right. this has taken some organising, i can tell you.

what happened was that bottles that have been dredged out of the wey navigation over the years have been donated to raise club funds. i want to help maximise these funds but really i want to ensure that these bottles go somewhere where they will be treated with the respect that i feel they deserve. but i don’t know about bottles or what they might be worth or who might want them.

so, i have done my best to catalogue and photograph them and then i will send links to flaskophiles or whatever and ask them to have a look. if you know what you are talking about or even if you don’t please leave a comment. please don’t leave an anonymous comment or the anon-trap will get you. please be helpful and say things like ‘it’s nearly all a bit rubbish but numbers x and z are worth a fiver each. something like that.

whatever happens it will be a fun experiment and if you want to email me my address is henrythethirst@aol.com. don’t forget to clicky on the piccy to enlarge it.

have fun and welcome to the old bottle section of the edmund trebus memorial wing of the rubbish out of the canal museum…

1. green glass - RW&S WHITE 1d deposit charged - stopper: white’s
2. aqua glass - 3 fluted sides, one flat - top of neck a bit sad

3. codd - CLAYTON BROS LONDON
4. codd - GOULD’S WIGHT PEBBLE WATERS - THE WELL AT CARISBROOKE CASTLE TRADEMARK

5. green glass - RW&S WHITE - stopper: white’s
6. blue glass - DIUROMIL - not that old judging by the cap

7. brown glass - ROSS’S RELIABLE GINGER BEER DUMFRIES - stopper: beasley’s beers
8. green glass - C. VAUX AND SONS SUNDERLAND - stopper: johnson durham

9. green glass - RW&S WHITE - stopper: white’s
10. green/brown glass - S JONES BLYTH - stopper: dover & n baxter ltd newcastle

11. codd - ALLEN & LLOYD MINERAL WATERS ALDERSHOT - bottle: redfearn bros barnsley
12. codd - STANSFIELD BROS RIPLEY & GUILDFORD - bottle: the rylands barnsley

13. flask type bottle - LASCELLES TICKNER & CO CASTLE BREWERY GUILDFORD
14. ditto but larger size

15. R. PYLE’S GINGER BEER RHODES ST ST JAMES ROAD LIVERPOOL ROAD ISLINGTON
16. STANSFIELD BROS RIPLEY & GUILDFORD

17. green glass - BURNS DUMFRIES
18. green glass - HOLT SHREWSBURY

19. flask - SCHWEPPES BY APPT TO THE KING & PRINCE OF WALES
20. A.W. RAY HARLINGTON

21. R WHITE’S - stopper: white’s?
22. STANSFIELD BROS RIPLEY & GUILDFORD - stopper: simmonds reading

23. green glass - RHYL BOTTLING COMPANY
24. green glass - HOLT SHREWSBURY

25. codd - F WHEELER’S PURE AERATED WATERS GUILDFORD - bottle: dan rylands ltd barnsley
26. codd - STANSFIELD BROS RIPLEY - bottle: carrington shaw & co st helens

27. aqua glass - OWBRIDGES LUNG TONIC HULL - lip chipped
28. GOODALL BACKHOUSE & CO YORKSHIRE RELISH

29. codd - A HARWOOD STAINES - maker: dan ryland 4 barnsley
30. flask - TAYLOR & CO AERATED WATERS STAINES

31. R WHITE - badly scuffed - stopper: white’s
32. stoneware - BRUFORD & CO CRANLEIGH

33. PURNELL’S HONEY SWEETENED GINGER BEER
34. PURNELL’S OLDE FASHIONED GINGER BEER

35. ARNOLD PERRETT GINGER BEER GLOUCESTER - nice glaze, good condition
36. NICHOLSON & SONS GINGER BEER MAIDENHEAD - nice glaze, good condition. stopper

37. R WHITE’S GINGER BEER - stopper: white’s. good condition
38. R WHITE

39. inkwell
40. inkwell?

41. bottle/jar
42. bottle/jar - denby pottery

43. nice little jug - good condition
44. ink bottle

45. DANIELLS LTD
46. F WHEELER GUILDFORD - stopper

47. denby bottle
48. STANSFIELD BROS RIPLEY

49. ink bottle
50. ? bottle

51. R WHITE
52. CASTLE BREWERY GUILDFORD - good condition - white’s stopper

53. jar - POTTED MEAT SAISBURY’S
54. jar - BLOATER PASTE SAINSBURY’S

55. ?
56. ?

57. TAYLOR & CO STAINES - good condition - stopper: taylor (but it doesn’t seem to fit)
58. R WHITE

whew! that was my longest blog entry ever. i hope it works. now then, the main thing is that this is FUN. i’m not a bottleologist so if i’ve made any mistakes i’m sorry. the bottles are as i got them and i know the stoppers are mixed up but there you go. perhaps you are very old and one of these bottles reminds you of when you used to travel by rowing boat in the late 19th century and used to chuck your empty beer bottles in the river. if so you might want to make an offer. or perhaps you know an interesting fact. or something. anything.

thanks for bothering and a warm welcome to any new readers of my blog. feel free to drop in any time. don’t forget to click the pic and that my email address is up there ^^^

cheers! (clink chink)

on saturday i got itchy feet. i just hadn’t had enough exercise and i thought i should go for a walk and, at the same time, do a little to beautify the neighbourhood.

i’d bought some flower seeds, quite a lot of them actually, and as i walked about i scattered them like little johnny appleseed who i read about once in a comic years ago. the kind of thing that must have been in ‘look and learn’.

i wonder if anything will come up?

the craze i refer to is sweeping the nation and i know this because of a txt msg i had received earlier in the day. the craze is:

PULLING STUFF OUT OF CANALS

i’m not the only person who does this and this was confirmed AGAIN when i got to the boat club.

at weekends there is a barrow of old tat like paperbacks for 50p for sale to raise funds for the club and when i looked at the barrow there were something a little ‘extra’ about the display…

bottles. old bottles.

but where had they come from?

over the years they have been dredged out of the canal by the maintenance team and wound up being looked after by trev. trev has now retired and as he is a member of the club he donated them. loads of bottles and jars. they were going to be sold off for pennies.

i’ve asked that none get sold until i have had a chance to catalogue and photograph them and oooooh, who knows what may happen to them. some might be worth some serious money but even if they are not it will mean a great deal to me just to be able to hold them and wonder and clean them and listen to them as they whisper to me.

i’m in serious ‘old rubbish out of the navigation’ heaven. tomorrow i had best phone the commodore and make sure this is all legit although knowing my luck i bet they flogged them all to a passing scummer to use as air-rifle targets for three quid the lot.

keep your fingers crossed for the safety of the bottles and pass me my conservators hat.

we went boating at the weekend.

we went slowly up to godalming which is about as far as you can get in that direction until they reopen the wey and arun. we haven’t been all the way to godalming since last year.

we stopped downstream of bowers lock which is near burpham. some other boats that we knew were there and having a bit of a party. these days i find amateur drinkers a bit annoying so we had an early night. i magged the lock but only fished out a couple of nails and nuts and bolts.

at guildford there was a hire boat coming down through millmead lock, the very first lock for hirers of craft out of guildford boathouse. they were a nice couple on board and able to laugh at themselves which is a good sign. we carried on and spent the night at st catherine’s lock. i magged it thoroughly but got nothing. the next day we saw our old friend, matt, and his new boat which is called barley something or other. he is giving his old boat, carrot, away because it would have cost him three and a half grand to have it scrapped. we carried on. the elsan tip at godalming wharf was out of order. we turned round and started our journey home.

just in case you are a new reader (welcome you, you know who you are) you might be wondering what i do all this magging with. i use a powerful magnet called a sea searcher to pull out ferrous objects of interest.

at unstead lock i got a windlass. binGO. get IN. it was a bit rusty but how good to feel the magnet clicking on and that telltale weight on the line. i knew it was a windlass before it broke the surface.

when we got back to guildford i dithered about a bit trying to moor up and eventually got in alongside the flood meadows. i was just banging the mooring pins in when what we call in the trade ‘a silly old (scuse me, doorbell)’ came past in a narrowboat called [name witheld on legal grounds like for when i drill holes in it and set it on fire and don’t want to incriminate myself] and had the temerity to suggest that i might like to ‘tidy things up and go that way or this and then he could get in’ and i stood up slowly and suggested that ‘or he could go up there’. there was a time not so very long ago (about 5 months actually) when matey would have won himself an argument in the tombola of doom for that one. i let it pass though.

next day at triggs lock it was quite a jolly scene. it put me in mind of e j gregory’s boulter’s lock, sunday afternoon except, of course, it was nothing like that at all. except the atmosphere, you know.

we were going downhill and two hire boats were in the lock going uphill. i was idly fishing for windlasses and a bloke off one of the boats asked me what i was measuring. i told him what i was fishing for and he said that they had lost one. lost one? oh really? KERCHING!!!

so i sold him quite a nice one for a fiver and found out where they had thrown theirs in.

the other boat in the lock was the nice couple that we had met before. i asked if i could step across their stern to hand over the replacement windlass. what happened next was really interesting, to me at any rate.

the man on the boat saw this little transaction and said to me ‘oh, you’ve got a nice job, haven’t you?’ or words to that effect. and he said it a bit sarky like. a bit mocking.

now as you all know i have a bit of a problem with self-esteem and all that, but i have learned an awful lot in the recent months and here’s something that i noticed…
he couldn’t have been more envious if i had painted him emerald with a hint of apple. i could hear the wheels going round in his head. he was thinking ’stuff this, i have just paid a million pounds to hire this boat for five minutes and i really like it and everything and along comes this shambolic individual who has his own shambolic boat and has somehow acquired the knack of fishing five pound notes out of a canal on a lovely day at triggs lock and he’s using a magnet on a string and i have to go to work and I WANT TO BE HIM, NOT ME. I WANT TO BE HIM’

and he was not alone in that sentiment because i am getting better now and i, probably for the first time in my life, want to be me.

anyway, off we went. to pyrford lock. we had met up with john off punchie and we hadn’t seen him for aaaages. that’s because he has had his leg chopped off. he’s a really nice bloke. tell you what, i really LOVE knowing all the people that i know. i’m glad i talk to people….. ahhh, where were we? oh yes, pyrford lock, that most fruitful of locks.

no windlasses this time but look what i DID get…

…i managed to haul this fab mooring line up using my new technique of going along the cill of the lock. it has nice back splicing on one end and an eye spliced in the other. it’s about 25 foot long and would have cost a few bob to buy. plus, it might easily have got wrapped round a prop so i do everyone a favour by hauling junk out of canals, keeping the bits i want, and disposing thoughtfully of the crap.

and today i went to where the man on the hire boat told me the windlass had gone in. i love it when people throw windlasses from one side of a lock to another or leave them on the roof of a vibrating boat or chuck them about. i think it should be encouraged provided they tell me what they have done and where exactly they have done it.

today’s haul included one rusty windlass, too rusty to have been the one thrown in at the weekend, then the one that WAS thrown in at the weekend, a g clamp, some old boat nails that i’m rather fond of and later, after the picture was taken, a 1p piece.

and that’s what i’ve been doing.

see you!

a little while ago i challenged simong to make a cherry pie. he had been moaning, i remember, because he had nothing delish to eat. ‘make a cherry pie!’ i said and i told him how easy it would be, what with all the mod cons available to today’s time-pressed chefs. i explained the ready-made pastry and the tins of pie filling and all that but he didn’t really want to know.

so, sit back simong with your toasted, stale hot cross bun what you bought from a petrol station and i will show you how i made a traditional cherry pie this very weekend.

notebooks at the ready? here we go!

let’s cheat and use some pastry from the shop…

it’s quite good and saves so much faffing about. just look at how they have spelled ‘filo’! tchoh!

the next thing we will need is some cherry filling. i said to simong that he should use the tinned one available from all good pie-filling stores. i won’t bother with that muck though; this will be a traditional pie so we need to find some cherries.

now i’ve heard quite a few people say that i’m a right old countryman and how right they are! i certainly know a cherry tree when i see one!

just look at that cherry blossom! it’s a riot of colour on a cold, spring day!

the maltese owl was introduced to the british isles in 1923 and since that time cherries have been hard to find. these greedy birds will swoop down from their craggy eyries to devour the sweet, sweet fruits which they crave. they’re not called ‘the cherry thief’ in their native land of maltesa for nothing!

but even a maltese owl would have to get up very early in the morning to beat a wise old countryman like me to the pick of the crop…

sweet and juicy! just how i like ‘em!

if you have a sweet tooth you will need some sugar to boil up with the cherries. about 3 kgs of garun. of grunu. of grulatned. of sugar will be fine. that’s exactly 10lbs in the old money!

once you have made your pie, with all pastry and that, you have to place it in a foil pie dish and pop it in the oven. i reckon on about 20 minutes a pound plus 20 minutes so i put this little tastebud tickler in for three hours to be on the safe side. underdone cherries can be a little tart for some!
a moderately hot oven will do. my pie went in to a pre-heated oven at 2680 kelvin which is approximately gasmark 12

when the pie is done let it cool in the freezer compartment.

aaah, bisto! what a lovely pong!

i like to serve up a slice of cherry pie with some rich dairy cream. believe it or not, in the olden days, farmers would get their creams fresh out of a cow.

let’s see if my old friend buttercup will oblige me with a bucket of pasteurised double cream suitable for whipping, pouring, spooning AND cooking…

i was going to say ‘miserable cow’ because i only got 284ml of rubbish single cream, barely enough to cover the bottom of the bucket! but then i saw the photo! the cow is laughing! a laughing cow! it must be buttercup that they named that cheese after! camembert!

anyway, here’s to a successful day’s hunter/gathering. not an owl in sight and a delicious pie with cream!

i bet you’re jealous now eh, simong!

happy easter, readers!