Granny Buttons

BW vs National Trust board - a compelling case

Double standards - Narrowboat World

Allan Richards has written a very interesting piece comparing the renumeration of the British Waterways board with the National Trust.  It starts: 

There is a growing dichotomy with regard to British Waterways directors salaries, considering themselves to be underpaid.

The directors reinforce this claim with a consultants report which suggests that they are underpaid by about 15% per year. The reason for this shortfall is that they have no long term incentive plan. They have spent the last year planning to introduce one!

On the other hand there is the rest of us who accuse British Waterways directors of being 'fat cats' with 'noses in the trough' (which suggests pigs rather than cats!) or 'riding the gravy train'. We are not alone! The man who will probably be the next prime minister, David Cameron, in a speech at the Conservative Spring Party Conference named five public sector workers he claimed were getting rich at the publics expense. Four of those named were BW directors!

He points out that BW's 'governance costs' (I presume that means directors' fees; I'd not heard that term before) are nearly double that of the National Trust.  This is in spite of the NT raising all its income privately, whereas BW gets a substantial portion from central government. 

I'm not sure I'm entirely in the 'On the other hand there are the rest of us' category - the comparisons perhaps are a bit shaded and grey.  BW is a satrapy; its directors are to a certain extent reliant on the grace and favour of the government departments to which its beholden, and must walk a tightrope.  And bizarrely as it might seem - as with the satraps of old - they would probably curry more favour with Her Majesty's ministers if they are pampered more. 

That's my interpretation, anyway.  But Allan Richards makes a compelling and well-reasoned argument in a compact space.

Moving the furniture on GB and gb.com

One thing I like on narrowboats is when the furniture is not built in, but is free standing.  Space is always at a premium, and sometimes what works in one dimension doesn't work in another.

With an open plan layout you can move around the chairs and tables and so forth, and experiment with the convenience, practicalities, aesthetics and ambience (even acoustics - that's an underlooked aspect) of different layouts.

By the same token I'll soon be shifting around the layout on www.grannybuttons.com - again.

Halfie pointed out that he couldn't find the 'Recent Comments' feature, and although he eventually noticed it on the other side of the screen, it reminded me that although I get bored with the 'look' of things, aesthetics isn't everything; that the layout involves practicalities, and moving the furniture can be an irritation or shock.

One big practicality when going online while on the boat - as I've been reminded this week  on the River Nene - is the problems of getting online while in the middle of nowhere.  My own internet connection has been thin or extremely patchy, and browsing is a slow and frustrating experience. (I've not yet had a chance to understand or adjust all the new equipment I've installed.)

So I'll have a clear-out of much of the bigger 'furniture' of the blog - the sophisticated search facility, the little badges that slow it down, etc etc.

Meanwhile, here's Granny's interior, especially tidied up for the picture, with some of the furniture moved around. Just for the picture I took the blanket box out from the side of the sofa and put it opposite as a coffee table, how convenient is that?

Upsize, Downsize, and winning a narrowboat

Debbie says she is "looking to down size boat due to relationship breakdown. Do you know of any? Around 20,000.  Thanks."

It depends what you mean by downsizing.  Well, there's:

1. Downsizing because the current boat will seem too big to live on when one person leaves (unlikely).
2. Downsizing to split up assets and you can't afford a better boat.
3. Downsizing simply to save money (because smaller boats are cheaper). 
4. Downsizing because you can't handle a larger boat on your own.

I'd guess Debbie's request is all about saving money.

The best choice is probably on Apollo Duck (even many of the biggest brokers advertiser their boats there) and you can place an ad there yourself in the 'wanted' section if you don't see what you want.

There's an imaginative ad in Apollo Duck this week:

Lady wishes to purchase 30 to 50 foot liveaboard narrowboat. Nothing 'posh', just comfortable and reliable. I have £5,000 cash and would like to pay remainder monthly over 2 to 3 years by legally binding contract.  Any area.

Meanwhile, Tony Shaw of Nottingham wants to upsize his boat. He hit upon the idea of holding a prize draw, via www.winmynarrowboat.com, for someone to, well, win his narrowboat so he can afford a bigger one.  It's called Anguilla, it's no longer big enough for him, it's based at Priory Marina, Bedford, and you can see it here.

He's selling tickets for £5/time and you have to answer three simple questions, send him the money and sit back and hope the draw is fair, and that the boat is something you'll actually be pleased to have and won't regret winning. 

Both 'Debbie' and 'Lady' might like take a punt with a fiver each way on Anguilla.  You never know.   Although some of the small print is ominous:

... The Promoter accepts no liability for errors or omissions contained within the Prize details, description or specification or any other part of the Website. It is the responsibility of each Entrant and in particular the Winner to satisfy him/herself as to the accuracy of any such details and/or any content of this Website.

So if it doesn't turn out to be what he says it is, it's your own fault, not his.

... The boat will also be advertised privately to give it the widest possible coverage. Should the boat be sold privately, alternative prizes to the value of ALL tickets sold will be offered to the winner of the draw.

So that means if he only sells a few tickets - let's say £800-worth - and sells the boat privately, your £5 will be an entry for an £800 draw, not a £32,000 one (less an unspecified 'admin' fee).  I'd feel happier about this sort of thing if the picture showed something that everyone really wanted to win, and that was provably worth the money.

Jancis Robinson and the waterways - exciting, no?

Oenophile journalist Jancis Robinson was last weekend talking at a San Francisco wine gathering in Portland, Oregon, about how she got her start in wine writing. 

I was interested to hear she began with the PR dept of British Waterways:

... When I got back to Britain and looked for a job that would allow me to write, I got a job in the press office of the British Waterways Board. Exciting, no?

I got to see some trade journals of many different kinds, and one happened to be about wine, and at the moment it was carrying a notice to fill the job of assistant editor.

I polished up my CV and to my surprise I got an interview. The publisher told me: 'we've had a lot of difficulty with this job. We tried hiring journalists, and then we had to teach them about wine. And then we we tried hiring wine people, but we had to each them to write. And you're neither.'

Her BW years (months? weeks?) up to December 1975 aren't mentioned in the official long version biography on her website ('only for the bored'), which describes her writing career as starting at Wine & Spirit magazine.

I'd be interested to hear what aspects of PR for the waterways she found exciting, how it might compare with the work of a young graduate BW press officer today, and if their recruitment requirements have changed.

Reverse painting on glass is Wilde at art

Heidi Wilde is the only artist I've ever come across who paints in reverse on glass.

'Reverse painting on glass is an art form consisting of applying paint to a piece of glass and then viewing the image by turning the glassover and looking through the glass at the image'.

You'll find her work on www.wildeaccents.com, under the tagline 'Life captured in a window.'

Reverse painting isn't unique to Heidi, but she's taken it to a far more figurative level.  More specifically, she paints still life, landscapes and animals on the glass of old windows, presumably taken from demolished buildings.  It's a backward form of painting, seeing the undercoats first, but mostly not painted directly from life:

Most of my windows are painted using my original photos as source material, but on occasion I have been known to ask permission to use the work of another photographer.

One occasion when she used another photographer's work was last year.  She came across my old post about 'Curious Cows' and asked if she could use that as the source for another of her reverse-on-glass paintings.  I was flattered, so of course I said yes.  It's not often I get the chance to be  the art world equivalent of a musician's 'sample').

Months later, the result is finished and now on her website and entitled The Curious Case of Inquisitive Cows.  I presume this eight-panel work (octych?) is for sale, but she doesn't give the expected price.  

I think it looks grand.  (The result, I mean, not the price.  But since it's based on my photo, pure vanity makes me hope the price is rather more than a grand.)

I guess one big advantage of Heidi's technique is that the paintings are ready-framed.  Have you seen the price of frames recently?

Original blog post: Granny Buttons: Curious Cows

Heidi's source photo remains one of the most fascinating times I've communed with animals.  It was on the Macclesfield canal a couple of years ago, between Congleton and Bosley Locks. I'd got 'stemmed up' (stuck aground) and the cows slowly ambled over to investigate my many minutes of trying to free Granny Buttons from the mud.  I switched from frustration with the boat to fascination with the bovines, and their very curiosity seemed to lighten the boat and free it from the mud.

Jewel of the Nene 2009 gets scratchings for tea

Jewel of the Nene is John Green's "charity bid to row 250 miles, over 17 days, from Welshpool to Peterborough in a twelve foot inflatable dinghy to raise funds for Marie Curie Cancer Care", with a companion. 

He's been doing it for several years with different partners, this year accompanied by Rob Reed.  (They call it a 'row', but technically it's a paddle.)

I first learned about Jewel of the Nene several months after the 2007 event, and I wrote about it in December 2007. 

This year John and Rob are using Twitter to log the journey, which adds live piquancy to the trip.  As I write this I'm at Wellingborough on the Nene, a few days ahead of the pair.  and the wind's blowing rain hard on the window.  I've got a full supper inside me, and I've even turned on the central heating tonight (in July!) .  Meanwhile the latest tweet from @jewelofthenene reads:

Just walked a mile to pub in Napton. It doesn't do food. Pork scratchings for tea! Rain for the last four hours! http://bit.ly/9ZD33

Are  we supposed to feel sorry for them, or should we hope they suffer a bit more because it's charidee?

Liveaboard life and the three Rs

Fancy the barge life? Don't go off the deep end - The Observer property section

Interesting article in the Observer today by Huma Qureshi that's essential reading for those people who think that living afloat is simply a cheap option for people who can't afford a proper house.

It properly stresses what I've long been saying (to an audience a thousand times smaller than the Observer's):

Property prices may well be falling, but that hasn't stopped several throwaway suggestions that living on a barge may be cheaper than paying city rents.

However, buying a narrrowboat [sic] isn't necessarily the brightest of ideas if you've never lived on water before.

"So many people talk glibly about getting on the property ladder by buying a boat, but a boat is not a property," says Rex Walden, chairman of the Residential Boat Owners Association.

"If you are considering it because you love waterways and wildlife, then fine - but it worries me that recently a lot of people have shown an interest for all the wrong reasons."

Hmm, the word 'narrowboat' in this piece has the letter 'R' three times in a row.  How embarrassing that the Observer's proofreaders don't know the three Rs!  In their defence, this is one of those occasions when a spell-checker picks it up more easily than a human.

The article also gives a plug to Great Escape Narrowboats, which is said to specialise in long-term rentals.  However, this company has one of those all-flash websites, which I wasn't able to read - either on my iPhone or my main web browser. You might have better luck.  Reports please.  (Have I written about it before?)

The Crickaoke Kid and his imaginary audience

I said a couple of days ago I was 'quite tunnelled out'.  OK, so I lied.  But that promise was only about Standedge, really.  I love all canal tunnels and will never stop talking about them.

In particular, I love the acoustics. 

The problem with diesel boats in tunnels is the engine noise.   If there's one big reason to have an electric boat, I'd say it was to enjoy the sound of going through a tunnel.  Every noise is amplified and echoed back to you.  And what better way to use an acoustic than to sing?

I've got a new game.  I'll call it crickaoke.  The other day I was going through Crick Tunnel when I couldn't resist it, I got up a bit of speed, turned the engine off, and began to sing my heart out.

It's  like a giant bathroom; you can almost bathe in the acoustics.   Oh my.  The delusion it grants you.  Standing in the dark on the counter, the glow from inside the cabin shining like limelight, the lapping water gently applauding every note and every wrong and incompetent key-change, you feel you have an imaginary but adoring audience of millions.

In the YouTube video (Your Hundred Worst Tunes) you only hear my 'Amarillo' at the end of the tunnel, as we emerge blinking back in real life.  I spared you my 'Painting the clouds with sunshine' and 'Laughing on the outside' and 'Singing in the rain', three other favourite crickaoke songs.  

I can understand how the legend of Kit Crewbucket arose.

Canals cool for cats

I've been browsing the new book Cool Canals - slow getaways and different days by writer Phillippa Greenwood and photographer Martine O'Callaghan. 

(After I mentioned it a few days ago, I got a review copy pretty quickly, thanks!)

As an overall guide to the UK canals, it certainly  offers something different.  It focuses on things to do, on categories, not geographical areas or actual canals. The preface says:

Everyone needs an antidote to the mayhem of modern living, so why not do something different.  Eat strawberries on a boat, run through a tunnel, canoe over an aqueduct or stroll a slow mile.  The minute you arrive, you sense canals are different to any place you've been before.

... We don't give nitty-gritty history or navigation details of each canal, there are plenty of other books that do that.  Cool Canals is all about how to spend leisure time on the waterside and water.

The whole book is about theme.  You'll find ideas on things to do, but not the linear thread of a journey, which perhaps makes it an excellent taster rather than a  book to take on a boat voyage.  If you refer to it when you are already afloat you might get frustrated at all the ideas it tantalises you with on the other side of the country.

However, there's no guide to living afloat, which is something that people will inevitably (and quickly) ask if they fall under the spell of the canals, even though it's not technically 'leisure time'.  This is remarkable, because in the book Phillippa and Martine make no secret of their own life afloat together for several years and their passion is likely to be contagious.

They also make clear their affection for cats.  They are real ailurophiles; their passion runs through the book like letters in a stick of rock.  If there's one thing this book is more cool about than canals, it's cats. 

In fact, throughout it's a very personal guide, which is no bad thing.  It helps rescue the book from being a generic 'rough guide' style travel book, and gives it a genuine voice.  

The book contains references to their own personal passions - not just cats, but in particular many eco- and lefty themes.   They thank "those who have absolutely nothing to do with this guidebook" - the WSPA, RSPCA, CWIF, Brooke Foundation, Woodland Trust and Amnesty International.  And they thank "our stalwart companions - the cats."

On the other hand, another omission that needs correcting in the next edition is a guide to the online community - to canal boat blogs and forums and newsgroups, for example. 

I spotted a few things in the book which must have come from research online, but which don't get credited.  (For example, where did their information about Sparky Adams come from? Rhetorical question!) 

Still, it's a brilliant guide, and a worthy addition to the canal guide canon.  If you get it from Amazon, there's a considerable saving. 

Did I mention the cats?   Well, I like cats, don't get me wrong.  I love them. But that's because I'm bigger than them, and if they are sitting in my seat they grudgingly allow me to move them.  To half of Britain's wildlife cats are simply stealthy nazis in fur coats.

Stained glass on narrowboats

When someone comes out of the blue and asks for a namecheck, I'm usually happy to oblige.  Provided they've got an unusual and 'boaty' angle. 

(It might take me a few months, but I usually get around to it.)

Bonnie Brooksbank of The Purple Stained Glass Studio certainly fits on both unusual and boaty counts.  She writes:

I live on a boat in Barrow upon Soar and had some work I needed doing on the boat. Being eternally short on money I ended up making a few neighbours some windows for their boats in return for jobs done on my boat.

Oh, I thought, now that is a good idea for a nice niche. Since then I've done quite a few boaty windows.

I'm trying to get my name out there, and seeing as every time you search for anything boat-like your website pops up, I thought I'd contact you.

Bonnie's certainly got an unusual waterways business.  Stained glass on cratchboards is always interesting, and Bonnie's done quite a few of those, as her stained glass on narrowboats page shows.

I particularly like the cratchboard glass for NB Poppy, which would do credit to a war memorial.  (Since she asked for a plug, I assume it's OK to use the picture from her website here.)

I think stained glass would be particularly stylish and useful for boat bathrooms.

Oh, that reminds me.  A lady in America used one of my canal pictures as a base for her own art (she paints in reverse on window glass) and I recently saw the results - they were amazing.  I must do a post about that.  Thanks for unwittingly reminding me, Bonnie.

Thank you for not putting out rude signs

A boat called Kilsby bawled me out a few days ago at Brinklow, just around the corner from Rose Narrowboats.

I was pootling past at tickover speed (yes, really), and a female head popped out of the rear hatch and called out, in the tone of a drunken fishwife:

Oi! This is a canal, not a motorway!

At least, it sounded to me like that.   I know it's hard to get the tone right when you admonish people.  I'm assuming she thought I was going too fast, although it might be because it was dusk (about 9.30pm) and she thought that unlike motorways, canals should shut down earlier.  Or perhaps she thought I'd come too close, and in a shallow canal there can be suction between boats, even at low speed. 

Or perhaps because when Granny Buttons goes on tickover or neutral, it actually sounds louder, because the rear hatch vibrates against the loose brass runners. 

I still am adamant that I wasn't going even slightly fast - although heaven knows, if commercial carrying every picks up again on the Oxford Canal, NB Kilsby is itself going to be in for many rude awakenings.

(At Streethay Wharf one of the official conditions of mooring is that you DON'T shout out at speeding boats.  "Unless, of course, they collide with you", is the amusing corollary.)

But it led me to thinking about the rash of 'SLOW DOWN' signs that seem to be everywhere these days.  

Put simply, I don't like them.  Not least, because they automatically make the oncoming boater fear that - even if he isn't speeding - the group of boats he's approaching think he is, and thus they put him on the defensive.

On Monday at Nether Heyford (location on Google Maps here) I came across a message I'd not noticed before:

Slower than that !!   

Sorry, but this is just plain, damned, non habeas corpus rude.  It assumes that the passing boater is going to shout out to them "Yes, I have slowed down!", and that they are simply not going to accept your point. 

'I'm spoiling for a fight', is the message it conveys.  

At the other end of this stream of online-moored boats is a supposedly politer sign:

Thank you for slowing down.  Have a nice trip.

But that's yet more insinuation.  'Well, thank you for trying to slow down' is the nicest thing it seems to say.  (The boat alongside is - somewhat appropriately - called Doubting Thomas.)

I thought about this when I moored up outside Blisworth Marina on Monday afternoon.  For the next 18 hours, boats certainly did seem to roar past me; particularly hire boats. 

But Tuesday morning it rained and blew like buggery, and my boat was battering against the side of the canal even when boats weren't going past, and I'd learned my lesson.  When the rain and wind died down I got out and tied Granny tightly, something I'd clearly not done properly the night before.  And do you know - as if by magic - all subsequent boats seemed to have slowed down!

Thank you for driving carefully enough not to bump into me, that's all I had to think to be happy.

Standedge Tunnel (again!)

I'm not quite tunnelled out. 

Following my post last week about Phill D's Standedge tunnel photos, Phill writes:

Great stuff!  Glad you liked them

I've made several sorties into the tunnels since then.  I made three trips in and around the tunnels.  I spent over ten hours down there in total.

I'm sure you will find my whole story very interesting.  You can see it here.

It is indeed very interesting, even though the main focus is on the rail tunnels.  In fact, overall it's far more interesting than the Flickr pictures I mentioned earlier. 

Phill's photography is startlingly good and atmospheric - the best I've ever seen in tunnels - and includes a lot of time exposures where he 'paints' the darkness with torchlight.  This is something that I often do in my own night photography, but I'm pleased to see I'm not alone.

One thing that startled me was a 1961 local newspaper report of a trip boat through the tunnel, commemorating the 150th anniversary of its opening.

I thought the last public boat passage through the tunnel before the recent restoration was the Rolt/Aickman expedition in 1948, but I'm clearly mistaken. 

Phill would appreciate more information on this last trip.  If you know anything more, please comment on his blog.

He's also photographed many exterior features including an air shaft that juts out of the moorland 460 feet above the tunnel, and annotates some aerial photography to show the various features of the tunnel from above. 

The most impressive thing of all, for me, is the way he captures, on film, the 'vortex' air pressure effect created as trains rush through the tunnels.  (This is about 2/3 of the way down the page).

Thanks, Phill! 

LINK: Phill Davison's blog post (80+ pictures) exploring Standedge Tunnel. 

[That's enough tunnels - Ed.]

Wi-fi at Blisworth and Gayton Marina

Granny Buttons was outside Blisworth Marina overnight, outside and it's basking in a strong 3G signal from an O2 transmitter. 

I had my boat upgraded with a fair bit of communications equipment over the weekend, and technically it's working well, but I can't go into detail until I've sorted out all the teething problems. 

Since I last came this way in February BW has removed most of the visitor moorings outside Blisworth Marina, presumably to make egress easier (pictured right).  You aren't allowed to moor there any more, except for one single space at the end, by the bypass bridge.  Even that was perhaps an oversight. 

I think they've gone too far - I reckon there's still room for a couple more 60ft spaces there, one either side of the entrance.

Blisworth Marina has wifi, but if you are passing through it's nothing to email home about; it's for moorers only.  I don't know how strong, nor how fast it is.  However, it is free to moorers, which is as it should be.

The nearby Gayton Marina has an expensive 3rd-party wifi service (from www.ineedbroadband.co.uk, with one of those rip-off 0870 contact numbers),  but  handily there's a mobile phone mast looming over the marina and it's got a strong O2 3G signal.  

Wireless internet is the great frustration of boating.  I still think it should be free - like toilets and tap water and towpath walks - and one day it inevitably will be, because the marginal cost is zero and the social benefits are huge. 

But you try telling that to marina owners, who as a breed don't know their internet access from their elbow.   Of course, they know about the benefits of making toilets free, because they are acutely aware of the bottom line.

Anyway, after a day of on-off rain, it was good to see a glorious sunset, one of those classical 'old master' twilights where the sun peeks out from distant layers of clouds. 

I can't help it; never mind the sunset itself, the light it casts on the rest of the landscape always drives me to run inside and fetch my camera.

Latest rash of Standedge photos gives me ideas for photographic tableaux

Suddenly there's a rash of 'inside Standedge' photos on Flickr.  The latest is the Standedge Tunnel set from the user 'Urban Outlaw', and was apparently taken yesterday lunchtime (if the date in the camera was set correctly).  

My favourite of the set is this untitled one, because it shows a sense of the scale of the tunnel.  It appears to have been lit by a torch held to the left of the photographer, and makes the place feel like an empty film set, waiting for a ghostly lighting director to materialise.

The photo 'Tunnel ghosts' tries to suggest exactly that, but I guess it simply shows the three or four photographers who made the trip.  Is this tunnel just available for people to stroll into casually, or is there a booking system?   How do you get into it? 

It set me thinking about what I could do with this tunnel. I'd love to go in with some sophisticated lighting and illuminate the whole three miles, positioning the lights within the Standedge canal tunnel adits (cross tunnels) to highlight their position.

Other ideas might include a fashion shoot within the tunnel.  Or a time-lapse of a walk-through, perhaps punctuated with little son et lumiere tableaux at each adit, telling the story of the men and women and children who worked the tunnel and the Huddersfield Canal two centuries ago.

And I can imagine a 'conceptual art' installation of (men dressed as) soldiers marching in a line into the dark depths - towards their doom - raw recruits, as it were,  for Pluto.