Back on Bakewell

Squirrel lit, pillows airing by it, two hot water bottles in my back cabin bed, and just a little help from the double Beatrice stove to take the chill off before bed.


I've sat one of the stoveplates from the Guidwife on top in the hope of mininising soot deposits. Given that we only arrived about three o'clock this afternoon, the boat has really warmed up quickly (fortunately it's still pretty mild out). Tomorrow I'll go and light Chertsey's stove and give her cabin a bit of TLC.

Grrrrauniad

I never usually read the travel section, but I picked it up this evening and found this article, which so annoyed me that I had to sign up and leave a comment.

I was pleased to note that I wasn't the only one.

It's a plan...

I'm writing this using the new Bluetooth iPad keyboard that Baz kindly gave me for Christmas. I am however hampered slightly by not having a tale to put it on, so there will probably be just as many typos as if I didn't have the benefit of it.

It is of course that time of year when one's thoughts turn to making next year's boating plans (subsequently, of course, to be amended or abandoned) but here is what we thought, work, crews etc willing, we might do.

Firstly, Ellesmere Port at Easter, a brief stroll up the Shroppie. Hell, we might even take the butty (although I have to say it's unlikely). Then bck to Stretton.

For the rest of the year, round trip, taking in Langley Mill, Braunston and Cropredy, and returning via Birmingham. This is apparently 263 miles and 269 locks. We wouldn't do it all at once, but would need to find/arrange strategic places to leave Chertsey along the way.

There's a gathering at Langley Mill ayt the end of May to celebrate the
fortieth anniversary of the Erewash Canal Preservation and Development Association (as it now is). We've been up the Erewash on Warrior but never with Chertsey.

Then of course Braunston at the end of June is the one fixed point in the calendar - still not to be missed in my book even if attendance was a bit sparse last year. After that, but short step to Cropredy, to provide acccomodtion for Baz and Izzi as they attend the festival at the beginning of August - and then they join us as crew to tackle the Grand Union locks en route to Birmingham whence we proceed via Wolverhampton back to Stretton.

Baz 'n' Iz are up for it, so wwhat could posibly go wrong?

Easing the squeeze

The Chesterfield Canal was never built for motor boats, or iron or steel boats, let alone Grand Union steel motor boats. (In fact, the Chesterfield Canal Trust are currently building a replica of an original Chesterfield Canal boat if you would like to see what one looked like - wooden, shallow drafted, and horsedrawn.) So perhaps it is a little greedy of us at HNBC to want to be able to take our monsters all the way up to the head of navigation at Kiveton Park.

On the other hand, when the canal was restored in the 1970s, the locks were meant to be rebuilt to the standard dimensions for modern leisure craft. There was no earthly reason why Stret Lock should have been rebuilt to a width of 6'10" rather than the standard 7' plus, causing problems for modern boats as well as historic ones (mostly in the case of modern boats, because of protruding baseplates).

It was to highlight this issue that HNBC organised a massed (well, there were about seven of us) attempt on Stret Lock in the summer of last year, to see who could and who couldn't get through. Chertsey couldn't even get through the one before (Morse), but there are very few of us who can get through Stret (Bath and Petrel being the only two that come to mind). I think we were all pleasantly surprised when BW (as was) agreed firstly to investigate, and then to take action to remedy this.

The action has consisted of removing an entire layer of bricks from one of the lock's side walls, anchoring the wall into the ground, and then rebuilding the inner wall, using the existing stone blocks (for reasons of both heritage and cost - nice when the two coincide!). This widens the lock by at least two inches, to a depth well below the bottom of any boat, even when the lock is empty.

On Sunday, CRT held an open day at Stret, to show off the work they'd done - and presumably, from the number of CRT chuggers in attendance, to attract people to come and visit the canal. I couldn't resist the chance to get right down inside the bottom of a dewatered lock, as well as seeing the work - which looked to be being done to an excellent standard. We were able to talk to the people who were doing it, and once again were struck by the commitment of the CRT workers on the ground (and in this case, below it).

Eileen

Goodness, why has it taken me so long to add Nick's Eileen blog to the old boat blogroll? Nick won the great 'how many candidates will stand for the boaters' places on the CRT Council' sweepstake back in January; I've met him, and heard about his ongoing project of a 1903 day boat, BCN no. 18686, aka Eileen; I knew he had a blog; I've even looked at it. You should too - it has some stunning photos.

Tomorrow: I travel seventy miles to look at a hole in the ground.

Biscuit review

At Sheffield station this morning, I had pressed upon me not one, but three, free samples of the much advertised Belvita 'breakfast biscuits', designed for people who don't have time to stuff a bit of toast in their mouth before leaving the house but prefer to cover themselves in crumbs on the train instead. Unwrapping a 59p packet of two took me back to my childhood - they were like nothing so much as the 'Limmits' meal substitute biscuits on which my mother vainly tried to lose weight in the 1970s. A sweet, digestive-y type biscuit sandwiching a 'creamy live yogurt filling' (yeah, right. 'yogurt powder 3%') with oooh, added minerals and stuff so it sounds like proper food and not just a biscuit.

According to the packet 'Belvita Breakfast Yogurt Crunch are truly exciting'. I'll just repeat that. A digestive biscuit with a sugary filling containing powdered yogurt is TRULY EXCITING.

What are they thinking when they write this stuff? Do they think people will buy it in the hope of a thrill? Are their lives really so dull and bounded by biscuits that they actually believe it? Is it the result of hyperbole inflation? What is left, other than ironic English understatement, to describe things that really might arouse a flicker of interest in a jaded populace?

Or maybe it is the idea of being someone so busy and important that they are above eating breakfast like ordinary mortals, but must instead snack on a 1970s diet biscuit (which apparently can be part of a balanced breakfast when accompanied by a latte and a banana... Just eat the sodding banana!) because they are so modern and zetgeist-surfing.

Anyway, as I got given a freebie, I thought I would review the 'truly exciting' Brevita Breakfast Yogurt Crunch Biscuit.

It was horrible.

Boss eyed in the blogosphere

I have added Angry People in Local Newspapers to the blogroll, as I still find it quite amusing (even if some of the captions pall after a while). Finding absurdities, over-the-topperies, and sheer acts of people taking themselves too seriously in the local press has long been a source of entertainment for me on the long winter evenings. Few things will better the sub-editor in the Brighton Argus who saw fit to headline the story of a clearly mentally ill man self-harming to the extent that he got gangrene 'Man Kills Himself with Giant Novelty Pencil'. However, APILN, and its sister website Lib Dems Who Point* (and I have been one of those in my time) does collect together a treasure trove of pictures of people trying to look cross. Sometimes the story is worthy or serious comment (and the anger justified); more often however it's concocted almost entirely for two minutes of local fame (or infamy) before becoming chip wrapping.

Not having anything else to read last night, I spent a few hours following up some of the sites APILN links too. I was astounded to discover what goes on between the covers of Chat, Take a Break etc. and feel fully vindicated in never having handed over a penny for any of them or their ilk; I have also learnt (no, I honestly had no idea before) what extremely fat women look like with no clothes on. Or almost no clothes; modesty dictates that they wear some kind of bra for the photoshoot, but other undergarments are rendered redundant by obscuring cascades of flesh. (Although come to think of it, they probably have got something on down there, you just can't see it). Obesity, incest and clairvoyance (with a nice line in psychic animals) seem to be the staple of these housewives' favourites.

Then I looked at Speak Your Brains, basically a collection of comments on online news stories, before I realised that too much laughing at stupid people on the internet is not really good for the soul and I had to go and have a shower.

Whilst fiddling, I have also changed Sandbach to Badger, to reflect George's change of boat.

*Doesn't appear to be working at the time of writing, though it did the other day.

First frost

Well, the first I've photographed anyway.

Hooked

Ever since being shown Blossom's splendid collection of pot hooks at Alvecote, Jim, unbeknownst to me, has been watching out for some on ebay. Today, after meeting a man from Wolverhampton in a pub car park, he came back with these.



They were supposed to be for Christmas but they were so marvellous he couldn't wait. There are five delicately worked ones in brass, and four chunkier copper ones. And - would you believe - he was the only bidder and got the lot for £10.50.



Now we need to find a rail to go over Bakewell's range, to make good use of all of them. Well done Jim!

Simple things...

I'm afraid I find this very amusing.
Angry People in Local Newspapers

Diamond Geezer visits the BCN!

A non-boating blogger from London posts a piece that puts most of our efforts to shame. I have commented with a link to my post which in turn has a link to Captain Ahab's excellent articles from this time last year. Hoping that DG's having an extended stay in the West Midlands and that there's more to come!

Going the distance

Yesterday saw the bi-annual fun and frolics of an HNBC 'social' (I am not convinced that 'social' is a noun, but we will take it as an implicit abbreviation of 'social event'. Being on the committee, Both Jim (who is not Events and Awards Officer) and I were meant to be there at ten. We were a bit late however, as, for all its virtues, the free Navfree satnav app is a bit optimistic about journey times. We were also somewhat perplexed by the route it had chosen, until I investigated and discovered that it was still set to avoid motorways, and had been ever since we had the oil leak in the previous Volvo.

The afternoon's entertainment this year was provided by Tony Gregory, who had put together a really good show of photos from the 1940s and 50s, mainly of the BCN and the Wolverhampton locks. I finally learnt why lock twenty is the only one to have a single top gate - it was added twelve years after the original twenty locks were built, to save water, and the standard for the BCN had changed in the meantime. The secong half of the presentation included some compilations of cine film put together by Keith Christie. This was less successful as much of the film had not transferred very well to the digital medium, and it was largely reliant on Tony Gregory reading out Keith Christie's written commentary.



There was an excellent bonus though. Tony had brought along a number of items he had salvaged many years ago which were looking for good homes, and for a small donation to charity, they found them. The items in question are, I understood at the time (but see below), 1966 reprints* of 1886 Grand Junction distance tables. I only have a terribel iPad photo, but you can see they take the form of the tables you get in motoring atlases, whereby you can read off the distance from any one place to another. There are also smaller tables for each arm.

*Update - firstly to remove the awful iPad spelling, but more importantly to add what Tony Gregory has subsequently sent in an email: the tables were salvaged in 1966 - so could be any age. Maybe the original 1886 printing, even? Tony sent an account to be printed in the HNBC newsletter, so I am sure it will be all right to reproduce the relevant bit here:
'These had been in a wardrobe at the home of the late George & Olive Andrews since they collected them from Thomas Clayton (Oldbury) Ltd., when their canal carrying operations ceased in 1966.'

Toilet talk

An occasional series on a subject close to all our hearts

I have noticed an interesting trend in the design and layout of public toilets lately. Examples have been spotted in public loos in Lewes (pronounced Lewis, in case anyone thought that was a lucky pun), and on two different trains.

The phenomenon to which I am referring is a toilet paper dispenser, set into the wall, either behind (Lewes) or adjacent to (trains, where there is a very narrow space) the toilet, almost at floor level meaning that you have to practically stick your head down the loo in order to help yourself to the kindly provided sheets of flimsy tissue (the lot I pulled out in the last train was all damp...).

Now you might say, well, surely it is positioned for easy access whilst sitting on the toilet, rather than advance supply.

To which I would reply, anyone that applied to would have to be a contortionist with extremely low standards of hygiene.

A winter's day with Singapore

Apparently all last week while I was enjoying bright blue skies and crisp autumn sunshine highlighting the golden leaves in Sheffield, Jim, down in Newhaven, was being battered by heavy rain for the entire week. Friday morning, however, was noticeably colder, as I made my way south.

We'd decided that it would be nice to visit Singapore, Jim's Dunkirk Little Ship currently undergoing repairs at Walton on the Naze, and see how she's coming along. It was sunny when we left, but as we drove north and then east we encountered black skies and heavy rain. Jim was beginning to doubt the wisdom of proceeding, but as we reached Walton, we passed through the clouds and once again it was sunny and clear. And cold; god how perishingly, suddenly, cold. (Captain Ahab's post for today gives an idea of what the east coast was like at the weekend.)

Well, it was certainly bracing. At least Singapore is in a shed, out of the wind. At first glance, Singapore does not look very different from how she did eighteen months ago, but closer examination reveals that a lot of the wood is new

including new oak ribs



a new laminated breasthook, but it was too dark up in the forepeak to take a photo with the iPad, and of course I'd left the camera in Sheffield.



and ongoing caulking.



Funny looking grindings!

Songs from the Shipyards

On Friday night, thanks to a wonderfully generous gesture from a friend, Sebastian and I saw the Unthanks perform 'Songs from the Shipyards' at the South Bank Centre. The show comprised a film, put together by Richard Fenwick from archive and newsreel footage from the 1940s through to the 80s, covering the boom and subsequent decline of shipbuilding on the Tyne, accompanied by the band singing their arrangements of mainly contemporaneous songs. And that's it, basically - and at little more than an hour, it was so brief that they were able to put on two performances each evening.

But it was one of the most moving and stirring sixty minutes entertainment I have ever had. Almost impossible to put into words, the power of the old film - men rivetting, welding, climbing gantries... warships being launched... ships in battle; ships being sunk... cruise ships being launched; massive oil tankers on the drawing board; being built, and dwarfing the terraced streets as they are launched... Thatcher (to boos and hisses from the audience); foreign competition, decline, closure and demolition of the yards' buildings and cranes. And this combined expertly with songs written by local people at the time, and later classics like Elvis Costello's 'Shipbuilding', along with arrangements of Rudyard Kipling's poem 'Big Steamers', which looks trite on the page but was given a heartrending air of naivete by Niopha Keegan's singing (better known as the Unthanks' violinist, she has a great voice which complements both Rachel and Becky Unthank's very different voices). The whole thing was fabulous. I was surprised that they didn't get a standing ovation for it (being in the front row, I was far too shy to start one!). Immediately afterwards, Sebastian booked tickets for him and Izzi to see it at Bexhill, one of the last remaining shows not to be sold out.

I am just hoping now that they will release the film with a recorded soundtrack, for cinemas, maybe even on DVD. If you get the chance, see it. If not, you can buy the CD of the songs, but beautiful as they are, the combination of music and image is so much greater than the sum of its parts.

From steel box to steel city...

Thank you for bearing with me while I've been getting my feet under the table in the new job and making the transition to living in a city - for the first time in my life, I realise.

I'm going to try and get back into the swing of blogging now with a few musings on life in Sheffield... a place I already like a lot... Then when the novelty has faded, it will hopefully be back to the old mixture of boat-related ramblings and rants.

Room for greater realism?

Last night I thought I would investigate BBC iPlayer (I'm not exactly what you would call an early adopter). I don't normally enjoy watching television - we haven't had one for about a decade now - but I was sure I would find something to look at on the iPad. I decided on Room at the Top - the much praised BBC 4 dramatisation of John Braine's angry young northern grittiness. Surprisingly, perhaps, I've not read the book, so didn't really know what to expect, other than the strong language and sex that the BBC kindly warned me about beforehand.

It wasn't that that shocked me however. Rather the scene that had me peturbed was the one in which a woman, in the 1950s, in Yorkshire, goes up to the bar of an old fashioned pub and orders a pint for herself as well as her male companion, and is served it without demur. In a London glass, what's more.

Someone who can remember, please tell me whether this would really have happened.

Numbers game

A chance moan in a text from a friend this morning led me to ten minutes of life-enhancing Wikipedia reading pleasure.  I had mentioned that I would like to ban the word 'unacceptable' as used by government spokespeople and their ilk; he countered with 24/7 and 0207, and I suggested 1-2-1 (as in students requesting an individual tutorial; they do, I'm afraid). I wasn't sure what he meant by 0207 so I Googled it and found this: UK telephone code misconceptions.

I suspect Starcross Jim will enjoy it.

I have one of those peculiar 011x numbers now.

It's 0114 for anyone who's interested and hadn't yet guessed.

Launching Lazarus

Remember Singapore? You could be forgiven if not, as things have been very quiet in relation to Jim's wooden sea boat. Things have not stood still, however; work has been progressing steadily at Frank Hall and Sons' boatyard at Walton on the Naze - it's just that for a change we haven't been directly involved. There is still plenty more to do and she probably won't be going back into the water until next year now, but we - and particularly Jim - are busy making plans for what happens then.

One thing we are going to need is a dinghy and an outboard for it, especially as Singapore is going to be kept on a swinging mooring. That's a buoy attached to a lump of concrete in the middle of the sea, to me, from which one requires a means of getting to and from land.

Well, as of last week, when Jim (with Bill and Michelle's help) collected an ebay purchase from Chepstow, we have the first of those requirements, a nine foot long Hyperlon inflatable dinghy.

It didn't have a name, as far as we know, so I decided it would be fitting to name it after one of Singapore's satellite islands. It turns out that there are masses of these - around sixty - but most have rather unmemorable names. Others turn out to be former leper colonies or the sites of spectacular petrochemical disasters. Lazarus Island, on the other hand, is apparently a peaceful holiday resort. It also seemed like a fitting name for a dinghy which will be deflated and stored away at the end of each season, only to be resurrected the next.

Of course, we had to try it out, and it was very successful, at least on the nice flat canal. Our rowing technique wouldn't stand up to Amy and James's scrutiny, but I managed to get us over the aqueduct and back. Not quite Tom Rolt crossing Pontcysyllte in a coracle, but a start.

Thanks to Iain for taking the photos.

Shopping in Stourbridge

I've not yet been to Stourbridge by boat, although it is definitely on the itinerary for next time we go down the Staffie (according to John Thorpe, in the splendidly heartwarming Windlass in my Belt, this is traditionally known as the 'Stour Cut' though I confess I have never heard this name used, sadly). However, the Black Country Man Canal Shop at Stourbridge is our nearest Craftmaster stockist, and they are (he is) very helpful, so today was our second visit, to pick up some engine enamel and carnuba wax polish.

Having done that we thought we would explore the town, and in particular, of course, the charity shops.

Well, the town was rather nice, with an absolutely splendid Victorian town hall that put me in mind more than anything of St Pancras, all red brick turrets and pediments. But the charity shops! I've already forgotten what came from where, so suffice to say that I spent something in the region of £46 in total, and came home with at least eleven items, including a brand new Berghaus fleece jacket (£4), a Rohan fleece jacket, a lovely embroidered silk skirt, an ankle length black lightweight coat, a long black Monsoon skirt (just what I have been looking for) and a gorgeous red Pachamama South American hand knitted jumper. I think I can be certain that this is the best charity shopping expedition I have ever undertaken. And I can justify much of it on the grounds that I'll be wearing it for work!