Granny Buttons

The road to 2020 vision on the canals

British Waterways has taken us me quite by surprise.  Firstly it's issued a 'road map' of where it wants to steer the waterways in the next decade, a fourteen-page brochure called:

   2020 – A Vision For The Future Of Our Canals And Rivers 

(There's a companion YouTube video, although that is a bit corporate and watercolourish and won't tell you too much.  Looks and sounds good, though)  

Next, as a flying start to the new initiative, it's announced a big restructuring and 'slimming down' of management, with about 100 job losses.  A good day to bury bad news.

They call it the 'Third Sector', this approach.  As far as I can tell, it's about moving BW into a sort of public trust, perhaps a bit like the National Trust.  And just as the NT is supported by endowments, so BW would be aided by its own property portfolio, the canalside land it has developed over the last decade.

But the waterways can't be supported entirely by the property; BW will still need support from the central government, albeit in straitened circumstances.  The government doesn't have the money now, even if the general public is using the canals as much as (or more than) we boaters. 

So BW will need wider public support.  Perhaps, like the National Trust, there'll be an element of 'joining', although what they could join and how people would contribute I confess I've little idea.   Except, as I've said before, the voluntary work could be the key.

Waterways World has summed it up well here, and appears enthusiastic.

The Inland Waterways Association is more sceptical; its press release gives 'a cautious welcome' but IWA Chairman Clive Henderson says 'we should not take risks with the waterway network'. 

I think that's wrong.  I think that, oh yes, we should take risks.  Without risks, the IWA would never have got started at all.  Without risks, the waterways will sink again into what Tom Rolt memorably called 'a reedy stagnant ditch'.  Without risks, nothing worthwhile can emerge.  Risks were what Robert Aickman took, especially in the early days when he was warned he risked antagonising people by his campaigning.  Who are Aickman's heirs now? 

I wonder if '2020' was the document the BW PR dept had in mind when a couple of weeks ago they asked if they could use one of my photos in a 'forthcoming document'.  (I said of course, naturally, feel free.  I was flattered to be asked.) 

In the event it wasn't used, so I've added it to this blog post instead.  It does rather sum up the 'old boats and new buildings' idea of the waterways of 2020. 

Hopefully by 2020 I'll have some interesting new sights to photograph.

But all this is a bit deja vu.  BW have regularly produced worthy dreams of the future.  Five years ago they brought out something with even greater vision: Waterways 2025.  That was more about canal restoration, envisioning the new and revived canals, such as the Lichfield, the Wilts & Berks, and the (now realised) Liverpool Link.  It was an inspiring dream.  

2020 is more of a wake-up call.  It's about the humdrum stuff - what's necessary, rather than what's possible.

By the way, I notice that 2020 says nothing about the Environmental Agency waterways, principally the Thames and the Anglian waterways.  Does that mean that Robin and his Merry Men have given up on ever extending their remit?

Cracked bollards on Birmingham narrow locks

 

I spent Saturday afternoon descending the Farmers Bridge lock flight in Birmingham, and then the Ashted and Garrison Flights, to moor overnight at Star City.

You know all those big, square, wooden lockside bollards on the narrow locks in the Midlands?   Well, I can't help but notice that almost all of them are cracked, only a few months after being installed.

Does this matter?

On Saturday afternoon I had the assistance of my brother-in-law David, who steered the whole time, giving me a treasured opportunity to lockwheel, something I adore but don't get chance often enough to do.  And this allowed me to inspect them more closely.

[David is the only person I know who is a World's Leading Expert on a subject; in his case, garden and landscape history. 

He was the garden historian who restored William & Mary's Privy Garden at Hampton Court to its original 300 year old design in the 1990s, a time when BW Chairman Chief Executive Robin Evans was then the manager of the place.

David is also a landowner, running hundreds of acres of Staffordshire farmland and managing a hundred-aker wood of his own. 

I'm not sure if that qualifies him to comment on these bollards, but I certainly listen to him on matters silviculture.] 

I pointed out the reasoning behind these new bollards, and the drawbacks too (as explained in What a lot of bollards on the narrow canal locks).  

(Paul Balmer has a photo of one of these, freshly installed last year)

I pointed out how these new wooden posts are cracked within months of being installed.  Why was this?  Was the wood badly seasoned? 

He can't be sure, but wonders if it's because they are each cut (singly and centrally) from single young tree trunks.  Young wood like this cracks radially from the centre, he says (see main picture, above), and he thinks it might have been better if the bollards had been smaller, and cut four at a time from larger, older, more seasoned wood. 

They also, he reckoned, needed 'caps' – something on top of each bollard to stop the rain from leeching in – at least for the first year or two. 

Many boaters are asking whether these bollards were needed in the first place, let alone whether they were designed and installed correctly.  David's comments made me wonder if there are serious errors of execution as well.

I can't help but feel that a target was set – probably a 'health & safety' one – for the entire BW estate to be fitted with these things in haste. 

I wonder if the completion of the job – perhaps on time, maybe under budget - helped to earn someone in the corporate hierarchy a bonus?  (A cheap shot, I know.)

See also: Ribble Piddler will return as £30k iron man (and ask about parallels.)

Update:  Richard Fairhurst mentions that there's an interview with BW director Vince Moran that touches on the bollards, in a recent edition of Waterways World.  "See what you're missing by not faithfully reading?", he adds with a gentle smile.   It's not online, so I can't link to it here, sorry.

Temporary delay on Granny Buttons

I'm having problems getting online and finding time to update. 

Darn.  I hate missing out a day, and it looks might I might not update until tomorrow.  My apologies.

So much to tell you about, so much to show, so little time to do it in, so few opportunites for finding an internet link.

Duck hunt

Ducks near Handsacre, Easter Saturday.

 

I guess I'll never stop hunting for the perfect photograph of three ducks in a row.  And I'm not really getting any closer. 

My favourite remains the three white ducks I photographed near Barrow on Soar in late 2006, a photo that's been used on IWA promotional material, amongst other places, and that could be great if only the third duck had done as it was told. 

The Armitage Shanks factory

One reason I find Christine such good company is that she's always sharper-eyed than me.

For example, take this scene at the Armitage Shanks toilet factory, last Easter Saturday.

The world knows Armitage Shanks for its toilet bowls, so I thought I'd stand on the roof and get a view of the factory, to illustrate anything written about toilets in the future, puns and cheap jokes galore, ha ha.

But it was Christine who noticed the bench and chairs at the base of this wall of porcelain and understood its significance.  Presumably they were there for staff breaks. she said.

"Imagine,"  she added, "sitting there, eating your packed lunch, underneath all those toilet bowls.  Would there be anywhere to go in your career but up?"

The Armitage Shanks website is curiously silent about toilet bowls.  It only mentions them in the collective context of "bathrooms suites", a coy circumstance considering that bog bowls and urinals is all you ever see outside the factory, from the perspective of the Trent & Mersey canal.

Misleading Ambiguous ha-ha signs

I would love to start an occasional photo series of misleading signs that have ambiguous meanings.  Here's a kick-start.

Slow Moored Craft:

says the Ash Tree Boat Club, of its stationary boats.   

This boat is alarmed:

Says the sign on Maid of Oak, at The Taft, near Cannock.  Owners Julie and Peter are leading lights of the Boaters Christian Fellowship, and while I've seen many a boat which claims to be 'alarmed', this one is presumably God-fearing.  

Oops, I've looked closer, and the 'alarmed' boat was not Maid of Oak, but the next boat I photographed, just around the corner from The Taft.   Sorry for the error.  What a waste of a very good joke.

Received pronunciation

Basso Profundo Radio 4 continuity announcer Neil Nunes read out my news last week, in iPM’s Your News section: 

My Granny is having her bottom blacked, the first time in over three years. She's only 15, but she looks older; narrowboats need drydocking more frequently.

Listen to it here, 13:45 from the start.

It’s strange but warming to hear the glorious Caribbean accent and perfect enunciation of Neil Nunes speak my own words. 

He’s a mystery, Neil Nunes.  He doesn’t appear on the list of Radio 4 presenters, there’s no public photo of him, and he refuses to comment on the controversy that greeted his arrival at the station three years ago.   A lot of people complained, me amongst them I regret to admit. 

For me, BBC broadcasting is a church, and the Radio 4 continuity announcers are a priesthood.  I love the traditional ‘Received Pronunciation’ accent, because not only is it easy on the ear, but it’s not related to any particular part of the world.   It's regionless, non-nationalistic, it doesn't 'belong' to anywhere. 

People who complained about Neil Nunes were accused by some of being racialist, but when I lived in Jamaica about 35 years ago I knew a Nunes family, and in addition to having Jamaican accents they were wealthy and white, so I’ve never assumed a well-spoken Jamaican is ‘black’.  

He’s not the only R4 announcer with a pronounced regional accent.

There’s Kathy Clugston, heavily Ulster, for example (though you’d not guess from her profuse  and entertaining Twittering); and Scot Susan Rae. 

But the Scots get away with it, particularly if they are from Dundee.  An educated Scots accent is, for me, a sort of honorary RP, and even somewhat sexy.   

There's a saying that the best place to learn a foreign language is 'on the pillow', but personally that's where I'd choose to learn the bagpipes!   (Or more realistically to toss my own caber.)

Face-time on the Trent & Mersey Canal

We humans have to anthropormophise everything, don't we? 

If we can't see a face in something, we'll put one in anyway.

At Rugeley, I saw this log in a back garden, followed only a mile later by the same thing done on the stump of an old tree, near the new Rugeley by-pass.

It's called 'pareidolia', the tendency for the mind to see or ascribe animate things in otherwise inert and meaningless objects.   And if we don't see them, we'll insert them and hope others notice.

I'd forgotten about this, but I stumbled on it again a couple of days ago on a post in Derren Brown's blog, where he points out how Michael Jackson, circa 2000, 'appears' for a split second in film of the old Muhammed Ali/George Foreman fight in 1974.

(It's true, go see!  Just a couple of frames, 5:45 in from the start.)

In which I make another (two) new friend(s)

A couple of days ago I praised the new Narrowboat World for going all bloggy.  I also said that I liked NBW's new forums, which you can read openly and without having to register. 

This, I said, is far preferable to the 'walled garden' approach of - e.g. - JustCanals, where if I linked to individual items, you only saw Google ads until you registered. 

Sam An admin guy from Just Canals  takes exception.  He's put his point of view in a comment on Granny Buttons here.  To be consistent, he's also now barred me from following him on Twitter. 

Hey, I've made a new friend!

This is an interesting feature of Twitter.  It allows you to control, individually, who reads you, although it doesn't yet permit a sort of 'register' feature; you have to 'follow and' annoy someone and make them aware of you first before they can block you.  

Actually Sam Just Canals is making pretty good use of Twitter.  They 'tweet' frequently about threads on the forum that they find interesting, which is a smart way of promoting a website.  Or they did tweet frequently; now, obviously, I won't know if they've stopped doing it.

Update: I must apologise for assuming that Sam, the founder of JustCanals, was behind the comment and tweets.  He wasn't.  Since it went over to 'walled garden' and I ceased to visit, I hadn't realised that there are other administrators.   I think Mark of NB Willawaw is the one who pounced in this case.  Sorry for causing you any embarassment, Sam.

The third administrator is Chris Burton, and he really is a conciliatory marvel - thanks for your kind guidance, Chris!  (No relation to the Chris Burton who won the IWA Cyril Styring Trophy in 1984, incidentally.)

By the way, I've learned of a way of bypassing the login/registration and searching/reading JC.  Google indexes Just Canals, and if you prefix a Google search with site:justcanals.com and it shows up in search results, then click on the 'cached' link and you'll see the relevant thread.

For example, here are the ten mentions of Granny Buttons on JC that Google found for me.

Love @me, love my @grannybuttons

 A week ago I wrote:

I've created @nbgrannybuttons for my boat-only tweets. Others are already using the @nb[boatname] format, and I think that's a smart idea.

Well, no it wasn't a smart idea.  

My original purpose was so I could do separate boaty and non-boaty tweets, particularly so I could write about boaty things without boring people who didn't care for the waterways.

But it feels schizoid having to worry which is which, who's who.  

So I figure, love me, love my boat.   Twitter is nothing if not about the individual.

Jessica, aka @shoedesigner, agrees.  She tweeted to me (about herself):

@nbgrannybuttons - I agree - the footwear fans will have to put up with narrowboats and the boaters will have to put up with shoes!

I'll now retire @nbgrannybuttons and  walk back to @grannybuttons with my tail between my legs. 

It's a big tail, though; don't judge me by my shoe size!

Never mind the quality, feel the narrowboat's width

I've just received the official court judgement relating to last week's post 'When a narrowboat is not a narrow boat'.

You can read the judgement here  [pdf].  Five pages, 3,100 words.

It's an interesting case, worthy of Mr Justice Cocklecarrot, but here's my summary:

Paul Williams fitted out the boat 'Skylark', on an unnamed shell.  It's fractionally over 7ft wide and won't fit safely through Hurleston Locks onto the Llangollen Canal, says the judge.

Since purchasers Philip and Susan Preece bought it to live afloat at Fron, close to the Ponty Aqueduct,  they claimed that it was unfit for their purpose, especially because they eventually planned to cruise it around the canal system.

There's another Paul Williams boat for sale on Apollo Duck right now ('Merlin', see right), so you can get an idea of his fitout quality.  I have to say, it looks pretty good.

But about Skylark, no one's complaining about the quality, but simply about the width of the boat.  The Preeces said they wanted a narrowboat, and that Skylark isn't -quite - narrow enough for what they asked.

Two expert witnesses appeared: Peter Hopley of Acorn Engineering, for the Preeces; and Michael Carter of Marine Surveys, for Paul Williams.

The judgement sounds a bit Solomonic.   Judge Derek Halbert found in favour of the Preeces, in that they were entitled to a boat that would go through the narrow locks 'safely', but was despairing of calculating the amount by which they'd lost out. 

His final paragraph says, of the two surveyors' respective valuations of the boat: 

28: Neither piece of evidence is particularly satisfactory. In substitution for Scylla and Charibdis, the Court has a choice between an inadequately supported assumption [Carter] and a stab in the dark [Hopley].  Having given judgement for the Claimants on the subject of liability, the claim stands adjourned on the issue of quantum [amount].   A date will be fixed for further argument (unless the case settles by agreement before then).

He's clearly hoping the two sides will come to an agreement and that he won't have to get involved further.

Paul Williams is distraught that his boat might be deemed worth 40% less than what he priced it at, and fears it may sink his business.  The Preeces are presumably distraught that they might have to worry at every narrow lock they come to, and not fit through. There's literally a fraction of an inch involved, and rarely can a case have hung on such a tiny dimension.

So I rang my own narrowboat guru, Ray Bowern of Streethay Wharf, and asked him.  He's stretched and shrunk dozens of narrowboats in length, but what would he do if faced with a boat that's too wide?

"Bring it along, we'll slip it out and have a look," he said.  "Maybe the baseplate's a little wide. Maybe we could reposition the rubbing strake.  Maybe we could compress the beam a bit where it's too fat."

Or maybe not.  But nowhere in the court's 5-page 28-clause judgment does it say that any boatyard looked at the hull with a view to changing it, rather than simply measuring it.

Then I looked up 'Skylark' on Jim Shead's database, which should give the specs of all UK inland waterways craft.   It doesn't feature.  There's no 62ft narrowboat called Skylark listed, although there's a 70ft 7ft wide original working boat.   Why isn't the Paul Williams/Philip Preece Skylark listed?  I get the feeling that the judgement itself is perhaps a little narrow, perhaps not mentioning a few other factors.

But before you cast judgement on the judge himself, bear in mind his 'form', as the police jargon has it.  In Nov 2004 he told the local Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom that it was unfair to send out computerised speeding tickets automatically, and that individual policemen had to look at them and sign them off.

Narrowboat World (at last) becomes 'bloggy'

Praise be, Narrowboat World has finally switched to a blog! 

[Well, sort of.  They are using a 'content management system', but the upshot is a blog format, near as damn.]

Progenitor/editor Tom Crossley has held out for several years, and probably dug his heels in even further after I criticised him for the old format, which was easier to write than read. 

He might have done that out of paternal loyalty, since Jason Crossley (relation) was behind the technical side of the website.  And there wasn't much love lost for me about it.  I had a couple of embarrassed and apologetic phone calls from NBW contributors last year after some things said about Granny by Tom's multiple personality, 'Victor'.

But – as I've said before - I'm full of praise for Tom's news reporting over the years, and NBW's content has been worthwhile to read, if you had the patience to 'visit' the site and work out what you had (or hadn't) seen before.

The new format is not quite perfect.  In its RSS feeds you can only see the headlines & intros of the stories, and it's not made clear that you can subscribe to individual contributors separately.  In fact, you have to subscribe to every contributor individually, which is a bit of a fag  but better than nothing.

On the other hand, NBW's new forum system is completely open  and you don't have to create an account simply to read what other readers/visitors have to say. 

It's now a practical competitor to Canal World, albeit only just starting out. 

(It certainly puts it ahead of the 'walled garden' forums like Just Canals, which you can't even read until you've registered first.  I don't bother with walled gardens.  There's nothing quite so infuriating as hearing about an interesting flower, clicking through, and finding a solid wooden door in front of you, full of Google ads.  Maybe I'm just not a gardener.)

Freaky scotty dog shakes himself at Wood End Lock

I was fascinated by the freaky, excited behaviour of this little scotty dog at Wood End Lock near Fradley last weekend (as pictured yesterday).

I loved the gambolling, ants-in-his-pants behaviour as he rolled over on the grass and he jumped up and down and he sneered and snorted and turned cartwheels. 

Click click click, he was irresistible to photograph, and I stroked and patted him and tickled his tummy.  Cute doesn't begin to describe him. Loads more pictures too.

It was only later that I wondered if he had fleas – and if I now had them too. 

Hopefully not; the owners said he was naturally jumpy.

I think he was on NB Bon Accord.  At least, that's the one whose cratch and headlight are just visible in the lower photo.

As I wrote that last sentence I got an itch, and stopped to scratch my back against the chair. Hmm.

Any facts about re-using old wharves and canals in London?

Melissa asks:

I am doing a report on the Thames gateway and have to write three challenges, for my coursework.  I have chosen one to be water transport.

There are various government references to re-using old wharves, canals, etc, but no actual facts. I don't think any of the docks in London are being used for freight transport, only for leisure.  Have you got any examples?

She adds:

Sorry, one last thing to that question - is it possible that more moorings licences will be granted in London to get money?

These questions make a really interesting point, but I don't have an answer.  

Are there any actual facts regarding using old wharves & canals in London any more?  And are any of the docks in London still being used for freight transport?  

I don't think the Olympics count.  They are simply ad hoc,  a one-off.

I like the "one last thing to that question - will more mooring licences be granted in London to get money?'"

Melissa, you may very well ask, but British Waterways couldn't possibly comment!