Lockdown by the Canal - the musical

"Maybe I should be using my lockdown time more productively"  I thought to myself.  Instead of sanding down the garden table and slapping on a coat of Sadolin, I could have been becoming famous and getting rich like Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Sadly my songwriting credentials haven't exactly cut the mustard in the past.  My first attempt was a little ditty going something like:

It's raining wet water from out of the sky 
If I don't get wet then I shall be dry 

 Unaccountably, that was not a commercial, or any other kind, of success

Then as a young Engineer  (note the capital E) in the late 1960s  in Bedford I wrote my biggest hit so far, The Ballad of Charles Wells and Greene King  (being the two rival brewers having a stranglehold on Bedford pubs in those days) which I dare not print for fear of litigation but suffice to say  the phrase "tastes as though it was filtered through his socks" might have been included.

After the last year of taking my guitar theory and technique more seriously than in the previous fifty years and steeping myself in scales, modes and arpeggios, I've now returned to basics digging out some actual songs.  Things I used to play have faded somewhat in memory and I can't always recall the lyrics, so I though I might as well make them up in the hope that no-one else can remember the originals anyway.

One of the first songs everybody learned to play way back then was House of the Rising Sun ( which actually requires knowledge of 5 chords - I had previously thought there were only three). So I thought I'd adapt it as the first song of a Canal Musical.  How's this for starters (It is admittedly helpful to have a knowledge of the canal through Berkhamsted)?

There is a pub in Berkhamsted

They call the Rising Sun

And it's been the ruin of many an old fart

And God I know I'm one

My mother steered the butty

All she cooked was beans

My father was a number one

Down in Milton Keynes

Now the only things a boater needs

Are a windlass and some rope

A bottle of beer, a lump of cheese

A bucket, a mop, and some soap

Another thing a boater needs

Is a hammer and a stake

A bag of coal, an engine 'ole

And now and then some cake

Dad put one foot on the gunnel

The other foot and the bank

He gave a shout, the boat moved out

And he fell in the water and sank

Oh mothers tell your children

When you need a loaf of bread

Don't stop your boat at the Rising Sun

Press on to Waitrose instead

Feedback is welcome-please choose one of the following

a) Needs improving

b) Needs scrapping

c) Needs certifying