BOAT PEOPLE

it was with fear and trepidation that i returned to the ‘charlotte rose’ today. i fully expected to see her at a 45 degree angle because i always worry about these things. but she was on top of the water instead of underneath and some kind soul had fastened down the covers on her and seemed to have kept an anonymous eye. thanks, whoever you are.

we emptied off the pools of rainwater that had puddled on the aft cover. we looked around. we read through all the bits of paper that we could find. we decided to go for it. we went back home and phoned matey. we offered 11 grand.

it didn’t take too long for him to get back to us. it looks like the ‘charlotte rose’ will be ours for a smidge under 12 big ones.

so hoorah.

simon stats: he is still at stockton having suffered rain of the ‘pissing down’ variety and being weak. he has a flight of locks to do and an elsan to empty. seeing as how he couldn’t lift an empty gas bottle a full porta potti will be a challenge. they weigh more than you might think. poor old chap; i’ll be back with him soon but i hope he has managed to empty the bog first. it’s a horrible job.

choon stats: ‘liquidator’ by the harry j allstars

all aboard the ‘charlotte rose’. we are very happy to think that she might be ours very soon.

goodnight everyone.

HARSH REALITY

i’ve spoken to simon. things are not good. he is so weak that he could not lift his expired gas bottle from the locker. he is enjoying the help provided by his new walking stick that a nice bloke with a moustache gave to him but he is failing fast. during the time i spent on the boat i saw him collapsing and when you can’t lift a gas bottle then being in charge of a 16 ton boat is not a good idea. i wish so much that i was there with him now. if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. i wish, i wish, i wish.

there is the ‘charlotte rose’ to sort out and then i will get back up to the midlands to help him. if anyone can get there first it might be a good idea.

and then, AND THEN, we have the small matter of the stuff in the times today. there is a lovely (depending on what you think is lovely) picture of iyad allawi laughing his head off about a week before it gets shot off.

the war criminals, bliar and büsh have done such a total runner out of iraq that there are smoke-trails coming out of their handmade shoes. what a pair of total bastards and cowards. here we go, in to nick all the oil, job done in a couple of weeks, johnny towel-head all pleased and grateful and loads of oil and dosh for the western parasites. but, oh no, what happens next? people whose culture is so historic and unfathomable to the fat white pigs of the west have turned around and booted them so hard up the arse that they can’t take it.

what you have to bear in mind is that we live in a world of heavy propaganda. amerikalanders don’t like to see beheadings; they like to think that they can just go in and bomb peasants into submission and take anything that they want. but it didn’t work this time just like it never worked before, they should read history, they should learn, but they never will.

and now bliar has dragged us all, screaming in protest but ignoring all the voices, into the most ghastly mess possible. how many thousands of people does the butcher of downing street want to die so that his ambitions are satisfied?

and now he wants to run away. where i come from, if you start trouble you get it sorted or get a fucking good hiding. the man is a murderer and a cunt. i fucking hate him for what he has done to my country.

anyway, i saw john the bosh and i saw vodka mick. mick is going to teach me how to do ropework and make fenders and that. there’s a packet to be made on the canals with painting and stuff. i wonder if a portion of that packet might ever be mine.

simon stats: last heard from at stockton on the grand onion and dying on his arse.
tune stats: george harrison and the rutles doing the pirate song
jolly roger stats: i want a proper red one; no quarter
trouty stats: ain’t she a good one? love her to bits
exploding head stats: the sooner that bliar goes the better

and with that i shall leave you. love and luck my friends. i wish you well.

GUILT AND REGRET

when we parted today, simon and i hugged and we both cried.

i had to come home. trouty turned up yesterday out of nowhere and we spent a miserable night on the hard vinyl floor of the ‘wey tamarisk’ which involved being like two sardines in a too small tin and me with my head in a coal scuttle.

simon bollocks me and says things like ‘if you don’t do this (or that, or whatever) i’ll come back from the grave and haunt you’. i don’t actually need this. simon is dying and has every right to say the things that he does but i’m not actually all that well myself. i need a rest from it all. i’m not a qualified carer or counsellor and where, i ask myself, is his fucking girlfriend?

he is a special man on a desperate mission; he wants to get the tamarisk to his girlfriend to hand her over. he has no moorings there. he wants to hand the boat over all spot bollock and everything and he is spending a fortune. he coughed up 80 quid on a fucking painted metal jug thing and where is his fucking girlfriend?

he had her name painted on it but at the same time refuses to make a will or anything. he goes on and on, refuses to handle his affairs, has just a few weeks to live and behaves like a madman. he drinks at least a bottle of whisky a day, more like two, and is on this mad mission.

so today i left him. he will be on the grand union tomorrow and the best of luck to him. but i had to come home. i was feeling ill and tired and wanted to be at home for a while where i feel safe but at least i did my bit and i will keep in touch with him and i will go back when i’ve had a rest from it all. but where, oh where, is his fucking girlfriend? he kisses her photo every night and morning. where is she?

he is giving the boat to her on the grounds (unwritten) that she doesn’t change the name of her or sell her. anyone in the telford area who wants to buy a narrowboat in the telford area in about nine weeks should be able to pick up a bargain.

i’m very sorry, but it’s done my head in, all this. the feelings of regret i have for leaving him are very strong but i have to look after myself at the same time. when i have rested up a bit i will go back and find him, even though i think he’s mad (and i think he knows he is too), but i just need a bit of time off from it all. but at least i did a bit, more than his girlfriend did, and she’s getting a boat out of it. oh, and it comes with an island on the river wey which is worth about 2 million quids. ah well…

he was last seen at napton. keep the messages of good luck coming and don’t mention what i have said. keep the faith and get praying. he needs it; he’s so ill.

my heartfelt thanks to ned, JG, omally, trouty, scott, oh and just everyone who has helped simon or sent messages and stuff. i wish i was with him but i’m glad to be at home.

it’s just a blog - i have to be honest.

love…

I keep doing this to myself don’t I? Merrily saying I’ll do a guest blog for someone without a care in the world. When the time comes though, I’m all a-quivering and a-shaking. I’m not like this with my own blog, but then there’s nothing to live up to with that I don’t suppose. In my previous guest bloggings, I’ve really tried to think as they might; kinda difficult in the case of SimonG or Omally, but I found Lisa to be quite similar to me. Or at least how I imagine Lisa to be is quite like me.

Now, the dilemma is this… do I emulate henry’s style or not? Of course, I could never hope to live up to the content he provides, but I could make it look the same by doing that ‘without capital letters’ thing he does. It always really used to bother me when people didn’t use correct capitalisation, but since reading henry’s posts, I’ve found it to be quite a refreshing change because his use of punctuation is always spot on, as is his spelling. In fact it’s a joy to behold someone who has such such an adept grasp of the use of English, but chooses not to bother with certain conventions. Why these conventions have ever arisen quite fascinates me actually. Why do we have the concept of upper and lower case letters? In Chinese there’s no such distinction, and I’m sure there isn’t in other languages which don’t use our alphabet, so why do we have to be so awkward? Good old the Germans use capital letters all over the place - nouns are always capitalised for example. What difference does it make? There are subtle changes afoot though; lowercase ts have always traditionally been a little bit shorter than the other letters which ascend to such heights, and still it is so in lots of fonts, but not in Arial. Same height as a d for instance. Who decides these things anyway? It’s all very mysterious.

As you can tell, I’ve decided not to emulate henry’s visual style, because I’m sure he wouldn’t really like it; after all, it’s his style, not mine. Hurry home henry - I miss you and your blog.

[Posted by car0l]

(Trouty here)

I KNOW IT’S SELFISH BUT ………….

Is it really only a week since I last saw Henry ? He left Thirst Hall to travel to Oxford to meet up with our friend, Simon, aboard the Wey Tamarisk.
For any new readers, Simon is terminally ill and desperately wants to deliver his narrow-boat to his girl friend, Julie, before he dies.
Henry couldn’t bear to know that Simon was struggling with nobody to help him so off he went to man the locks and swing bridges, enabling Simon to conserve at least some of his energy and to fulfil his last wish.
They are on a mission.

Although the days are long and there is enough light to travel for about fourteen hours, Simon is only strong enough to do about four or five.
Progress is slow. Wolverhampton is still a long way off.

Selfishly, I wish they would plough on for as many hours as there is daylight.
This way, I would have my Henry back very soon. This is not to be.
I can’t join them because there is no room. As it is, Henry is having to sleep on the floor of the saloon.
So we keep in touch by phone, several times each day. It isn’t enough.

Some women don’t see their men for weeks and months on end. Soldiers in Iraq, deep-sea fishermen, long distance lorry drivers…… Do those women ever actually get used to it ? Well, I won’t and I don’t want to.
I won’t be happy until he walks back through our front door - even if he spends the ensuing fortnight with his nose glued to the monitor, catching up on what he’s missed - and he probably will !
At least he’ll be home.

Self concept

Ever wonder how the whole world thinks of you? How you seem to everyone else? It’s always puzzled me, how I come across to people and I don’t suppose I can ever really know the answer. Only way I can think of is if I drink a polyjuice potion and transmografimy myself into someone else, then ask revealing questions. Actually, that sounds like a lot of fun! Anyway, the thing that spurred this on is the intake days at tech, at the moment.

Intake days are when the current year sixes that go to junior school, spend a couple of days at the secondary school they’re off to in September. I remember my intake days, and the utter misery they were. I don’t think I cried so much in all my life. Y’see, I didn’t know any of the people at Ercall Wood, because I came from more of a country junior school; rather than the infamous Ercall Junior where all the happier kids came from, because they all knew each other and at least had one friend. So I was all alone, in a big school, and totally upset. Our head of year, a man called Marc Nelson, looked after me wonderfully when I broke down in tears in the middle of breaktime, and he was a good friend for as long as I knew him. Sadly, he died in my second year from cancer, but I’ve never forgotten him. He meant so much to me in those days, and without him I would have lost the will to go anywhere near a classroom. Someday I might blog about him, and the way he touched the lives of my year group, but for now I’ll carry on with this theme.

What I was trying to say was: when I was a year six on my intake day, was I quite as small and vulnerable as the ones now? They all seem so tiny, and so unsure. I’ve never ever felt tall in all my life, being the size I am, and today, for the first time ever, I did. So now, do I seem to all these young people, the way my brother and his friends did to me then? Us being prefects, we’re expected to help out the little ‘uns* when they get lost or upset, and all. But the problem we’re all facing is the inapproachability of the prefects. I remember walking amongst the older kids, and being so terrified. They were huge giants, which you daren’t speak to because it attracts attention to you. I remember Munty, the giant ball of fat that he is, and how terrified we were that he might eat us. I can’t believe we used to draw straws on who had to go speak to him. So how are we supposed to help these kids, if they’re going to be scared of us? Admittedly, the teachers have sort of provided for it. Unlike my intake days of horror, the current ickle ones have been equipped with maps of the school, and sticky labels with their name and house colour on. Just goes to show, against all my cynicism, and hatred of the school system, maybe they are making life easier for their new victims.

* I have never been able to call someone that!

[Posted by Her Royally Earlifimicated Duchessesesesesness Sir² Mortington Bear]

Hello. My name is Fungle Groath - some of you may know me as vice-president of the Association for the Recognition of Straw Ethics, otherwise known as OSTRICH. I’m taking this opportunity, in Mr The Thirst’s absence, to discuss a deplorable practice in which he has been engaged for some time.

We at OSTRICH are primarily concerned with advocating the rights of the humble drinking straw. This poor, defenceless creature is friendly and very social - they can often be found in large groups which congregate on the counters of fast food establishments. They expend few natural resources, consuming only soft beverages which they pass unprocessed, and attack humans only when provoked. Nevertheless, there are people such as Mr The Thirst who delight in mutilating these long-suffering beasts.

Mr The Thirst’s catalogue of crimes can best be described as perverse. He has been sighted, on countless occasions, stabbing holes through the back of the terrified animals with some device of torture* and subsequently fondling them, with apparent delight, as he attaches his lips to their posterior orifice and blows his sputum up their internal cavity. What he gets out of this obscene behaviour we can only speculate, but this is clearly a man whose notions of propriety are very much out of kilter with the rest of society, and whose lewd acts of saxual gratification highlight a very disturbed mental condition indeed.

More worryingly, it has come to our attention that Mr The Thirst has encouraged the same behaviour in others by declaring it one of his ‘favourite things’ on an underground website which advocates, among other things, stalking astronomers, stealing Christmas trees and smearing one’s body in blue watercolour paint, and appears to be run by a man obsessed with Brad Pitt’s willy.

We would like to say to anyone reading this who has ever considered pursuing the example set by Mr The Thirst that cruelty to animals is neither big nor clever, though admittedly it can be jolly good fun. Nevertheless, all decent people would surely agree that such inhumane practices are what one might expect of barbarians or foreigners, and are hardly befitting of modern English gentlemen. We are not prudes, and have no objection to sax between consenting straws, but the filth perpetrated by Mr The Thirst must stop NOW.

There is a man with a collecting tin in the lobby. Please give generously, and perhaps we can have a decent Christmas party this year. Thank you.

*Our intelligence is unclear on precisely what implement Mr The Thirst employs for this grizzly job - we suspect some form of machete.

[Posted by SimonG]

Hello folks. I am speaking to you as a temporary resident of Thirst Hall. I have wiped my feet and my nose and feel a little overwhelmed by the task ahead.

Whilst His Majesty King Henry the Thirst is on his royal progress towards Wolverhampton, the Jolly Roger will be flown at half mast. In order to keep souvenir hunters at bay, a rota has been drawn up of bloggers willing to man the battlements and tip hot splot on potential invaders.

From my vantage point in the West Wing tower I am charged with keeping an eye on the tenant farmers of New Haw as they wend their weary way home from their toils, stopping only at the pub of ultimate swearification to take their ease. How peacefully they must slumber in their mean hovels, knowing that the benevolent eye of Good King Henry is upon them.

As the sun sets, the Thirst Hall ravens are poised to peck out the eyes of Tony Bliar should he pass below the gargoyles. In the distance I can hear the melancholy hoot of a South West Train as it stands idly in a siding, waiting for the right moment to be just too late for honest folk to make their connections.

It will shortly be time for my loyal retainer Mort to serve up the casserole de splote lentil in the baronial dining room, accompanied by a bottle of the best Chateau Lafitte Swig that Tesco could supply. When my tour of duty is over I shall miss the many splendiferous comforts of Thirst Hall and only wish to apologise for any mysterious stains which may have spontaneously appeared and which in no way have anything to do with me.

[Posted by Mort’s Mom]

Why I Like Football, by Henry the Thirst

Everyone in New Haw loves to go to Tescos to buy their swig. Sometimes we hire a coach so we can all go along together and have a lovely singalong on the way. Jack the Lash and Billy No Mates both come along with their delightful Rottweilers on the ends of bits of string. Jack’s Rottweiler is called Tyson, and Billy’s is called “Gertcha the Lurcher".Usually, I like to stroke both of them (the dogs, not Jack and Billy) because I really understand the meaning of the expression “a dog is a man’s best friend".
Often they will accept a fresh marrow bone that I have specially ordered from the butchers.

When we arrived at Mr Tesco’s fine establishment last time, we tied up the dogs outside. Crowds of friendly school children, on an edumacational visit, came running up and asked to take the dogs for a walk along the railway line, where South West Trains encourage pleasure seekers to walk their dogs and play football in between train services. They even switch off the electrified third rail so people can take short cuts across the line. Many a time I have been able to do this when walking back from Tescos to Thirsty Towers, after a late night shopping expedition to buy more milk. So. Off the children went, with their teachers waving them happily goodbye. Inside the shop, we went straight to the fruit and veg section where I bought some beautiful flowers to decorate my new powerboat, the “Wayne Rooney". I bought the boat the other week and it’s great for burning up and down the canal. It starts first time, every time. You should see the admiring looks on the faces of the other boat owners as they see the size of my wash!!

Anyway, back to Tescos. We discovered this wonderful new section where they are selling England flags that you can put on your car or boat. I had to buy six pairs for all the windows but it only cost 40 quids. I got myself an England Shirt too. It’s really great to stand out in a crowd and show my support for good ole Ingerland. Once we had found a cask of Screamingwitch, we made our way happily back to the charabanc*

My new flags (I’ve put one behind each ear) have allowed me to meet some great new people: they have all just shaved their heads and they’ve all got the new Ingerland shirt like me. You can get good coke off of them, which is great for livening up the evening. When the pubs shut we get a kebab and pick a fight. Later they will give me a lift home and have a good LARF driving along the towpath, scaring the ducks and hopefully hitting that feckin swan that keeps trying to bite me.

So, another fabulous day was had by all the happy residents of New Haw.

Oh, and that reminds me.I must write to the Prime Minister and thank him for the lovely letter he had the kindness to send me recently

* An old fashioned word for a coach

swig stats: Queen Elizabeth II Reservoir
goal stats: 4
DSS stats: Me 6; DSS 0
Fag stats: 20 Woodies and half a pack of Players Navy Cut

[posted by Lord Hutton QC]

Yarrrr! Whilst that scurvy dog Capn Thirst is away a-visitin’ forren lands, I managed to get me and me crew of cut-throats aboard his ship! Yarrr! Capn Omally (Grace to my friends) is now in charge! Hoist the Main Sail and fetch me another jug o’ swig! Ah-harrrr!!!

Now listen up! I have it on good authority that Capn T. will be away for about 2 weeks so, me hearties, I reckon we can have ourselves a fine time in this old tub, a-guzzling all the swig and eatin all the pasties! Let’s make a plan: we wants every one of you lily-livered slugabeds to write a blog entry for Capn T. so’s his poor defenceless ship don’t go floundering on no rocks or nuffink and keeps on steaming along on a nice straight course. Yarrr!! If yer just email me yer blogs, I’ll post ‘em up here quick-smart. Now, me hearties, who’s gonner join the party? First come first served, I’ll be a-posting in order of all who say “Aye Capn!” in them thar comments down below. So be you a-swigging and a dancin’ or be you a-sittin’ down on the poop deck? Yarrr!! C’mon me hearties, Old Tom is a-playin’ a fine shanty on his squeeze-box!

I DUB MYSELF SIR RHOSIS OF THE RIVER

what a day!

there was explodification upon hms ‘the charlotte rose’ this morning. the electrics are so bollocksed that when i went to start her up this morning and when one of the misplaced isolator keys had vibrated loose there was an unpleasant sound. then the nasty-smelling smoke started to come up through the hatches.

then the nasty-smelling smoke started to come out of the gusset of my pants. i turned everything off and started to sweat. the hatches got ripped off and i checked for fire. then i lay down on the decking and had a nervous breakdown. i called the river rescue bods and had to pretend to be someone else. i whizzed down the towpath and had a word with the bloke from the chandlery and he trotted along with an electric measuring thing. steve from the marina where i was supposed to be dry-docked for the survey turned up and they both peered gloomily into the engine housings.

there was no pushing back of trilbys nor sucking of teeth; boaty people not being like that. but they were both frankly gobsmacked at the parlous state of the wiring. they couldn’t make it out. stuart from the chandlery (gawd bless yer, mate) wondered if there was a safety certificate for the boat. there is but there has been some ‘pissing about’ (technermological term) with the wiring since that would make it invalid. steve from the marina sorted the starter, although all the other electrics were knocked out, and i took her upstream to the drydock. the surveyor was already there and he got cracking straight away. he did all the engine and stuff while we waited for another boat to come out of the drydock. verdict: rather arse.

the drydock was nerve-wracking. guess who left his camera on board so he couldn’t get the fab pics he wanted? ho hum…

the surveyor smacked the hull about with a hammer and ultrasounded and had concerns with various thisses and thats. he spent four hours on her and did the lot. steve bodged up the busted electrics for free. i emptied an elsan thing (what a nice job) for free. we filled up with water, again for free.

then back to pelican wharf. more nightmare. after all the hell i was trying to wind and the engine stalled. broadside across the stream with no power is not very funny. i eventually moored, turned everything off, put the covers on and we went to the pub. had a pint and then got a cab home. omally turned up hours later having suffered extreme torture at the hands of south west trains.

so. la la.

i must now decide whether i really can face owning a boat. it does my head in really badly, all this, as my nerves are bad.

thinking, thinking, trying not to worry….

and tomorrow we try to find simon the sailor up the oxford and omally will meet a man who really DOES have something to worry about.

i don’t know when i’ll be back.

but when i am i’ll tell you about my sea-magnet. every home should have one.

god (who may, or may not, exist) love you.

goodnight.

I’VE ONLY GOT A SMALL ONE

that’s right, i’ve only got a small blog for you to read.

we moored up by pyrford lock last night and i started to talk to other boaty people. there was a hire boat which featured amongst its bold crew, two young lads. i didn’t have my gps with me but i told them about geocaching and told them where exactly ‘weyside wander’ and weyside wander 3′ were. i hope they found them.

i’ve been fiddling about with boats, poking my nose in where it probably wasn’t wanted, getting all covered with grease and diesel and canal water and am, in short, about as happy as i’m ever going to be.

the good ship charlotte rose is moored up at byfleet boat club and we came home for refuelling of swig, fags, and boring old food. as soon as trouty gets back from tesco we shall wander off and clamber back aboard. we are just kicking our heels until this survey gets done on friday.

simon stats: i spoke to him a few times recently. he got as far as abingdon, which he liked very well, and he is now moored at iffley. his julie is coming to see him on friday. i’ll see him at the weekend.
when he spoke to trouty on the phone he cried. i’m not surprised. he must be bloody terrified. he appreciates all the messages that have been sent to him and so do i. thank you for all the love and support.
one man, one mission. one hell of a great bloke.

now i must weigh anchor. see you when i see you. g’night.

QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS.

today i actually asked him. and this has been difficult for me.
’simon, do you really want me to come with you?’

and i can’t tell you what his exact reply was because it was private. whoah there! it was positive. so next weekend i will be on a train trying to get somewhere near the oxford after the survey on the charlotte rose has been done and that is all put to bed.

i can’t wait because i need to go and find him. he makes me strong with his strength and he needs help with things. how to explain? well, he needs someone to do the lines and not be a total tit. he needs someone to get him to wolverhampton. i need a reason to live. really it’s a good match although the circumstances could have been better.

the question was hard. he might have said ‘no’. and i didn’t want him to say that.

simon stat: boat fixed and 3 locks past pangbourne.

he needs the messages so keep them coming.

thanks.

LOSS

i did do an amusing and thought-provoking blog. and then that bastard ‘blogger’ went and lost it.

i can’t be arsed to do it all again. but the most important bit is this…

simon got as far as pangbourne and then he split a fuel line. last time we spoke he was waiting for the aquatic equivalent of the RAC to turn up.

i have his mobile number. if anyone would be kind enough to text him with words of encouragement, i will give the number to GOOD people who e-mail me for it. he’s dying and needs all the goodness of the heart that anyone has to spare.

i’m putting out a genuine ‘please’ on this one…

h.

SHAVEN-HEADED, COKED-UP SCUM

what a lovely day! birds go tweet, sun goes shine; all that sort of thing.

as you all well know, it does take a great deal to put mr the thirst off his pint. but we shall come back to that later.

woke up on time and fairly bright and early, kissed goodbye to stu and sarah (great guests, come back anytime) all breakfasted and done and dusted and trouty put on the train to farnham for cat-sitting duties.

la, la la lah. what to do next? *drums fingernails*

in the pub i saw john the bosh. we tried to have a conversation but unfortunately the coke-fiends came in. i have tried cocaine myself and i can vouchsafe that this particular class A drug is unparallelled in its ability to make me talk bollocks. i enjoyed the sweetly metallic tang as it slid down behind my soft palate, i enjoyed the ritual too. on the other hand i DO prefer swig and always have done. cider is my game and nothing else will do really. this is why i sneer at…

…in they came. shaven-headed enormous blokes who are obviously well paid for whatever it is that they do. they look as hard as nails. they ARE as hard as nails. they wear fashionable clothes. they are tanned and can obviously pull ‘birds’ at 100mph. and they were coked off their nuts.

it is my belief that all drugs should be made legal. prOscribing them makes no difference because they will still be there and you can buy heroin (for example) in the tiniest villages in the land. now, i’m not ‘pro-drugs’ now (although i used to be) but i know where they are and that is everywhere. you can’t just make these things ‘against the law’. in my opinion you have to realise that mankind has always used substances to alter his state of consciousness and always will do; if the shitty government would ever wake up and realise this the crime rate would drop by what i estimate to be at least two-thirds. for example; telling a smack-head that his hundred-quids-a-day habit is against the law makes not the slightest bit of difference. just give them pure stuff and clean needles; they will die anyway. and the rest of us won’t get burgled.

i was going to blog about orange juice.
i was going to say that you just can’t get the stuff anymore in the flavour that i like and that’s TINNED orange juice. now i have to buy tins of orange segments so that i can get that really great tinned taste off the juice. the last tin of juice that i bought was from western road branch of waitrose - it was years ago. if anyone has a stockpile of canned orange juice, please let me know. i might have to look on eBay.

being not entirely daft, i can tell when people are coked-up. i can see the little signs that they do to each other. when they start vibrating and doing stupid little dances my suspicions are confirmed. these are big blokes but with a g. of charlie up their bugle they are are worse than wild horses. i left the pub, went to tesco, went home and felt rather sad. there is a stupid footy match on tonight. i hope england get stuffed. i can’t bear the ‘patriotism’ any longer.

simon stat: bad news; he split a fuel line and was stuck at pangbourne with diesel falling into his bilge. the aquatic version of the RAC is on its way and hopefully will have the bits to put ‘wey tamarisk’ back together again. i have his mobile number. should anyone want to send him a cheery text please e-mail me for the number. he would like it. from as far away as possible please.

he’s so pleased to know that he is ‘world famous’ now.

down with scummers
up with simon

if you are of the praying type, you know now where to send them. me? i just cry because there’s nothing i can do for him. i spoke to his girlfriend on the phone. she started crying and she won’t even know what to do with the boat when he gives it to her. what a mess.

he’s on a mission. point all your positive thoughts in the pangbourne direction.

g’night.

SALAD DAYS

when i was a ikkle chap my parents used to have a record. it was of a musical called ’salad days’. god knows who wrote it, i don’t. it was something to do with a magic piano…

“i’m looking for a piano”
“a piano?”
“yes, a piano”
“i’m looking for a piano, one that makes you laugh”
(a ha ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha)
“i’m looking for a p.i.a., a p.i.a.n.o”

etc…

anyway, stu and sarah came today. they have just got back from freezyland and are stopping the night before they go to a picnic in clapham.

they went off and did a cache and then we went to see the good ship ‘charlotte rose’ and then we went to the pelican for a wee bit of swig. and then we went home and we had salad. and then we had fruit salad.

so today was, indeed, a ’salad day’. except we ain’t really that young anymore. but it was a fair title for a blog.

the only bad news is that i can’t get hold of simon the sailor. i will phone him again tomorrow.

in the meantime, have a great weekend.

MORE FEAR, MORE BRAVERY

there was a time when i wasn’t scared about things, but now i get in a right two and eight. anxiety and panic attacks aren’t very funny; and to think that i used to get up to all sorts all them years ago. but now, things are rather different.

i’ve been sweating bullets over the boat, made it all up in my head that when i went back that she would be sinking and that IT WOULD ALL BE MY FAULT.

of course, she was not sinking and so i checked the bilges, greased my gland (ahem, technermological term) and made sure she was secure. now i have a whole week to get in a pickle over the survey next friday.

we had a climb aboard and a chat with aiden and jan on their boat and then we came home.

i spoke to simon twice today. for tonight he is moored at henley where they are getting set for the regatta. he gave me two telephone numbers; one for his married girlfriend in wolverhampton and one for his old mum in guildford. he wants me to call them. of course i will, but they won’t be easy calls to make. i think he wants me to know how to get hold of someone if there is some ‘news’ to give me.

simon is full of fear. but he has a right to be, whereas, i do not.

he is very pleased to hear that i mention him in my blog so, in future, i will post simon stats. and then we can all keep up to date with him and wish him well at every turn of the waterways.

HOW VERY SINISTER

thinking about what to blog about i remembered a curious thing about the ‘three men in a boat’ episode; vodka mick and merman and myself are left-handed.

i have always liked being left-handed. it can get in the way of things a bit but it makes me feel special and that, i like. the biggest difficulty for me was handwriting because at my school you had to use a fountain pen (what for? the biro wasn’t exactly a new invention even in those far-off days and i don’t know if you can even buy a fountain pen nowadays except perhaps a gold one to give to a bank manager as a retirement present and never to be used) and the side of my left hand used to drag in the ink as i wrote. all rather messy. i taught myself to write from underneath the line, so to speak, although i have seen other southpaws who write with their hand hooked over and writing from above the line. my first form teacher at school was left-handed and he had quite distinctive writing and i now find that i can often spot from manuscript if the author is a member of my special club. i quite like my own handwriting; it’s ‘different’, you know.

i’m also left-footed and left-eyed. if you don’t believe me about being left-eyed just try firing a rifle.

some people are very left-handed and have to have the knife and fork the other way round but i’m not like that. in many things i am just about ambidextrous and when i cut glass i do it right-handed but that’s more to do with the way the measuring sticks and tee-square work. rulers have always been a pain in the butt because you have your hand over the bit where you are trying to see. you can get left-handed rulers (you can, really) but i never bothered. you can get special can-openers and scissors but i get on fine with the ordinary ones - in fact, i’m not sure that i could use special ones.

one thing that i do have though is a left-handed cheque book. it really works well. now all i need is some money and i’ll be able to write cheques AND fill in the stubs with ease.

have a good evening and friday.
(but if you are a special sinister person like myself, have an even more special one).

GOODBYE SIMON, HAPPY SAILING…

this is a wee bit difficult to write.

when you know someone that you rather like, well, you want to see them again. but when you know that you never will see them again it is all rather sad.

simon cleared off when i was up the psychiatrist’s. i had asked him to wait while i was away but he still went. perhaps the goodbyes might have been too painful for him, as if everything else is not already too painful. i’d already told him that he was now world famous by virtue of the blog. i took some pictures of him. i’m not sure how he felt about it at all really. but he did say some very nice things to me that i would like to keep private.

it would be very wrong to capitalise on simon’s misfortune in order to write a blog, but he was such a special man that i simply cannot not mention him. i got back from the quack’s and he had gone. and that was that. gone.

we went upstream and moored south of walsham gates again. there was a very handy telegraph pole thing and we tucked in for the night. i got attacked by a juvenile swan who bothered to get out onto the bank to try to bash me up. a smack round the head with a copy of the times did the trick.

i have a metal mallet for bashing mooring pins in. i noticed that its neck was getting badly cracked and suggested to trouty that we should get a new one before disaster struck. in the garden of the anchor, when a party from the WI at reigate were doing some very bad watercolours of my boat, i found a ten-pound note. so this morning i used the tenner to buy a new club hammer. guess how much it cost? 9.95 quids. ah well. you have to have one in case the sky falls in and everything goes wrong.

now, gentle reader, read on… dot dot dot…

at new haw lock we moored, turned the engine off, did the lock emptying and buggering about. she slipped a bit when i tried to restart, but she started. i avoided the weir-drift, got into the lock and then the engine died. oh fuck. this is not a good situation. being stuck in a lock with no power is really, really, really not good. but we managed. she restarted and we came through the lock tail. but then, oh big bollocky arseholes, there was no coolant coming through and i was in the middle of the flow with the water and wind behind me. the engine might have exploded if i hadn’t got it turned off dead quick so i grounded her about five feet from the bank and turned the engine off - and then i started to panic. i’m pretty good at panicking. so i have 15 grandsworth of boat that doesn’t actually belong to me yet with a buggered coolant system and the current and wind behind me trying to broadside me right across the canal. i got her beached on silt. trouty jumped for it and only got a minor soaking. i had a look under the hatches. the cooling system for the lister works by sucking water out of the canal and putting it through the engine and then spitting it back out again. there was nothing coming out so i figured that there was nothing coming in. OK. sort the weed filter. the weed filter filters out weed but it works off water that comes in through the sea-cock. the sea-cock is below the waterline and if it doesn’t work, you sink. you sink the whole boat like driving a BMW off the end of a pier, so i was bricking it.

i threw the lines over to trouty and we got her tied in. i jumped for the shore and nearly killed myself (i’ve just taken pictures of all my bruises) and then wondered what on earth i was going to do. and then a boat came along. it’s a bit of a done deal that boaty people help each other so i borrowed a big gangplank to get back on and started to fiddle ‘down below’ (if you see what i mean).

i pumped out all my bilges and turned off the sea-cock as i did not want to sink straight away. filled with fear i started to use my limited engineering knowledge to try to put things right. here’s an analogy: imagine you drove your car into a river and it was sinking a fair bit, with all your property in there too. then, a bloke comes along and says ‘oh, yes, i can get that sorted for you, i can have that up on a ramp in 6 weeks’. i was shitting myself.

i cleaned out the weed filters, i fiddled with my cock, i nearly started to cry, i cursed god who does not exist, i prayed to god, i had a nervous breakdown. and then i mended it.

we were so far aground that it took ages to get off again. the poor engine was so overheated that i nearly killed it but we did get going, eventually.

we didn’t have that far to go, just down through cox’s lock, do the winding and back into the berth. but by this time i was a shuddering nightmare. how trouty puts up with me i don’t know. but i do have a problem with my nerves, they are all shot to bits. yet we lived to tell the tale, i’m covered in enormous bruises, trouty is in farnham (she went on the train to get away), and i’m pondering existence.

they say that ‘the man who never made a mistake never made anything’.

i have to face my fears.

i wonder if i will ever face them like simon. probably not. here’s to you mate. god love yer.

(and buy a hammer before you need one rather than cry your eyes out, i’d have been bollocksed without the new one)

goodnight everyone.

EMERGENCY NEW BLOG

we saw a boat called ’sam stone’. this made the honourable merman think of a song called ’sam stone’ by john prine.

now how the hell i’ve never heard this song before i really don’t know.

but now my (ahem) 24 hour record dealer has supplied a copy and i heard it for the first time.

now, that’s what i call a song.

have a listen…

THREE MEN IN A BOAT

the charlotte rose set sail with myself (skipper), trouty (midshipman) and vodka mick (cabin boy) on board.

we could not get hold of merman so we chugged along. trouty left the boat because she didn’t want to spend the night amidst the wild animalism that is the ghastly combination of myself and mick. can’t say i blame her.

we met my brother, matt, under the parvis road bridge. he looked around the boat and i went off to the chandlers to buy an isolator key. 3 bloody quids 20 for a bit of plastic. what a load of old rubbish.

we moved on down one of my favourite lengths of the waterway. we didn’t do too bad, me and mick. he used to be in the navy (as he never stops going on about) and he does know a bit about boaty things. well, really big grey boaty things with massive guns on but he understands the principle of boatification on the inland waterways. and along we chugged…

‘how far are we going?’ asked vodka mick. well, the answer was about as far as we got before we had to turn round. we got as far as newark lock and there i met the nicest man i have probably ever met. we were going through the lock when merman called. merman was up the A1 and heading our way and we agreed to turn the boat round and meet him at pyrford lock because he knew where it was and he could park the mervan there.

simon’s boat was called the ‘wey tamarisk’. i just met him at the lock, never seen him before in my life. so i came through the lock and did the ‘winding’ (that’s as in wind, not as in clock. it means turning the boat round) and then got out of the way while a hire boat came through with simon’s ‘tamarisk’. me and mick stayed out of the lock but we agreed to meet simon again up by the anchor. he wanted to get into pyrford basin to buy diesel. we saw him later. he told us he was going to wolverhampton. he told us he was dying. of cancer.

what on earth can you say? - nothing. we moored just a little upstream of simon and waited for merman to turn up. which he did. and then we went down to the pub by the lock. we sat in the garden and watched the boats. we saw a hire boat coming down. it is always good entertainment to see what people who aren’t sure what they are doing get up to.

but we could not understand what they were doing. when we heard the planks on the lock gate getting smashed by the rising boat we went to have a look and see if we could help. the top gates were jammed and wouldn’t shut properly, they were so open that you couldn’t open the bottom gates; too much water coming through.

we tried so hard to sort them gates, and none tried harder then that simon. and he fell in. he gave me an enormous wad of soggy money to look after when he went to change back on his boat. and do you know, those miserable bastards just fucked off. they smashed the lock gates. and they couldn’t be arsed to moor up, buy him a drink and say thank you. they were norwegian and going out from guildford for four weeks. i spend all my time down the canal and when i see them again there will be all fucking hell to pay.

simon became unwell. merman and vodka mick hit it off rather because they talked esoteric boaty chat. merman went to sleep in the mervan and mick and i stayed up til 3am and chewed the fat. i saw simon for the last time in the morning. we walked to the marina and he bought a new chimney. we all went to the pub and then trouty turned up. we tried to get simon’s old chimney off but we couldn’t at all because it was so rusted on. and then he was feeling ill and tired and wanted to be alone.

so here is to simon. i hope he gets to wolverhampton. i’m not ashamed to say that i cried when i shook his hand and said goodbye. what a lovely man.

then we came home, done the winding, moored up, and merman drove us all home in the mervan which he had thoughtfully taken up to the pelican and then pedalled back to the boat on his little bike.

all in all, it was a fantastic weekend.

god love you simon. you are one of the best people i ever met.

TODAY

i felt so ill that i didn’t get up until nearly 4.

then there was the race to tesco followed by a brief visit to the pub of ultimate swearification. saw john the bosh. he is not well either on account of having a not-very-well disinfected camera tube thing poked up his bugle while he was having fun at cancer hospital. vodka mick is out of work and skint. horrible oggi has had a new tat. boxer was nowhere to be seen, although apparently he had come looking for the boat and virtually got told to fuck off by a concerned boat owner.

i tried to phone merman, my mum, my brother and my brother’s missus. no replies all round.

i cooked salmon with butter and lemon and a nice mixed rice dish what i made up with a fair amount of panache.

and i won the dressing up game, thanks to my wardrobe assistant, the fair trouty.

back to the boat tomorrow. i can hardly wait.

and no, simong, ‘panache’ was not an ingredient.

sleep well.

“THERE IS NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, QUITE SO MUCH FUN AS SIMPLY MESSING ABOUT IN BOATS” kenneth graham

last night we spent our first night on the charlotte rose.

we moored just south of walsham gates, the only turf-sided lock left on the canal. there is a weir there where the river wey departs the navigation. merman jumped ship at the anchor in pyrford. he doesn’t like the smell of the weirs but i love them so we went that little bit upstream to moor.

there was another boat moored up there and i won’t tell you the name of it for reasons which will become clear. there was a couple on the boat and i popped along for a boaty chat. he had a look around ours and then we popped along to see his. it was a lovely boat. 55 foot bought from new. it was lovely. we had a look inside and we were very impressed. god only knows how much a boat like that would cost now.

then this couple came back to ours. we stood on the patio that is our stern end and nattered of this and of that. as it got dark and a bit of swig was had the conversation got a bit swearier. and then the hair started going up on the back of my neck.

the ‘woman’ was a bloke. i can’t prove it but i know that he was.

very convincing but as the sun went down, she might have had tits and that but she started talking like a bloke. and women cannot do that; no matter how hard they try.

i said to trouty, i should have looked at their boat and said ‘oh, i see you have a TV on board, we just have a TRANNY’.

the sun went down and we went to bed. the birdsong was fantastic in the morning. we did the winding in the morning, there was a massive flow on the water before we hit the canal off the river. trouty nearly lost the whole shebang down by the anchor. you have to watch out for the current and the weir drift. oh, how much fun we have.

if anyone wants to stay on the boat or go out before the 18th well, that will be ok. let us know.

i must be off; vodka mick is telling me a rather disgusting story…

goodnight all.

EVERYTHING SMELLS OF DIESEL

i kind of booked a surveyor for the charlotte rose. tomorrow i will have to call the boatyard to book a slot for the ‘dry’ (ahem, read ‘wet’) dock so the hull can be ultrasounded.

up we went to the boat. now, boaty people are a curious breed. with classic cars you get things like MG owners flashing each other (their lights, don’t be smutty) but with boaty people you have a kind of built-in fraternity. i spoke to aiden who is moored a few berths away. he spent about an hour crawling around under the engine hatches of the charlotte rose. we sorted all the electrics and did a weird kind of ‘how much fuel is there in there’ thing.

most boats you can just dip the tank with a clean broom-handle. not with this one. there is a right-angle in the line which prohibits such action. aiden went and got his hammer. then we crawled around under the hatches knocking the tank with the hammer and tried to guess how much there was in the tank by using the power of sound only. we thought there might be two inches. narrowboats don’t have fuel gauges. we ran the engine for a bit (2 cylinder, water-cooled lister, if you are interested) and chewed the fat in a boaty kind of way.

it started to rain. aiden went back to his boat to put his tools away before they got rusty. and we took the charlotte rose out. we went to new haw lock and moored and i went to the petrol station to buy some diesel at car prices. a gallon of diesel should keep us going for at least a day. we should have got red diesel but, hey ho. tomorrow we shall have well enough to get us to pyrford basin where we can get enough of the cheap red stuff and make a booking for the dry dock.

i turned the boat around twice today; both times intentionally. as we were mooring at the pelican we bumped (not literally) into john and roy. as we are so boaty we invited them aboard. roy does not like springers (metal too thin) but they were impressed by her innards.

tomorrow we head south. i wonder when or if you will ever hear from us again.

in the meantime, my face and hands are black, the comedy trousers are besmirched, we went through coxes lock (with the shittiest, most arseholest paddles on the whole canal) twice, i was not driving a hire boat (kudos), everything was good and i smelt of that lovely smell…

diesel.

AHEM, A CORRECTION

it has come to the attention of mr the thirst that he may have mistakenly misled some readers of the world’s fabbest blog in the whole universe ever. mr the thirst does not wish to go around miseling (a new word, i just made it up, just like shakespeare)folk and so he wishes to make the following quite clear…

PERSONAL STATEMENT:
i wish to apologise to any readers whose trilbys were dented when they bounced off the ceiling at the thought of myself and trouty being engaged to be married. we are not and never will be. we are perfect chums and just knock about having loads of fun together. a bit like on ‘last of the summer wine’, except, instead of going downhill in an unlikely bath on wheels contraption or a comedy brass bedstead we intend to perish on a sinking narrowboat.
trouty has had her engagement ring for about 250 years and so she did not want her hair-loom pinched by mr boxer whose financial circs are possibly best described as ‘permaskint’. so she hid it while he was at thirst hall for a bit of nosebag.
when i was bashing out my TRUE JOURNAL i didn’t even think of the confusion that may have ensued. but in mitigation i would say that i was rather, ahem, ‘refreshed’.

so, there you have it. and now the comedy duo are going to play on the canal and have lots more jolly fun.

we pass this way but once. that’s what we say.

lots of love,
h. & t.

WHAT I DID ON MY BANK HOLIDAY

is the same as i do almost everyday.

trouty was in london. i went to the rub-a-dub.

i cooked sossidge and mash for messrs bosh and boxer.

bosh went home early. boxer cried but twice.

trouty hid her engagement ring.

i filled myself with fear about taking the ‘charlotte rose’ upstream tomorrow.

i have a whole boat to play with. why on earth am i not playing with her?

you tell me.

g’night.