A final farewell

Just over ten years ago, we arrived for the first time at Industry Narrowboats yard at Stretton Wharf on the Shropshire Union. The story of that trip is one of the earliest posts on my Warrior blog.
At ten to eight this morning we left there for the last time.
I didn't look back.

Location:M6,Stafford,United Kingdom

Ready to go

We've been to Asda for provisions, to Turners for diesel (will we ever again pay 49p a litre?) and paid a valedictory visit to Penkridge market. The engine's running well and some of the brass has even been polished. So we're all ready to set off in the morning.

Location:Watling Street,Stafford,United Kingdom

Going boating? Can it be true?

Well, in a few minutes I'll be setting off to the station to go to Stretton, via Stockport, Crewe and Penkridge. Although we've been to check up a couple of times, I haven't actually been on board Chertsey since last October. That is both incredible and shameful, I know. So who knows what Jim and I will discover when we arrive. Hopefully nothing that can't be sorted, and after cleaning up, victualling, and overhauling we should be able to set off on a short trip. I'll be trying to blog on the phone so expect posts to be short, and, the way Blogpress is behaving, unillustrated. But let's give it a go!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

A well kept secret

I started my much-heralded new blog well over a month ago. And it has had NO VIEWS. No one has stumbled across it by accident. So why not have a look now and discover some things you never knew about me...

On the spot

After thirty five plus years of watching on the TV, and over three years living in this great city, on Monday before last I finally went and watched a snooker match at the Crucible.  If I could have told my teenage self this, she would have been so excited. As it was, I was more curious; interested to witness the Crucible atmosphere that the commentators rave about. (I've noticed a marked increase in both commentators' comments and TV features on players singing the praises of the venue as its contract to host the tournament nears renewal with a real possibility of its being relocated to China). I've been to the Crucible before, so I knew how small it was, and did wonder how they fitted two snooker tables in. I was still surprised though to see just how little room for manoeuvre the players have, with possibly no more than three feet between the table and the dividing screen. Add two pairs of TV cameras and a referee, and it really is a very intimate setting. The audience were very much as you might expect, closely resembling if not the players, then, in many respects, the balls.

A first round session on a Monday morning might not be the time to experience the most electric atmosphere but it was still great to be there. And I found when I got to my seat that I had an added bonus. My ticket was for Table 1 - John Higgins v. Ryan Day (I booked a year ago, taking complete pot luck as to who would be playing). On Table 2, Ronnie O'Sullivan was playing Dave Gilbert. How frustrating, I thought, so near and yet so far. But as I took my seat I realized that not only was I looking straight down at Table 1, but that I could see all but the top left hand corner of Table 2! And here is a photo of Ronnie to prove it.

He won that match, but not the next. Had he decided to retire at that point, I could have claimed to see him win his last ever match. But hopefully he will be back. As I write four players are left in the tournament and the semi-finals are about to begin. As the second round began, I organised a sweepstake at work for the final sixteen - and I am delighted to report that the player I drew is one of the 25% to have made it to this stage. So go, Alan 'Angles' McManus, surprise success of the tournament!

The end of an era

We got our first colour TV in 1973, for the Royal Wedding. In 1975 I watched my first FA Cup final, and became a West Ham fan, following in the tradition of my mother and my grandparents, who lived just up the road from the Boleyn Ground (people have now suddenly started to call it by its official name for the first time I can remember) at Upton Park. And the era of Upton Park is of course coming to an end, as West Ham move to the Olympic Stadium. But that's not the era I was thinking of when I started to write this.

It was a few years later - I would have been in my early teens - when the Black and White Rag heralded a half hour which would have my father glued to the screen, and I quickly joined him in becoming an addict of Pot Black, as he explained the rules of snooker and I immediately realised that at last I had found a sport that could really interest me. It must have been on Pot Black that I was first introduced to Steve Davis, who joined the ranks of professional players in 1978, the year he turned 21. Nowadays, when any player over 40 is considered to be a walking miracle, it's hard to recall what a breath of fresh air it was to see a player who was not only young, but fresh, and personable. I became a fan straight away, and as with West Ham, have remained loyal, with varying degrees of passion, ever since.

Photo stolen from someone on the internet who stole it from the BBC

This afternoon, as I sat on my new sofa watching the World Championship, Steve Davis announced his retirement after thirty eight years as a professional snooker player. So now - other than on the television - I shall never see him play competitive snooker.

I left this all a bit too late...

But better late than never... Next year could be the tournament's last in Sheffield.

A second experiment

As the new iPad is actually wireless only (not my choice!) I'll need to be able to post from my phone when we're out and about. I wonder whether a photo will work this time (it didn't on the iPad, and not in the old one either)
[space for you to imagine a photo of a swan]
No, it won't. I get the message 'some problems when uploading photos, please check your connection'. Well I have checked my connection and it's just fine thank you very much. Bigger and more photos than this upload and download without a murmur in every other app. Now I remember this is why I stopped using Blogpress before. It's clearly a very longstanding problem. Anyone got any ideas how to solve this, or a recommendation for a better app for posting to Blogger from an iPhone. With pictures.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Testing my new toy

I've got a new iPad (well, new to me) and I'm just testing out Blogpress again.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

That's two interesting things in Woking then

And that's if you don't include Britain's first mosque, which I did already know about.
Not only is it the destination for the Historic Narrow Boat Club's 50th Anniversary Rally in August (of which more, much more, anon), but thanks again to Diamond Geezer I now know that it is both the setting for H G Wells's* The War of the Worlds and where it was written.
Makes me want to visit for more than a day!


*Had you ever wondered how to form possessives for people whose name ends in 's', I offer you what I am reliably informed is the guidance of the Oxford University Press, which I like. If the name has one syllable, add an apostrophe and an 's' (Wells's, Jones's) but if the name has two or more syllables, just add the apostrophe, as you would for a plural (Roberts', Humphrys', Papadopolous'). If you think of saying it out loud, it works.

Spring stroll

I haven't been out for a walk with my local Ramblers group for ages, but yesterday I did manage to get out with a work friend for a lovely walk along Derwent Edge - somewhere I'd not actually been before.
The weather was perfect - dry and bright and a bit cold - and the views were fantastic. It's hard to believe that just over two years ago, I'd never been out into the Peak.

We walked four miles then retraced our steps, making eight miles in all. I didn't stop for many photos so these are just a little taste.

And this one, where my phone clearly decided to do something odd without asking me - although I rather like the effect.

A real mystery photo

Inasmuch as I don't know where this one was taken, when, why, or by whom. I found it randomly among some books at my mother's house - it's quite conceivable I took it myself.

I'm thinking possibly Northampton Arm, but can anyone identify any distinguishing features at all?

Slight detour

I've been slightly off the beaten track these last couple of weeks and managed to find half an hour for a quick walk, so here is a small mystery for you - where and on what waterway is this lock?

It's not currently in use, although the gates were replaced in 2001...

And it has this very nifty hinged balance beam, which I haven't seen anywhere else.

I don't actually know as much as I feel I should about this waterway, so any information about its ongoing/aborted restoration would be very welcome.

Ten years a blogger

Exactly ten years ago, I became a blogger, with this, in itself rather unremarkable, but undoubtedly historically significant, post.


Since then, another 1,758 posts have followed. Peak posting was in 2010 - the first full year of having Chertsey - with 298 posts in total. My posting rate has dropped steadily since then despite many resolutions to do better, falling to a pathetic all time low of 44 in 2015. I said last year that I would wind the blog up after ten years... I don't want to do that though - but neither do I want it to drag on in its recent moribund state.


I have an idea for a new blog, covering my boating experiences, but with a broader remit than boating alone. My blogging hero of course is Diamond Geezer, with his daily posts on an idiosyncratic but always interesting mix of London life and everyday life itself (with a current focus on Bow Road's Bus Stop M). There is no reason, I tell myself, why I couldn't do this. DG and I are the same age, both work full time and live alone in a city... and I could certainly do with getting out more.


I am rather busy and away from my computer for the next week or so, but I've decided that I'm not going away, so watch this space for further developments.

Keith

Keith Hedley Ball

23.12.1947 - 13.02.2016

Artist, boatbuilder, and thoroughly good person.

He will be greatly missed.

Sugar!

It was all over the news yesterday that weird sounding drinks from leading coffee shop chains contain staggering amounts of sugar. This is a completely closed world to me, and I understand that the portions containing up to 99 grammes of sugar (that's as much as a whole victoria sandwich cake!) are more akin to buckets than cups... But all the same. Ninety nine grammes is apparently the equivalent of 25 teaspoons. When I make my bedtime cocoa, it contains one teaspoon of sugar. Even if the notorious 'Starbucks’s Hot Mulled Fruit - grape with chai, orange and cinnamon venti' is three times the size, what poisonously bitter substances must it contain to offset that much sweetness?

Breezy Christmas Eve by the sea

It was most invigorating. Christmas Day or Boxing Day, I forget which, I was walking along the seafront in a t-shirt.

Getting in training

Rocky is getting in training for his next boating trip

 

 

Bit of politics....

Jeremy Corbyn. Politics just got a bit interesting again.  It never occurred to me to attempt a bit of £3 entryism and actually vote for him, but I find myself hoping that Corbyn will win the Labour leadership election on Saturday, and heartened by the thought that he could.  Here’s why – and why I don’t buy the Labour Party arguments against him.

Is Corbyn’s proposed economic policy cloud-cuckoo impracticable? Quite possibly. But it doesn’t matter, because despite the best efforts of Blair, the Labour leader still does not unilaterally make Labour Party policy. And should he ever become Prime Minister, the Prime Minister does not rule by diktat (despite the best efforts etc…) but is constrained first by the Cabinet, and then by Parliament.  Corbyn’s loudly stated commitment to democracy both within the party and beyond will make it harder for him to push through pet policies than any previous leader. So it’s good that he’s flagging up a few policies that have been out of fashion for decades – but they won’t become reality unless he can build a consensus for them. It’s interesting, incidentally, to note that the same opponents who say that a Corbyn government would be a disaster for the country are the same people who say that he’s unelectable. You can have one problem or the other, but not both.

Has Corbyn expressed verbal support for some frankly dodgy organisations? Possibly, depending on your political stance on the Middle East and your views on how people who perceive themselves as oppressed can legitimately fight for their cause. But if so, he’s in the very good company of all the UK governments who have and still happily support oppressive regimes and dictators. At least, as far as I’m aware, Corbyn hasn’t actually sold anyone any weapons.

Is a Labour Party led by Corbyn completely unelectable? I have no idea; no one knows what the mood of the country will be in May 2020. It is interesting though that those who claim so vociferously that Corbyn is unelectable are the same people who had no inkling that Labour would be wiped out in Scotland in 2015, and were so confident that he couldn’t win the party leadership that they nominated him despite supporting other candidates (and did so on the grounds that it would be good for the party to have a debate – well, doesn’t the country deserve the opportunity to have that debate as well?). So I don’t have much faith in their crystal balls.

Most senior Labour figures are still traumatised by what happened in 1983. This is what they constantly refer back to as evidence that a lefty Labour Party is unelectable. But it isn’t 1983 any more. By the time of the next election, thirty seven years will have passed since 1983. That’s two whole generations of voters who weren’t even born when a resurgent Thatcher defeated Michael Foot (and it could well be argued that, post-Falklands, she would have won even against a Blairite Labour Party).  However, it’s not just a question of whether a Corbyn-led Labour Party would or would not be electable.

The guiding purpose of the Conservative Party is to rule; it exists to win elections and exercise power to stop it falling into the hands of anyone else.  But wasn’t the Labour Party supposed to be about more than that? Wasn’t it meant to be a campaigning organisation? Surely this shouldn’t just be about winning the 2020 election. That’s nearly five years away, and during that time there’s a massively important job of work to be done.

It’s called opposition; holding the government to account; asking the awkward questions, shining a light into the corners of its decision-making. I’ve noted before that, in my view, the role of the Opposition in British politics is greatly underrated. Governments will always be governments; the delights of power and the constraints of office combine to make governments tend towards the conservative and the authoritarian whatever colour rosette they were elected under. But a good, strong and – dare I say it, principled – Opposition can act as a check on this tendency. This country has not had a decent Opposition since 1997.

A Labour Party led by Corbyn – principled, distinctive and fearless –  could be a revitalised Opposition, and that, in itself, is a noble aim and a thoroughly worthwhile achievement.

See how they run

Terrier vs. Greyhound


Courtesy of the Captain of Princess Lucy

What was in the van?

Halfie has shamed me into posting by mysteriously alluding to something his son Andy moved for me in his van last week...


Last year at Foxton, I think it was, Halfie mentioned that Andrew had a 'man with a van' business in Sheffield, and I filed that away in my memory in the knowledge that I was bound to need such a service one day. My Volvo 240 is brilliant, but being the saloon rather than the estate version its furniture moving potential is a bit limited. (For a couple of years when it was our only family car, it had the front passenger seat removed in order to fit Sebastian's double bass in.)


You may recall that the glamping boat interior of Chertsey's hold has a sort of fifties feel. We've been developing this further over the course of this year and have a number of plans (of which more, hopefully, later) - none of which involve anything permanently attached to the structure of the boat - to make it even more commodious for summer holiday cruising. We decided that we needed another kitchen cupboard/dresser - one with plenty of space for storing the tins and jars and packets that make up our provisions (the Origo has paid for itself many times over this year in the money we haven't spent eating in pubs) and hopefully provide a bit more preparation space.

One afternoon the week before last, I'd just popped out to the shops on a whim when outside the Oxfam shop I saw this:

I crossed straight over to enquire - it had only that minute been dropped off; ten minutes later it had been spirited away inside and upstairs and I might well never have seen it. It still took another day and a half to get a price for it, which I willingly paid even if it was a bit on the high side (Oxfam's like that). I then had a week to take it away. Jim had just left Sheffield, having only the previous week picked up a washstand for me from the same shop - so I Googled Andy, and the unit is now in my hall waiting for Jim to come up this weekend, whereupon we'll put it in his Volvo and take it to the boat.


I've been looking back over the blog and it is such a wonderful record of the work we've done on the boat, it really does seem a crime not to keep it up - even if I do spare you the details of widith ((c) Granny Buttons)