Granny Buttons

Grandma Chickens

Sometimes, as I stroll through the memory lanes of my photos, I come across stories I want to tell again.  I know they are stories, I remember they are stories.  I just don't remember the stories themselves, because my memory's so poor.

So all that is left is the echoes of the stories, reverberating in the photographs. 

Perhaps that's what happens to everyone.  What do  you remember when you look at a photograph you took of someone  you didn't know?

Grandma Chickens is one such story.  I'm a sucker for Grannies, Grandmas, Grans, Nans, whatever. 

I didn't remember 'Grandma Chickens' until I stumbled on these photos yesterday, and not much has come back.  But I then remembered she told me a tale of of how her grandchildren thought her little protective mesh at the back of her boat (to stop her dog from falling aboard) reminded them of a chicken run.

Or is that fanciful? Four years on, the memory this photo brings back might not be the same one filed away in my brain.  

I love her wooden name plate, and its inscription. Looking closely, the only letters which are repeated ('a' and 'n') are slightly different; this presumably means that it's individual, perhaps even hand-made.  

Many more boats should have such distinctive signwriting.

If I'd written about her four years ago, when this photograph was taken (16th Oct 2006), or at least within a week or so, I might have a better tale to tell. 

Well, not a better tale, but a better remembered tale.  Every granny has a wonderful tale worth telling. The magic is in the telling.

Reflections of the Hyatt Hotel, Birmingham

I was wandering canalside at Gas Street Basin over the weekend when I spotted the trip boat Anson moored up and awaiting a new cargo of tourists.  I think it was in its Sam's Jazz On The Water guise.

Anyway, while the steerer awaited the new guests he was keeping his hand busy giving the boat a quick clean.

I was struck by the 'window cleaning' action of his mopping motions, and the background of the Hyatt Hotel, which is pretty much all windows.  How long would he take to clean the Hyatt?, that's what I thought.

After I'd taken the picture, something nagged away inside me. What else did it remind me of?

I felt deja vu - it seemed I'd photographed this scene before.  The boat in the foreground, the Hyatt in the background.  The link between the boat and the building, and those massive mirrored walls.

So I ferreted around, and bingo!  Yes, about eight years ago, when I was still shooting on film, I photographed another boat at this exact spot.

And here's the photo:

I vaguely remember this occasion: I saw the boat approaching through the Warwick Worcester Bar, the old, narrow stop lock in Gas Street Basin, and very quickly tied up the connection between the boat and the scene.  

On that occasion the boat was moving steadily, not tied up, and I only had one chance. Plus, in those days it was film, so I was only inclined to take one picture to capture the moment.

And what a moment to capture!  What fun, to have such an appropriate boat, such a 'self-captioning' photograph. 

One thing you can see about film is how it has a greater 'dynamic range'; that is, it captures a greater range of tones, especially in the lighter parts of the scene. The clouds are beautifully preserved on film, but are largely lost in digital.

I suspect more technically expert photographers will quickly point out that you can get a lot more detail out of digital photographs if you know what you're doing.  In particular, 'shooting raw' will extend the dynamic range a lot.

But I'm still a beginner, and probably will never master the technical side.  Never mind the quality, catch the moment.

May is the yellowest month

April might have been the cruellest month for Tom Eliot, but not for me.  It's just glorious now, isn't it? 

But if I had to name a favourite month, it would be May.  It's just now when the hawthorn bush blossoms, and for the next month there's that gloriously sickly sweet smell of maybush.  Well, I like it anyway.

There's also the little matter of rape.  Late-April - and most of May - is when most oilseed rape bursts into flower. 

I know some people find it far too garish, too foreign. It turns the entire countryside hi-vis, as though nature had received a health & safety warning and was under orders to make itself more visible.

But I love it.  Rape turns the countryside from this...

(Atherstone Lock 8, August 2007)

...into this...

(Atherstone Lock 8, May 2010)

You can see this tree on Google Maps here or on Google Streetview here.

Incidentally, it's fascinating to browse the English countryside on Google Maps, looking for the rape fields. For example, the above location was clearly not photographed by Google's satellite view at 'rape-time', but fields in the surrounding countryside were - and you can see how Google 'stitches' the maps together.

Commenting on the same subject last year, Jo Gilbertson of the IWA wrote:

Don't get me wrong but I hate the sight and smell of rapeseed - and often wonder if rape could become a classic example of why GM might be a good idea?-

By engineering it have a less lurid colour more suitable for our landscape? (maybe a paler pastel yellow); and engineer that overpowering chemical scent out of it - in favour of something more subtle and gently floral?

He also calls it 'napalm'.  But if I love the sickly smell of maybush, I'm completely anosmic when it comes to rape.  I can't smell what Jo smells. Can you?

English rape makes a wonderful cooking oil. It doesn't necessarily have all the flavour or pungency of a classic virgin olive oil, but the best is still marvellously fresh-smelling, and just as healthy - if not healthier - and superb in salads if you don't appreciate olives.  And its higher smoking point makes it better for cooking. I like it for popping corn, especially.

Try Pratt's English Extra Virgin Cold-Pressed Rapeseed Oil.

Or for another good oil, a wider product range and a great story, try Andy Fussell's attempt to sell his quality Fussel's Somerset Rapeseed Oil range to the Dragon's Den team.

(That's enough bloody hi-vis yellow - ed.)

Wharf Inn, Fenny Compton

You know that panoramic photo you were looking for, the one of The Wharf Inn at Fenny Compton in 1986 2006?  

[Oops, 1986 was so long ago, the steel for Grranny Buttons hadn't even been mined by then!]

Well, I found it for you. You can stop looking now. 

The Wharf Inn has changed a little bit since then, including a new extension (you can see its frame going up in the background).

In recent years it has capitalised on its position by offering facilities to boaters and passing caravanners, including a grocery shop (above) and a laundry.  Free wifi too.  Smart move.  I rather like the look of the grocery store - it has an 'Aladdin's Cave' look about it, like there are treasure stacked away.  

They even offer propane gas - although they do spoil complicate it for boaters by offering 'Flogas' rather than the near-universal Calor.

(These cylinders are compatible but they are not exchangeable, so it's a distress purchase only - you end up having to keep the Calor empty aboard, and are faced with having to find a place to return the Flogas cylinder when it's empty.

Going north on the Oxford Canal, this is the last pub/shop before the start of the long, lonely, winding summit near Wormleighton.

Or as they say, 'Last shop before Cropredy!'

I think that's a marketing mistake.  They should say 'The only shop between Cropredy and Napton'.  Or 'The last shop before the middle of nowhere'.

Kensal Green Cemetery

Browsing my old photos last week, I was struck by some of the images of Kensal Green Cemetery, taken at Christmas 2008.

It's one of those must-see places you should visit when you pass by on the Paddington Arm (or when you tie up to shop in the nearby Sainsbury's.  But it's one that people rarely visit. 

A revolutionary concept when it opened in 1833 - a commercial burial ground, owned by a private company - today it's still owned by the same company, the General Cemetery Company. 

Maybe the neighbourhood was a little more rural 150 years ago; the gasometers across the canal must have been erected much later, and the canal traffic was horsedrawn and surely quieter.

But today the cemetery remains an oasis as the city's grown around it, and I heartily recommend a quiet stroll around it, exploring the rich inheritance of notable gravestones, tombs and mausoleums.

The official company website lists hundreds of notables interred here.  Time has worn away their names from history, in most cases more thoroughly than the gravestones commemorating them.

To be honest, one Victorian cemetery tends to resemble another, and after a while the charm lies with the details.

"In lapidary inscription," quoth Dr Johnson, "a man is not on oath."  And while the inscriptions on old gravestones often tell great stories, you can't help but wonder if they are also tall tales.

There's a section in the middle, partitioned off for a selection of military graves; all as neatly mashalled as the rest of the cemetery is higgledy-piggledy.

You can get guided tours most Sundays, thanks to the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery, though I preferred an aimless wander, just to see what catches my eye and my camera.

It's those chance encounters that makes my lonely strolls more interesting.

Of course, a little general knowledge makes it more productive too. For example, since I'm a know-it-all, I can already tell you that the standard chess set design is known as the 'Staunton' pattern, and was standardised in Victoria times by someone of that name.

So, when I stumbled on the grave of Howard Staunton, and saw its chess-knight emblem, even though I'd never heard his first name before, my mind said Check! 

(His tomb looks too modern to be that of a high Victorian.  Perhaps the grave was erected by 20th Century chess enthusiasts?)

Probably the greatest name - from a canal enthusiast's point of view - to lie under Kensal's turf is Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

In fact, the whole Brunel family lie here,and judging by the state of the grave, in reduced circumstances it must be said. Some day perhaps the family plot will be restored to the precision of war graves.

'The Brunel Name Liveth For Evermore', a restored inscription would say.  And perhaps there'd even be a Red Wheel plaque.

On the other hand, there's charm and humanity in the gentle decay of graves, no matter what happens to the tombstone.

For example, there's more poignancy - perhaps a whole new tale - in the way that the names of Brunel's mother and wife are bolder than those of the men.

The cemetery also has more modern, manicured sections,  giving a charming 'garden footpath' effect, where people have attempted to grow things.

Explore the older graves and you'll come across some lovely tombstones.  For example, consider John Edward Taylor:

In affectionate memory.... erected by his sorrowing wife

A pre-Raphaelite nymph, presumably representing the widow herself, appears to grieve for him.

Close by, a more demure modern Virgin Mary stands over a more modern grave saying simply 'Mum.

Less tasteful and rather more emotional are the recent graves that have become mawkish shrines, where the bodies are buried more in sentiment than in earth.  Indeed, I get the impression that the bodies themselves are buried only grudgingly and the family would rather have them stuffed and propped up in the living room.

Even to say 'no comment' would be to comment.

What's especially interesting is how idolatrous and devotional these graves are. The way food, drink and trinkets are left as sacrificial tributes seems quite archaic.

It might be only a can of beer or an alcopop to you or me, but it could easily be a cup of mead in a Bronze Age barrow or wine in an Ancient Egyptian pyramid tomb. Our cultural veneer is thin.

This overt and self-flagellating grief is in stark contrast to another grave a couple of hundred yards along the canal, and one which I found far nobler, sadder and more affecting. 

This modest little stone sits in a lonelier, more overgrown area, and commemorates a little girl who died at less than 3 years old, almost 90 years ago.

The traditional British reserve of a different era is evident in the inscription:

Here lies Marigold,
Dear child of Winston and Clementine Churchill. 
Born Nov 15th 1918
Died Aug 23rd 1921. 
R.I.P.

Even though it's almost 90 years ago, I can imagine the small, quiet assembly of family mourners around the grave. I wonder how often they returned, and what they brought with them, other than an occasional small bouquet of flowers.

I  love the typography of the inscription - is it Eric Gill?

Put another Peppa on the barbie at Crick

Are you planning to come to the Crick Boat Show?  If you're a barbecue lover, you'll find plenty on your plate. 

At least, that's the case according to one member of the British Waterways Customer Service team, who's been attaching this 'signature' to their emails:

Being a childless lonely old grouch, I'd never heard of Peppa Pig until now.  But as a lover of fine barbecue I'm delighted to hear there'll be enough to go round.

I've just done my homework and watched a bit of Peppa on her website. 

I'm not sure which is your favourite character  from the series, but I'm quite partial to a bit of Granny.  Here's the family profile:

Peppa Pig is a lovable but slightly bossy little pig. She is five years old and lives with Mummy Pig, Daddy Pig and her little brother, George.

Peppa likes playing with Suzy Sheep (her best friend), visiting Granny and Grandpa Pig, and looking after George.

Most of all, Peppa loves jumping up and down in muddy puddles, laughing and making loud snorting noises.

I was delighted to see that Granny is very much part of Peppa's family, and I'll be looking forward to meeting Peppa at Crick.  I'm a bit too old to jump up and down in muddy puddles, but I'll enjoy laughing and comparing our loud roasting noises.  And our flavours too, I guess.

Kit of nine tales

In my Cats on Boats post a couple of weeks back, I briefly mentioned Steve Haywood's upcoming book, Too Narrow To Swing A Cat.

The new book centres on his experience of taking his cat on holiday and trying to herd it. Along the way, he describes the charms and frustrations of travelling and living afloat on the waterways of England, from the perspective of an educated, soft Londoner - one who gets frustrated that nothing in life ever stays where  you put it, least of all cats.

I've just read the five-chapter 'sampler' provided by the publisher.  While only one chapter begins with the words 'The cat was missing', surely many of the remaining chapters will start with those words too.  Any book about cats on boats will inevitably contain nine tales of them going walkabout.

In my earlier post I included my own favourite cat-on-a-boat picture.  However, my photo wasn't of Steve's cat.  So he sent me a photo of the hero of his book, looking out of a porthole.

Hey, doesn't this look like Gromit, staring out of Wallace's rocket ship window?  All it needs is a grouchily eccentric bald middle-aged man looking out alongside and it would be perfect. Know any suitable candidates?

The central figure in Too Narrow To Swing A Cat starts out as 'Smudge', but gets renamed 'Kit' when Steve decides that Smudge is too daft a name to keep shouting every time the moggy disappears.

Steve describes Kit as:

Black, with a messy smudge of white down her back, and with the hairiest ears I'd ever seen on any living creature.  They were like the ears of a lynx, sharpened to a paintbrush point wth hairs that seemed to be rooted inside her head.

But what strikes me about Kit is the huge whiskers.  If you look closely, they appear to sprout through the porthole, suggesting that there's no glass there, further betraying its similarity to Wallace's spaceship. 

The photo above has a date embedded in it of April 2009.   It was only a month later that I passed Justice doing the BCN marathon, and hurriedly snapped Steve at the tiller, so I guess Kit would have been aboard at that time.  Or perhaps not, being a cat.

I didn't realise it was Justice until Granny Buttons was barely level with with her, so it's a hasty shot, and it's the only one I've got of Steve at the tiller. But I always try to have a camera ready.

By an irony, this wasn't too far from Catshill Junction, where I paused later that evening.  Where better for a cat lover to stop and for a cat to go walkabout?

Rolt and Aickman, 'Kindred Spirits'

A couple of years ago I mentioned the poetry of John Burman.*  Recently re-reading his second book, 'Excalibur Immersed', I was charmed by the poem 'Kindred Spirits'.

It's a 145-line imagining of Tom Rolt greeting Robert Aickman to the afterlife.  The ghostly meeting takes place on Cressy, just as their first one did in 1945, and the 'voice' is that of Rolt.

In a preamble to the poem Burman says:

I never met Tom Rolt but I did know Robert Aickman, who wrote the preface to my first book of verse.

After Robert’s death, I wrote ‘Kindred Spirits’, revising it several times and publishing it in the ‘58’ magazine. [The Worcester & Birmingham Canal Society magazine]. It caught the attention of Dorothy Aickman who hoped to add it to her latest book which, sadly, never came to fruition.

A considerable body of historical evidence is now published concerning these two men who revived our waterways. I hope I have found a balance in their conflict and perhaps a posthumous reconciliation.

It's rather fanciful, of course, even were you to believe in an afterlife. Sonia Rolt is insistent that her husband 'never looked back', never reminisced.  Rolt himself was emotionally wounded by Aickman; he would probably have greeted him warily, even in the hereafter.

But that's not what we want to hear, is it? We want the two of them to get on, to reflect and ruminate.  Kindred Spirits does just that, vicariously, on our behalf.  And it ends with a stern reminder to the IWA of Rolt and Aickman's legacy:

That legacy, I trust, they’ll squander not,
Those men who follow on.

* See my post 'Cruising the BCN. Because it's there', and my two previous posts which that one links to. When I last saw him, a year ago at his charming canalside house on the Worcester & Birmingham Canal, John Burman kindly gave me carte blanche to republish his poems here on Granny Buttons.

KINDRED SPIRITS 

A second meeting of Tom Rolt and Robert Aickman in ‘Another Place’

“Too soon you come to join me. Welcome, friend.
There’s anguish in your face.
          Mine’s more serene,
Less furrowed now, less etched with battle scars.
But so, in truth, it should be. Soothing years,
The mellow lapse of time, kind memories
Erase those anguished lines. So much forgot;
But yet not all, though recollections rise
With more placidity; without the scourge
Of angry seething.
‘Sentiment’, you say.

Well, not exactly. More the balm of time.
We have millennia now.
You fought a dogged fight, say what you will.
I marked you well, both here and when I breathed.
Such grim tenacity, pugnacious verve.
You had an attribute that’s rare indeed,
The wit to see the future. And the fire;
That hidden dynamo within our breasts
That pulses far beyond the man himself;
That missionary, visionary zeal
That spawns a movement.

What of the movement now? Those first, five men
You drew to Gower Street in forty-six
To form the founding spirits. Now they’ve grown
To twenty thousand members. That’s the scope,
Th’extent of your achievement. Twenty thou’;
Each speaking disparate clamour. All with views.
Shall ever waterways enthusiasts meld
With one wholehearted cry of unison,
And not a voice dissent?

‘All’s lost’, you say. ‘Our aims have foundered now.’
No! No, my friend. Let’s ponder, let’s take stock.
We spawned a concept, you and I; a thought.
That’s one fact that is permanent at least.
It’s changed. Of course it has. The march of time,
Of evolution, must dictate the same.
That’s not disaster, that’s a natural law.
But our ideas, appraised by other men,
Re-worked, revalued, given spurious names
Like conservation and ecology;
These are our gifts, our written archived word;
Man’s other DNA, th’immortal part;
His major species difference. We conceived.
The others take it on.

This after-life’s unearthly, you will find.
A sixth dimension. Limbo it was called,
Heaven, Nirvana, even purgatory.
For me it’s where I spent my happiest hours
On Cressy as you see.
          The boat looks well.
The workshop rather cluttered. All my books,
Cased in the sitting-cabin, overflow
Their shelving and are classified in piles.
Each one of yours is here.

Your personal Nirvana? Who can say.
But let me hazard a not uninformed,
(And knowing you) not disingenuous guess.
Your happiest hours were in the early years,
Before the passage of unfettered time
Muddied the issues with complexity.

On every side the navigations failed
In silt and debris, born of apathy.
Tall grew the reeds; grew rank the nettled edge
Where slipping towpath merged with green canal.
Weed sprouted, verdant, out of every chink
Of crumbling mortar. Timbers, coarse and grained,
Old lock gates that had swung in former times
To grunting boatman’s shove, hung hogged and split;
Wedged in the brickwork, warped by tons of sludge
And weight of stagnant water.
          But all this;
This agony of dereliction, this
Was surfeit to your point.

You saw, so clearly, how the loss of trade;
One failure to secure a contract sought
Led to a stop in boating. How the ‘cut’
Thrives on the passage of a laden boat.
How fiscal pressures, once the boats had ceased,
Fostered abandonment, that wretched Act.

Should one lock leak, should one embankment breach,
Or lifting bridge be fixed, the system fails.
And should one section, starved of funds through trade,
Be lost to navigation, then this great
Unique, linked network, built for local need,
But welded into one contiguous whole,
Be thus diminished.

‘I have a vision of the future, Chum!’
I like that quote, (from Betjeman, I think).
It neatly castigates how planners thought
When ‘British Transport’ shelved the mammoth task
Of rationalising waterways. The Act,
Aimed by the Socialists at railways,
Took little cognisance of the canals,
Their poor relations. Apathy before,
Now fogged bureaucracy; what hope had we
Of prodding such to act. But prod we did;
With bold outrageous tactics, verbal war,
That stirred the planner’s breasts. We won. We lost.
The Runcorn burned, the Lancaster was split.
But by the passage of a narrow boat,
The Parrot, forced through Rochdale’s awful locks,
The Cheshire Ring was saved.
I could go on, but then you know it well.
The Stratford link re-forged. Your proudest day
On Royal Avon.

You must acknowledge these achievements came
Not without conflict. Painless, when the foe
Was ‘British Waterways’; yet searing when
The skirmish was internal. It is hard
To have one’s cherished tenets overthrown
By other worthy men. You challenged all,
Calling for vigour, when maturity
Enjoined rapprochement.
          But the times had changed.

The ‘Castle’ Act of sixty-eight confirmed
Your concept of the system as a whole;
(De-classified ingenuously, it’s true).
But economic pressures of a sort
We’d scarcely dreamt of, now bedevilled schemes
Where ‘Waterways’ and we were in accord.
The clamant need for action from both sides
Brooked no contention, but the bar was funds.
And advocacy centres on this scourge,
While whey-faced ‘Ministry Officials’ duck
And weave to dodge the issue. Now the fight
Is in the Commons, Lords or at Appeal;
Proceedings, costing thousands.

Two issues still pre-empt. The fight for freight
And Right of Navigation. These are goals
That Inland Waterways should strive to gain
In memory of Aickman. Think you not
They should be worthy aims.
          I hear some folk,
The Worcester-Birmingham Society,
Have set a plinth and plaque at Tardebigge,
Commemorating Cressy’s sojourn there;
And how we met. Nostalgic, touching thought.

Yes, that is sentiment. It made you smile.
But Aickman magic, that rare alchemy
Of dedicated action and of fire
That alters concepts in committed minds;
That legacy, I trust, they’ll squander not,
Those men who follow on.

We’ll see.”

                                                 -- John Burman

Pumpout tank woes on Granny Buttons

Two old, rotten pumpout tanks lie discarded by the rubbish skips at Streethay Wharf.

Granny has a problem.  And it's not one that you should read before dinner.

Eleven years ago, a few months after I bought my boat second-hand, I decided that opting for a boat with a 'porta potti' had been a mistake.

I paid Streethay a considerable amount to have the bathroom refashioned to accommodate a pumpout tank.  Set upon this - like a throne on a dais - was a simple Mansfield Traveler dump-through toilet.

The tank is about 38 gallons, and quite tall and capacious as pumpout tanks go.  Indeed, with the lavatory perched on top, one's bottom is two feet from the floor.

Shorter people sitting on this loo often feel like they are children back at school, their feet swinging freely above the floor.

But it works well, and I can go two or three months without needing a pumpout.  It's a simple low-tech connection to my lower intestine, as I'm reminded every time my foot presses the flush lever, the bottom opens and last night's dinner joins its predecessors.

The problem is that the tank was made of mild steel, and is clearly doomed.  The acid in human waste slowly eats through such soft metal, albeit the corrosion is slow and can take years

But in 1999 when the tank was built and installed, ten years seemed a long way distant.

Well, time has caught up, as it always does. Now the bolts holding down the toilet have rotted through, the toilet itself is loose, an anaerobic smell is seeping out of the top and heaven knows what's happening further down in the stygian, smelly blackness of that tank and the revolting sludge lining it.

Streethay removed two other tanks recently from old boats - I spotted them this week by the waste skip, awaiting collection.  These tanks are smaller than Granny's, but no older, and clearly corroded through at the top.  They are gloomy evidence that my own tank's days are numbered.

Ordinary steel must have seen an appropriate metal when Streethay themselves made this tank, and it's served me well.  However standards have moved on and I'm told stainless steel is the preferred material now.  Stainless would be rather more expensive, but far longer-lived.

But what worries me most now is how much it will cost to have the bathroom ripped apart and a new tank fabricated and installed.

(At this point I'm sure Mr & Mrs Smug will tell me I asked for the trouble and I should have stuck with a porta-potti.

No I shouldn't!  I don't regret the pumpout tank.  I loathe the process of confronting my own waste.  I like that it only has to be done about four or six times a year, and that I'm nicely sealed off from the process.

And there's a peculiar satisfaction in seeing that giant umbilical connected to the roof and watching it pulsate like a monstrous lower intestine as all the muck is sucked out, becoming someone else's problem.)

But I digress.

I wonder, was  mild steel a sensible choice for a pumpout tank all those years ago?  Did we (me, Streethay and the whole boat sanitation industry) know any better at the time?  Was I mis-advised?

Of course, few problems arrive without companion opportunities.  Tearing down the bathroom might give me a chance to improve other aspects that I'd never dare change otherwise.

For example, will it be possible to fit one of the modern macerating toilets in the space available, thus completely sealing off my digestion from its consequences?  Is there a system that can increase the time between pumpouts even more?  Can I use the upheaval to turn the bathroom into a 'walk-through', giving me more space?

But right now, for a few weeks, I'll have to live with the worries about a rotten tank, and hope it's not seeping out behind the lining.  There are far too many other calls right now on the few pounds left in my pockets, not least a major engine service.

The boat that built Guy

If you give anyone a primetime TV slot for six weeks, I suppose they will inevitably develop a following.

And not just people.  Quite a few people have asked me where they can see Reckless, the 'star' of the new TV programme The Boat That Guy Built.  Well, it's back at Streethay Wharf near Lichfield, and has become quite the little tourist attraction, with a stream of people dropping by just to look at it.

I learned tonight that Reckless is now for sale, with an asking price of £41,500.  For that you'll get - well, pretty much what you see on the TV program, and on my earlier posts (see links below).

Reckless is a trad layout narrowboat with an original sweet-sounding Lister JP2 in its own engine room, with a traditional a boatman's cabin, and a somewhat spartan fitout.  It's almost habitable, but it's very much the boat that Guy didn't finish building. 

Instead, consider it a little bit more than a solid, very nice lined sailaway at a reasonable price.  There's a lot of quality work already done, mostly by Streethay - including basic wiring and plumbing - but there's also a lot still to do.

If you are interested in buying Reckless, it's being marketed through Tollhouse Boat Sales of Hillmorton, or by appointment to Streethay Wharf.

You might have to fight through the tourists eager to stop by and have their photo taken with it.  I nipped around tonight to photograph it for this post, and found a nice young couple behind me, breathlessly impressed, asking to do just that themselves.

(I let them through, how could I refuse such honest enthusiasm. But if you come, please bear in mind that it's on private property and wait to be invited as they did.)

Originally I described Reckless as a 'maguffin' a simple device for excusing the holes in the plot of a programme. 

But judging by the enthusiasm it generates I'm starting to think it's The Boat That Built Guy.

See also:

Recked Reckless (2007, aftermath of the fire)

Wrecked Reckless salvaged 

The narrowboat that Guy Martin took over

The boat that Guy built follows me

Canal bridge graffiti removal and training

Wombourne bridge graffiti stays due to red tape - Express & Star

A story emerged in February that local residents were officially forbidden by British Waterways from a DIY attempt to remove graffiti from the bridge over the canal. 

I don't know why, but the local paper's revisited the story this week: 

Members of Wombourne’s Best Kept Village committee had been ordered to take training before being allowed to scrub off spray paint.

But the organisation that is in charge of protecting the bridges [BW] said the clean-up operated required “specialist attention” and that it could not afford the £2,000 bill to have them cleaned.

No new developments this time, except that a figure of £2,000 has been quoted for cleaning the bridge.

I'm not sure where this figure come from.  I related a similar story in July 2008, in two separate posts -

BW are ***kers, says county councillor Matthew Ellis

Graffiti removal gone mad

- when BW quoted £7,000 as the cost of cleaning Bonehill Bridge, on the Coventry Canal near Fazeley, or £100 to remove an offensive phrase. 

At the time I wrote:

BW says its annual graffiti removal budget for the West Midlands is £100k.   That includes 400 miles of waterways and over 700 bridges.

By my estimation, that means they can either clean about 14 bridges a year, or they can do 5,000 rude words a year.  If they stick to whole bridges, each bridge could be cleaned once every 50 years.

Surely the West Midlands graffiti removal budget must now be considerably less, if not zero. 

[Bonehill Bridge near Fazeley, before (top, 2008) and after (2009) a clean-up.  Granny in the background, both times. I notice that the wooden post in the foreground still bears its legend 'SLASH'.]

So what must a local community do, if it wants the unsightly blight removed?

It took no permission or training for the graffiti to be applied in the first place.  I wonder what the punishment would be if local residents were caught trying to remove it without official permission.

Are there evening classes in graffiti removal? 

And what if, having got your Higher Certificate in Bridge-Cleaning, you just went ahead and did it, without waiting for BW's permission.  Do they want to 'organise' it, complete with overalls, hi-visibility jackets, lifejackets and protective goggles - and a volunteer coordinator in the background, complete with clipboard?

I'd like to think that all BW ask is that if you do decide to tackle the job, you at least know what you are doing.  On the face of it, that's not too much to ask.

In that case, what's really needed is not official 'volunteer' groups, but some free training courses.  They could be run alongside Roses & Castles painting course, and perhaps combine the two together.

Here's a lateral-thinking idea - why not paint bridges with canal folk art? 

Write & spell better in comments

The blog A Computer Scientist In A Business School has made an intriguing observation.

Examining the user comments on Trip Advisor, Amazon and other such websites, they found a direct correlation between the literacy of the user-written reviews  and the demand for their products.

In their words:

... Demand for a hotel increases if the online reviews on TripAdvisor and Travelocity are well-written, without spelling errors; this holds no matter if the review is positive or negative.

... We observed similar trends for products sold and reviewed on Amazon.com.

The upshot is heartening for lovers of good grammar and spelling:  Write n spel better and ul be taken more seriosly LOL!! 

But more interestingly, from a business point of view, was the action taken by one online retailer.  They went through the user reviews and comments and FIXED the spelling and grammar - and sales on those products went UP.

(Memo to self: Double-check and correct my blog posts - and perhaps correct the spelling and grammar of comments too.)

It's a bit unfair for me to pick on comments, because once you've posted a comment to Granny Buttons, you can't edit it yourself - you have to own up and ask me to change it.

NABO 'Cost of Boating' survey 2011

If you have a canal boat, how much does it cost you to run?

I haven't got a clue about Granny Buttons, except that it's more expensive than any ex-wife.

But if you are more provident, more diligent and more meticulous about keeping records, the National Association of Boat Owners (NABO) would like to hear from you.

They have issued their latest Cost Of Boating survey, and you can fill it in here: http://goo.gl/DBQAp 

NABO says:

With the changes to the way the waterways are being run, NABO Council believes it is even more important that we monitor the rate of increase of boaters' costs, so that we can quote from knowledge, when speaking on your behalf to government departments, BW, EA etc.

Among the questions we ask are the actual costs of your Licence, Moorings, Boat Insurance (excluding contents insurance) and obtaining your BSS Certificate (if relevant - but excluding any resultant necessary repairs) for the past 12 months.

We also invite you to enter amounts, or estimates, of fuel, gas, coal and routine maintenance costs; also, enforced extraordinary expenditure such as bottom blacking and major engine repairs. Because of rapid increases in diesel and gas costs, we are also asking for unit costs (p/litre and cost per 13Kg container) if you buy either in April or May 2011.

I'm sorry that I can't complete it because I don't really keep records of how much Granny takes of my earnings.  Fool that I am, I know, don't remind me.

What will they do with the figures, and will those figures be meaningful?  I'm not sure, but the figures from their 2009 survey are here.

I'm sure they can spot the trends and relevance, but since I can't even work out my own boating costs, don't expect me to know what the other figures mean.

Do you keep accurate and punctilious records of your boating costs?

Jonathan Raban on the canals

The best way through England is wet - Wall Street Journal

With all due respect to the world's many hard-working newspaper travel pages, they don't often do the waterways justice. 

There's too often the element of 'widith' about them - they are journalists in other disciplines who simply take a holiday with the family and then write it up later as a way of paying for it. Alternatively they accept a free holiday as advance payment for writing up their trip.

Jonathan Raban is in a different element. He's an acclaimed travel, cultural and political writer whose words flow, rather than tumble out.   His article in today's Wall Street Journal suggest that a book from him about England's canals would be the equal of any yet written.

That unruly hedge, where the hawthorn is white with blossom alongside the hazel, ash, alder, oak and holly, was likely planted by Saxons in the 9th century—you can tell by the number of species in it. Those long parallel bars of shadow, cast by the early evening sun on a close-nibbled sheep pasture, are relics of "ridge and furrow" medieval farming.

A balding recreation ground slides past (kids kicking a ball about, someone walking his dog); the back gardens of a line of 1950s semi-detached council houses; then, beyond the screen of beech trees and horse chestnuts, a 16th-century church tower and the roofs, some slate, some thatched, of the village.

The pub landlord has already switched on the lights above his sign, freshly repainted with the arms of some long-ago local peer. You hammer two metal stakes into the towpath, tie up your boat and make for the companionable bar.

He makes it clear that he's a frequent canal hirer, and as a Brit who rehomed himself in America 20 years ago he comes back to the waterways with an experienced - yet fresh - eye. 

So it's perhaps surprising that to my knowledge Jonathan Raban has rarely written about the waterways English waterways, and never published a book on the subject.  (His 1980s Coasting was about a coastal trip.)

He ends his article like no widith I've ever seen, in a way which perfectly sums up the appeal of a canal holiday:

I've done this often, out of season, avoiding the summer crowds, and each trip has been a revelation. I've glided noiselessly through great post-industrial cities like Birmingham, enchanted and astonished by what's left of 1800 in them, seen from the magical time-warp of the canal.

I've learned to read the past of the country, its palimpsest of field-patterns, hedgerows, woods, roads, market towns, hamlets, isolated farmsteads, from the Roman occupation to today, with the help of W.G. Hoskins's groundbreaking 1955 book, "The Making of the English Landscape," an essential item of cargo that every narrowboat should carry.

It's ironic that his latest Wall Street Journal article has persuaded me to buy another author's book altogether, in an edition that appears to be long out of print.