I can gather all the news I need on the weather report

If I have been feeling more calm and cheerful since the new year, it may be due to any number of factors. One that should not be underestimated is having retuned every radio in the flat from Radio 4 to Radio 3. So sorry, Frank, no witty apercus on the forthcoming* election.

I used to be interested in politics. I followed general elections with fascination from the year I was nine (there were two that year). I was probably the only fourteen year old in my school who could name all the members of Thatcher’s first cabinet – and do bad impressions of her to boot (that actually must have been earlier, as they consisted entirely of saying ‘as Leader of the Opposition…’ in a nasal voice. Still, there wasn’t much entertainment on school camp and it made a welcome interlude in between renditions of Green Grow the Rushes-O).

I got passionate about politics, joined a party, became a councillor. The passion quickly faded, to be replaced by disillusionment, but the interest remained. I studied politics; I researched it, and I taught it. And now, with the possible exception of a remaining trace of psephological Asperger’s, I am heartily sick of politics. Above all I am sick of talking about it with people who have nothing new to say. I know being a doctor or an actuary or similar is meant to be a classic conversation stopper, but announcing yourself as a politics lecturer can’t be far behind. ‘Politics!’ people say. ‘Don’t get me started on politics!’. And then, unfortunately, they invariably do.

On Radio 3 there is just enough news to keep up with what is happening in the world; to be cognisant of the fact that Leon Brittan has died, it’s going to snow in New York, and David Cameron wants to reintroduce the Poor Law Amendment Act only without the comfort and security of the workhouse. And people will vote for it.

On Radio 3 you get the news, but without the dissection, posturing and sanctimonious pontificating that makes me shout at the wireless. Well, unless someone starts applauding too soon after the end of Verdi’s Requiem. There is a downside of course, viz. Schubert Lieder, but on balance it’s easier to ignore.

So don’t get me started on politics.

*Because ‘upcoming’ is not a word.

The death of the blog?

Each year, blogger extraordinaire Diamond Geezer charts the decline of the blog as a form of mass communication. He posts every day, and he's not short of readers, but the number of comments, the level of engagement, he observes as steadily falling. The received wisdom is that, as new media go, blogs are old hat, overtaken by the immediacy and spurious individuality of the likes of Facebook and Twitter. These give the impression of communication with friends on an almost personal level (Or so I believe. I am not on Facebook, and my level of Twitter activity can be gauged from the widget on this blog. I only signed up so that I could post brief updates when out of internet range, in the days before 3G); a blog, on the other hand, is far more akin to writing a newspaper column. It can be an amusing one, a special interest one, or a highly personal one, but the key point is that you don't know who's going to read it - or, unless you're very clever, who actually has read it. It's scattering your pearls randomly, then waiting to see who, if anyone picks them up.

I like the blog as a format. I like that element of impersonality; the fact that it is a public document and I have to restrain myself accordingly in terms of what I choose to post. I like the challenge of having to think up something interesting to write, something that will grab the attention of a passing reader rather than being dropped into someone's inbox and unfolded under their nose.The trouble is, of late, I have been having trouble rising to that challenge. It was easy when there were boats being worked on - first Warrior and then Chertsey; engines to be rebuilt, whole new worlds opening up. My passion for my boat, boats in general, and (admittedly to a lesser degree, i.e. one not great enough to spur me to actually do any research to write about - too much like work perhaps) canals, is as strong as ever - but it is no longer new, and therefore does not spark the enthusiasm necessary to believe or to convince someone else to be interested in it. My lack of posts since Christmas has been occasioned not (any more) by lack of time, nor of motivation, but of material. I no longer read CanalWorld Forums (they made me too cross, and anyway it does get a bit groundhog day after a while), and I don't want just to spout opinions anyway. Well, not too often. I do want to keep the content largely boat related, but I'm too lazy and/or insufficiently motivated to undertake swathes of research.

It starts to look - not for the first time - as if the blog will fizzle out. But that is the one thing I am determined to avoid. I look at Granny Buttons, among the first and the most widely read canal boating blogs, posting almost daily from 2003 until 2012, and then just stopping; fading away, no announcement, no goodbye... I don't want to do that. I noticed with surprise, just then, when I looked up when Granny Buttons started, that it lasted in total for nine years, August 2003 - August 2012. An eternity in blog terms, but a mere nine earth years nonetheless.

I started blogging in April 2006, with Warrior. I did 100 posts in 2006, 247 in 2007, 245 in 2008, and 267 in 2009 - a total of 859 posts in three and two thirds years. Then at the start of 2010 I moved over to the new Chertsey blog, where I made 297 posts in 2010, a high point from which it has been downhill all the way: 197 in 2011, 162 in 2012, 116 in 2013, 79 last year, and a pathetic five so far this year. Nonetheless, that's 851 in five years. Almost the same as the first not quite four years. Overall, it works out at an average of 171 posts a year, and a grand total of 1,715 (counting this one but not the lone 2010 changeover post on Warrior which is the one you'll land on if you visit. Go on, have a look - I wrote much better stuff in those days.)

So, a fairly noble enterprise overall, and come April it will have outlived Granny Buttons! But all good things must come to an end, and at some point it will be right for me to move on to new projects and forms of expression. Not just yet though; and not with a whimper. I hereby commit and give notice that I will cease blogging on March 31st 2016 - ten years to the day after I began. I shall thus go out with as much of a bang as a few lines of text can muster. That is the easy bit. The hard part is that I shall attempt to make that final post my 2000th - i.e. I need to create another 284 between now and then. That's about twenty a month - not an outrageous target, although you might doubt that on past form. Of necessity, many of these will be short, although not necessarily to any particular point.

So there we have it. Now that the end is in sight - although still some way in the distance - and a grand finale planned, hopefully I won't feel so vaguely (and mildly, don't worry, I'm not actually losing sleep over it) bad about the blog withering on the vine, and having already made my excuses, I can post little inconsequentialities, if I can think of any that it. Please feel free to send in topics you would like/like to challenge me to expound upon.

A ramble by canal

Being one of those times when you start off writing one thing, and it goes off in a direction all of its own...

The Grand Union means my boat, a Grand Union Large Woolwich motor boat, on of eighty six pairs of boats and butties built in the mid to late thirties, following an even larger order of slightly shallower drafted boats from 1934 onwards. A Grand scheme for the Grand Union. An act, it turned out, of great hubris – or so at least it appeared with hindsight. Did they not see war coming? Was it too late? Or did they think the war would be the making of them?

Many of these boats never went into service. But was it because of the war? Was it really because there weren’t the men available to steer them? Inland waterways transport was a reserved occupation. Would so many of this famously insular, illiterate, separate, community have deliberately not just volunteered, but insisted, on going to fight? How many of them would even have been young enough? Perhaps it was that goods were no longer arriving by sea in such quantities, and not leaving either – the mainstay of the Grand Union’s trade. Maybe the war didn’t make that much difference. Maybe trade, even on this greatest of England’s canals, was already dwindling, and its people moving onto the land; retiring, dying, and not being replaced. Perhaps if wider boats had been introduced sooner, perhaps perhaps, and maybe.

If the war didn’t kill the Grand Union, its aftermath did. While most of England’s narrow canals had long since, famously, been put out of business by the railways, it took the rise of the lorry to put the final nail in the coffin of the Grand Union – and after the war there were lorries galore, and the men looking for work who could drive them, and the men looking to set up the businesses to employ them.

After that, canal carrying was no longer a mainstream occupation carried out by the people who had traditionally done it for centuries – adapting to the times with motor boats and electric light, but carrying more tradition that any other working class profession. The aftermath of the war was the start of the canal as a place for misfits and rebels; not dropouts at first, but working, and working bloody hard. Young, middle class men seeking a challenge and, perhaps, the dignity of labour. Roughening their hands and blackening their faces and punishing their muscles, hauling coal, nearly always, the last product it made economic sense to shift by water. Just. This tiny renaissance, this Indian summer, was rained on by the arrival of oil, which revolutionised the powering of jam factories and paper mills as it turned so much else upside down. Surely it is above all oil (and not silicon) which has made our lives today all but unrecognisable to someone from merely fifty years ago, if they hadn’t been here to witness the transition.

Without silicon and all it stands for we wouldn’t have computers, tablets (or the whole new meaning of that word), smartphones, or the internet. Granted. But we wouldn’t have those things without oil either – the oil to make the plastics that encase those devices’ intelligence; the oil to extract and transport the precious rare elements they devour; the oil to produce the heat to manufacture them and then again to ship them, literally, to us. And without oil, cheap, plentiful oil, how different would our domestic lives look and feel. No plastic, and none of the bright colours our plastic products encapsulate. So many fewer imported goods; nothing so cheap, and therefore nothing so plentiful, and then, of course, nothing so disposable. No incinerators; massive landfills merely middens. Less stuff; more precious stuff. I remember being struck by a scene in one of Flora Thompson’s books, in which a rural labouring family buys a new tea set. For them, this is a once in a generation purchase, anticipated perhaps for years. To make it, they have to wait until the annual fair. They are not a particularly poor family, within their local context, but this represents a significant investment, and is treasured as such. Because it is treasured, it gives them great pleasure. The anticipation of buying it, the careful choice, is probably greater than we today would invest in buying a car, and then there is the constant pleasure of using it, often accompanied by the memory of the day it was bought, the fair, the ribbons, the dressing up and the fairings. And the old tea set – only the items that are broken of course, and beyond use – that goes, piece by broken piece on the midden. Imagine a society in which so little was thrown away that each household had its own individual rubbish tip, and was not overwhelmed by it in a matter of years, if not months. Imagine if you had to keep everything you threw out at the bottom of your garden.

I digress. From the Grand Union to the transformation of our lives by oil. But that’s what canals do. They transport you from one place to another, via an often winding route, so slowly and with so many distractions, that you don’t notice the transition.

My fault

I've finally got round to catching up with Alan and Cath's new blog, for their new boat, Flamingo - and have updated the 'Old Boat' blogroll to feature it. What a fabulous looking boat - and that bathroom looks luxurious to me! I've never seen it before either - where has it been hiding? - but I can't wait to.

Their detailed tales of 'ones that got away' stirred some memories - although to be honest, despite briefly considering maybe half a dozen boats, there was only one other seriously in the frame for me before Chertsey appeared.

Why my fault? Well, in 2013 I enlisted Alan's help to assist Jim bringing Chertsey back from Watford (old story; I had to go back to work). And I swear that it was from that point on that he was re-bitten by the big boat bug.

Well done Alan and Cath, I'm really looking forward to meeting Flamingo.

More beer: it started here

If you didn't know better, you'd think this was the Harbourside Inn, Fort Road, Newhaven, another sadly abandoned and already semi-derelict pub. But to some of us it is and always will be the Sheffield Arms Hotel, which it was until about ten years ago - haunt of local liberals and town councillors (the two categories have been interchangeable since 1991), owing to its proximity to the council chamber, and the hall where party branch meetings were held.

It is not the pub where I first drank. That honour goes to the Sussex in Haywards Heath - an imposing corner building long since demolished - but oh my, Beer in the Evening still has a photo of it!

This is where I gathered with my fellow sixth form part time Sainsbury's colleagues to drink under age Woodpecker in the early eighties, listening to Sade and wearing a rather fetching black and white zig-zag jumper knitted by my mother. The eighties were not a great time to come of age, really.

No, the Sheffield was where I learnt to drink beer.

It was following a party meeting, in the early nineties (pedantic political point: I was, at this time, clearly, a member of the Liberal Democrats. But - and this is important - that is not the party I joined in 1987, and I still have my Liberal Party membership card to prove it). I was a new, keen member, about to stand for the Town Council (which is not NEARLY as important as it sounds), newly escaped from domesticity, and we had retired to the Sheffield following a meeting in the nearby Meeching Hall. A veteran party member and District Councillor (relatively important, in that district councils at least used to get to make policies and spend money) by the name of Peter Harper asked me what I would like to drink. I muttered something about shandy, or possibly a Bass top (I lay myself bare here) and - picture him, a big bellied, tall, bearded, imposing man - boomed (there is no other word for it): "YOU CAN'T BE A LIBERAL IF YOU DON'T DRINK HARVEY'S"

So I did. And I have done ever since. And it's only when I go back to Sussex now after having been away for a while that I notice just how distinctive Harvey's Sussex Best Bitter is.

So it was with some sadness that I noted the decline of what was once an imposing local building. I can't see it surviving, somehow.

There was something particularly poignant about the bag of dog shit carefully looped over the door handle, never again to be opened to welcome the local not-so-great and not-so-good to talk politics and drink beer.

Beery backlash

Reading Pete Brown's latest excellent post has reminded me of a fleeting feeling I had before Christmas, which is on course to firm up into a niggling dissatisfaction. Our works Christmas outing took us for a pre-prandial drink at a popular local hostelry where they had at least half a dozen cask ales on (I fear it was at least in part out of deference to my tastes that the place was chosen). The range was dominated by IPAs (and a pale Christmas ale - a novelty too far, you might think). Now I am a self confessed lover of IPA but there was nothing there to satisfy me. Why? Because my sudden realisation was that I want a proper English IPA that tastes of English hops, not one that has aromas of bleeding grapefruit and elderflower. Enough already with the New World hops. Give me fuggles and goldings, and lots of them.

Ten minutes

Hello... hello..? Yes, it's me. I'm still here...
      Having hopefully recovered from the worst semester ever (I hope). It wasn't all bad, but a lot of it was, and it was all quite overwhelming, working evenings and far more hours than I should have done, leaving quite insufficient time, energy and will to blog - not to mention no time to do anything to blog about. How it happened... Well, it had been brewing for quite some time, but reality hit in October. When I first came to Sheffield two years ago it was to my dream job - running a degree in Social and Political Studies for part time, mature and 'non-traditional' students. People who had the ability but never got the chance to go to university when they left school. Ex miners, retired policeman, refugees, mothers... an infinite variety of ages, backgrounds and experiences. The part time degree took six years, time to get really involved and engaged with the students. Policy changes and increased fees however led to fewer people feeling able to take up such second chances. (I went to a conference in London where we were being told that the fall in recruitment of part time students was just because they didn't understand that they could get a loan for the full fees, and that some of them probably would never have to pay back a penny. My thought then was - and still is - have you ever tried selling a massive loan to a working class Yorkshireman?)

Anyway, the University's answer to this was to stop running part time degrees, and instead focus on a new one-year, full time Foundation Programme, to feed 'non-traditional' (albeit a completely different sort of non-traditional) students into full time degrees in the mainstream University. All of us who were running the old degree programmes had to apply for new roles on the new one, and only once these were confirmed, in September, could we take over development of the many new modules for which we were responsible. We also became responsible for managing a cohort of newly recruited tutors, and between us, had to start delivering the new programme at the beginning of October. As if that weren't enough, I'm still running my old programme, but in a quarter of the time it previously took. So I hope you will excuse me having been a bit too frazzled to blog for a few weeks.

Back to work tomorrow, and I'm hoping the worst is over. I hope at the very least that I will be able to find ten minutes of an evening to squeeze out a few words. If I don't, at least now you'll know why.

Favourite book

With my mind turning to travel plans for next year, I've dug out one of my very favourite books. Arteries of Commerce is a facsimile, published by Belmont, of a 1930s promotional book for the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company. It contains contemporary diagrams and decsriptions of the company's waterways, extensive puffs for canal carrying in general and the Grand Union in particular, and a host of 1930s adverts. The waterways diagrams poignantly state which companies could be found at each wharf and arm.

If you are anything like me, you will love it. Best of all, it's a 120 page, A4-ish size, hardback book, full of treasure, and it's only £5.99.

... I wrote that a week or so ago, and I was browsing Amazon to see whether It was available there (and it's actually much the easiest and cheapest to but it from the Club shop), when I came across  what purported to be an original, 1930s, copy. I emailed the seller to make sure that it didn't have the (subtle) facsimile imprint on page 121 and took the plunge and bought it - sixteen quid in this case. Mad, I know, but I am pleased to have it. And I can report that, if this is an original, then the facsimile is a very accurate one.

Still haven't make much progress planning the trip though.

... 

Long Rocky road

 Still on last weekend, on the Sunday we took Rocky for a walk, This was with some trepidation, as we had no idea what sort of levels of stamina he had. When I go on 10+ mile walks with the Ramblers, we are often accompanied by a dog or two, and they all seem to love it. One spaniel in particular runs back and forth and must cover twice as many miles as her owner, who is himself a keen long distance walker and runner. Another one is a little terrier, with very short legs, and never seems to tire either.

But I'd heard that greyhounds are most definitely built for speed rather than distance. Gallop like a mad thing for two minutes, then sleep for twenty two hours. This would have been a bit of a downer, as Jim has just joined the Ramblers too and started walking with the Beachy Head group in Sussex.

I think all will be fine though. We set off from Ladybower reservoir and, making it up as we went along, with the help of a map, walked pretty much all the way around one of its two arms. The e-trex sat nav thingy told us that the total distance covered was seven miles, and that included a couple of decent climbs. Rocky kept going steadily (on the lead all the time of course) showing an interest right the way through and not appearing to flag. So that's a relief.

He was obviously a bit tired when we got back...

Cutting edge technology

Jim and Rocky visited this weekend and on Saturday we met up with Adrian to visit the Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet. This is a small open air museum site on the outskirts of Sheffield, which is, basically, a water-powered steelworks founded in 1785. It houses the only remaining crucible steel furnace in the world, apparently. The site was donated to the city council in (if I recall correctly from a long and very interesting chat with one of the curators) in the 1960s or 70s. It had been operated as a museum since then but has recently received lottery and other funding which has enabled further development - largely in the form of a shiny new 'education centre' on the periphery of the site.  The old buildings themselves are wonderfully, marvellously, under-restored. It looks as if the workers just downed tools one day and walked away. The whole site was powered by damming a river - I think it was the Sheaf - and using water wheels to turn a giant and many smaller shafts, to power a range of tools including these mighty hammers, one of which struck 126 times a minute

as well as the bellows that kept the forge hot.

Then, in a workshop that looked as if it hadn't changed in a hundred years, we met a man who was making swords for the Household Cavalry. He had just completed the blade for a ceremonial sword for the coronation of the King of Tonga.  He was working for a company based in Shoreham, where the finished blades go on to be made into complete swords, including, for his Tongan majesty, gold embellishment. It turns out that the Shoreham firm, Robert Pooley, took over the designs and machinery only in 2005, when the previous manufacturers pulled out of the sword-making business. And the previous makers were... Wilkinson Sword. Nowadays known largely, if not exclusively, as the manufacturers of disposable razors, I was amazed to learn that a history of sword making stretching back to 1772 had ended less than ten years ago. Having taken over part of the business, Robert Pooley originally had the sword blades forged in India, but recently brought this process back to the UK, to Sheffield. I'm sure the city's name can only be good for the weapons' reputation.

Very English

A memorial plaque on a bench outside the Packhorse Inn, Crowdecote.
You'd go a long way to find a better summing up of the typically English attitude in four words.

Asinine charms

Woooo!
One of three seen on Sunday's walk.

Hearth and home

Or, in the absence of on open fire or a solid fuel stove, the next best thing - my new cosy corner, focal point of my front room for the winter months.

Complete with Nobby the wooden cat.

All things being equal

I don't believe in any gods, not even pagan ones. But I do have a liking for the pagan calendar. It divides the year into eight seasons, each one long enough - longer than a month but shorter than a quarter or a conventional season - to start a new project or achieve a goal. The year is marked at its quarter points by the planetary phenomena that most directly influence our lives - the summer and winter solstices (the longest and shortest days), and the spring and autumn equinoxes, the mid point between the solstices when day and night are the same length. There is an intuitive logic and rhythm to the pagan seasons, and with the year being seen as circular rather than linear, it stresses the eternal cycle of life, death and regeneration - even without gods, somehow a more comforting thought than a linear one way journey through life or through the year.

So, tonight is the autumn equinox (it's a late one this year). The next half of the year will be more dark than light. This could be a depressing thought. Few people prefer the cold and dark to warmth and light. But could we really appreciate one without the other? I have always been one of those people who curse the dark and huddle in the cold, but thinking of things in pagan terms, I'm more inclined to embrace it and try to accept it on its own terms. There is a problem though - that is a lot harder to do these days than it was when the pagan worldview held sway.

In winter it is natural to store fat, be less active, sleep more. It's a time when all of nature rests and gathers its strength for another year and cycle of life. Many animals take this to extremes by sleeping the whole winter through. In the cold we want to conserve our energy. Our minds and our bodies alike long to be less active. Yet modern society expects us to ignore and defy this, as if electric light and central heating is all it takes for us to ignore the seasons altogether (ironic when seasonality of food is all the rage). Many people are able to cope with this. They may not be functioning optimally but they struggle through, and, most importantly, get the job done. For those who find it harder though, there is a label: Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD (all too neatly) for short. Those people whose lives are more attuned to the natural rhythm of the seasons, less able to be conned by electric light, are labelled as having a disorder because they can't keep up with the requirements of modern society and economy. I would like to argue that it's society's crazy expectations, not people who would quite reasonably prefer to be hibernating, that is disordered.

I'll not be having any big ceremony to mark the equinox, although I do think one of the good things about the pagan calendar is the punctuation it gives to the cycle of the year. I will however be thinking about things to be thankful for - the christian ritual of harvest festival has been imposed/draws on the celtic/pagan mabon, marking the end of the harvest season and is traditionally a time of thanksgiving. Taking time to think of things for which to be thankful has been shown to be good for us psychologically; in short, to make us happier. The autumn equinox is the penultimate festival of the pagan year - although its beginning and end point could be seen as far more arbitrary than in a linear model. Nonetheless, this is a good time to be thinking of finishing outstanding projects and tying up loose ends in preparation for the new year which starts at the beginning of November.

Most importantly, though, the beginning of the dark months means that we'll be spending more time indoors and will need cheering up. So my most important equinox ritual will be to brighten up my living space, in particular my front room, to make it warm and welcoming, cosy, comforting and cheerful. It's already predominantly decorated in reds and oranges, but I might look for a new throw for the sofa, swap some of the curtains and throws around, and find a safe place where I can have a few candles - in red and orange glasses and lanterns - to represent a hearth - something I sadly lack here. I think just doing this, and looking back on having done it, will help me face the winter with greater confidence and equanimity.

Walkies

Of course the one thing I failed to consider when introducing Rocky to Jim is the effect it would have on Jim's burgeoning walking activities. Dogs = walks, no? Well, no, I have learnt; not if the dog is a greyhound, in which case the equation is more like dog runs around like a mad thing for two minutes and then sleeps for twenty two hours. Still, he is taking Jim on lots of short(ish) walks, taking full advantage of what the immediate area has to offer, as the 740 has thrown another electrical wobbly. Anyway, more or Rocky another time.

This is about me, me, me and the walks I've been on lately. Lots of 'em, including a sixteen miler - my record so far - last week, which I was pleased to accomplish without any ill effects. Often, when walking with the group, there's hardly time to admire the view, let alone stop and take photos. Also, as stunning, breathtaking and other-worldly as those views can be, once mediated through the camera they become, well, just pictures. Pretty pictures, sure, but the faintest shadow of the real thing, poor enough to be a misrepresentation. You'd think, so what is all the fuss about then. There's only so many arty shots of posts and barbed wire, and wry ones of hills that look like nipples (and many do; there must be some sort of geomorphological explanation. I asked a colleague last week what limestone's made of and she just threw a book at me (Rock Identification in the Field or something) so I Googled it. And so can you, if you really need to know).

Anyway, today I went for a walk with another colleague, her partner and their friend, and there was time to stop and stare, particularly at some sheep with sticky-up rabbit ears, and take some photos of the View.

We went from Hartington to Crowdecote (I'm guessing at the spelling here) for lunch, and back. This is further afield than I usually venture and entailed a longish, although not unpleasant, drive. I am told that at one point we had actually ventured into Staffordshire.

We stopped to admire the site of Pilsbury Castle, a motte and bailey construction of the eleventh century or thereabouts. I remember learning about motte and bailey castles at school; in particular being perturbed by the utter lack of any context and thus comprehension of their purpose. I hadn't given them another thought until today, when I learnt that this one might have been a Norman fortification to subdue rebellion (resistance?) from the north. Or it might not. No one knows really when it was built, or why, although we do apparently know that everything was made entirely of wood, presumably because there's now nothing to show for it at all.

Chertsey has a boat dog

Yes, who'd have thought it?  To be honest, although Jim and I had been toying with the idea of perhaps acquiring a dog when the cats were no longer around - we had got as far as discussing optimum leg length for embarcation and requisite degree of hairiness - all this has happened rather suddenly. The story in brief is here, and now Rocky's former owners have blogged about it, I feel OK to.

I first met Rocky a few months ago, and he immediately struck me as that rare beast - a dog that I like. Gentle, friendly and undemanding, (him not me) we hit it off straight away and he let me sit on his sofa and hold his paw, and stroke his lovely velvety ears.

However, it turned out that the wilds of the Peak District, with sheep at every turn, wasn't the ideal environment for a greyhound - at least, not this one. After one scare too many, his mum feared that he would either die of frustration, or at the hands of an angry farmer. She determined that he needed a home away from the the tantalising temptations of what he could not help but see as prey. Because I'd grown rather fond of Rocky, I made a suggestion that might not otherwise have crossed my mind: perhaps Jim could provide that home. The area around Newhaven offers a wide range of walks, and while there are sheep, they tend to be enclosed and in predictable, avoidable places - unlike here where nearly all land is grazing land and animals are moved - or move themselves - into places where only they day before there were none.

So last weekend Jim came up to Sheffield, met Rocky on the Monday and after a walk and a pub lunch decided that they got on well enough to take him back to Newhaven that very night. I have to say that his previous owners were very brave in seeing this through, and it's obvious that they have put Rocky's welfare above everything. Rocky meanwhile has settled in well, attaching himself devotedly to Jim. Willow the cat has of course had his nose somewhat put out of joint, but seeing as he had more or less moved out to live on a part time basis with a number of little old ladies who fed him on best mince and kidneys braised in milk (I kid you not) my sympathy for him was slightly limited. The other cats just ignore him and hide themselves away.  Jim has built a special fence to give him a garden all of his own.

Rocky is rather exercised by cats, sheep and, it transpires, swans, but we can work on this. On the (very much greater) plus side, he is absolutely lovely with people, children and other dogs. He has already palled up with Aaron's dog Elmo and they are now walking buddies.

Rocky is three years old, and is a smallish greyhound (possibly part whippet). He's never raced (too small?) and has always been a pet - first to a single man, then to the crew of Princess Lucy, and now to Jim. As a bonus, he is an experienced boat dog. While he is longer of leg and smoother of hair than the fantasy boat dog we envisaged, I can't, of course, imagine any other now. I am sure he is looking forward to meeting everybody (human and canine) when we next get the chance to go boating on Chertsey.

If this works, you can find lots more pictures and stories of Rocky here.