Facebook Follies

Simple pleasures - home-grown veg and a happy hubby - but Facebook thinks I should aspire to more than this!

It's strange to think that I owe my soon-to-be new job to 'Facebook'.  I wasn't specifically job-hunting, having finally secured a reasonable number of regular gardening clients, and obviously still hoping for literary fame and fortune.  But when I saw from a friend's Facebook status that there were vacancies back at my former workplace, I realised that despite the fun I was having writing adventures for imaginary welfare rights worker friends, it would be good to be back with my real ones.

Not that I take up most of the opportunities and products with which Facebook tempts me.  Sometimes, it clearly picks up on a comment I've made and advertises something relevant (polytunnels at present), but more often it's clearly working from assumptions and stereotypes based on my age and gender, or just making completely wild guesses.  Why, for example, would I 'like' a cat charity's site when all the stray cats in this dstrict use my front lawn as a toilet?  I would rather 'like' the paramilitary wing of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds ('Continuity RSPB', anyone?)

You get some glorious contrasts and contradictions in Facebook adverts, though - like the juxtaposition of one of the many 'shocking weight-loss secret' ads (usually associated with a Z list, size zero celeb once derided as 'fat' because you couldn't count her ribs through her bikini) with one below it urging me to 'Bake Better Cupcakes!' while just beneath that was 'buy gorgeous corsets' or something to that effect.  So there you have it - get thin, pig out, then compress the consequences back into a socially acceptable figure!  Sorted!

And naturally, being a woman, I must care deeply about shoes, so hardly a login goes by without an ad for some implausibly extravagant footwear appearing alongside my friends' updates.  'Killer Heels' weren't kidding - the picture with the ad was definitely of something which, applied to my feet, would probably have punctured sheet steel, and when you're already pushing 6ft tall, you would really need to accessorise those towering red stilletos with a hard hat to save bashing your brains out on the doorframe whenever you entered a room.  If they even make shoes like that in a size nine-and-a-half. 

Actually, I bet they do.  And not for girls, either.

Since passing 50, the ratio of menopause remedies to life assurance schemes has shifted slightly in favour of the latter, with a sprinkling of funeral plans for good measure, while all manner of bizarre beauty tips are just a click away, or so I guess from those '60 year-old woman looks 30!' claims, next to a pic of a lady who's either 94, or has spent all of her shorter life sunbathing without the factor 25, while another 'shocking beauty secret' appears to involve a jar of lemon curd.  I think I'll put up with '50 year-old woman looks a bit older than that but still has all her own teeth and doesn't fritter her hard-earned cash away on pointless beauty products or quack 'remedies' for an entirely natural phase of life'.

I had thought, however, that Facebook had now decided I was officially 'past it', as many months had passed since they last advised me that there were men, of various specifications (and I hasten to add that by specifications I mean 'single', 'dads', 'sincere divorced' etc, rather than anything anatomical!), looking for 'lurve' in my area.  Either that, or someone (or some algorithm) had noticed the 'married' reference in my personal profile and the frequent affectionately-subtitled photos of dear Mr H that make it onto my status. 

But no - this post has been prompted by the news that 'in your area' (because I'd be too old to travel far?  Or too young for a free bus pass?) single men are looking for 'faithful women'.  So, you might wonder, why is Facebook telling this to a happily-married woman?  In order that I can let them know that 'faithful women' are indeed out there, and they shouldn't give up hope of one day finding one of their own, the poor lonely lads?  Or are Facebook's dating agency accomplices working on the premise that although these guys would prefer 'faithful' partners, someone else's cheating wife would do? 

While I usually allow myself a wry chuckle at this nonsense, sometimes I can only stare speechless at the poor aim and utter bluntness of Cupid Facebook's arrows.  The classic - bearing in mind that even a cursory glance at my 'likes', photos and comments gives me away as a bit of a Leftie - was the revelation that there were 'faithful policemen' looking for love in my area.  As opposed to the disgracefully shifty undercover ones with false names from the gravestones of dead children and fake lifestories who routinely sleep with unattached female activists, presumably? 

Still, it could be worse.  With all our online data apparently being routinely shared with the various US intelligence agencies, I suppose I should watch out for ads telling me that there are 'Sincere CIA Operatives' looking for 'faithful women' too?  Watch out for the Prism Dating Agency girls!  It's watching out for you...   

Foremost, but not First

'The Monday Group' display their best taters.

My RHS Level 2 Practical course at Reaseheath College came to its conclusion yesterday, with a handful of odd tasks we needed to complete in order to finish the syllabus fitted in between the showers.  We thinned out the parsnips on our plots, took out a drill to sow lettuce seeds, weeded our peas and beans and tested the temperature of the fast-decaying compost heap.  We made an insect house out of a polystyrene cup, sawed wood to make a log stack (again for wildlife to shelter in over the winter - they spoil their bugs at Reaseheath), and finally took cuttings of Berberis.  And we had a final dig through of our potato patches, rounding up the handful of stragglers that had evaded us on Saturday morning, when the rest were lifted for the First Early Potato Show.

It's often said (especially, as I recall well, to the non-athletic kid on School Sports Day) that what matters in any competition isn't the winning, it's the taking part.  No-one who has ever witnessed a vegetable show, be it at a major RHS-accredited event or at their local village hall or allotment hut is under any such delusion.  To hell with 'play up, play up and play the game!': the ethos of the Reaseheath First Early Potato Show, in common with all horticultural competitions, was the thoroughly Spartan 'come back with your shield or on it!'  There was no room for failure.   From the moment we drew the name of our selected spud out of the bag back in March, victory was all.

Baskets of spuds, including Foremost, in all its many forms...

The laurels would go to whoever could present a plate of the best four potatoes.  The chosen taters needed to match each other as closely as possible, be of a good size, of a shape correct for their variety, perfectly clean of mud or dirt and yet without damage to their frail skins.  At the beginning of the week, we had seen four potatoes chosen from just two roots clean up nicely and make a perfectly satisfactory exhibit.  With two entire rows to choose from, how difficult could it possibly be to select four matching spuds? 

I had high hopes that if I started at the well-watered end of the row I had spaced widely, I would find good-sized near-perfect examples of my 'Foremost' taters from the first two or three roots.  But having planted the other row closer together, and having deliberately not watered the eastern end of each row to find out how much difference that made, I would need to lift them all that morning, just to assess the experiment.

Show-stoppers - prize winners from our group (well done Maz and Crispin)

To my surprise, failing to water and close spacing seemed to have made virtually no difference to the number or quality of potatoes lifted from each row, or from either end of the row.  The result of the experiment was clear - potatoes are apparently completely impervious to how you treat them!  There was a slightly higher yield from the ones planted close together, though of course that row had more tubers in to start with.  But regarding size and quality, the pattern was roughly the same across the whole site: a good mixture of 'baby' new potatoes and a fair number of medium-sized tubers, none of which resembed each other to any appreciable extent. 

I carefully washed off those from the 'spaced at 30cm centres' row.  It's amazing how many different forms a potato from a single cultivar can take!  There were longish tubers, round ones, knobbly ones and smooth ones, but finding any four that had more in common than membership of the species Solanum Tuberosum was surprisingly tricky.  I had planned to leave the dirt on the others, to help them store for a little longer, but in the end washed all of them too.  The selection before me remained an impressive illustration of mashable diversity, and now time was running out to select and prepare any of them for the show.

With high hopes of clinching victory - before I uncovered the disappointing truth - I had brought a soft paintbrush with me to help clean off every last spec of dirt without scraping the skin, but no amount of archaeologist-like attention to detail was going to save the day.  Victory would surely go to another...

Luckily, the 'other' in question was Marion, celebrating her 'twenty-first' birthday (though not for absolutely the first time...!), and accepting her prize most graciously.  That the Friday Group managed the actual 'Best in Show' plate of spuds was mildly galling.  There were mutterings in the Monday group that they had been favoured with more show-friendly cultivars; clearly, we ought to have resorted to proper allotmenteers' sabotage techniques after all, and blasted their plots with 'Roundup'.

No prizes for rude spuds...!

Alas, there will be no opportunity for revenge; 'school's out' for summer now, and although some of us may be sneaking back to harvest our peas and beans, that may be the end of formal study at Reaseheath for me for some time.  After two wonderfully enjoyable years as a part-time student there, I'm not sure that there will be time to fit in another course, my home and commercial gardening commitments, and my forthcoming new job.  Because, after two years away from the fray, I'm rejoining Citizens Advice in a new role.  The official job title is 'Training and Network Development Officer', though 'Counter-propaganda and Resistence Support Officer' seems equally apt! 

But before that gets underway, there might be the chance to help on another Tatton Park show garden for the college.  Watch this space!

First Earlies

It's my favourite time of the gardening year.  My garden is its most colourful, the evenings are long and light (even if they are now getting shorter) and best of all, the First Early Potatoes are starting to be ready.

If you have been following this blog, you will know that I am a self-confessed spud geek and love my taters, experimenting with several new cultivars every year as well as growing my tried and tested Kestrel second earlies and the blight-buster main crop Sarpo Mira.  After years of growing my own, it's still a thrill lifting the first root and tasting the first of the year's crop.  When we lived further south, and at sea level, that was my birthday treat, but since moving 200 miles further north and six hundred feet up, I've had to do without home-grown new spuds on the big day.  I probably need to trial growing them in containers in the greenhouse, or experiment with quick-growing cultivars - Casablanca is supposed to mature in just sixty six days! 

There's extra excitement this year, as we have a Potato Show at Reaseheath on Saturday, and after a visit from the Judge, the tension is mounting.  Our challenge is to lift as much of our crop as we need to select four potatoes to show, and then to clean and prepare them for judging.  The aim is to select spuds which are of uniform size and shape, of a shape typical of the cultivar (round, oval, kidney-shaped etc), of a good size, clean of any spec of dirt and yet with the skin undamaged.  There are apparently a number of old gardeners' tricks to help with this, such as dabbing milk over the tubers the night before to give them a nice sheen, which doesn't count as cheating, though our judge claims to have a good nose for handcream or furniture polish employed to the same effect!

Harry lifting potatoes and Derek explaining what the judge is looking for.

As we drew lots for our taters, some people are in with a better chance than others.  Our guest judge claims that in all his many years of showing and judging, he had never know Rocket to pick up a first prize, for example, which is a shame as it's a tasty tater, if prone to slug attack.  Luckily, I'm not growing Rocket and Foremost have a good record of success on the show bench, though I've probably hindered my chances by conducting experiments with my college crop, watering only half of each row, and spacing the tubers 20cm apart in one and 30cm apart in the other.  Hardly a recipe for uniformity!

Vales Emerald looking good enough for the herbaceous border!

With less than a week to go, some plants are flowering profusely, others look far from mature, and only a few of us have done a trial lift to see what lies beneath.  I tested one root of 20cm, unwatered - theoretically the least cared-for - and got a good helping of lovely clean, smooth tubers, if rather small for the show bench, but with a week to go, I think it's looking good!

They certainly tasted good!

Midsummer Colour

Pink poppies, aquilegia and foxgloves in our front garden.

Well, it's been a quite a few posts since we last looked at the garden here at home.  We've been boating to London and back, sowing and planting at Reaseheath, trying to market self-published left-leaning legal thrillers and even visiting Buckingham Palace, so it's no surprise that I have to confess to neglecting the garden. 

Not tended for two months (apart from cutting the lawn)

And while my back has been turned, it's gone mad, but it's done so in a fabulously romantic 'Secret Garden' fashion, with the flowerbeds lush with early summer perennials, cascades of wisteria and clematis entwined with golden hop and honeysuckle smothering the pergolas, and drifts of geum and flag iris rising from the ferns around the ponds.  

Wisteria and golden hop: pale pink aquilegia

It's a similar story in the front garden.  Close scrutiny reveals an invasion of couch grass and the plumes of horsetail lurking between the cultivated plants, but the overall effect is a tapestry of colour, a rich meadow of aquilegia, alchemilla mollis, foxgloves and, somehow dodging the worst effects of some heavy showers, spectacular deep red/pink oriental poppies.  The funny thing is, I don't remember them being that colour, but they tone beautifully with the digitalis and the darker pink columbines, and contrast strikingly with the purple ones.

Front garden flowerbed from above, and close-up

There is a lone 'Turkenlouis' oriental poppy in vivid scarlet in front of the yew tree; that's going to have to move, but to where, I don't know, as all of the late spring/summer flowers, front and back, are quite soft shades.  I suppose I could try a 'Chelsea chop' on it, and try and get it to flower later, when there should be red/gold colours in that area from rudbekias and hellenniums, if the slugs haven't munched them all...

Evening sunshine on the 'meadow'

It is mildly concerning that what is effectively my trademark planting scheme, exported to a couple of clients' gardens, actually needs so little looking after, as it suggests I'm in danger of doing myself out of a job!  In practice, this luxuriant growth is going to need a good clear-out before too long.  The alchemilla is, as usual, in danger of stealing the show, but I have a likely home for some of it in one of my project gardens and a generous gift of some acanthus to find space for too.

 Meanwhile in the veg plots, much digging and clearing was needed to remove excessive amounts of creeping buttercup and self-heal, and the leeks had passed their prime, though I may leave them to flower for the bees.  Much of the area is currently a shrub nursery as we missed the time for planting squashes while we were on the boat, but all being well we'll get some 'greens' in for the autumn and winter and may even try some late sown peas and beans in case we get a warm autumn.

As for midsummer, it's actually sounding quite stormy outdoors tonight, so there will be no sitting on the patio with a glass of wine enjoying the light evening and bright full moon, and watching out for the bats.  Perhaps another evening...





Honours even!

Outside the Palace!

You know that the Stoke-on-Trent air or water has well and truly got into your system when, as well as checking the backstamps of crockery wherever you are, you start checking the provenance of the 'water closets'.  I was pretty certain that one I visited last Friday was the twin of a venerable exhibit at the fabulous 'Flushed with Pride' exhibition within the Gladstone Pottery Museum, but having been obliged to check my camera into security before venturing so far, I can only provide a verbal description of the circular bowls, wooden box seats and pull-up handles of the Victorian contraptions still in use within Buckingham Palace.

In case you were wondering, I didn't secure a new gardening commission while in London on the narrowboat.  I found myself pondering the plumbing in Buck House because Himself was awarded an MBE in the 2013 New Years Honours List for 'Service to Rail in Kidsgrove' (in summary, writing and campaigning and lobbying indefatigably until the very poor services from our local station were transformed to add hourly direct trains to and from Manchester and London Euston to the dismal Crewe-Derby stopper that had previously been our only link).

Travelling in style!

Since the award was for Public Transport campaigning, it seemed only right to use one of the services Jon and his co-campaigners had secured to get to London, namely the cost-effective London Midland service, and on Investiture Day itself, to make our way across London by public transport too. We were tempted to walk, but having spent the day before exploring Regents Park and London Zoo, and with no clear idea of how long we would be on our feet for the Investiture, we opted for the bus.

On arrival at the gates, the security procedures to enter seemed low-key compared to, say, boarding a typical flight, though doubtless that was due to everything being well-rehearsed, and had I attempted to take the pitchfork in with me, I'm sure it would have been politely but firmly removed from my grasp.

Once within the gates we were literally ushered from place to place courteously but purposefully by various quite elderly gentlemen in all manner of ceremonial garb, under the scrutiny of cavalrymen in plumed helmets with drawn swords.  While those to be honoured were ushered away, as guests we were escorted to seating in the ballroom, passing the originals of numerous royal portraits usually only seen by us peasants if reproduced on the cover of historic biographies.

Somehow, the Honeysett party were allocated comfy bench seats beneath the minstrel's gallery, giving us an excellent view far enough away from guards to peruse the list of receipients and pick out those we'd heard of (Olympic cyclist Laura Trott and Paralympic equestrian Sophie Christiansen), while decoding from their 'services to...' citation what we suspected some of those being honoured had actually done.  Lots of civil servants, a decent helping of teachers, plenty of military personel and definitely a few 'spooks', we concluded.  And we guessed correctly which of the women we had noticed previously were the ones honoured for 'services to fashion'.

Jon recreates his investiture with a Covent Garden street performer

 We'd found out the night before that it wouldn't be the Queen handing out the medals, as the news reported she was off to open the new BBC studios; in the event, Prince Charles got the gig, preceded by a posse of Yeoman of the Guard (aka Beefeaters - more archaic costumes) and entering the room flanked by a bodyguard of gurkhas.

Those to be honoured were brought across the rear of the ballroom, in front of where we sat, in lines of about fifteen at a time.  As luck would have it, the diminuative JH found himself marching along between a remarkably tall young chap being honoured for 'services to rowing', and another lanky lad having 'services to athletics' recognised.  Jon looked so little by comparison that we half-expected to hear his award announced as being for 'Services to Middle Earth'!

Once all the awards had been bestowed and HRH had left the building, there was much waiting around for official photographs, and the chance to retrieve our own cameras and 'phones and take a few of our own - outdoors.  But at no stage were there refreshments for the guests, and even the recipients had received simply a glass of water or apple juice.  Personally, I think the royals are chancing it with this policy, bearing in mind the trouble that the remark 'let them eat cake' allegedly caused across the Channel.  'Let them eat cake' sounds to me like a much better policy than 'Let them eat nothing at all' and you might have thought that with HRH in charge, at least a few boxes of Duchy Originals bickies might have appeared, but nothing doing.

Luckily, Jon's daughter's father-in-law is of infinitely more generous spirit, and having arranged to meet the Palace party after the event in Covent Garden, promptly produced not one but two bottles of champagne and glasses (well, plastic beakers - but nice ones) and our little party stood outside the Apple Store celebrating in style, with the exception of baby grandson who looked miffed to be left out.  I glanced around slightly nervously, but there didn't seem to be any by-law notices prohibiting drinking in the street.  An arrest at this stage would really have spoilt the whole day...

Men in Black - protecting the capital from the scum of the Universe...

A leisurely late lunch followed, the restaurant providing more sparkling alcohol and a kick-ass liqueur 'on the house', then we saw the family off from Victoria and meandered back to the bus stop and thus to our hotel, spending the evening mooching about 'Fitzrovia' and the following morning checking out the latest additions to the London skyline from the vantage point of Tate Modern.

And then, to wrap up a more than slightly surreal visit to the Capital, just outside Euston as we were about to cross the road for our return train, we were passed by the London Naked Bike Ride participants, some of whom were taking the title of this event very literally.  Yes, there are photos, but not on this blog!

Home again

Back to Braunston, and farewell to the Grand Union Canal

To quote one of literature's most famous gardeners, "Well.  I'm back!"  After almost two months away, Uplander II slipped out of the north portal of the Harecastle Tunnel just after 5.30 yesterday afternoon, and moored back at Kinnersley Wharf a few minutes later. 

After so long on the move, it is a strange feeling being back on dry land and knowing that the same view will greet me as I open the curtains each morning.  Actually, hopefully not exactly the same view as at present, since the grass on the back lawn is almost knee-high (and that's to my knees too!) and the Hairy Bittercress is seriously over-represented in the vegetable patches, but my plans to remedy this situation have been thwarted by a downpour, so it's back to the keyboard.

Sunshine in West London - near Kensall Green

It had been fun travelling down to Cavalcade with Tickety-Boo, and reassuring to know there was always a friendly boat to share those big Grand Union locks, so the return journey with Uppie alone seemed a daunting prospect when we reached our first lock and considered the hundred plus still ahead of us.  A good helmsman (or helmswoman) can easily take a narrowboat in and out through one gate of a broad lock, and Jon is more than capable of this, and roping up in the lock saves the boat being bashed about when the paddles are opened, but it's still a longer, heavier job for the lock-winder working alone, especially if the offside gate swings open as you close the towpath side one and you have to scurry to the closed end of the lock, scramble across the gates and close it, then dash to the paddles to start some water moving before one of the blasted gates swings open again (a particular hazard in windy weather).  Luckily, Uppie was to make some new friends on the return journey.

Uppie looking very small, all alone in a big lock!

Our first stroke of luck was being caught up by a posse of Waterways Recovery Group volunteers  returning a hired boat to its base, who came through some of the locks between Uxbridge and Rickmansworth with us.  They had been members of the industrious and efficient crew looking after the site logistics at Cavalcade, and were heading back to Gayton Junction.  "Wergies" are generally blessed with good muscles and decent helpings of common sense, since they do all the grubby jobs associated with rescuing and restoring canals that would otherwise languish in a state of disrepair, so with a couple of them to assist each time, it was a good time to volunteer as lock-winder.

We then had two very pleasant days travelling in the company of 'Estia' from Devizes and her human and canine crew, progressing all the way from Rickmansworth to Berkhamstead and only parting there because I needed to make plans for another return home for college and gardening work.  The dogs Frankie and Star, with their little orange life-jackets, were constant entertainment, leaping intrepidly from lockside to boat, boat to towpath and back again, or trotting across the tops of the lock gates inspecting progress as we ascended lock after lock.

Fearless Frankie watches Uppie and Estia

Working on through Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, we arranged to meet some friends just north of Milton Keynes with the provisional arrangement that, if they enjoyed narrowboating and we felt they were safe enough doing it, they could look after Uppie for a couple of days while both of us came home from Rugby, our last planned intermediate stop.  Both are quite tall, but the gent is, at 6'4", one of the few people who could get away with calling me 'shorty'.  He could just about stand upright in the boat, but getting in and out without serious head injury took more practice than usual! 

Sunshine and approaching stormclouds at Cosgrove

However, at the end of a couple of days and practice ascending the cumbersome Long Buckby flight of locks and the Blisworth and Braunston Tunnels, we were confident that our 'rookie' crew would be safe enough in charge of the vessel and they duly piloted Uppie safely from Rugby to Atherstone, including performing a successful, indeed elegant, transit of Hawksbury Junction from the Oxford Canal to the Coventry.

That bloke's nicked our boat!

We collected Uppie safely at Atherstone after a couple of days at home, welcomed back aboard by our shipmates with a freshly-cooked meal, but unfortunately they had to be away home the next morning, and we had eleven locks to tackle!  Without the need to get anywhere urgently, we called it a day soon after, making gentle progress to Fradley Junction by the following evening, despite daunting hailstorms, one of which loomed over Tamworth as if the Martians had just obliterated the place, and deciding to go nowhere at all on the Friday since the weather was even more evil.

Sunny morning at Fradley Junction

We had two days of sunshine as we started our return along the Trent and Mersey Canal, familiar waterways from our first journeys on Uppie in the autumn of 2011, but sure enough, as we approached Stoke-on-Trent after leaving Stone on Monday, clouds gathered and rain started to fall.  Stoke-on-Trent doesn't currently do a great job of looking welcoming to boaters heading north; there are mooring rings at odd places, but nowhere you'd feel all that confident stopping, even by day, and no indication of places of interest accessible from them. 

We pressed on up through the locks and decided to moor at Etruria overnight and possibly for a couple of extra days, as it's an easy place to turn the boat and I hoped to finish painting the name panels on both sides, but the rain put and end to those plans and had it not been for a kind friend visiting on Tuesday evening, bearing tasty food into the bargain, I would have put the day spent at Etruria down as a washout.

Under the railway at Stoke-on-Trent

So on Wednesday, after the welcome gift of chicken buryani had been scoffed for lunch, we set off for the Harecastle Tunnel, passing more sad signs of dereliction and the altogether happier sight of welcoming moorings and  the smart visitor centre at Westport Lake.  As the water started to turn more orange, we knew we were getting close to home, and after waiting for some southbound boats to exit, got the "okay" to enter the tunnel. 

You can do some amazing time-exposure shots going through canal tunnels, especially with the weird colouring in the water at Harecastle, but need a flash to catch the skeleton.  The question is, would he be found fit for work by Atos?

The rain had stopped briefly and the song of blackbirds drifted in as we exited the tunnel and cruised the last few hundred metres to our mooring.  I packed up the things to come home - spare food, laundry - while Jon went for the bus to retrieve the car.  The rain fell again.  It felt desperately sad to be at the end of our excellent adventure, but looking at the pile of 'Nicholson's' guides, the question has to be - where to next, Uppie?

Forty-One Cups of Tea

Bunting and chimneys

For a couple of days, it was summer.

Cavalcade 2013 got off to a soggy start on Saturday 4th May with grey skies and heavy showers, but to be fair the '99% against Austerity' demo was much more of a damp squib, with a small gaggle of people in Guy Fawkes masks with a megaphone sitting on the steps outside the National Gallery, heavily out-numbered by bored cops.

I decided the revolution could manage without me and returned to Little Venice.

The showers fizzled out, the visitor numbers started to rise, and I had a lively couple of hours on the Info stand before returning to 'Uppie', to find that Jon had already been busy with visitors.  We'd told lots of our South of England-based friends and family members about our proposed visit and already seen some of Jon's cousins on Wednesday evening, my Dad on Thursday and Jon's daughter Faye, her husband, their baby son, plus Faye's parents-in-law on Friday, but on Saturday it was all go with several parties of both friends and family arriving at regular intervals.  Jon's estimate was that he'd made forty-one cups of tea by the end of the day!

We could possibly have turned this into a successful commercial enterprise as Uppie's side-hatch proved to be an irresistable attraction to passers-by, tending to be open when we were 'at home' to keep the busy boat cool and well-ventilated for our numerous guests.  I came back from one Info stand session to find Jon chatting to a Japanese couple who had literally stuck their heads in through the side to see what it was like within, and while we were talking to some of our visitors on Sunday, out on the towpath, a pair of American ladies started commenting to each other about how 'cute' it was.  A few lucky tourists were invited aboard when Jon was feeling especially welcoming; an Israeli woman commenting, on seeing our cosy but quite narrow bed, that there must be 'no marital difficulties'!

Only the flowers to do

I also managed to become a minor tourist attraction.  This was on account of making a start to repainting the boat's name and, despite a complete lack of sign-writing experience, changing 'Birmingham' to Kidsgrove'.  Sitting on my folding chair on the towpath, I found myself on the opposite end of the camera lens to usual, listening to people talking in numerous languages and the chink and swearing noises as they stumbled over the frequently-spaced mooring rings along the towpath (a noise that sometimes woke us in the morning and could be heard as we settled down to sleep each night!).  The English comments tended to be either warnings to children not to knock into 'the lady painting her boat', kind remarks and complements or, probably the most frequent, 'You can do mine when you've finished!'

Matching pair

Both Sunday and Monday were dazzlingly bright, and Monday was warm too, and the crowds arrived in droves.  We ran out of event programmes by lunchtime on Monday, a nice change to the soggy bundles we've had left at the end of previous rain-drenched festivals, and Jon's raffle-ticket selling was somewhat more pleasant without the books turning to papier-mache in his hands.

Conditions were also perfect for the evening events.  We had the opportunity to travel with the procession of illuminated boats on Sunday evening aboard 'Tickety-Boo', allowing me to take some unusual night-time views of west London from the canal as we travelled back to the 'winding hole' at Kensal Green to turn the boat and then to join the other vessels, passing under bridges and beside towpaths crowded with spectators.  It was a magical night.

Cavalcade by night

Having had such a good time boating in London, it was tempting to stay longer, perhaps exploring down to Limehouse Basin or out to the Lee and the Olympic Park, but in the end we settled for a morning cruise along the Regents Canal, past London Zoo and as far as Camden Locks, before starting our journey home along the Paddington Arm, back to Bull's Bridge Junction and then north.  But that journey isn't yet complete and we still don't know when we'll be bringing Uppie home, or via which route!

Uppie in The Pool at Little Venice