Granny Buttons

Expert at work

It's always good to see a sign that a professional's at work on your boat.

And there's no better sign of a professional than the sight of a good cleavage.

28th April 2007, Streethay Wharf. 

One thing I especially love about Streethay is that they have a great sense of tradition.

Eminent reservists help out on the early Kennet and Avon restoration

This 25 minutes ITV regional news documentary from 1973 is a must-see for modern waterways lovers. It contains much delightful and haunting footage of early restoration and the end of the dereliction, including an old barge converted into a lovely paddle steamer trip boat.

I'm a latecomer to the waterways; by the time I came to them, 20 years ago, it was already open to navigation.

General Sir Hugh Stockwell (below), commander of UK Land Forces in the 1956 invasion of the Suez Canal...

... and his friend and contemporary Rear Admiral Sir Joseph Selby (bottom), kick it off and comment throughout.

It's easy to be amused at the thought of such men playing on the canal as if it were a giant train set, after a career in control of Britain's military might. Bear in mind that these men were the last Victorians, and public service held an important role in their lives.

I was struck by the high-powered nature of these early helpers of the K&A Restoration effort 40 years ago. They would now be described as 'volunteers'.

How many such persons of eminence use their experience and skills to help out on the waterways nowadays? General Stockwell and Rear Admiral Selby were not so much 'volunteers,' as 'reservists'.

Dad's Navy, as it were.

Signs of the waterways

The change in status of our waterways will lead to a change of name and identity.  It's inevitable.

The name British Waterways probably won't stay. It engenders too much dislike in other areas, particularly the Environment Agency waters such as the Thames.   But it's unlikely they'll adopt one of those stupid modern pretentious names like "Aquantis' or somesuch.

No, we'll probably see a simple twizzling of familiar existing words, a sort of linguistic three-card-trick.  They'll probably mix up variations of existing words, such as 'trust', 'charity' or 'navigations'.

I suspect it'll end up as Waterways Britain.   But I rather fancy something with 'Kingdom' in the title.  Call me girly, but I love the way the word 'Kingdom' suggests there's a pretty princess in the background.  And of course there are plenty frogs around the waterways for her to kiss.

But the name doesn't matter much.  What probably matters more is the manifestations of that name, and nowhere more than in the signs you see plastered up around the system.  (Or 'signage', but I'll stick with 'signs'.)

When BW last changed their signs, in the 1980s, they commissioned a complete redesign of corporate identity -  not just logo but all aspects - typeface, language-independent symbols etc. 

I understand it was done by the Pentagram design group, and really it's a superb piece of work - classy, clean and coherent.  The black and white theme  is clever - it reduces the need for painstaking colour matching and makes it all much easier to print or copy.

There are only a couple of off-notes in the BW symbol set.  The biggest mistake is in the mooring bollard symbol, which shows the rope pointing downwards, something that they must have got from large ship docks.  Most mooring ropes go UP from bollard or ring to the boat.

The other (minor) confusion is the mix-up between the sanitary station 'slop-out' bucket, and the rubbish bin - too similar.  Whoever designed the symbols wasn't an inland boater.

But really, I think the best design of all is the BW logo.  It's is a work of inspiration.  The bulrush is marvellously evocative of bucolic peace and the humpback bridge symbolises perfectly the history of the narrow canals and BW's responsibility to maintain historic structures.

As with any ideal ideogram, as soon as you try to reproduce it in real life, you fail.  It looks mangy and unexciting.  Here's my attempt outside Mercia Marina last May:

You will probably be able to do better.

(See also my post of exactly a year ago, BW's ideogram set, which says much the same as this post, but comes at it from a different angle.)

Actually, never mind the online survey BW carried out last month to test new names.  Far better would be a photo competition to create a new image that  summed up the waterways for a new generation of canal and river users. This scene would then be turned into a simple, emblematic diagram.

In my mind it would have a lot of characteristic waterways features at once - a bridge, a boat, a cyclist, a dog walker and (of course) a hurdle course of anglers with roach poles.

Oh, and GONGOOZERS ON THE BRIDGE.  Very important.

Here's a couple of starter ideas.  Nothing like what I mentioned, but it's food for thought.

Into Horninglow Basin

Well, I've made it. Granny has moved, finally, from Mercia Marina, and is now at Horninglow Basin in Burton.  The cold, solid world of a month ago is already a bad but distant memory.

As I passed under the Dallow St bridge last weekend, a dozen geese (what's the collective noun?  A gaggle?) formed a guard of honour,  scurrying along beside me for the last few yards into the basin.

The surroundings here are less salubrious than I'm used to, sandwiched as I am between a BW sanitary station and the concrete wall of the A38 above me. 

Heavy traffic thunders ceaselessly above me here, but Granny is insulated enough to ensure a good sleep.  I like a little steady noise at night. I get unnerved in complete silence and too much quiet stirs my mind into waking terrors at 3am.

In truth, I didn't move in immediately.  For five nights I tied up to the towpath visitor moorings (on the left of the picture), since there's an old cruiser on the moorings allocated to me (somewhere in the middle of that gaggle of narrowboats). 

But I'm happy now, with electricity shoreline and waterpipe close by.  And the office a 25-minute stroll away, half of it on the towpath.

When I leave the office, there are any number of backstreet routes to return by.  Burton being what it is, the brewing capital of Britain, I walk past a variety of pubs on my way home.

More reflected glory

Granny Buttons reflected in the mirrored sheen of a boat on the North Stratford Canal last August.  How much I love seeing my boat brightened by another's polish!