Granny Buttons

Drooling for Britain

Four years ago I learned that a pedigree Newfoundland dog had been named after Granny Buttons. 

(See Nutbrook Granny Buttons, November 2005)

I was reminded of this today I came across this old picture of a 'Newfie', alongside Granny Buttons at Wheelock a couple of years ago.

'Great big affectionate hearthrugs', I described Newfies as, and Steve Haith, owner of Nutbrook Granny Buttons, said that description wasn't far off the mark.

What they also are, though, is great big droolers.  Newfies drool for Britain, and this picture shows a world champion drooler!

The Basingstoke Canal houseboats in the canal society's newsletter

Following my previous two posts about the Basingstoke Canal narrowboat house conversions, Paul Sladen comments that the Basingstoke Canal Society's Winter 2009 newsletter has a couple of pages about the story. 

It begins:

In the 1950s, the owner of the canal, Sidney Cooke, set up a company to sell cheap accommodation based on a fleet of old narrow boats brought down from the Midlands. Some of these were already more than 60 years old.

The Illustrated London News of December 1960 had an "advertorial" item about them, from which this photo comes.

John Gerrard’s Floating Homes Ltd were offering 25-year old barges (sic) “converted into architect-designed new style dwellings of great attraction, and even luxury, on the Basingstoke Canal at West Byfleet.”

The boats came as three basic models: The ‘standard’ (three bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen with cooker and refrigerator, entrance hall and saloon with convertible settee/double bed) cost £1,350.

The ‘de-luxe’ (master bedroom, single bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, entrance hall
and saloon as above) came at £1,750.

It's an interesting two-page read, especially if you ever wonder about what happens when you leave a houseboat stationary at its moorings for years on end.

Download the BCS Winter 2009 issue here (PDF).

My engagingly narrow mind

I took this photo in November 2007 near Congleton on the Macclesfield Canal, but I wasn't sure why at the time.

And stumbling on it today, ha ha ha, it's taken me over two years to get the joke!

It's not just 'Engage', but 'Narrow Gauge'.  Geddit?  Surely not everyone is as slow as me.  Or as narrow-minded.

Update: Brian of Harnser points out in the comments that I'm even slower than I thought.  "You obviously didn't have toy trains when you were a little boy," he says.   Well, yes, Brian, I did have a Hornby Dublo 00-gauge set and knew of the O-Gauge. 

But I freely admit, I'd never heard of N-Gauge railways until you mentioned it!   I obviously wasn't single-minded enough, or I never was a proper boy, either one.

Basingstoke houseboat conversion - what it looks like now

Following my post last week about the Pathe film clip Narrowboat houseboat conversions on the Basingstoke Canal, 1961, artist Julia Jacs emailed to say that she actually lives on one of the boats mentioned in the short film clip!

And she's kindly send over a couple of pictures of the interior as it is now.   I must say, it looks lovely, it really does.

Compare the saloon photo at top with the still from the 48-year old film clip below.   Thanks Julia!

 

(With that copyright stricture staring me in the face I'm not sure if the Pathe people will come down on me in the same way that bricks hover in the air, or if they'll be grateful for the publicity.  I'm banking on the latter.)

Maffi and the martinet - the Oxford Mail story

Police used terror legislation to stop ex-RAF engineer in Kidlington - Oxford Mail/Oxford Times

'Terrorist' (cum-boatman-cum-blogger) Maffi has got another few minutes of fame.  His tale last week of the policeman ignorantly trying to stop him taking photos has reached the local paper:

A MAN who photographed police while he was on a trip to buy fish and chips was searched under legislation designed to stop al-Qaeda bombers.

Stephen Russell, 59, spotted police swarming Kidlington High Street and, as he had his camera with him, he took four photos because it was unusual to see so much action in the centre of the village.

... Mr Russell, a boatman known locally as Maffi, turned out his pockets and the officer used his bank card to carry out an identification and criminal records check.

I note they call him a 'boatman'.  At least they didn't say 'bargee'.

Here's the view from Maffi's own camera of the picture in the newspaper (right) and here's my own original post about the story.

The story also includes a snippet of video of the original 'stop and search' recorded by Maffi.

One side effect of all this is that Maffi's real name is finally 'outed'.  (Although, as I mentioned a couple of days ago, a 'real' name isn't necessarily the one you are born with, and I'll still think of him as Maffi.)

I do hope Maffi carries through his promise to make a formal complaint about the bullying policeman (who is clearly ignorant of the law in this case, and who is reported in the story as PC Steve Burchett.) 

It will tie up police resources in form-filling and keep Burchett off the beat, that's true, but the policeman has only himself to blame and it will hopefully stop him acting like martinet in future.

Update: Alleged elsewhere was that the original cause of the police appearing on the scene was a lout who threw a bottle at a woman.  It's said that the lout was simply told to move on, while Maffi was stopped and searched.

Rugby pastoral scenes

Granny is currently at Streethay Wharf, awaiting their tender loving care, before setting off to retrace a few historical steps in the spring. 

Of which more later.  If I remember.

One stretch of the waterways I'm really looking forward to is the North Oxford Canal.  Perhaps the most charming part - especially on a warm summer's evening - is the short couple of miles from Rugby to Hillmorton, including the lovely park-like stretch alongside the (confusingly named) Rugby Golf Club. 

The scene below is centred on Google Maps here, showing the old viaduct of the long-gone Rugby to (? can someone fill in the gap?) Railway.   You can seen the aerial view of this scene on Bing Maps here.    

Catch the light at the right moment and in the right weather and you can just wait for the figures in the landscape to position themselves.  Or direct them into position yourself, if you have the chutzpah.  It's so picturesque.

I can't wait to get a better camera for scenes like this, in late afternoon.  One thing I enjoy doing and would like to become better at is muting the colour palette and  as if the scenes were C17th pastoral landscape paintings.  (There's a selection of Claud Lorrain landscapes here which hint at the effect I love.) 

By the way, talking of pastoral scenes in Rugby, if you find yourself moored up in Rugby, nip down to the junction of the Newbold Road and Hunters Lane, to photograph the cute donkey sculptures by 'environmental artist' David  Gosling.

Surrounded by daffs these steel-wire asses have for several years turned a rough corner of Rugby into a charming little garden.  Delightful.  I'd love to photograph some wide-eyed little kids trying to feed them carrots.

You can tell I'm just pumping myself up to get Granny going again, can't you.

Frilly Mule

When I wrote last week about Maffi's run-in with PC Plod ('Maffi's a terrorist, not a photographer'), I misspelled his boat name. 

He was quick to pick this up, and without slapping my wrist personally he wrote a post called 'I before E but not in Milly':

It is not Millie M, it’s Milly M! Not difficult to work out. There is no ie in Milly, see there isn’t, yet people still spell it Millie. Why?

My mother has always been a Milly never a Millie and the boat was named after her so I  know its Milly. Come on guys get it right!

That's interesting.  Yet another boat named after a mother, just like Granny Buttons.

Misspelling names is always a minor irritation.  My own surname is persistently spelled as 'Denney', even after they've seen the right way in writing,  and I'm often being called 'Andy', despite writing a couple of  years ago that it made me itch.

So, mea culpa, sorry Maffy! 

But whenever I hear the name of Maffi's boat my mind 'sees' the Millie spelling. 

Perhaps it's because four years ago I passed a boat moored on the Grand Union Canal near Long Itchington called Millie Fleur.  And signwritten underneath there was a cute anagram of its spelling:  Frillie Mule.  It's stayed in my head for four years and I was able to go straight away to my photo library and retrieve the picture I snapped at the time.

I'm a sucker for anagrams, even simple and meaningless ones.  Can't get them out of my head. If you ever want to burrow into someone's brain so that they constantly misspell something, an anagram or a spoonerism is a good way to do it.

BW's Twitter lists, and Alby Dumsday

If you are a Twitter user, do you make use of its 'Lists' feature?  That's where you can assemble a group of twitterers together into a kind of single 'super-user' that people can then follow.

British Waterways' press office is tweeting as @BWcomms, and they've created three lists:

bw-people (BW staff)
heritage  (museums, National Trust and public organisations that occupy the same public 'space' as BW etc)
waterways (canal-related twits such as  Granny)

This is really handy, and  if the person behind @BWcomms keeps it up I might cease my own canal-boating list and simply use his.

It also makes me realise that I'm far too off-topic  on @grannybuttons, cluttering it up with idle chat that has nothing to do with the waterways. 

I created an alternative identity, @albiondumsday for the non-canal irrelevancies, and I must get in the habit of using that one more.  You might want to follow my alternative  just for the joy of seeing its avatar.  It's a picture nicked from a birthday card office mates gave me several years ago.

The person who sent it added my specs and the single hair in my forehead and, good lord, it's like looking in the mirror!  It's my fave birthday card ever.

Why 'Albion Dumsday'?  It's my alter ego. My father's original surname was Dumsday (Denny was one of his christian names, adopted as a surname in his teens) and the original Albion Dumsday was one of my ancestors, born about 1800.

Old Albion came to light when doing my genealogy about 20 years ago.  The 'Englishness' of his first name and the similar initials were irresistible.  My official name might yet change.  I've always disliked being called 'Andy', but I like the sound of 'Alby'.

But I want a middle name too. Yesterday the Guardian ran a story about Elton John saying his 'real' name is Reg Dwight.  No it isn't!  Reg Dwight was his original name.  His new - and REAL - name is Elton Hercules John.  He changed it officially in the 1970s.  (Cliff Richard, similarly, is quick to correct journalists who say his 'real' name is Harry Webb.)

Any suggestions on what Albion Dumsday's middle name could be?  Something with equal style to Hercules, please, but canal-oriented.

Bosworth Field betrayed this day on Fen Hole

The history tourism industry has its collective heart a-flutter at the news that The Battle Of Bosworth might have been misidentified all these years.

Traditionally it's been located by the Ashby Canal near Sutton Cheney, but archaeologists now think it was a couple of miles away near Stoke Golding, in the rather unromantically named 'Fen Hole'.

I think the best article so far is in today's Daily Mail, complete with a lot of good photos:  Real location of Battle of Bosworth finally revealed after 500 years

However, if you're a media vegetarian you might prefer the Guardian's version:  Silver badge and lead shot pinpoint site of Battle of Bosworth

For many years boaters have moored up on the canal embankment overlooking what's signposted as 'Richard's Field', and trekked loyally to the memorial stone that says:

Richard, the last Plantagenet King of England was slain here 22nd August 1485.

The Richard III Society for many years used to put a death notice in the Daily Telegraph's In Memoriam column on August 22nd, saying "Betrayed this day on Bosworth Field".

I hope they don't move the stone.  Even if it's mislocated, that in itself is a bit of history. 

How will this affect the appeal of the popular and delightfully bosky 'Bosworth Field' visitor moorings overlooking Richard's Field?  Hopefully space will be a little easier to find in the heat of midsummer. 

All around the kingdom there are canalside communities which lay dubious claim to little bits of English history, but the legends take a long time to die, and sometimes never do.  A legend, lived long enough, becomes real in itself.

For example, boaters often moor at Mancetter on the Coventry Canal near Atherstone, drawn by the arguments made that Queen Boadicea's army made its last stand there, at the place then called Manduessedum. 

By the way, while history is a light and movable feast, tradition is often sweet and heavy as treacle. Just as the stone at 'Richard's Field' is now too heavy to move, so you needn't bother to tell me the old Romano-British Queen as the upstart 'Boudicca'.  She's not.   She's Boadicea.

See also: 

Richard III Society - Where is Bosworth?

Bosworth Battlefield website.

Maffi's a terrorist, not a photographer

Psuedonymous canal boater 'Maffi' of NB Millie M says he's a terrorist. 

He's posted a story about being questioned by PC 1933 Burchett of Thames Valley Police in High St Kidlington last Wednesday for photographing in public:

Then the fight started. Walking down the high street to the fish shop I noticed a larger than normal police presence. I passed one officer and asked “What is going on”, to which he replied, “nothing”.

Two police vehicles and three officers is not nothing, well not in Kidlington.

Anyway I took a picture of two police officers. They walked towards me and the girl asked me to delete the picture. I said “No” and that they “were not allowed to ask me to do that”.

“Oh yes we can”, said she.

“Well no you can’t and you cannot confiscate my camera either”.  (I only read the rules last week).

"You didn't ask my permission”, she said.

I wasn't there, but I suspect Maffi didn't endear them with his response. In his position I would bombard the constabulary with such a surfeit of personal information that they quickly regret their approach.  I talk far too much and it drives people away, but sometimes that's handy. 

But Maffi is quite right, and the police were wrong.  See the  I'm A Photographer Not A Terrorist 'bust card'.

According to the form given to Maffi (below) he was stopped under Part 5 Section 43 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2000 (the part called 'Suspected Terrorists') under the following grounds: 

(1)  A constable may stop and search a person whom he reasonably suspects to be a terrorist to discover whether he has in his possession anything which may constitute evidence that he is a terrorist.

However, PC Burchett seems to have got it wrong on the form.  I think he should have quoted Section 44 of the act, not S43.

As Andy Trotter, Chief Constable of the British Transport Police said in an article in The Independent in December:

Everyone – photographers, members of the media and the general public – has a right to take photographs and film in public places.  It's as simple and as clear as that.

... The threat of terrorism is real, particularly in London, and the power to stop and search anyone under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 is an important one.  That power, however, only applies in specially designated areas and has to be renewed by the Home Secretary every 28 days.

Police can also stop people and ask them to account for their actions, commonly referred to as a stop and account.  Officers are then required by law to record details of that encounter, although the person stopped is under no obligation to provide them.

But an argumentative Briton taking photos of the police is NOT 'reasonable suspicion of being a terrorist'.  A pain in the arse, perhaps, but that's not a crime. Not yet, anyway.

Too often the police are forgetting they are public servants, like nurses and firemen, and misusing the law to feel self-important.  In short, too many policeman these days strut.

I feel sad saying this, as I'm the son of a policeman.  My daddy was trained at Hendon and  in the City of London police before WW2, before a life spent policing around the world, (including in the hot terrorist spot of Aden in the 1960s, where his car was bombed and he was shot at several times.)  The one thing he never did was strut.

My abiding memory of Kidlington was of Granny Buttons being stoned by youths at Kidlington Lock in 2001.  (I wrote about it here.) I took telephoto pictures of the yobs and went to the local police station.  They laughed and said "We won't have any trouble identifying them!", but I heard nothing more. 

See also:

Daily Telegraph: I'm sorry, officer, my husband is so childish.

Granny Buttons: Terrorist thwarted from blowing up Merchant Square, Paddington Basin.

Times Educational Supplement: Felipe Fernández-Armesto says police officers need the academy's guidance.

Narrowboat houseboat conversions on the Basingstoke Canal, 1961

Debbie Figuereido has been browsing the marvellous British Pathe newsreel library.  And she tells me she fell in love with one particular clip from 1961.

Called 'New Barges For Old', it shows old boats being converted into floating homes on the Basingstoke Canal at West Byfleet:

Do the boats still exist?, Debbie asks.  Well, the narrator says the boats are about 25 years old (i.e. built in the 1930s), and reckons they have another 25 years life ahead of them.

What's impressive is how how hospitable they are, as comfortable in their 50-year-old way as we'd expect liveaboard boats to be now.  And with some sparkling 1960s interiors that make me feel, yes, maybe the interior designers of the time had greater taste than we now grant them.

The narrator firmly points out that the boats aren't 'barges', but 'narrow [pause] boats'. 

Yet I get the impression that the main interior scenes of one of the finished boats is wider.  Am I imagining it? Were they the same boats as the ones shown at the start?  Or were the boat tops simply built with much less 'tumblehome' so that they just feel more spacious?

One of the boats shows a sign over the 'front door' with what looks like the name 'Alan Turner' (or perhaps 'Turing'!).  Am I imagining that too?

Meanwhile, inveterate rivet counters (hello Sarah!) will probably not get past the first ten seconds of this film clip, as they try to identify the butty on the right.  Its name looks like something short ending in '...llie', such as 'Millie' or 'Nellie', but I'm probably imagining that too. 

Marina jobs - experience with nannies and kids an advantage

One thing I noticed about Aston Marina last week was the web site's Recruitment page, including some unusual job titles for a marina:

• Commis Chef
• Butchers
• Bistro Supervisor
• Farm Shop Staff
• Deli Staff

Commis chefs I can understand as part of a restaurant, but ... deli staff?  And butchers?  For a marina?  

Well, plans for the marina from the start include a 'farm shop'.  And marina owner Nick Brandon is already one of the UK's biggest goat farmers in the UK. with a 2,000-strong herd, and job applicants might well find themselves becoming experts in the resulting meat.

(Incidentally, goat is one of those meats which is enormously popular worldwide, but - mystifyingly - rarely seen on menus in the UK. 

Goat meat is "low in cholesterol, high in iron and ounce for ounce having less fat than chicken", says www.goat-meat.co.uk.  In my time in Arabia and the Caribbean I've always loved it, and the spicier the better.  Curried goat, yum.)

I'd imagine that chandlery and boatyard staff would be important straight away in a new marina, but there's no evidence of that in the initial roll-out of jobs here. 

Still, if they create the reason for hungry and food-discerning boaters to stop in the first place, perhaps the conventional marina boatyard jobs will follow later, and they'll be advertising those vacancies like billy-ho.

This is the point of the post where I'll often try to make a pun out of words central to the subject, but I can't think of any this time, sorry.

ExposurePlot helps me decide on the best camera lens

I've been using a clever PC software tool that trawls your computer for digital photographs and compiles statistics and information from the data held inside each image.

It's called ExposurePlot, and it's free to download.

I'm planning to buy an expensive camera, but initially I'll only be able to afford one lens.  It will inevitably be a zoom for flexibility.  But a trade-off is size, because I carry a camera an awful lot.

So: what focal lengths do I like to use on my existing camera?

ExposurePlot can tell you this, and summarise other things you want to know - average shutter speed, film sensitivity (I still call it ASA), aperture, etc.

It's very simple to install and use, and was soon analysing the several thousand photographs taken in 2008 on my existing digital SLR with 18-70mm lens, equivalent to 27-110mm in traditional 35mm film terms. 

I set ExposurePlot to give the results in '35mm-film equivalents', because the camera industry still thinks of it in that way. 

The result is here.  It shows that by far the largest proportion of my images are wide angle, with the maximum 27mm setting taking up nearly half of all pictures.  And the fact that this is the widest setting suggests that I'd go even more wide-angle than that at times, had I the choice.

It hasn't resolved my dilemma, but at least I'm working from facts, not feelings.  Do I choose the 17-40mm extreme zoom, and get the bonus of the extra wide-angle I'm hankering after?  In the process, I'll cut myself off from the quarter of shots where I use a medium telephoto, and which would come with the alternative 24-105mm lens - which is bulkier and gives me less wide-angle leeway.

This week I needed to photograph the nice loo/bathroom on one of the hireboats of the Aqua Narrowboats fleet for a magazine (no, not Water & Waste Treatment Magazine!), and the standard zoom lens on my cheap digital SLR wasn't really wide enough.  A bog-standard lens didn't work - not even in the confines of a narrowboat loo! - and I would have loved the 17mm option. 

I suspect many of my workaday published shots would come from extreme wide-angle, from being called in to photograph things that cheaper cameras couldn't do, so this is an important issue.

I mentioned that ExposurePlot is free, but if you aren't a cheapskate, you'll donate to author Paul van Andel's costs for writing this useful tool.

By the way, I found out about ExposurePlot by asking a question in the 'Beginners' forum of www.dpreview.com, the marvellous photography website run by Phil Askey.  Yes, even I find forums useful at times, when one has specific questions and answers.

Did the butty steerer know what he was doing?

What's that big tiller arm on butties called? 

You know, the removable one that's attached to the elum, and is turned upside down like a wooden priapus when the butty's tied up at the end of the day?  Or is it called the ellum itself? 

Whatever, I'll call it the butty tiller handle. 

I was exploring the British Pathe newsreel archive (I wrote about it before Christmas) and came across this particular newsreel clip of canal cruising, where guests were taken 20 miles a day through the Midland canals and stayed in hotels at night:

Canal Cruise (aka River Boat)

What caught my eye is a short 20sec snippet where a working motor and butty pass by (from 1:50 to 2:10) ... and the butty is clearly shown being steered with the butty tiller handle pointing upwards.

Is this a mistake on the part of the steerer, or was it often done like that?

By the way, doesn't the Water Rambler look smart in its Kennedy-era livery, like the early days of airlines when travel was glamorous, and slim ladies in pencil-thin skirts would make you feel pampered at your seats.

Where is Water Rambler now?  It's still around, sure, but have I seen it on the Regent's Canal, between Little Venice and Camden?  Or is it at Sherborne Wharf in Birmingham?  I forget.  One of those two places, certainly.

I seem to recall it's less bright and sleek now, darker and more faded, and the scruffy tourists travelling on it are less pampered.  Or perhaps the ladies serving them are less alluringly dressed.

But I digress.  I simply want to know if that butty steerer knew what he was doing.