When I'm 64 -applying the McCartney MoT.

Another year to look forward to.  Herbie moves north, new places to see.  We have just under three months left to do any boating in our current area.  Hopefully another week in London and maybe a short outing or two up the GU, then it’s off we jolly well go.  Weather permitting we’ll move up to Crick via the Thames and the South Oxford, a great trip in itself.

Meanwhile it’s time for a personal checkup that I’ve been looking forward to for many years.  Very soon I’ll pass the McCartney milestone.  My 64^th birthday.  So I thought I’d see if life was turning out according to his rather splendid song.  Here goes.

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When I get older losing my hair, (well thinning bit, but I’m still fully covered up top.)
Many years from now, (ten days actually)
Will you still be sending me a valentine (yes, thanks Kath)
Birthday greetings bottle of wine? (a single malt even!)

If I'd been out till quarter to three ( at my age?)
Would you lock the door, (Never, but I have my own key thank you)
Will you still need me, ( I like to think so) will you still feed me, (actually I do half the cooking)
When I'm sixty-four?

oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oooo ( sounds like my stiff legs in the morning)
You'll be older too, (ah ah ah ah ah) (and my stiff shoulder)
And if you say the word,
I could stay with you. (where else would I go?)

I could be handy mending a fuse (just about)
When your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside ( Naah, too busy doing embroidery)
Sunday mornings go for a ride. (Any day really, the joys of early retirement)

Doing the garden, digging the weeds, (Hmm, here we meet our first failure, apart from an annual border bash and a bit of mowing)
Who could ask for more? (I could)
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, (see above)
When I'm sixty-four?

Every summer we can rent a cottage
In the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear (failure number 2. I don’t have fond memories of the IoW, on our only holiday there the wind blew our tent down – and it is too dear, so we go camping in Shropshire)
We shall scrimp and save ( we need to, to keep Herbie going)
Grandchildren on your knee (YES! our best achievement, although Jacob is getting too big for knee sitting)
Vera, Chuck, and Dave (well that would have been something of a coincidence!)

Send me a postcard, drop me a line, ( email or text these days)
Stating point of view.
Indicate precisely what you mean to say (Failure number 3, verbal precision isn’t Kath’s strong point)
Yours sincerely, Wasting Away. (failure number 4, I could do with wasting away at least another stone)

Give me your answer, fill in a form 
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?
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Have I passed?  4 failures doesn't look too good does it? But like a lot of tests the questions are wrong! 

Instead of the gardening test we could have Doing the engine, changing the oil

 and then perhaps

Every summer we could take a boat 

On the old canal,  if the water's clear

At a steady pace

Grandchildren on our knee

Jacob first then Grace  

I would have liked Jacob to have been called Chuck though.

Mind your wee knees

Some years ago in a photo gallery shop in Queensferry a lady shop assistant asked me to move aside so that she could access some photo drawers.  Her polite plea to "mind your wee knees" in her delightful Scots accent has remained a family saying ever since.

Today I forgot her advice and now I have very sore wee knees from kneeling on Herbie's roof scraping at the snow and ice.  A broom proved useless and a shovel would have scratched the paint , but a quick rummage in the kindling box produced a handy sized piece of plywood which doubled as a scraper and shovel.  Under the snow, at the side of the roof there was an impacted layer of ice about half an inch thick and it took a fair bit of shifting.

Anyway, we have now gone from this

to this

and there is a large pile of snow and ice on the frozen canal surface.

The good news is that my newly acquired waterproof gloves (from Black's) did their stuff brilliantly.  I had my hands on cold wet snow and ice for the best part of two hours.  The outer of the gloves was soaking but inside was dry and warm. £24 well spent.

Grrrr! Brrrr! Oooh er!

Grrr!  Today I read a forum post entitled Don't say I didn't warn you from Phil Speight advising everyone to get the snow off the tops of their boats so as to avoid the formation of micro blisters in the paint.  I wish he had posted it two days earlier because I was out at Herbie then and could have done it.  However I feel I can't ignore it after all the work we did this year to paint it so  I'll have to drive back out tomorrow and brush off the snow if I can.  It was about four or five inches deep the other day and freezing cold.

Brrr!  It's going to be cold, but worse than that , slippery.  I don't have the luxury of being able to do it from the bank, so I might have to climb on the roof to do it.  Either that or from the gunwales.   I have a nasty feeling that there will be a crusty layer of ice under the snow too.  I don't ant to scratch the paint by too much scraping.  I could  use hot water, although that would re freeze straight away I suppose.  Hmm perhaps not a good idea.  I certainly don't want to do it chemically because that would probably do more harm than good.  The more I think about it the scarier it gets.

Although we have had snow here and it has been quite cold, we don't seem to have had the extremes of cold that people up north have.  The canal was frozen quite thickly the other day but there was water between Herbie and Humbug our neighbour, presumably thanks to Glyn being resident on Humbug and losing some of her heat through the hull.

The Herbie 2010 Premier Award

And so to the final Herbie Award for 2010, and anyone reading the blog this year might easily work out what it might be.  For the first time it is a special group award to a terrific bunch of people whom I can never thank enough, as they helped us through the biggest job we have ever undertaken on Herbie.  And here they are in alphabetical order.

David (rainman) who got deep into the job

Kath ( painter and chief catering officer)

Marilyn, the best painter on wood that there is

Rick, the mainstay for whom no problem seems insurmountable

And Simon who slaved over the dirty bits and missed the fun bits

Yes of course The Herbie Special Award for 2010 goes to The Paint Crew for unpaid services beyond all expectations.  Here they are in a rare moment's respite.

Thanks guys and gals, I continue to feel very humbled by your contribution.

Not only that, but they all make very fine cruising crew members too.

As for me, I did a bit as well, although in disguise

Well that's the end of the awards for this year.  I hope you enjoyed them.

Roll credits

Herbie's Video Christmas Card

Before we get to the final Herbie Award for 2010, a short musical interlude.  Unfortunately we couldn't afford Take That ("What is Take That?" , " A popular beat combo M'Lud") so you'll have to put up with me on smallpipes and Kath on dulcimer playing a Spanish carol while you look at some pretty winter canal scenes.  This is our home made Christmas card to all our lovely boaty friends, blog readers, and fellow bloggers, especially those afloat that we don't have addresses to send real cards to.

Its all a bit Low Res and  Lo Fi, (Simon we need you).  I never tried this before, and the recording was on the internal mic of a handheld MP3 player after all of three minutes rehearsal.  So having suitably managed your expectations in a downward direction, have a click on the video thingy.

Awards amid winter's weary snaa

The view from my window as I write.  My car is abandoned in the snow a hundred yards down the hill from the house.

My good friend Terry Conway who lives up in Allendale, wrote a wonderful song called Winter's Weary Snaa and the last verse and chorus goes like this (to be read in a broad Northumbrian accent)

This white stuff is a corse, ye pluff it aal in vain
And then ye find yon corsed wind 
Has blaan it back again
I've often thowt meself
Heid doon against the sting
The squirrels has the best idea
Gan beep po's till the spring


Why man it makes ye bad
Tae hear the aaful blaa
Of yonder ca'ad north eatern wind
That drives the winter snaa

I guess you might need a tad of translation:  Corsed -cursed, pluff - plough, beep po's - to sleep

Terry is semi retired now but used to be a snow plough driver across the Northumbrian fells, so you can imagine that this song is very heartfelt.  I get very cross when people on telly complain about the lack of help from the authorities in this awful weather.  Let them have a go and they'd soon see it ain't that easy.

What has this to do with the Award for  Best Boater's Accessory?  We had some great wintery suggestions form readers.

Is it the hot water bottle I suggested, and Carrie warmly endorsed in her comment?

Is it the fantastic battery powered tiller hand warmer that Sue on Indigo Dream has?  (I want one)

Is it the Eco fan that wafts the warm stove heated air round the boat as suggested by Rick?  By the way Rick it doesn't work by peristalsis but by  placebo effect.

No it has to be the camera.  How else could  show you today's snow, and reminders of warmer times like this favourite from earlier this year.  I call it The Driving Lesson.

Best Boaters Accessory nominations

Back to the awards and our penultimate prize.  This is for the item which is most useful when you are out boating.  This is a good one for you to join in on.  All suggestions considered.

Note: There are some exclusions, viz:

A boat
All the fixtures within, otherwise it might have to be the toilet, and we wouldn't want that would we?
Essentials such a windlasses, mooring stakes, gangplanks etc.
Fancy fixtures like solar panels
Food and drink (otherwise Jim McBeam might win too easily)
Waterproof clothing - vital but not exciting enough

 No, it has to be something simple that you are glad to have and /or something you would regret not having if you forgot to bring it.

and my suggestions (in no particular order) are:

1 A canalometer, beautifully modelled here by a scarily semi naked Simon  with the mighty Tortoise in the background

This amazing device must have been invented by a genious  (modesty forbids me to say who), and it tells me how long it will take to reach the pub.  Clearly a vital piece of kit.  Should you be unfamiliar with Canalometers (shame on you) there is a link on the right hand side of this blog.

2. A battery-less torch.  Canals don't tend to have street lights, so when you are out and about after dark you often need a torch unless you like having a midnight dip in the Grand Union.  However torches with batteries are a waste of time.  They always run out just when you need them.  We use this super little hand powered jobby which you can buy in lots of shops quite cheaply.

It works and except for high summer it gets used virtually every day.

3. A hot water bottle.  Its a cold night, and the bed on the boat is up the other end from the stove.  You know you'll be cosy once you have been in bed for a little while but a HWB put in the bed half an hour before bedtime makes getting into bed a real pleasure.  Bliss.

4. A camera.  How could I keep doing this blog without one.  My main record of our boating activities is photographic, and browsing through the pics brings back so many memories.  Even when you have one, you curse it not being to hand when something interesting passes or suddenly occurs.  And sorry all you DSLR lovers, it has to have some point and shoot capability otherwise you'll miss too many shots fiddling about.  You haven't got time to fiddle with white balance or ISO settings when your engine is on fire (believe me, I know!).
I use two cameras, a big Fuji one with knobs to twiddle and a  Lumix compact.  It's the compact which gets most of the work.

Any more ideas?

Antifreeze testing

I popped out to the boat today to check it was OK pending the return of the freezing conditions.  No frost damage so far, but how can you be sure you have enough antifreeze in the engine?  Apparently too much (ie over 50%) is not a good idea.  I had to top up with a few litres of fresh water when we had the boil up on the Stort so I'm not sure how we stand.

I have one of those little antifreeze testers from Halfords - three little plastic balls in a dropper tube, and that shows two balls floating, which according to the label says probably enough, but check.  Then I remembered a great tip I read on canal world forums.  Take a sample of your coolant and stick it in the freezer at home.  So I did, remembering to run the engine first to give it a good mix.  After four hours in the freezer it is still liquid although there are ice crystals at the bottom of the sample which is is a pottery jug.  I Googled freezer temperatures and found that most UK freezers operate at about -18 degrees C, so I guess I'm alright unless it gets extremely cold out there.  The engine is reasonably well insulated from the outside world anyway.  The min max thermometer I left by the front water tank stopcock showed a low of -1 deg C over the last 3 weeks or so, so that's not too bad.

Whilst I was there today I also stuffed a hot water tank insulating jacket round as much of the calorifier as I could reach.  These are really cheap at the moment in DiY stores as they get a government subsidy like roof insulation.

The Herbie Award for 2010's worst bit of canal

This is a tough one.  Not because we have encountered much to complain about this year, but because I like nearly everywhere we go.  However, certain bits of the waterway in certain weather conditions or times of the year can be a real pain.

Let's start close to home.  The dear old Slough Arm.  I love it really and as you can see from the picture I use at the head of the blog, it can look very pretty.   Not bad at the other end either except for a bit of graffiti.

Remarkably clear water, loads of fish, greenery and waterfowl.  What's the problem?  The dreaded blanket weed that's what. Every summer it becomes nigh on  impassable because of the weed.  Us boaters are surely to blame because the densest weed growth is alongside the boats at our yard at Iver, and when I say dense I mean really dense.  Great thick blankest of green cotton wool that seem to clog the whole width and depth of the waterway.  It can clog a propeller in seconds.  That is the one thing that I shall not miss when we move Herbie to Crick next year.

Next contender.  The Regents Canal south of Islington.  That Regents Canal? Yes, I know it is lovely through Madia Hill and Regents Park, and great fun at Camden market but . .

It all starts at City Road lock just beyond the Islington tunnel.  A nice enough spot, but it has the most frustrating lock I think I have ever encountered.  It seems that whatever you do, the bottom gates want to swing  open on their own.  You walk round and shut one, and then you charge round the other way, leaping over balance beams  and nearly falling into the adjacent unused lock, but its no good.  By the time you reach the other gate the first one has swung open again.  To add insult to injury, not only do these gates swing open, they are real pigs to shut.  Something is seriously out of balance.  There are some heavy gates further down this stretch too and beyond Ducketts Cut  a number of places are really vulnerable to side winds, so the poor person waiting on the boat while you do the gates gets blown into the far bank.  Drab too, this bit.  And so on through to the final lock at Commercial road which seems to have permanently broken paddles and takes ages to operate.  But what is even worse, it nearly always seems to be terrible weather when we go down there.

After that I'm struggling to think of another really bad bit on our travels this year, although quite a few locks in the  chilterns do suffer from gates that swing open, they are not in the same class as City Road.  So I'll declare here and now that the Regents Canal takes the biscuit  Award for Worst Bit of Canal in 2010  .

So what was the scariest moment of 2010

Do you know what people are generally most afraid of?  I once saw the results of a survey and there was clear winner.  Way above, flying, spiders, getting mugged and all the rest was public speaking!  I reckon it all boils down to fear of failure of of embarrassment.  And so it was with my scariest moment of 2010.  Not the sudden adrenaline shock of Herbie's engine threatening to blow up, but the slow inexorable approach of a moment when disaster might be revealed.  A bit like those people who can't watch their football team in an important match.

So my choice of  the Herbie Scariest Moment of 2010 has to be the removal of the masking tape at the end of the paintfest.  Months of planning, weeks of work and stacks of money, all resting on the pull of a piece of tape.  It was truly scary.  Now you know why the masking tape was a contender for best DiY product!

But there is an upside this type of fear.  If the event passes without the dreaded worst happening, then the result is often complete euphoria.  And in this case it was.

Coming soon

2010s worst bit of canal
The Best boater's accessory,
and a mystery Special Award

Award logo mark II for the taking

As I suspected my lovely award logo was too wide for the job, so following an idea from Sue here is Mark II.

Herbie Award

for FORTITUDE

Just copy the jpeg and type in the citation below.  Is that OK?

Scariest Moment Award nominees

As a firm believer in discretion being the better part of valour, I'm a fairly risk averse person, which is I suppose what makes me such a dull chap.  However it seems that operating a boat does unavoidably have it's scary moments, so how about an Award for the scariest moment this year.  Here is my shortlist.


1. Starting Herbie's engine after bleeding the fuel and having it instantly run away to what seemed like ten million rpm because I had replaced a broken governer screw without adjusting it.  I had fleeting visions of the engine exploding as I was in the engine hole alongside it.  I still get palpitations at the thought.


2. Mooring up in a very strong sidewind at Campbell Park in Milton Keynes.   I was on my own and there was no-one ashore to catch a rope.  I quote from my blog post at the time.


There was one mooring spot, just long enough, and there was a stiff breeze blowing offshore. My first attempt failed and I overshot. Then I got blown into a rather smart boat opposite. I backed off and had another go, pointing the bow of the boat at the centre of the gap and in forward gear just ticking over, I ran along the gunwales to the bow and jumped of with a rope just as we were about to crash. Not a textbook manoeuvre but it worked. I pulled the boat parallel with the bank and leapt on to the stern to apply reverse gear to stop us just before we smacked into the boat in front. 


And if you wonder why I don't have a photo of this, you don't really understand the situation!


3. On the Stort , lifting the engine hole cover to see why it had stalled and seeing this.

Nuff said.  It was alright in the end.


4. Taking off the masking tape at the end of two weeks of painting the boat.   The whole business of the boat painting was scary because there was so much at stake, and it's not until the end that you know if it has worked. You see, before you pull off the tape, you have this.

The paint looks OK but would half the paint come off with the tape? Would it have bled all over the place and the nice sharp edges be all ragged? After two weeks hard graft  and a thousand pounds spent, these are not trivial matters.  I happy to say Rick did the peeling for me while I held my hands over my eyes and squinted  through the gaps between my fingers.  

The result - brilliant, and probably my best moment of the whole year!


5.  Another painty one.  Never having done any signwriting before, putting the first brush strokes of Herbie's name on the lovely shiny newly painted panel. 

Now there was no going back.  Would it be a disaster?  Would it ruin the whole effect of the new paint job?  I was very nervous, and shaky hands are not what you need when you are signwriting.  Hence all the masking tape.


Do these seem scary to you, or am I just a whimp?