Lazy day

Actually the trouble is I'm too busy to think of anything original and scintillating to post but I have just spent five minutes over a cup of tea enjoying Diamond Geezer's Flickr tour of the Regents Canal, so this is my contribution to waterways happiness today.

What we did in April

Casting our minds back just a little further, I have now uploaded an album of photos showing what Chertsey was doing in April.

Going back in time

Only to May though; just sorted and uploaded the work-in-progress photos from the month before last. See them here.

What happened before we left

Now I'm getting round to retrospectively organising my Chertsey photos, starting with last month's. June was a very busy and productive month, starting with collecting the new engine, and ending at Braunston. That bit's already been covered; the rest of the story is here.

Up the wall

Today I finally got around to putting up my boat and boat-related pictures to brighten up a rather plain white wall. Clearly I'm not going to be invited to join any hanging committees any time soon - I was aiming for a sort of random effect but I'm still not sure whether it's too random or not random enough.

As I acquire more frames (these were all less than a pound each from local charity shops), I'll add to the collection - I can always find the pictures. So far these include a horse drawn barge on the Regents Canal, the interior of Tarporley's back cabin, Tarporley on the Regents Canal in the 70s, me steering Chiswick, Chertsey in 1937, Dipper (Bristol) and butty frozen in at Brentford, and the biggest one, a turn of the century photo of Amsterdam, one of a dozen won by my father for correctly identifying all the cities featured.

And finally....

My photos of the weekend, and here, the preceding days of the trip. I'm now going to get on with organising the others into monthly albums.

More photos - and these are super!

Courtesy of Mike, the official trip photographer, here.

For the proper chronological effect, select slideshow and 'reverse order'.
Thanks Mike!

Moving pictures

The thing is, my Braunston photos this year are a bit rubbish. Most of the time I was on Chertsey, or talking to people, and I hardly got the chance to go round snapping as is my usual wont.

Matt Parrott has uploaded some fantastic pictures to his website though, and there are a couple of videos featuring Chertsey: this one, taken by Andrew and Andrea on Dove, of me steering in the parade on Saturday, and this one (in which we all come out a bit tall and thin) shot by Halfie on the Sunday, with Keith doing the honours (well, I didn't want to push my luck). There are also some pictures in this CWF thread.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing Mike's photos, and Liam's videos... And thanks to all those other individuals who have taken and sent me photos.

New album

Thanks to another recommendation from Paul, I have got hole of a copy of the Shire Album of Canal Barges and Narrow Boats by Peter L. Smith, published in 1975. This is very exciting, as it appears to contain three photos of Chertsey.


This is the first one I recognised - they're a bit like babies; they all look the same to outsiders, but after a while you recognise your own instinctively. This photo also appears in Smith's Pictorial History of Canal Craft (Batsford, 1979) which I got a couple of days later. Here he gets the build year right (see below), but says the boat's composite. Just goes to show you can't believe everything you read in a book.

This would seem to confirm it - a lovely fore end shot, and identified as Chertsey, albeit with a bit shaved off its age. Both of these on the Ashby, where Chertsey is known to have hung out in the 70s.


And finally this one - unidentified, and taken on the Trent and Mersey, but I think it's my baby again.

Two more (pun resisted)

I've finally tracked down photos of Dover and, ahem, Tarporley and added them to the album. Not many left to find down the back of the sofa now; I shall have to go out and spot some more.
The one of Tarporley shows the first time I encountered it, when we had Warrior in London in 2008. Sort of 'here I am with a famous person' kind of photo.

Last night was the monthly Tarporley committee meeting. The facilities on the boat are gradually being upgraded, and, in order to make the next difficult decision, I have selflessly volunteered my services as a member of the Toilet Subcommittee. The subcommittee is packed with dump-through supporters so I don't envision too much internecine warfare - until the subcommittee's decision comes back to the full committee for approval, of course. Politics - don't you just love it.

Someone else's pictures

Been saving this up for a night like this when I've not prepared a post and too tired to start thinking about it. A while ago Andrew of Dove posted this link on CWF - it's someone else again's wonderful old boat photos. I don't know who he is myself, but if he's posted them on the web then presumably he wants as many people as possible to look at them. To be honest, they are so wonderful I found it all rather overwhelming - an embarassment of riches - and haven't had a really good look yet myself.

The experts and anoraks at CWF have however given the matter their fullest attention and have issued a number of corrections to the captions and reminiscences, and a long thread has ensued.

Enjoy.

Found some more!

I made a quick raid on the laptop last night and tracked down photos of Aynho, Badsey, Bainton, Otley and Towcester, which I have added to the album, along with a lovely picture of Fulbourne at St Ives. There are still at least two missing - ironically two of the three I've steered - of which I have lots of snapshots but no real portrait.

And it's catching on - Adam of Debdale draws my attention to his collection (and reminds me that I must have Dover and Nuneaton somewhere too) and Jim of Starcross has posted some lovely seventies photos, including Bexhill, which has so far eluded me. It's a shame my self-imposed rules don't let me do swaps!

I wonder if anyone whose interests lie in those directions will start a collection of Stars, or Joshers (or subdivisions thereof), or boats by builder? Maybe it's not quite the done thing for the very purists, but you've got to admit it's fun.

Boat spotting

I think that for someone lacking a y-chromosome, I have quite a male brain. This manifests itself not only in a greater ability to process rusty rivets than fluffy kittens, but also an insatiable need to categorise, catalogue and collect. I understand train spotters.

When we were kids, my sister used to go in for those sticker albums - she had one based on the Disney film The Rescuers. I was quite fascinated by this, although of course being three and a half years older I was above such childish things. I had never got into those things where you have to buy stuff, mainly because of a terror I had - dreadful in one so young - of being ripped off (which I lay entirely at the door of Richard Stilgoe), and also because just being able to go out and buy the things - even though you also had to swap them of course - seemed somehow like cheating. So I just carried on cataloguing my mug collection and setting up a prototype ID database for my dolls and teddies.

The concept however has never left me and I have now found an outlet. For years now I have been watching old boats and now I consciously register when I see one I've not seen before. It won't be long before I have to start making special trips to track down those boats that I know to exist but which have so far eluded me. I have become a boat spotter.

To keep the task manageable and within the limits of my fiercest obsession, I shall in the first instance limit myself to spotting large Grand Union motor boats. If we take this to mean the 'Town Class' of large Woolwiches and Northwiches, a quite cope-able with 86 were built, most if not all of which are still in existence in some form.

So, I have set up a separate blog on which to catalogue my spottings and stick my stickers. I have created a post for each boat, and I will stick in a picture of each as I collect it. The unbreakable rule is that it must have been seen and photographed by me. I already have quite a collection, of course, scattered around in various envelopes and hard drives and CDs - it will be interesting to discover, as I trawl methodically through them (!) just how many I've already spotted. When I spot a new one or post a new batch I'll post about it here too.

So far I've trawled through all the photos on this computer - that is those taken since April last year. So there is already something there to look at. Then I shall work my way through the CDs of photos from 2007 and 2008, then the prints from earlier that will need scanning...

Cool pictures

I am very aware that this is supposed to be a blog about Chertsey, and I haven't actually written anything about Chertsey yet. I shall try to remedy that over the course of next week by posting a bit about what I know of the boat's history. In the mean time, here I sit on the south coast while Chertsey is 200 miles away on the Shroppie, waiting patiently.

I am also aware that although there is a link on the right labelled 'Chertsey photos', if you click it (as eight disappointed people, or possibly one very optimistic one, have) it leads to an empty album. There are Chertsey pics on Photobucket, but they're still in nbWarrior's albums.

However, I have now started to remedy that, because Keith has very kindly taken some photos of Chertsey for me, to show that it is still afloat, and huddled up to Hampstead for warmth.