The Wisdom Of The Ages

I don't know you spend over 400 years living a happy-clammy life in the soup then some wannabe lab-star dredges you up and slays you. Here

"Don't Forget Your 5 a Day!"

The shelf of a colleague of mine (who I think ought to remain anonymous) who teaches health and social care and generally empowers students towards healthy lifestyles!

This morning...

There was also a massive rainbow right across the sky!.....but unfortunately I was in a hurry to run down the towpath and catch my bus

Hangover Cure

Every Sunday has been the same lately...

Try to get early enough to catch the Laundrette still open, have a (far too watered-down) double espresso the waterside cafe, dry clothes on the boat, have lunch then wander into town with some work to do at a cafe-bar.

Some Sundays I even manage to go swimming.

....then I'm ready for a night for a slightly less ambitious night out again.

You can tell I'm near to Chester!

If you're a little confused as to where you are one day from mooring in so many different spots just look at the side of some nearby boats to for some clues...

Basin End Nantwich - Yesterday and Right Now

...and live webcam pics from the other side of the bridge from local boat holiday people here

Much Ado about Blogging

Just wondering whether I should combine my other 2 little blogs into this one???

My nature-pics one is only added to now and again and my music one is likely to become much more active.

MMmmmmmmm ? All in one or keep it simple and separate?

Spidey Sense

This miniature Spiderman (I've always been a massive fan since my dad used to read the comics to me to send me to sleep as a child) sits on a bookshelf.

Recently a real spider spun some silk from his fists down to the wood. Cool.

Nice New Towpath

Between Acton and Nanwich

It's Friday

Be Careful What You Wish For 2

Things I can't live without...

Making music (esp playing guitar)
Listening to music (not so much that I can't live without it as that music is life - only more-so)
The music of the Red Hot Chili Peppers (not so much that I can't live without it as I wouldn't be alive without it).
Love
The Earth (see Gaia)


Things I'd prefer to live without...

Football/cricket/rugby etc (why am I supposed to care? - lets call it soccer just to piss them off)
Patriotism (being proud to be British is like being proud to have brown hair - it's not an achievement)
Copy-bands (my preferred term for 'tribute bands' - I've got the CD. Creativity please not painting by numbers)

Be Careful What You Wish For

Paul Kingsnorth has posted an excellent article in which he ponders (with a fair degree of self-scepticism I think) whether global warming might actually be a the best thing for humans and our fellow Earth-dwellers:

"Being a human, and especially a human who is about to have a child, the idea of mass human death is not especially appealing..."

He goes on here

Mr Angry has gone for a while...

Sorry about my recent ranting. Back in zen-like mode now. Here's a flower.



These are in my front 'garden' and they probably wont last much longer given the time of year. Last year these plants (also called 'Cosmos') attracted loads of hummingbird hawk moths (for which 06 was a bumper year in the UK), usually around dusk though they are supposedly happy to fly during the day.




Things seem a lot wider round here if you've been used to the Macc and Peak Forest canals.

Have a go - No!

Given the recent utterances of Jack Straw, Superhero - next time I'm cut up on my bike by an arrogant BMW driver who doesn't mind casually killing me, presumably it'll be alright by his worthiness if I chase the driver down to the next set of lights and beat the living crap out of them?

Seriously though, many kids are brought up to think that canal boats are for playing on (be they lived-upon or otherwise). Some of my erstwhile colleagues have told me about all the high jinks they got up to on boats "well you do at that age" kind of thing. So if anyone sets about with a crowbar against some 12 year old chav without even giving them a chance to explain themselves or run away deserves anything the penal system can (still) throw at them, having proved themselves to be an utter thug.

More Gratuitous Boat Pics...

If it's mild night-sailing is the best. Especially with extended opening hours!

I am NOT a Role Model!

…though some (deluded in my view) think that people in my job should be. I think such folks may be liable to be hoist by their own petard* if they’re not very careful, unless they don’t have much of a life. One of the parts I might play at work is that of a ‘role model’ in some respects, but when I leave the gates behind I’m afraid I become a human being…and a very bad one at that. Here’s just some of the evidence…

Most weekends I get very pleasantly pissed thank you, I like girls in hot-pants, I think that saying things like “bollocks”, “silly fucker” and “buggeration” (and worse) is funny or very funny depending in how pissed I am (and if I think it won’t offend those around me), when I was an active environmental campaigner all my private mail was opened presumably because I was deemed some sort of terrorist threat (not bad for a pacifist), I have missed TV licence payments, even overstayed on moorings on occasion, put zillions of things off (I had loads of stuff stolen in June and still haven’t filled in the forms), plan to follow Elvis Costello’s lead and dance on Margaret Thatcher’s grave (though I’ll probably never get round to that either) and sometimes use phrases I know the gist of without remembering the origin (see *).

I could go on.

But I’m human first and the job second (though obviously at work I wouldn’t do the above (excepting the moorings business, TV licensing and the like), and that is why I don’t make my full name too obvious or explicitly mention my day job, though finding either wouldn’t take that much research if someone could be bothered and some obviously do.

Needless to say any opinions and/or expressions made here are for my own puerile entertainment and light relief from the burdens of the non-cyber world along with anyone else who might be interested and in no way reflect on any duties or work I have outside this space blah blah blah bleedin blah.

Yours, a bit paranoid….

Pruuffe reedin

Christ I hope Sarah's concerns for lack of proofreading in a certain boat mag doesn't extent to blogs! Most of my posts are short, rushed, seat-of-the pants style gibberish of whatever thoughts are rushing or drifting through my head at the time.

My problem with most boat mags is that they seem to be irrepressibly stuffy (not that terms like "irrepressibly stuffy" aren't also a bit on the stuffy side). Dare I say it though this might have more to do with the demographics of the readership (just look at the hilariously over-formal stylings of the letters pages).

I'm used to reading cycling magazines which seem much more personal, fast-paced and frankly 'fun'. I don't just mean MTB magazines but even roadie mags for proper, serious bike riders (joke, well half-joke if I'm honest). But that's a whole other can of worms (or inner-tubes), (or in-a-toobes)))@ ;)

For me I think it's Canal Boat magazine which comes closest to what I'd like to see, which the good Dr Bones now writes for though she doesn't say so on her blog.

Benji the Bunny

He's rescued, free-range, cute and this is his first day aboard with his human friends, including his affable and eccentric 'owner' (if animals really have owners) aboard 'Arthur'.

Water Music

At my winter mooring in Nantwich last year, I got to know Ray, a fellow live-aboard and then owner of The Limelight live rock music venue in Crewe.

Now Ray has bought the Jolly Tar at Barbridge. I had been traveling in the dark for some time when I got there and had been wondering if he had already got it going. It turned to be his first week of live music there and it was packed out. It was good to bump into a lot of people I know from the area.

A place to stay, then and now...

Old fly-boat stables converted into living accomodation on the Middlewich branch of the Shropshire Union.

Animal Quackers...(or Cow on the line)

On the way out of Middlewich I saw magnificent specimen of a fox, a duck with a squashed, overlapping beak who had clearly recovered and was managing fine, a heron catch and fly off with something that had legs (frog? crayfish?), an entirely black duck, more kingfishers than I could shake an iridescent stick at and then for an animal encore.....

I'd moored up to cook some food, heard an almighty splash ahead and saw a crazy cow emerge from the depths (she had been completely under when I looked up) and scramble out where her peers had run over (to have a look, come to the rescue or have what approximates to a 'laugh' in cow body language I know not!)

I suspect she fell in but like to think that she ran and jumped in, in the time-honoured fashion favoured by some dogs.

Misty Morning

It's almost worth getting up for.

....and then when I get to work I finally have my own PC - whoopie! I can get chocolate on the keyboard without feeling guilty now.

What blogs were made for...

Though this was back in May

Canal Pubs R.I.P.

Looking through my ace new Flickr account I found some old photos from the bade olde dayse when I had to scan prints before sending them to a website....

I found this old pic from a regular drinking hole right by Clarence Mill in Bollington. One of several which are no more in the town - having revisited this summer.

The quality is so bad I can't even tell if that's me sitting outside the pub or my girlfriend at the time...

When Intollerance is a Virtue

I'm glad to see the blog of 'Lactose the Intolerant' is back up and running again. He's an intelligent and entertaining boatie-bloggie type (& I'm biased because he's Green, a cyclist and shares a similar taste in females with brown bobs!).

That is 'bobs' by the way - the hairstyle not a misprint!

My First Boat...

Me and my sister on an early boat trip! This and my other pics are now on my Flickr.

I was always thinking of moving my photos from Yahoo to Flickr but as they're closing Yahoo Photos this month they did it for me!

Nantwich beer (oh yes and food...) festival.

Getting a bit lackadaisical about taking photos lately. Went to the said fest - took no pics but Mr Crewe Blog is always on the ball for Crewe & Nantwich goings on and his post is here.

As well as this - managed to see a couple of ace bands in the Vic in Crewe over the weekend (a good place if you're tired of copy-bands in the Limelight and places).