, so I added a bit about LED lighting. And in this case, the waterway angle came up trumps: 

The new LED lights Kestrel has installed have reduced its lighting drain dramatically - from 34.8 to 9.6 amps.   That's 25 amps, a hell of a saving.

I'd like to think it was all because Mr Kestrel saw a pic of me and dad together.  Go on, humour me; pretend it was...

Granny goes Lijit, and bargeeboy

I’ve finally got my ‘Lijit’ badge working.

LIJIT is a clever search engine that only indexes my own content (blog, twitter, Flickr and other things I belong to) and that of my blogroll and immediate links. 

So if  you search for a subject I’ve written about, not only will it come up with the posts I’ve written on the subject, but also the items that other blogs/websites on my list have written about.

One area where it should score over Google Custom Search is that it’s completely automatic – it doesn’t need me to tell it to add another page or blog.  It senses it automatically.  It also gives numerous reports (such as watching if you type in any dirty words and reporting you to matron).

That’s the theory as I understand it, anyway.  Let me know how you get on.

No waterways connection in the above, so let’s have one now:

I love bargeeboy, the blog of veteran canal carrying boater and businessman Malcolm Burge.  He writes concisely and introduces many classic memories that really bring his accounts to life.

For example, in a recent blog post  ‘Stoke Bruerne’, he writes of going in a single day from his home to Stoke Bruerne on his old motor Stafford. (Since I think his home is below the Atherstone locks I was bemused as to how he did it in a single day.   Perhaps he forgot to mention one overnight stop.  But working boaters are amazing in the distance they can cover per diem.)

I loved his description of ‘flying’ through Blisworth Tunnel in 24 minutes on Stafford, and comparing that with an earlier experience of going through it with another classic boat, Greyhound, which took two hours and was done in a manner which smacked of authenticity: 

[This was] a bit different from a trip with Greyhound, when the Masthead lamp had run out of oil and I put a candle in a jam jar.  No problems in Braunston Tunnel  - 1 candle light is sufficient to light the tunnel lining if put on the front deck.

But on this occasion it was just getting dark (never seem to arrive at Stoke in the daylight!) as I entered the tunnel and could just see the end.  Two boat lengths in, and a drip hit the target and out went the candle just as the light at the end faded.

What else can one do except put cans and chimney down, pull tiller on the strings and engine on very slow. Then sit it out and bounce and scrape through the tunnel. Over 2 hours this time and not a Woman to share it with.

Mind you, if he'd done it in authentic style, he'd have legged the boat through the tunnel.  Or to be truly authentic, had a Woman to share it with and let her do it!

Severed foot found in shoe on Severn river bank, four people are suspected victims

 Do you ever come across trainers floating in the canal? 

I do, all the time.  I noticed this one near Radford Semele three years ago.

You often see empty trainers in the canal.  Of course, they tend to float sole-upwards,  but they still leave you to think, well, is that an empty shoe? )

This week someone discovered a shoe which wasn't empty, on the bank of the Severn, near Odda's Chapel, Deerhurst.

Sky News reports it here.

I love the way Sky reports it, alongside four associated stories of particular people (click to enlarge the picture and see the connection):   

• Missing chef 'has come to harm'
• Fern Britton to quit This Morning.
• Wales pensioner stabbed to death.
• Driver led to cliff edge by sat nav.

Any one of them could have been the owner of the foot, couldn't they?

Daily Mail does yet another houseboat property article

A buoyant market: Houseboats are holding their own in choppy economic waters - Daily Mail  

Today's Daily Mail has yet another bog-standard property article about houseboats by property journalist Mark Hughes-Morgan.

Every property journalist starts an article about living afloat by talking about residential moorings and houseboats. Although they often digress briefly onto narrowboats, they are always quickly pulled back to writing about houseboats, barges and the river.

It's clear these journalists don't live afloat themselves, and mostly they really haven't a clue about the difference between a narrowboat and a houseboat.  They are just sent to cover the 'living afloat' beat.

In the case of today's Daily Mail article, apart from a very brief mention of Barton Marina, it's all about houseboats, barges and the river.  And certainly nothing about continuously cruising. 

Living on a narrowboat on the canals has very little in common with houseboats or river barges, but you'd never learn that from these landlocked journalists.

No Problem has a problem

Veteran boat blogger Sue now has the world's most inappropriately named blog.  It seems that No Problem has a problem – apparently it's been hacked. 

Poor Sue!  If you try to get to her site (www.choiceforum.co.uk)  you may well get a message warning you of dire consequences if you continue. 

She's trying to sort it out, but it might take a few days.  In the meantime, she's setting up a temporary Blogspot blog so you can continue to get a fix of her daily waterways stories and cruising log.

[Update:  She's now on www.nbnoproblem.blogspot.com - at least for a while]

Liverpool Canal Link opening day ruined by safety

There was lots of media 'tape and ink' expended yesterday on the official opening day of the Liverpool Canal Link.

I think the whole thing is £20million well spent – it really is a terrific project, superbly accomplished - well done British Waterways!

Martin Clark has covered the opening day well on Pennine Waterways.

But as you'll probably guess, I was alternately blue with anger and red with laughter at seeing the officials on the ceremonial boat being made to look like tw*ts by being forced to wear life jackets – all of them! - even the suits, even the more experienced waterways staff. 

Presumably this was because they were all thought by the 'health and safety' people to be too drunk, incapable of swimming, and too inexperienced to be trusted to act sensibly.

Some of them must have been thought so untrustable and incompetent that they were even forced to wear hi-visibility jackets too, just in case we didn't notice them and accidentally bumped into them. 

Although, come to think of it, hi-vis jackets like those are very unsafe near water (too bulky if you fall in), so no wonder they had to wear lifejackets on top to counteract that.

And if the bright yellow and red wasn't enough, the lock operators were even wearing shiny white hard-hats as well!  Strewth, the health & safety nazis took over the world when we weren't looking.

John Slee of NB Epiphany says he has a maths degree, and he's done some calculating:

New Canal for Liverpool - Creative Accounting versus Simple Maths

Since only six boats a day will be allowed through, he's worked out that it will take over 13 years if every boat on the waterways wanted to visit.

But more impressive is the value to the local economy.  If it's really worth almost £2million a year, that means that each visiting boat will in effect be contributing £867. 

As John concludes:  "When we get to Liverpool (and we hope we can this July), will we get a refund on our BW licence?"

No chance, John.  Nor will it go to much-needed bank staff (unless they need lifejackets).  No, the money will probably be spent on 'health & safety' (sic) clipboardholders and penpushers.

There, I've uttered.

Boat wrecks and projects

Following on from my earlier post about narrowboat graveyards, what about:

www.boatwrecks.com   

It claims:  

Probably the best site to find: 
Small craft - salvage - repossession

All items will mainly be available as a result of an Insurance Claim or a Financial Repossession.

All will be sold on the basis of  'As is, where is'

Now you're talking!   This is truly 'narrowboat project' territory.

See also:   Define: Project. 

[Thanks to Ralph Kitts, Marine Engineer, for the alert]

Free chimney for your boat at Banbury town lift bridge

If you want a free chimney for your narrowboat, there's a lovely one in the canal by the Banbury pedestrian lift bridge.

It was accidentally knocked off Derwent 6 as they went under the bridge on Sunday.  They write about it in Oh No! We lost the chimney!

They returned the following morning, Sea Searcher magnet in hand, and spent a fruitless hour trying to recover it, before giving up and buying a new one.  For forty-five pounds.  You can read about that too, in New chimney and a bit poorer.

If you do manage to locate the old one yourself, you can either steal it or be honest and contact Derwent 6 and ask them if they want it back, in return for a small salvage fee.

Ah, that takes me back.  I've been in that frustrating position too, fishing for a chimney for Granny Buttons. 

It was early in 2000 in London, in the shadow of the Westway near Paddington, when my own chimney was knocked off by an overhanging branch. 

I returned later with friends and my Sea Searcher, and together we eventually recovered it, to many cheers, and replaced it on the roof.

But as I was reversing away, the branch knocked it off again!  And that time we couldn't find it.  

My, how we all laughed. Well, they did.  And they howled even more as I got angry with them for laughing at my frustration.