The excitement began this morning. Cow Roast Lock is now closed from today (11th Feb till 1st March while the top and bottom gates are replaced. Then the next lock down (no 47 at Dudswell) gets the same treatment from 4th till 15th March .

I have no plans to travel south so it doesn't affect me other than it means not a lot of passing traffic; nobody to swear at, no bloody nuisances disturbing the water.... Where's the fun in that.
CRT have been fannying about at Cowroast lock for a few years now without sorting the problem but now the big bucks are being spent. 



Back in December-only 2 months ago- I wrote about " this blue sign which has replaced the one in black to be in line with the CRT new logo. It looks awful. It is awful. It is unnecessary and a complete waste of money. The knobs (and I use the word advisedly) at CRT have no idea how much this stupid rebranding has lost them in support from the boaters who just want the system maintained. I do hope it isn't intended to replace all these signs across the system. That would be insulting to everyone who has to raise the licence fee each year or volunteers for the Trust. Stop this madness NOW."

Well, of course in a matter of weeks the gate is being replaced so the man in charge of stupid signs will have to get his screwdriver out.

Ah no. Silly me. There's the 2 month old sign broken up with the lock gate.....


No news on our path at the mooring of course. No matter how we moan about what we pay we still get no action on what is a major downside of the Winter months, it's like the Battle of the Somme out there but unless we do it ourselves at our expense it aint gonna happen. We've got a lovely new logo though spread the length and breadth of the canal system. TFW!

But the good news is>>>>>>>!

We have snowdrops! Spring is just around the corner and for me they signal great joy.
My grand plan for the Winter was to spend a few  breaks away from the mooring and the most recent was a fortnight in Faversham, Kent. I've grown very fond of Kent over the last few years and Faversham has the added attraction of Caz, Philip, Florence and Mathilda living there. On this occasion it also had the attraction that, whilst Cow Roast was  snowed up with some serious ice on the mooring-just what I wanted to avoid- Faversham had a millimetre which disappeared overnight. Just the job.
Before I set off for Kent Pam and I practised playing "Shut the Box" a game I've had for years.

Shut the Box, also allegedly called Blitz, Bakarat, Canoga, Klackers, 
Batten Down the Hatches, Kingoball, Trictrac, Cut Throat, Fork Your Neighbour, and Jackpot, is a game of dice for one or more players, commonly played in a group of two to four for stakes. Traditionally, a counting box is used with tiles numbered 1 to 9 where each can be covered with a hinged or sliding mechanism.
I'd bought a set for Florence for Christmas and we thought we'd refresh our gameplan in case we were challenged-we weren't but sitting in the Market Inn alone one evening (I'd gone there to do some market research) I heard a familiar clicking/clacking noise. The locals in the other bar were playing Shut the Box and enjoying themselves greatly.

Coincidentally, following the medical advice that I should get in the sun more I visited the excellent  Sun Inn, Shepherd Neame's show pub in Faversham and lo....there was a group of four thirtysomethings playing Pass the Pigs. They were having so much fun. I was both envious, happy and a bit sad. I also felt old. A very long time ago Pass the Pigs was very popular amongst us Cowroastafarians and we played for hours, on board, in the Cowroast Inn, at the Greyhound in Aldbury. Great times. 


I remember the Landlord of the Greyhound suggesting we might like to organise a Pass the Pigs stall at a special fair the village was holding to raise funds for Muscular Dystrophy in memory of a young Aldbury resident.
I scrounged prizes from Games Manufacturers (including PtP) plus gifts from anywhere we could get them. This included a friendly NatWest bank manager (at the Civic Centre Branch-now gone). He came up with lots of the Piggy Bank sets which were very popular at the time and are now much sought after on ebay etc having increased greatly in value. We made a lot of money but mainly because it precipitated with gusto and everyone retired to the pub where we raffled two bottles of whisky at considerable profit.

I am pleased that such games as Shut the Box and Pass the Pigs are still played in pubs-it's healthy and good for the community where so many lonely people are sat in front of one type of screen or another.
Of course they could go for a walk.....

HERTFORDSHIRE HEALTH WALKS

BERKHAMSTED FIRST STEPS

Berkhamsted First Steps Walks are ideal for people who for whatever reason may be a little out of practice with walking or wish to walk with other people rather than on their own. Three Walk Leaders trained by Hertfordshire Health Walks are patients of Berkhamsted Group Practice and cordially invite anyone to come along and join them on alternate Thursdays starting at Berkhamsted Bowls Club with time for a quick cuppa at 11am before a pleasant 30 min walk around the canal area starting at 11.15am the next regular walk will be on Thursday the 21 February.

Additional walks start from the Sacred Heart Church car park at 11.15am and for those wanting to extend that to a chat and refreshments these are available at The Open Door Community Hub. Additional walk dates are on Thursdays 14^th February, 14 March and 21 April. 

So back to Kent and time with Caz and family......

The Faversham Rabbi entertains

As I couldn't build a Snowman in Kent I improvised with a Cottage Pie....

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CONGRATULATIONS are due to Joseph for whom I bought the Theory Driving Test for Christmas. He passed last weekend, of course. Well done Joe. Another reason why I'm feeling very old.
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And now we've lost Gordon Banks. So sad. I was at the final in '66 and it is up there in the 5 best days of my life. On the way into Wembley we passed between two coaches, the Portuguese team and the Russian team. I saw Eusebio, for my money the man of that series and reaching up to my right I shook the hand of the great Lev Yashin the Russian Goalkeeper. His hand was massive, my spindly 19 year old mit lost in there somewhere.

Gordon Banks didn't have Yashin's hands but he was the best, most consistent of all goalkeepers. The irony is not lost that on the day he died an Arsenal player was sold to Juventus and will reportedly earn £400,000 a week. In 2002 Gordon Banks had to sell his World Cup medal for 100k to make ends meet. The 53 years since we won the World Cup only emphasises how inadequately we treated those real heroes.
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I am grateful to the many readers who contacted me after my Special Artistic edition last blog which showed the work of Ivor Coope. I'd particularly like to thank those who sent a donation which remains as yet unspent because there's been no racing for a week thanks to an outbreak of equine flu. I have suspected for some time that some virulent bug is affecting all the horses that I've backed but apparently they're all at risk. I wish them well.
Any further donations would be welcome and  used to benefit those less fortunate than you. Like me.
Cheers for now.

.

"An Oeuf is An Oeuf"

"a shining omelette of eggstasy" The Croydon Eggsaminer

I have had the pleasure  recently of visiting the above display of the work of the late, lamented and little known photographer Ivor Coope, a Dutch artist  whose work whilst not generally appreciated warrants a whole hole in the  wall in the Tat Modern. 

As the Programme (£5)  unfortunately all in Dutch explains (please forgive the amateurish translation)

"Sponsored by the Shell Institute this eggsistential collection of works previously thought lost during Coope's scramble to eggscape  Holland daise before the German invasion gives Coope free range to demonstrate his skill. He arrived in Eggham ,Stains, via a transit camp in Hen don penniless and without his beloved Brownie, which he'd mislayed, or any of his art. He had salvaged a few eggsamples of his work and these eggcerts were kept in a photographic albumen cooped up for the rest of his life. He always reggretted having to leave Holland where had been offered immunity by the Reichstegg in exchange for painting Hitler enjoying an omelette but  refused saying he couldn't work for that  eggocentric, moustachioed little bastard; not realising that this might cause offence to such a sensitive dictator. Faced with eggsecution he had no choice but to eggxile himself along with his brother, Benedict and sister, Lorraine, to whom much of his "Creative Kitsch" is dedicated

Five years after his death in 1999 from eggcema his entire collection was discovered by a lake in  Hedelbegg, Baden Wutenbegg by some soldiers who had gone for a dip.
The pictures had been stolen by some members of a retreating German reggiment and hidden under an ash tray tree by the lake intending to return after the war. Sadly they all eggspired at Nijmeggen, nr Arnhem and the horde remained untouched,"

Here is a taste

DOUBLE SCOTCH
 BY IVOR COOPE, 1938

MUCKY DIP 
BY IVOR COOPE,1939

WAITING FOR THE GOOD SOLDIER
 BY IVOR COOPE, 1940

V.  EGGIE BREAKFAST
BY IVOR COOPE 1933

IF EGGS DID YING AND YING
 IVOR COOPE 1938

YOU LOOKIN AT ME?
 IVOR COOPE 1937

THE MOST OFFAL PICTURE I'VE EVER TAKEN
 IVOR COOPE 1941

EMERGENCY EGG CUP AFTER THE ***KING GERMANS HAD STOLEN ALL OUR CROCKERY 
BY IVOR COOPE, 1940

If you would like to support the work of this and other unrecogniseable artists please make out a cheque for whatever you can afford payable  to M. Wall,c/o Fund for Unrecognised Creative Kitsch Internet Traders  and send to Narrowboat Independence, Cow Roast Lock Moorings, Wharf Lane, Tring Herts U.K. HP23 5RE (marking the back of the envelope "F.U.C.K.I.T.")

Thank you for sharing my yoke joke