Little More...

You Can Shin Up, but Don't be Surprised What You See

Tree-peeping. That is essentially what we were doing. It sounds slightly perverted, but I assure you the perverseness was definitely not ours. Not on this occasion.

Before I tell you of this slightly unsettling encounter in the woods near Cassiobury Park in mid-December can I just say What-the-Bloody-Hell's-Going-on-With-the-Weather? I froze my carcass off at the height of summer on the Llangollen canal, picked ice off my extremities during my morning shower on the Grand Union in November and now, now that I am in an actual building in what I will laughingly refer to as The Depths of Winter, the weather has decided to go all mild and nonchalant on me. Right now there are bits of North West London that look like a Lilt advert; people bouncing through the gloom in their T-shirts, laughing and looking for all the world like it is just an overcast Thursday in mid-May, not frigging January the 20^th.

Anyway, we were up this tree, see. It was a sunny day in December and we had moored up at Cassio lock (not the home of calculators, sadly) and the woods abutted the canal in a very tempting come-explore-me way. Al and I set off for a brisk wintry walk through the slanting sunlight, catching glimpses of peacock butterflies sunning themselves on tree trunks, ivy flowers flashing with buzzy life and the odd small child in pink wellies dribbling snot on account of the biting winter air when we saw a Tree That Has To Be Climbed.

There is always one of these on any woodland walk and Alan always spots it. Alan is very good at climbing trees.

He nipped up there like a...oh, I don't know, like a gazelle chasing a squirrel in about the time it took me to look down at my feet, see that I was wearing wellies and realise I was buggered for tree climbing. But I love trees, me. And heights. One of my favourite-ever comments on any school report I ever got was; “Deborah appears to have no fear of heights”. It made me feel all Bionic-Womany (I was only five) and super-cool. This feeling has never left me. So with this passion for all things tree-ey and a greedy head for heights it seems cruel and tragic that I am absolutely shite at climbing trees. Unfortunately this is a Fact that I forget every single time I am faced with a Tree That Must Be Climbed. The Fact will, in fact, stay fast asleep in my subconscious even as I approach the trunk of the Tree and take my first firm handhold. As I make my initial foray above lower branch level, the Fact is only just stretching itself and wondering what's for breakfast. By the time it is pouring itself a coffee and leisurely perusing the Sunday supplements I have got myself into a mild pickle with a mid-level branch, but I regain control of the ascent. It is just after this point, though, just before the Fact is wondering if it can get away with not brushing its teeth that it suddenly straightens its bathrbe and pops into my head, manifesting itself in the dreaded question: How am I going to get down?

You must NEVER think this. The key to successful tree climbage is to have a sense of benign optimism or bloody-minded denial about the business of getting down. Alan has both in spades, which is why he was draping himself smugly atop this young oak just as I was sheepishly finding a comfy position on a lower branch.

Once positioned, we were just taking in the sparkly niceness of everything when we heard a sound not unlike that of a hippo trying, at mind boggling volume, to honk up a phlegm ball. This hippo, though, was yelling “Fucking fat bastard” as it honked. Just as I was looking up at Al to check that we were not sitting in some tree with hallucinogenic bark-properties a youngish man rounded the bend and came into view. He was wearing what I believe Sunday supplements would refer to as “baggy sweats” and he was looking furious.

“Fat bastard, hurry up, you lump of lard. You're not coming out with me and showing me up again, you fucking disgrace” he yell-honked with ear splitting loudness.

Exactly who is showing whom up, I thought, as around the corner came a boy of thirteen or fourteen, puffing with labour and unsurprising distress on a massive mountain bike.

“Come on. Fatlazy.”

I could not quite believe this. Here was a total git having a very loud and unpleasant go at his brother or nephew who seemed to be having enough trouble getting his bike across the muddy, leaf-slippery terrain. I mean, the git was on foot, who was he to talk?

Just as I was weighing up how I might nonchalantly but effectively intervene in this tirade, an old man bounded into view. He was dressed in what Sunday supplements would have called “baggy sweats” if there had been any Sunday supplements in the 1920s. He had a purposeful gait and was purposing it firmly in the direction of the git and his poor charge. “Hullo” I thought “It's obviously some worryingly strict Scout-type-exercise-session on a rite-of-passage weekend, and the git has overdone it. This Scoutmaster here will have a severe word and then take them both for a comforting ginger beer somewhere.” Indeed the Scoutmaster did go up to the git but instead of reprimanding him for living too closely up to his name, he shook his hand and asked if he might be permitted to talk to this young charge on the git's behalf.

Reader, this was no Scoutmaster, this was a 24 carat local nutter.

The poor unsuspecting boy dragged his bike wearily up to his new mentor.

“Now, sonny, don't look all glum like that. This [git] man is trying to help you. He's shouting at you because he wants YOU to be a man.” said the Scoutmaster.

The boy, wisely in my opinion, said nothing.

“I want you to listen to the man, yeah?” (this yeah-speak gets up my nose at the best of times but coming out of a scoutmasterly septuagenarian's mouth it was positively weird).

“You listen to him and you think of your father's fathers all looking down on you. You think they are ashamed of you? They are. You are a man now, you're not a kiddie, yeah? You're not wanting your mother's titty any more. You can't be a man if you're crying for your mother's titty all the time. So it's time to forget about your mother's titty....”

Really, I can't write any more. There were numerous more mentions of the maternal bosom, so many in fact that I had the distinct feeling that the young lad would find it painully hard not to think about his "mother's titty", poor love.  In any case I believe you, like me have had "titties" up to here.  I really think that the Scoutmaster believed he was doing the young boy some good, but all he was doing was traumatising him, and me. Alan's theory is that he had recently attended a highly questionable course for would-be motivational speakers and wanted to try his stuff out on members of the unsuspecting public.

Eventually he moved away, having exchanged hearty handshakes with the git. The kid looked bemused but relieved. He looked up warily at the git but was this time not met with another mash-up of insulting terms like “Blubberuseless” or “Wobbletwat”, instead the git patted him on the back gently and said – almost encouragingly - “Go on then.”

The boy ground his wheels into life an set off down the track – thankfully it was downhill from here on in.

“Good lad” said the git, suddenly sounding massively unlike his name.

We reckoned even he thought the poor lad had had enough thrown at him for one day. We climbed out of the tree, bums numb and brains addled by oddness.

If you climb a tree you have to be prepared to see some unusual things, you know. Even if you only get to welly-height.

PS - I have a Web Site now, for to sell my gabbling-wares. If you fancy a look, there is a link on the left somewhere. The site's got a picture of me with a bag on my head...

New Year, Glue Ear

I am sitting in an actual room.  With actual walls and doors, that have actual heating within them.  I am back in what one boater called the "Push-Button-World" and it appears that, after five months of being out every day in all weathers, showering (occasionally) in an ice-box and eating stuff I found in bushes, my immune system has decided that this sudden rush of modern comforts (plus a glut of luxury Christmas foods) is all too much to enjoy alone, so has invited a nice, friendly cold virus to keep it company.  The most unpleasant manifestation of said contagion is a build up of goo in my head especially around my lugs.  I am, to all intents and purposes, deaf as a post in my left ear.

You probably did not wish to know this.  I only mention it to solicit some sympathy, really, especially since I also plan to use my cold-related lethargy (and, of course,  the glut of luxury Christmas foods) to explain away my four week blog silence.  During this time I have been dealing with several culture shocks:  Moving off my beloved boat, which included a seemingly never-ending merry-go-round of packing and unpacking; starting back at work which was not so much shock as horror; getting used to a loo which flushes (why all that water??  Honestly, is it to suppress some sort of coprophillic troll that lives in the U-bend and will rise and strike unless it is routinely drowned on a twice daily basis?); and trying to sleep in a bed that  sits in a centrally heated room that will not move anywhere new tomorrow no matter how hard I try to find the tiller.

Then there was all the time spent shopping for luxury Christmas foods.  And eating them.  All takes time and energy, you know.

Truth is, I lost the habit of writing in this thing.  Stopping my journey and dealing with all that is Push-Button temporarily drained my brain of all its tall tales and colour.  Plus, if I am honest, I spent much of the Christmas period lightly pissed on the sloe gin that I made while phfutting my way up the river Avon in the Autumn.

Now, though, I have a load of memories, tales, near-misses and odd characters from the five months I spent travelling the canal system rushing back into my head, like a New Year party that decided to bugger going home and instead nipped out to the offie for more supplies.  If you have the patience and will be good enough to read 'em, I will join this party, have a listen, and attempt to write some of these buggers down.  I'll probably write them even if you don't.

Don't go expecting 3 posts a week though....there's Buttons need Pushing nowadays, you know.

Happy New Year.

Head Like A Badly Battered Cod

The world of work has reclaimed me this week, after I had been sucessfully hiding behind a bush from it for five months.  I feel as though my brain has been beaten with a beaty-stick and deep fried in very old fat.  Funny, then that at this moment, I want nothing with as much determined passion as a plate of cod and chips swimming in its very own Jus-de-Coronary Disease.

I will write a proper post this week (honest) as there is plenty to write about:  we are in Watford which is much nicer than it sounds and I have already seen a scene of Royston-Vasey-like creepy weirdness while I myself was sitting up a tree.

That'll keep you guessing, won't it?

I'll be back after my chips, a long sleep and another day back in the saddle-sore-saddle.

Boozer-Browser

I come from a family of pub-appreciators. My Dad in particular was a pub-appreciator of the highest order until a few years ago when the taste of alcohol in any form changed for him from a comforting, slightly naughty sensation of decadence to being nothing more than the the rancid squeezings from Satan's mouldy teabags. Like the reformed smoker that he isn't (but, I am told, some people are) he now abhors the smell of booze on me, my sister or my mum (who don't drink a lot, but like the occasional giggle) and makes verbose and earnest garrumphs of disapproval (“that wine smells like Daly Thompson's jockstrap”) whenever a new bottle of anything is opened.

I think this is because he has never quite got over the refurbishment of his local, the Yardley Arms in East Birmingham, around twenty years ago. It was a little building, rather like a big 1930s house, which had a bar, a lounge and a smoker's room where the men hid from the women. It had open fires, no jukebox and the locals made jovial but clearly intentioned threats to the owner every time he made a passing comment that he might like to get a couple of fruit machines in. I remember many rather lucrative Saturday afternoons when I'd come in off the swings in the beer garden with my friends, pad through the bar and, on my way to ask Dad for another Vimto, be given the odd 50p or even pound note from various uncles or mates of my parents. Apart from the miasma of beer, fags and cigars the main thing I can remember was the chatter. People talked to each other as if this were in fact not a weird thing to do. There may've been a domino or darts match going on, a committee meeting (they did a lot of work for charity) or my Granddad burbling Danny Boy to some unfortunate young woman in the corner, but rising above all these sounds was the bubbly rumble of amiable chit-chat.

Since then I have loved pub-chat in all its lucid and non-lucid forms.  This boat trip has been many things, and one of them has been a voyage to find the most entertaining pub chat in Britain. On the whole it has been superb; a chat-tastic trip.

The thing is, though, in general not many pubs encourage that sort of racy behaviour any more. I don't quite know what it is breweries like Fullers do to pubs; perhaps they go down into the cellar and forcibly excavate its mojo or something; but whatever it is, it makes the pub shite. The Yardley Arms is, as my dad would emphatically agree, a most tragic case in point. Anything described in our Nicholson Guide as ”recently refurbished” is given a wide berth. We don't want polished ash interiors and chrome and shiny things. I think it may be in the old nicotine stains, sticky, rickety wooden tables and questionable upholstery that a pub's mojo really dwells.

The Carpenter's Arms in the exquisitely named village of Slapton just north of Marsworth on the Grand Union is one such establishment. We were there last week and shortly after we had walked in, had our chilled bones soothed by a coal fire which oozed warmth and ordered a couple of drinks from the friendly (and scarily loads-younger-than-me-looking) bar person, we got chatting to Lol., the local long-haired-older-chap, prodigal son of Tring returned from a life of film archiving in Cheshire. Really lovely man. He was also a very drunk person. As soon as we began talking to him, I had to adjust my ears to his lonng, s-slow, s-s-s-sibilant music, a feat that can generally be accomplished with ease by downing a couple of drinks very fast and joining in, but I was too full up with shepherd's pie and a gut load of cabbage to go in for any of that kind of malarkey.

It turned out that Lol was a very genial bloke with a fondness for telling us he was “happy as a pig in shit” to be back on his home turf. As if to demonstrate, he continued to downed pint after pint of Guinness with showstopping swiftness, and got happier and happier. It was very nice talking to him, even though any attempt to introduce a topic of conversation on my part was met with a fatherly “Yep-yep, been there, done it, dusted it” from Lol. He bought me a drink and refused to let me buy him one back. I could've been back in he Yardley Arms. After I commented that the fire was getting low, Lol heaved himself up, swayed uncertainly to the coal scuttle which was brimming over with coal, picked it up and with some gusto chucked the whole lot onto the fire. Well, I say onto it, it'd be more accurate to say that he threw it in the general direction of the fire. He threw it heartily, mind. The few lumps of coal that did hit the fire did so with such force that most of the glowing stuff already in there was forced down into the ash pan. As he bent to pick up the scattered lumps of coal, rocking like a ship in a squall, he told each of them off for falling out of the bucket.

“Back in Cheshire, they used to call me Alco-Lol” he informed us. I couldn't say I was surprised.

If I had the time and you had the patience, I could describe a myriad of hostelries we have been to on the cut which have afforded us the kind of hospitality, warm fires and friendly loons that we found in the Carpenters Arms; The Olive Bush in Flecknoe, The Anchor on the Shropshire Union Canal, the Shroppie Fly, The Sun Inn in Llangollen, The White Hart in Ellesmere. Even The Angler's Retreat in Marsworth – a pub that had been dismissed to us as “too Seventies” by a boater – was a winner (this was partly due to the fact that we went there on Al's birthday and took with us one of our most 70s mates. Oh, and there were giant fish on the wall). Try 'em out. And if you see a friendly looking person sat by the open fire with a glass of cider, go over, say hello and have a chat with them. It might even be me.

Or Lol.

Milton Keynes: It's Not Your Fault, It's Ours

Like the crisp white shirt of a managing director's suit, we have tucked ourselves neatly inside London's commuter belt. We are in Hertfordshire where we have once again been treated to some fine pub-related entertainment, of which more in a later post, celebrated a birthday (ditto) and seen some stunning scenery. Today, Alan and I walked a few miles of the Ridgeway, a massive chalk ridge cutting across the south of England from the West Country to Hertfordshire. Its rolling hills, crumbly escarpments and velvety grassland contrasted strongly with the urban-ness we chugged through last week. But, although the scenery is breathtaking, the icy hiss of the main road is never far away and has of late become a more frequent unwanted companion.

Cars are pretty useful and that, but they are, essentially, crap. They are greedy for fuel, insatiable for land and burp out the dark wind of our future destruction, and so I suppose it is probably a bit churlish of me to focus on how bloody noisy they are (a bit like eating a death cap mushroom and getting all shirty because it tasted minging).  But there is no noise more guaranteed to drain my capacity for happiness than the persistent scaly rumble of car tyres pressing their way over a Tarmacked road. And don't even get me started on the roads themselves. Recently we cycled through Milton Keynes, a city which I am sure would be staunchly defended by some of its inhabitants but which to me resembled a former collection of nice small towns and villages vomited on by a giant Tarmacadam monster in the 1970s. Obviously the town planners took one look at us and our fast growing love affair with unnecessary car journeys, concluded that - the way things were going - legs would evolve out of fashion anyway, and gave us the city we deserve - sterile strips of grass verges lining endless stretches of tarry black road, interrupted only by the occasional green blob of a roundabout where the motorist can then vary his or her journey by turning onto an identical road perpendicular to the one they have just left.  Nice.

And once you've negotiated the grim grid of dual carriageways (and, presuming you've read this far, the previous excessively over-long sentence), you should find yourself in the giant car park that is Milton Keynes City Centre. Which is great, because here you can get out of your car and take the air for the 30 or 45 seconds it will take you to walk into the indoor shopping centre, which is essentially a city centre designed for people who will presumably vaporise if they are left outdoors for too long.

Now of course, I must not have a go at cars (or Milton Keynes) without acknowledging that I myself have been using a form of motorised transport these past few months. But a narrowboat is, I would argue, more efficient than a car. It uses far less fuel than a car per hour travelled; in sixty minutes you will get no further than 4 miles, and even then you would have to be some crazy Evil Kenivel-style speed demon. Also, as you travel, your engine is giving you all the hot water you'll need and producing your electrical power for you. You can also live in it, a service to which most people choose not to press their car. A narrowboat's engine does make a noise, I'll grant you but, unlike a car, a boat makes no nasty tyre-noise. Actually, that's a lie, mine does; it's got four recycled moped tyres acting as bumpers to protect the boat from any knocks I make when my co-ordination has buggered off on holiday to the daydream-district of my brain, leaving my clumsiness in charge. But the tyres on my boat make nothing more offensive than the odd squelchy or farting noise when squashed up against the bank. Car tyres on the other hand are the noisiest things about your average motor. If you don't believe me, the next time you are standing in a park, front room or field and think you can hear the distant motorway, stop for a second and see if it is the car's engines or their tyres you can hear.

O'course, I know that cars have got their uses – they'll get you out of Milton Keynes a darn sight faster than a narrowboat will for a start – but, during the five months we have spent exploring England, we haven't been able to help noticing just how many spectacular hills, lively communities, nice local parks and lush swathes of countryside – some of the Good Stuff that belongs to all of us – have been shat on by roads with too many cars on them. If you really need to drive there, then drive. So would I. But if you can walk it, cycle it*, bus it, tram, train or jog it, hop it, pogo it or get someone to give you a piggyback there, then leave the car. Go on. Please. And then maybe, just maybe, not all of the UK will end up looking like Milton Keynes.

Right, now I've got that off me chest.  I'm going to write something jolly about pubs next...

* My dear departed nan used to say, in a thick Durham accent I am too young to remember, that “The only thing that gets a ride on a bike is your arse”. She had a point, but there is still nothing like getting somewhere under your own steam – especially when every three miles cycled equates roughly to one medium sized guilt-free pork pie.

Like a Side of Meat

Frozen chickens, pork chops - you know how I feel.

Gammon steaks from the "chiller cabinet", you know how I feel.

Even Linda McCartney Pies, you know how I feel.

It's a new dawn, it's a new day, and it's damn cold - for me.  And I'm feeling Brrrrrr...

Look, I don't want to moan.  And in fact, I have no inclination to really; when you are on a trip like this, even the shittest things have a fascination factor.  I am really very happy indeed living on this boat.  Really though, this morning took the biscuit. Or more appropriately, the frozen peas.

Picture the scene:  7am.  Sun streaming through the gap in the curtains – one of those golden mornings that make you feel  like you are a little worker bee, cuddled up in a honeycomb before the shift starts. You are snug and warm, largely by dint of the fact that you have two duvets and a quilt - bearing a dozen appliqué milkmaids done in a country cottage style - on top of you. You awake to the sound of gentle tinkling somewhere nearby. It is very fairytale like, and you listen to it as you swoop gently between sleep and wakefulness at the edge of the day. The tinkling continues. Has Santa come early, you think in your half-sleep. Or are the fairies blundering about collecting up the bottles after another durunken all-night do? Perhaps it is the sound of the nightingales kissing each other goodbye before fluttering off to their beds, you fancy as you turn over for another five minutes.

When you start wondering if it is someone chucking gravel at your boat, you can be sure you are more awake than asleep. It was at the gravel-suspecting point that I yawned awake with the dawning realisation that the tinkly sound was emanating from inside, not outside my boat. 'Must be a small rodent playing silly buggers with a handful of gravel down there by the back door' I thought. As soon as I thought this, I became aware that I was still asleep and muttering utter bollocks to myself. I commanded myself to wake up. The more I forced the crankie-handle of my frozen brain round in an attempt to cough it into life, the more I began to suspect that I was indeed missing something. I mean, what kind of rodent would sneak into a boat under cover of darkness just to throw stones at a window that it could easily throw stuff at from the outside? No, this was not the work of a vole or water rat. This was something else. But what, reader, what?

I sat up, bolt upright, and looked at the window. I'd just heard the tinkling sound again but had missed the perpetrator, mammalian or otherwise. I sat and waited for it to happen again. That was when I noticed how chuffing cold it was. This fact was duly confirmed when a glistening bud of water that I had took to be a droplet of condensation fell off the window frame to the floor with the unmistakable sound of a small piece of gravel hitting a hard surface. Water doesn't make a gravelly sound, does it.....not unless it is frozen. I reached over to the window to touch one of the plethora of similar droplets arranged like a string of diamonds along the frame. They were rock solid. I looked at the window. It was caked with ice on the inside.  I contemplated getting out of bed. I thought 'Sod it'.

Of course I did get up soon after that – I am far too greedy to deny myself breakfast-based gratification, whatever the weather. And once the fire was going, I felt it was safe to wake the rest of my brain up, gently.  Shortly after lighting the stove though, before the boat heated up properly, we had a glance at a dodgy thermometer we dug out of our camping kit. It read just under 3 Degrees C.

Our boat is officially colder than our fridge.

Troglodytis II - Bigger, Longer and Altogether More Ming-ing-er

We are about to go into yet another tunnel, this one almost two miles long.  It is just north of Stoke Bruerne on the Grand Union Canal.  I am told it is so damp in there that you might be forgiven for thinking it has its own weather system, complete with perpetually incontinent rain clouds.  This is handy for us of course, because after an entire morning of being pissed on from a great height by similar rain clouds outside, the sun has deigned to come out, rather spoiling the continuity of things.  So let's get in that cold, dark rain-tunnel, shall we?

It is 12:35pm.  I shall report back sometime later today (or, depending on mobile phone service, later this week) on how we got on...

...12:37pm

Bugger. I wrote the above just as we were going into the tunnel – very dramatic. However, being a complete dullard I failed to finish writing it a mere couple of moments earlier when I actually had enough mobile phone service to send the words though the MagicWires to the bloody blog. So I have scuppered my own dramatic pause, somewhat.

I am sitting indoors while Alan drives. It is very dark save for the light from my computer and Alan is bumping into the sides quite a lot. This could be attributed to him being an inferior steerer to me, but I am far too loyal and polite to state the truth so baldly. In fact, the bumpy ride could be at least partially down to the fact that he appears to be going through this tunnel at quite a pelt. I think he must be a bit spooked by the dark. Who knows what Gothic monologues are menacing their way through his head at this very moment...Maybe my campaign to avoid cows, coupled with Toast's comment on being chased by them (see Cows, below) is playing on his mind. Perhaps being in this tunnel is creating a breeding ground for hitherto manfully dismissed cow-fears. He could be in terrified thrall to the spectre of a giant Fresian with a bone to pick with him;. its big wet nose and menacingly hairy eyelids bearing down on him as he tries to escape in the dark on a boat that only goes at four miles an hour.

I must go to him.

Not before I've looked out the bow doors at the light at the far end of the tunnel, though. I've never done that before......

Christ, its not even as big as a Rice Krispie....

Cows

Q: What do you get when you cross a field with a load of aggro horses and cows?

A: I don't know, because I didn't.

Here's the thing; I don't like cows. Well, lets be truthful and precise, I am scared of them. Shit scared. I don't know why. I love the countryside - I am a bit of a seasoned rambler-type you know: Muddy boots, cow-pat stains on my arse form ill advised picnic spots, leaky Gore Tex jacket, penchant for Thermos flasks filled with rancid tea, I do it all, me. Sometimes to within spitting distance of “the max”. But if I am in a field and a cow shows the slightest bit of interest in me I am out of there like a five-legged rabbit.

Today Al, Louise and I fancied a walk to the pub. The Queen Victoria to be exact; an impossibly posh but cosy boozer in the impossibly posh but cosy village of Gayton, near Northampton. (They do ace food by the way but not one decent draught cider.) Being the cagoule-wearing types we are, we decided to eschew the towpath/country lane route and go cross country. It was all going wonderfully well, Alan's woolly jester hat was bouncing in the bracing breeze, Lou was forging ahead – all five feet of her – like a fun-sized Sherpa and my boots were happily caking themselves in sheep-shit. We came to a footpath sign telling us to go diagonally across a field. These are my favourite type of sign; they invite you to do something that feels a bit risqué (take it from me, if you have a lot of waterproof items in your wardrobe, it does not take much to make you feel you are being a bit racy); when I were a lad* at school in Birmingham, you were taught that if you ever went into this fabled Narnia called “The Countryside” you must never EVER walk through the middle of a field, else Farmer Giles would come at you with a sawn off shotgun, or scythe, or similar. You were to go around the edge, always. I have since found that this occasionally presents the walker with a problem; if the sign you are looking at points diagonally, it just indicating the way out of the other end of the field (handy if the aforementioned Mr Giles is there and in a bad mood) or is it specifying exactly the way you should go? On this occasion we decided that the field was crop-less and that the pub would be calling last orders soon, so we went through the middle.

At the other end of the field was a wooden bridge-cum-stile thing, exactly the sort of structure you expect a goat to come trip-trapping over whilst keeping a wary eye out for the local gang of trolls. We trooped across it and, lo and behold, we came to my least favourite type of field; one with cows in it.  There were some horses in the field too, but I was quite reassured by them. I like horses; we used to go riding as a treat when we were kids at a place near Birmingham airport. Why do I dislike cows so much, then? Lets examine the evidence. Cows are big. There's no two ways about it. Take the average cow: there's a lot of it isn't there? Some of them have horns. Their hooves are sharp and there are four of them. These hooves are also very heavy, what with there being a whole load of cow above them. And don't get me started on their eyes. They are big and blink very slowly – almost malevolently slow – and seem to harbour a great and grave secret, some dark purpose perhaps, or the entire contents of your conscience. Whatever it is, they know things. In Ireland a few years ago me and my mum were charged at by a load of cows. It was twilight and we were obviously on their turf. There were about twenty of them and they began trotting, then running towards us in a great heaving stampede. It was especially unfair as we had only gone into that field to avoid a dog that had tired to bloody attack us outside a farmhouse on the road. I remember the thud of hooves, the panicky reassurances of my mother and the prickliness of the hawthorn bush we both forced ourselves through. We both lost a bit of weight that night. I felt a bit of a twit afterwards, but I have since heard tales of people being chased by bulls and heifers, including one bloke in the paper recently whose ribs were broken in some kind of cow-attack. It was not to be the last time I would be confronted aggressively by a herd of belligerent bovines either.

So today, when three horses from a neighbouring paddock broke through the adjoining gate into this field we were about to bravely walk through (my teeth were gritted, everything else was clenched) and began to engage in chasing and kicking activities with the other horses, my fragile wall of confidence began seriously to teeter. Al was all for forging ahead regardless – no slave to the cows, he – Lou was nervous of the horses. “They won't hurt you, it's the cows you've got to watch” I told her, somewhat irrationally she must have thought since, to her left, three horses were kicking the shit out of each other while the cows chewed grass nonchalantly. At the top end of the field two cagouled figures stood behind the stile, looking at the situation as we were, weighing up the odds. “Come on, lets go” said Al. The horses had calmed down a bit. Lou muttered assent and set off behind him. I shot a look at the cows that I hoped would look like a confident, stern warning and trotted after. At the top of the field, the two figures caught a whiff of our confidence on the breeze and forged ahead also.

Not ten paces in, one of the horses decided it had not yet kicked enough arse. Suddenly four or five of them were cantering like billy-o around the field and it was clear that they were seriously exasperating the cows. They began grunting. Not moo-ing, or lowing, grunting. Then they started moving. From their general trajectory and their gathering speed it became clear that the cows were not about to risk a confrontation with the horses. They were pissed off, yes, but they were going to take it out on the three smaller animals in the field; the three short, two legged animals in waterproof attire. They began – and I exaggerate not – to run towards us.

Obviously I had no trouble persuading my companions; calmly, with reasoned argument and only one or two nervously spoken swear words; to exit the field. In the distance, the two figures saw our retreat, halted briefly, and turned back themselves.

We took the road the rest of the way.

Now, don't get me wrong, I do challenge my fear of cows by walking through fields containing the big buggers. I do it quite often, in fact. But even then, even when they are not being roused into annoyance by a load of cheesed off horses I cannot shake the feeling, the very real and primitive feeling that they don't like me. I mean really don't like me........

I don't even eat beef.

* I am not a lad. Sadly, I am no longer a girl either. I may not be a lady, but I'm all woman....er, etc.

Troglodytis

It's blowing a bleeding gale out there. As I sit in front of the fire, which is happily burning wood we found on the towpath last week, I am beginning to worry that the tree nearby will blow over and fall on us in an act of woody retribution. I am cocking an ear for any ominous creaking. It's very cosy being inside a little boat while outside the sky tries to turn itself inside out. We are somewhere just inside Northamptonshire but I am not sure where; it is a beautiful but beguilingly same-y part of the world. (Didn't manage to get a photo of that lovely hill? Never mind, here comes another one. The pub is straight over two fields and behind the church, is it? Well that narrows my search down to just the twenty square miles, then.) Earlier today we were in a village butcher's shop being served by the proprietor, a very entertaining bloke; squat, sullen and dry humoured in his straw boater. Casting an eye about his shop, it struck me that, with fifty farms within cheese-rolling distance, there was no reason why he should be offering up squashy, wrinkled fruit and veg for sale other than as a social experiment. He was utterly preoccupied by some special reinforced paper bags he had acquired for wrapping up his spit roast chickens. They keep the chicken either cold or hot, you see. “French. Engineering.” he told us repeatedly and with great solemnity when we had bought a chicken from him two days before. He had the dogged, disappointed countenance of Tony Hancock and his face was a map of broken veins. He also had the habit – which I remember blokes in our local pub when I was a kid having too – of addressing all elderly gents as “Dad”. One came in for beef and some pork chops. “Another transaction in which I lose money”, he said as he clapped four chops onto the counter. “Dad” smiled ruefully at Al and myself. Our hearts did not bleed.

Having bought a tiny brown loaf from the Bemoaning Butcher for 94p (a transaction in which we lost money and gained not much bread) and eaten it for lunch, Al washed up and I revved up Little More and steered her womanfully into Braunston Tunnel. Now, we've been through a few tunnels on our travels since July, but this was the longest – almost twice as long as Dutton Tunnel where we dropped the bike overboard.* It took us almost forty minutes to pass through, during which time, steering alone in the pitch dark, I thoroughly spooked myself imagining what it would be like if the engine broke down in there. I mean, what would you do? There is no towpath. It is too long to be seen or heard by anyone outside if you were even halfway to the middle. You'd join in with the engine and have a breakdown of your own I suppose. I looked ahead. The light at the end of the tunnel; that's supposed to be an optimistic, uplifting thought, isn't it? But what if the light is so bloody small you need a torch and a telephoto lens to see it? The light far ahead at the end of this tunnel was the size of the head of a carpet tack, and I had already been in the tunnel almost ten minutes. By the dim glow cast by the headlamp 38 feet ahead of my place on the stern, I concentrated very hard on not crashing into the side. Looking up at the seeping, stalactite encrusted ceiling I began to wonder how on earth workmen like miners, sewer men and tunnel builders can stick it, toiling away, hemmed in in the dark. No light, no warmth, the damp, stale air, the primal feeling of deprivation and isolation. Just steering a boat through it was enough to feel very far away from the world as the minutes ticked by and the monotony of blackness continued.

I looked ahead to the end-light. It had grown to the size of a walnut now, which cheered me up no end until I looked behind me and saw the arch of light where I had come into the tunnel, absurdly large in comparison. I wondered if there were bats roosting somewhere in the dark. The water looked black and shiny as oil, rippling and reflecting the light of the headlamp back at me. It would be horrible to be stuck on your own in there. When he was seventeen, my Dad was electrocuted while working alone in a sewer. He was apprenticed to a bricklayer who had sent him down into the murky depths, up to his shins in – let's just call it “liquid” - to re-point the brickwork. He was holding, as illumination, a bare bulb attached to a cable. The cable had a fault in it, and as the faulty section became momentarily immersed, two hundred and forty volts of electricity went through my young Dad's body and his screams could be heard sixty feet away at the surface by his boss. While my Dad was busy seeing silent flicker-book retrospective of his life unfold before his unconscious eyes in the darkness, his boss shut off the electricity, called an ambulance and hauled him out. The tunnel was barely big enough to fit into in the first place, yet somehow my Dad's body had been flipped entirely around so that they pulled him out head, not feet first – something no-one has ever been able to explain. The paramedics got his heart started again, thank God (because he is ace, my Dad and besides, I wouldn't be here if they hadn't). The only traces of his near death experience my Dad still bears are two completely hairless calves (“Electrolysis. I don't recommend it”), a middle finger with no feeling in it ( as kids he would let us bite it and we would watch fascinated, me and my sister, as he held it unflinchingly above candle flames until it was black with soot), and a vehement dislike for enclosed spaces, especially tunnels. Yet two months after the accident he was back working in the same tunnel, and has been in and out of them for much of his working life.

He would think I was a total wuss getting myself spooked in this one.

I checked the light behind me. It was much smaller now, a bit like a Terry's Chocolate Orange. Brilliant, I thought, I must be near the end. Peering down the side of the boat to get a look at the greeny yellow light of the exit, though, my fire was well and truly pissed on. Another Terry's Chocolate Orange stared unblinkingly back at me. I was only in the sodding middle.

Just before I could start freaking myself out with thoughts of being trapped eternally in a never ending tunnel, Al emerged from inside the boat, wiping his hands on a tea towel. With a bit of company I felt a lot less morbid as the Chocolate Orange behind us shrank to the size of a walnut, then a big toe, then a garden pea. I felt like a mole with a hangover as I emerged from the darkness into what was, in reality, a gloomy Autumn afternoon but felt like a Zanussi advert. After so long travelling slowly underground in the dark, Al and I half expected the world to have changed dramatically somehow– for it to be suddenly spring or something. But, of course, things passing slowly and changing even slower is one of the best things about travelling the country on a narrowboat.

Blimey. Only three-and-a-bit weeks to go...

* For more exciting details – and tales of Alan the hero, see the blog entry Hairy Shower

Sod It; DO Talk to Strangers!

“You can put a bit of Neil Diamond on for me – 'Crackling Rosie', magic”. He grinned winningly at me and adjusted his elbow-position. He was not so much leaning on the jukebox as trying to fuse it and himself as one. He had been cosying up to it all night, making me think that this was the kind of dash my dear father must have cut mere hours before he came home in the middle of the night fifteen years ago, several sheets to the wind, and woke everyone up with his jolly but tuneless renditions of Neil Diamond and Gilbert O'Sullivan ditties sung at the top of is lungs. This present day Diamond fan winked at no-one in particular and made an unjustifiably confident swing for the table with his drinking arm. His hand, like a champion homing pigeon, alighted triumphantly on his pint of IPA. He'd just given me 50p for the jukebox. I was with Al and our mates Ant and June – up for a couple of quality days on board – in a great pub called the Crown in Stockton, south of Leamington Spa, which is just south of Lapworth where, the nice man at the train station had assured me (after telling me a colourful potted history of the Birmingham Mafia clans), Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath lives. And Jasper Carrott. It was incredibly nice of jukebox-man, a be-denimed local in his late 30s who sported the kind of grin that will have got him out of a lot of trouble as a wee-un, to give me 50p. I was a total stranger. Grateful though I was for this kind donation, it kind of defeated my purpose, which was to put my last 50p in change into the machine and select a few minutes music that would provide as much of a contrast as possible from the Neil Diamond and Bryan Adams that had been rumbling out of it for the past hour.

“Hee-yar,” he said to me as I looked through the fug of one shot of whiskey (that's all it takes to fuzz the edges for me) at the printed note Sellotaped thickly to the machine detailing the number of plays you got or your money – two for 50p - “Hee-yar, I've got 50p, you'll get five plays for a pound.” He handed me the coin with a nonchalant gesture; not threatening, not over-familiar, just well, just very nicely. “You can choose. You can put a bit of Neil Diamond on for me – 'Crackling Rosie', magic”. I had a little chat with him as I punched in the numbers for Mr Diamond, Mr Stewart, Messrs Jagger and Richards and all the Iseralites (Mr Desmond Dekker). I went back to my table conflicted by the feeling that I had just found a jukebox-chum whom I was now quite keen to leave since he was air-guitaring ather athletically to 'Cracklin' Rosie'.

I have surely been defying the recommendations of some 1970s public information film or other recently by talking to a lot of strangers. More than usual, in fact, and that is saying something. Maybe the change in weather – that most British of chinwag-openers – has eroded a little inlet into people's inhibitions. Whatever it is, I welcome it. In the past ten days I have been entertained by, amongst other things, tales of a conspiracy theory to get us to burn less coal (not, claimed the theorist in question, because CO2 emissions have anything to do with global warming – they don't, he insisted – but because the government do not want to re-open our collieries because that will give power to Arthur Scargill, who will stage a government coup). Today I encountered an impassioned monologue-er in the shape of an elderly British-Asian corner shop owner in Stockton who told me at length about her 25 year struggle to run her business and raise her children in the face of persistent racial harassment from local youths. This week I also met a father who confided misgivings about his daughter's chosen career as a tattoo artist in Kent and a local horsewoman who swears by chilli topped with rice, chips and cheese in that order as a post-winter-morning-ride-pick-me-up. I have been told jokes, given pub recommendations, weather reports and, in the last week alone, have also been given a shiny new ballpoint pen, some firewood, a lolly, 50p for the jukebox and an air filter for my engine. All given to me, unasked for, by strangers.

Some strangers have also provided me with oodles of entertainment entirely unwittingly. A couple of months ago while we were in Ellesmere we overheard two pale looking young men in slim-fitting sports casual wear chatting on the corner about the previous night out on the lash: “You should've seen you last night, pal!” guffawed the first bloke, remembering last night's drunken hilarity. “Yeah, I know,” agreed his mate “I was fuckin' paraplegic!”

Seriously, you cannot make this stuff up.

More recently, the other night in fact, I overheard the following conversation in a pub called The Bluebell (I urge you to bear in mind that it was after 10pm and this pub sold six types of cider):

Bloke A: Blowy out there tonight. Bloke B: Yea, its a wind alright. Bloke A: The grass moves, its a breeze you get.

Bloke B: (Silence)

Bloke A: When the grass moves, you only get a breeze, when the bigger grass - the bushes move, they move and you get a wind, if the trees move they cause a gale and when houses start blowing about you get a hurricane. (Pause) Still...

(Presumably he takes a swig of his beer here, but I am only surmising...I was earwigging, not staring)

Bloke A: There's some wind fanning them flames in California.

Bloke B: Conspiracy.

They then fell silent for fully five minutes. Presumably they were musing knowledgeably on this wind-conspiracy. Perhaps they were, chiefly to make some more room for beer, busy silently breaking some. I really wanted to go up and talk to them but they were quite scary looking. All solid beer-belly frontage and a sullen, disillusioned look. Massive ham fists. Besides, I didn't want to risk getting caught in a miasma of digestion-gasses.

But I should've spoken to them. I have rarely had an encounter in the five months of this trip that has been unpleasant. We don't chat enough to each other, I think, so lets get jaw-ing. Sod this culture of fear. Strangers, on the whole, are fairly entertaining and bloody nice. This is something I have learned.