How not to spend our money - 3
Dear BW
I feel I must commend the dedication of your H&S team. They have obviously been working very hard fitting notices on all the lock gates warning me to keep my boat forward of the cill. It is a shame that they had overlooked the requirement for planning permission to affix such notices to listed structures but hey-ho!
At least they will be be really slick by the time they have removed these and re- applied them after planning permission has been granted.
It was especially keen of them to include all the locks on the Grantham Canal which, being derelict, is unlikely to have boats on for some decades, but hey-ho!




This eye to the future is also apparent in the project to fit three totally unnecessary bollards to each lock in the country. When they are installed I am sure that a risk assessment will confirm them as a trip hazard requiring warning signs to be fitted to each bollard. Hey-ho!

Time to make Sunday More Special
Fourteen years ago today the supermarkets like Tesco which had been flouting the Shops Act conditions relating to trading on Sundays won a victory for bully-boy tactics. Since that date the Sunday Trading Act has permitted stores of more than 3000 sq ft to sell anything they chose for six hours between 10am and 6pm. This change was opposed at the time by Waitrose, M&S and House of Fraser amongst others The argument which won the day was that with so many women working the opportunity to buy groceries needed to be expanded.
However, in most of the country it is now possible to shop in a supermarket for 24 hours in the day so why do we need supermarkets open on Sundays at all? Surely the likes of Tesco have shot a hole in their own argument.
I think it is time to claim back Sunday as a day for relaxation and contemplation by repealing the Sunday Trading Act 1994. Perhaps Tesco would like to take the initiative and start closing their shops on Sundays. If they also restricted the sale of Hot Cross Buns to the appropriate time of the year they might reverse another attack on the British way of life.

Waste not: want not
I remember the 1970s as a period of considerable change. For half the decade I was working in the food industry and witnessed the introduction of bar codes and best-before marking of foods. I think it was also around this time that the Financial Times effectively destroyed the British Billion. It is easy to upset an American by pointing out that whilst his ego may be bigger than ours, his gallon and ton are smaller. In truth so is his billion. A British billion is one million million ie: 1.000.000.000.000 the US billion is only really one thousand million - 1,000,000,000. But somewhere around this time the FT decided to use the US billion and so it has been adopted by everyone.
The introduction of bar codes and best-before dates have had a greater impact of British consumers. At the time I had a letter published in The Grocer pointing out the potential pitfalls of not marking individual products with prices and relying on computerised tills to charge the correct price. We always check our supermarket bills and this year two out of every three have been incorrect. If this is extrapolated over the country there should be considerable cause for concern. Because we shop frequently our bills are generally small but it is not uncommon to see people spending hundreds of pounds on a Friday evening and not even taking the receipt with them. Given this attitude by consumers it is not surprising that last year Tesco was the first UK retailer to report profits of over £2 billion (US)
Whilst the four largest supermarket chains amassed profits approaching £4 billion (US) last year UK consumers managed to discard more than twice that value of food unnecessarily. Yes, we- no, you - discarded 3.6million tons of food - 60% of which was untouched and ten percent of which was still in date. This represented 18% of all the food you purchased. Families with children discarded 27% of the food they purchased. When I was a child we had a larder and threw away no food. We now have a refrigerator in which we are encouraged by manufacturers to store such things as jam, pickles and mustard. Surely pickling is a method of preservation? In 1976 Green Giant decided to introduce best before dates on canned sweetcorn. To my request for guidance on the appropriate period to declare I was advised by those in the know in USA that there would be no noticeable deterioration of the product in less than six years. This was unacceptable to the marketing department in UK "the consumer will be suspicious of dates so far out" Consequently the period applied was shortened to two years. Best before dates are even printed on honey jars and honey cannot go off!
Are you convinced that change is always for the better?

Glad News: Sad News
You may recall that at this point last year the blog ceased for some months. This was due to the arrival of our first grandson which threw our lives into disarray.

He is one year old today! And we have been up to Colne for his birthday party which included another amazing cake made and decorated by his mum.
Whilst out and about in Colne we bought some nosh at a local bakers and discovered that there is a confection called a Sad Cake which looks like a derivation of the Banbury / Eccles cake. It is, however, much thinner and the currants are incorporated into the short pastry rather than enclosed together like a pie.





This is definitely a GLAD cake










Will the blog survive or will it disappear until next March?................

Banbury v Eccles
Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross
To see a fine lady on a white horse
With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes
She shall have music wherever she goes

That's how I remember the nursery rhyme
However I recently came across a very different version:

Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross,
To see what Tommy will buy.
A little white loaf and a little white cake,
And a tuppeny apple pie

But what is a Banbury cake? Isn't it just an elliptical Eccles cake ?
That is a dangerous question to put voice to in Oxfordshire. There are (apparently) well documented references to the Banbury cake two centuries before the suburb of Manchester put its name to the Eccles cake. When they are full of currants, as I believe they should be, I am partial to either offering. The travesty which most bakers produce is hardly worth the effort of making. For the original recipe (take four pounds of currants.....) go to http://www.katjaorlova.com/Banbury.htm

I found it difficult tracking down a shop in Banbury where I could buy an authentic Banbury cake.



Somehow I don't think the cake referred to on this building was quite what I was looking for.



Unfortunately in the canal world Banbury is more famous for its reputation in the 1980s of being the place to avoid mooring if you were not looking for a fight. We have been reminded of this recently by two incidents of boaters being assaulted on their boats whilst moored in the town centre.

You Can't Trust Numbers
On the way from Coventry to Sutton's Stop there has been considerably development over the past 20 years including a giant Tesco store and the Ricoh Stadium which I understand is something to do with a game called football. There is also a terrace of houses which proclaim themselves a "Eco Houses" Apart from the very large letter E on the end of the building and the solar panels on the roof they appear fairly traditional.
When we were at school it was customary to sew name tags into all items of clothing which were considered at risk of being lost. These tags came from a company called Cash. Apparently they were woven in Coventry and alongside the canal there is a terrace of houses called locally Cash's 100. These three-storey buildings comprised accommodation on the lower two floors and weaving rooms on the top floor. All the weaving looms were powered by a single steam engine housed at the end of the terrace, power being transmitted through shafts and pulleys. This project was certainly ambitious as there were only 48 houses built, not 100. Now there are only 37.
Generally bridges over canals are numbered in sequence to aid location of boats in the absence of other landmarks. As rail and road transport developed it has been necessary to add numbers in the sequence, usually by the addition of a letter. This has led to some peculiar sequences when bridges are inserted between those already bearing a suffix. Usually the number plates are in cast iron and painted in white and black.
On this bridge the forge appears to have utilised the top of the number 8 to create a letter a (or is it intended to represent alpha?)
Perh8ps there is 8 short8ge of letters in the Coventry are8.

Sofa, So Good - 2




Please refer to blog entry of
7th May 2007
to appreciate this adornment of the Coventry Canal.

How not to spend our money - 2
Surveys reveal (don't you love that prelude to unsubstantiated assertions?) that only 5% of visits to the canals involve boating or angling. Actually these figures come from the omnipotent British Waterways to whom I have referred on occasions before.
If you consider that figure coupled with the fact that only boaters and anglers make direct financial contributions to the maintenance of our waterways then I feel qualified to express my views on how BW spends our money.
During our week or so cruising the southern Oxford canal we have been hit only once by an oncoming boat. This is very surprising as there are quite a few boats around and many of them are hire boats which increases the chance of and inexperienced crew. From Braunston Turn to Banbury there is hardly a bridge where the line of sight is not obscured by bushes and other flora. Has anyone at BW ever tried to manoeuvre a 60ft narrow boat safely through a bridge when you have to get 30ft through the bridge before you can see if there is anyone coming the other way?


However, in their infinite wisdom they are installing THREE bollards alongside each lock on this canal. What for? No one will use them. All they are achieving is an increase in trip hazards at what are already the most dangerous places on the canals.

If you don't believe that, take a look at the following photos of recent incidents.






Two into one doesn't go

These boats were jammed in the bridge because of the intransigence of the crews but the same could happen if sight lines are not kept clear.

TBH 871
Ducks, geese, swans, coots and moorhens are our constant companions as we cruise around the English canals. They all have their own peculiarities however: ducks quack all night and wake us up at 4 am by nibbling the weed which attaches itself to the boat below the water line. When we get up, they are fast asleep on the bank, heads tucked away to avoid our angry looks; swans attack the boat when we venture near their nest; Canada geese only appear in multiples of 50; coots are likely to nest in a bush so that if the young do not get the hang of flying on their first attempt they end up in the drink; and moorhens appear to be poor parents, often leaving their young with unhatched eggs whilst they go out on the town. One characteristic all these birds share is that they know boats dispense bread. If a duck glimpses a human face or limb the boat is surrounds by birds of all kinds within minutes. Except on the Coventry canal arm. Whenever we threw food out here the birds flinched and moved away. Whey are the water-birds of Coventry scared of flying food?
It is over 20 years since we have been to Coventry by canal and generally the environment is cleaner and tidier. The canal basin is certainly much smarter. The ring road which runs around the city appears to be effective as we encountered very little traffic as we walked around the city centre. The bus station is well designed and functioned efficiently when we used it and the Transport Museum has been renovated. We visited this late one afternoon but had missed the guided walks which they offer at weekends. As we expected visitors for tea the next day and Margaret had a cake and scones to bake we decided to return the next morning and catch the one o'clock tour. One of the staff we had been chatting to caught up with us later and said they would run a tour at noon for us so that we would not have to hurry the baking. Now that is customer service. For fairly obvious reasons the museum majors on road transport and has many features for the younger visitor. I was particularly interested in the locally manufactured cars. Despite its rather staid name, Standard was quite innovative. As a child, our first car was a 1954 Standard Vanguard Phase II. Black of course. The gear change was on the steering column and it had a pair of reversing lights. There are cars around today which do not have even one reversing light.

This picture is actually of the the rare DIESEL version but the bodywork was identical.

As you may have worked out by now, the registration number of our Standard Vanguard was TBH 871. When there was fun in collecting car numbers ie: there was time to write one down before the next car passed, we used to know which counties were denoted by most of the letter groups. Bucks, where we lived, first used BH and when these were exhausted they adopted KX. Both of these seemed appropriate to me. Why they went on to use PP I could not understand.

Tunnel Vision
Nuneaton - a name to conjure with - is it the capital of dieting or perhaps religious cannibalism?
And what about Bedworth? I am not speculating about that one. (orders from er indoors)
We stopped in Nuneaton today in order to look at Astley Castle. Some years ago the Landmark Trust were offered this property but, after much deliberation, gave it up as a lost cause. The fabric of the building was just too far gone for a viable restoration. However they have now taken a new approach and have the bit between their teeth again. Their aim now is to stabilise the fabric of the building and build a completely new accommodation unit inside the castle walls. They have not tried this before and have run a competition for the best design. The weather was a bit changeable but we started the walk up to Astley late morning intending to get some lunch at the charming little country pub which will be next to the church. Apart from the rainstorm and the race-track of a road we followed, the five miles to Astley were fine. Arriving around 13.15 we found the castle, the church and the dozen houses which comprise the village. But no pub. The nearest pub, we were informed, is in Ansley about two miles away (everywhere round here begins with A). We arrived at The Lord Nelson at 13.45 but were just in time for lunch. This was really very goo. I tried a beer called OTT from the Tunnel Brewery which turned out to be in the back garden of the pub, on top of a railway tunnel. This must be one of the most bitter ales I have drunk but a superb aperitif. Of course I had to try the IPA as well. If you are ever visiting Arbury Park which is nearby I recommend you head for The Lord Nelson for a meal in either the bar or the posh restaurant and try the very local ale. We took a bus back to Gecko which accomplished the return journey in 10 minutes. On our walk up, however, we had encountered two modern incarnations of childhood memories - a rag & bone man and a chimney sweep. Haven't seen either of those for a while.
A few weeks ago we visited another Landmark. Silverton Park Stables are in Devon, just north of Exeter. It really was stables but now sleeps 14 with about six bathrooms in a magnificent building and location.