Of Belonging, Membership and Being An Utter Tool!

The human being is a social animal. Anyone who doesn’t belong to a group tends to be viewed with caution by those who do. The demands made by the group of its members often influence the modes and the degree to which loyalty is expressed. Demands such as a membership subscription may enable the group to carry out its intended purpose and such shared payments can smooth the way in enabling the group members to take part in their shared activity. Pretty much stating the B.O.!

The human species also espouses contradictions. It’s a part of being human. Even fully paid up members of a group may consider themselves free-thinking individuals no matter how much of their individuality they have surrendered to the group. “I am a member of this gang because I think this or that" can so easily become "I am a member of this gang and so I shall think this or that". Some organisations, including religions and political parties exact a penalty for daring to deviate from the group's aims and priorities. I was raised in a high demand religious cult and coming out in much later life prompted the local ecclesiastical authority to request a meeting and accuse me of flouting the "law of chastity". I hope he felt as demeaned as I felt annoyed. I had known him since he was a child and in all that time I had never done anything more than sit in church to help my then wife with the children. I certainly had not professed any belief, since that had abandoned me long before. I did not consider myself a member of the flock, nor did I accept he had any position of authority in my life. Church had become simply a place I had to be to keep relative peace in the family. My wife and I had met and married as teenagers. Within six years I had come to the realisation that I no longer believed, but I had made what I thought was a serious commitment. I tried to support her priorities until I could no longer do so. I found myself as co-babysitter in church for more than a decade.

I joined the Ecology Party in the 1980s and was a member when they changed their name to the Green Party. I even stood for election in a borough council election in 1986. I was surprised to receive as many as 59 votes but very relieved not to be elected to the borough council. That left me free to start looking for jobs doing something I much preferred to do, namely music. When I moved out of the town to another part of the country I let my Green Party membership lapse and have never rejoined. I have felt almost tempted since Zack Polansky was elected leader and has been incredibly articulate in espousing many of the same thoughts as me on so many issues. However, I have decided that being a member of a gang is really not all that great when they start to make demands that one should think the same thoughts. I'm happy enough to add my ballooning weight to the throng in demonstrations and at rallies, if I can see the point of an action, but I'm not tempted to join or rejoin a gang. I will admit to a twinge of something approaching nostalgia every time someone calls for people to join up to increase the numbers in the party and add to the money available to fight campaigns. One of my favourite people, a kind, articulate and caring medical professional, a town councillor near where I moor much of the time, had their party membership revoked after using their professional knowledge and research to offer a different point of view to the prevailing group think on T issues in LGBTQIA+ matters. I don't know the details, but the party lost a good member who was willing to stand up for the main principles in the Green Party manifesto. As I understand the situation my friend wanted to explore nuance, but hardliners in the party would not tolerate nuance. The current leadership has said that the Party can be inclusive as long as any member is broadly in accordance with established principles. That is fair enough. Otherwise what is the point of people joining together for a common cause? My friend's expulsion went beyond this consensus. It was a witch-hunt and we've seen the same kind of expulsions happen in other political parties as well as organised religious groups. 

Does the same thing happen in the worlds of sports, the arts or other fields of human endeavour? They are certainly tribal enough. From time to time I have found myself parrotting a phrase or idea I have heard from someone else. Perhaps it seemed apt or amusing or poignant. I'm not always convinced I fully subscribed to the actual idea and it is only when someone takes the trouble to express their thoughts on something I have said that I may have been forced to confront my assertions and revisit them. Our society is all the poorer when nuance is seen as betrayal and something to be punished. A change or reconsideration of a thought may be derided as a u-turn. Whether the simplification of ideas is a deliberate ploy to mislead or an honest attempt to make an argument accessible to all, something is frequently lost in the reduction. It makes me sad when people seem not to be able to talk ideas through to find a place where different priorities might meet. "My way or the highway" leaves little room for the power that argument can offer to sway a decision. The way leaders express themselves gives permission to members of the gang to behave in good or bad ways. Why is it so often in bad ways - storming the senate, wearing masks to root out and expel people of other cultures, standing on cliff tops to gesture and shout at the sea to repel so-called "invaders" who are not invaders at all, but simply fellow humans in need a safe place to live? Were I going to "invade another country" I would probably choose a more robust method of travel than an inflatable raft. However invading a neighbouring country, manipulating the law to recruit the internal forces of law and order into dragging people away to the courts for merely sitting in a public place and holding a handwritten sign to express dissent are all crazy power games. Under threat of losing their membership, their citizenship, their jobs or their pensions the powerless will feel emboldened by the size of the gang and pride themselves on their ability to follow orders. The largest mob with the most amount of power wins and a thought-through argument does not figure in the process. I wish I saw more evidence of people who could and should know better following orders to enforce some sometimes arbitrary rules to a good purpose, but it feels somewhat rare. Maybe it's simply that the good examples happen in the background and aren't deemed worthy of attention. Only one political leader has actually discussed priorities that moved me to something other than dismay or anger. Hearing Mothin Ali discuss his passion for gardening was rather lovely. Hearing him described by those who disagree with his point of view as a dangerous terrorist is very upsetting, but I'm still not rejoining the gang.

Being the contrarian that I am, I have signed up to membership of a couple of waterways support groups that campaign and work for facilities I feel may be of benefit, but I'm still not joining the gang!

Of Blackwater Troubles

On the first afternoon of my latest trip I moored on March town centre mooring intending an overnight stop after replenishing my stock of food from the local supermarket and a health food shop. The mooring at March has a kink in the middle so I like to tie up near to one end or the other. My preferred spot lies furthest from the bridge, but not quite under a tall, overhanging tree. There is generally enough crap to wash off the boat without adding the guano donated by roosting birds. I try to aim for a straight bit of the mooring where my boat sits nicely next to the concrete apron. The other straight bit is at the other end, almost under the bridge, which is closer to the pub and road noise. If I have to use the bridge end of the mooring I try to pull back to just before the bend, making sure to avoid a broken road drainage pipe because it scrapes the paint off the boat. I don't like to be too close to the bridge because have seen people throw things over the parapet from the pavement to land on any boat moored underneath. So, my preferred bit of the mooring being taken already I aimed for the bridge end and pulled back from the vulnerable point, which was where I moored last night. Not long after I tied up, two more boats arrived and there was enough room for them to sandwich me in, the longer boat took the space on the bend and the shorter one near the bridge. I helped the big boat pull onto the bendy bit. We mardled for a while as I made a fuss of Mabel, their excitable black pooch. They’d come though from Whittlesey and were feeling the effect of the long journey, bearing in mind it's only a long journey if travelling by boat or, I suppose, on foot.

The small market town of March is handy for a few reasons. Shopping for food, diy materials and tools, water tank filling, toilet emptying, bicycle repairs and, if I feel so inclined, a meal at a favourite Nepalese restaurant (other restaurants are, of course, available). Sadly as I was to discover, the health food shop has just gone out of business, so I now face having to go elsewhere or rely on supermarkets for all of the requirements I cannot buy at a farm gate. Just across the road (or under the bridge seen from my perspective) there is access to the large green space of West End Park, where all sorts of fun and frolics can be enjoyed, particularly at festival times.  For anyone so inclined there is the museum and a couple of churches to visit and the rather unusual shopfront to the "fossil museum"! On certain days there is also a small market. Unfortunately the facilities at the sanitation station were still out of action after two months or more. Water is accessible, but it's the Elsan, the chemical disposal point / sluice room offering the facility to empty and rinse out cassette toilets, that I was going to be needing most urgently. It's the only one free to boaters on the Middle Level and is operated by the local council rather than the navigation authority. When I telephoned the council to enquire why it was still not available I was given the runaround by the receptionist and directed to call other numbers that had nothing to do with Fenland District Council. I don't think this was deliberate obfuscation, but it was a clear reflection of the lack of priority given to those of us who rely on the Elsan being operational. We simply don't figure in the council's list of priorities. After four phone calls I spoke to someone back at the council who told me that the closure was due to "vandalism". Having heard this reason used before I queried how vandalism might have happened since the sluice room is only available to boaters who have bought a Yale type key to Middle Level facilities. The person on the other end of the phone asked to me wait while she located an e-mail trail to prove her case concerning the cause of the problem. What she found instead was an exchange of messages between themselves (the Council) and Anglian Water referring to a broken sewage pipe, which had apparently been damaged while building a new public toilet nearby. That would also explain why the new replacement public toilets are still boarded up many months after the pedestrianisation of part of the main street through town has been completed. I can't help but wonder what would happen if any member or officer within the council or the water authority could not empty their toilets at home. I'm pretty sure something would be done about it pdq. In the meantime boat dwellers are told to take an extra hour to go to the nearest marina to use their facilities for which there is, understandably, a charge. This may not be significant in the grand scheme of world affairs, but it seems to be a sign of the times that annoying little people like me are routinely fobbed off with fabrications or deliberate lies. Again, I'm willing to accept that the person I spoke to at the council was simply repeating something they'd heard or been told to say and I am grateful that they were willing to trace the exchange of e-mails between themselves and the water company and accept, eventually, that the excuses they were making for the continued closure were not proven. There is a darker side to the story suggested sotto voce by someone who probably knows more about these issues than I do who had "heard" that the council were hoping that they would not have to spend any money effecting repairs and that no one would complain. Sorry, but now I'm paying for an annual licence I expect to get something for my money. I've already explained how not even a clear passageway along the "Link Route" from the River Nene to the River Great Ouse can be taken for granted.

There was nothing further I could do but try and find another facility once I left Middle Level waters. According to the map there was an Elsan point on the River Nene at Peterborough Embankment, which I hoped to reach within a day or so. 

The following day I set off through the town and stopped outside the marina on a river mooring to pick up some supplies and consult one of the engineers. I stopped outside the marina because the wind was pretty strong and I didn't want to risk turning in the marina basin and hitting another boat. As it happened the man I wanted to speak to was not in that day so I returned to the boat with the notion of heading further along the Link Route towards Whittlesey. I made a rookie error of not securing the centre line when the wind was blowing. I released the rope at the bow and the front of the boat was caught immediately by the wind to be carried out across the river. This pulled my stern ropes so tight that it took me quite a while to free them and by the time I'd managed to do so the boat was actually perpendicular to the landing stage and jammed between both banks. I thought I was going to lose the boat and have to dive in after it! Once I had freed the stern rope I could step on to the stern deck and allow the wind to blow me sideways along the river until I got to a part that was wide enough to employ the engine to bring the boat back under control. Phew! I took the following bit of film after that near misadventure.

Of Subliminal Mysteries

I think Ive spent most of my life being confused and full of questions. Had I been born an Elephant's Child I would have been accused of satiable curtiosity. The questions mostly become stuck in my head these days or fly out of it so quickly they are never voiced. I guess a lifetime as long as mine may have knocked some corners off some of the more jagged questions, apart from those that query the inequalities of circumstances, still I can't help but ponder. I daresay I've already remarked somewhere among these essays that my questions have often led me into trouble, but still the qustions come. 

As I write this the time has just passed mid-day. I woke up early this morning with a dream song still reverberating in my head. As is sometimes the case I was dreaming of a school music workshop, an activity that featured in my life very prominently over many years. Four boys dressed in something I took to be far-Eastern or south Asian attire formed a line and began to sing a song made of vocables, rather than words. As they sang they danced into a space in front of the rest of the class and the line curved into a circle, at which point I woke up. However, since the music was still so loud in my head I grabbed the manuscript book I keep close to hand and transcribed the tune along with the sung syllables. I didn't have time to go back over it, because my other notebook, the one in which I attempt to capture snatches of lyrics, poems or ideas to be developed into such, had fallen open at idea number 322, dated April 2022. It was just a couplet and the rest of the page was blank, but these four years later I finally saw where the song could go. Now I have the skeleton of a new song, cross-referenced in my lyric book and music manuscript notebook and I have no recollection of what was my original concept four years ago. I only know I haven't broached this subject or storytelling style in any of my other work. There is a kind of refrain containing (at the moment!) the line "Follow, why? Follow, where? ..." I guess the mysteries are finding a voice in the song.

Yesterday I spent the day signing up to or renewing subscriptions for boat related organisations. I've never been through Stanground Lock and I fancy travelling out in that direction, specially with the cott blocking my way in my normal direction of travel. Consequently I am now Friend of the River Nene. In fact I was so keen to avail myself of their facilities I think I've paid twice after getting a bit confused following instructions on their website. I had plans for this morning, including cycling into the village with my application form and membership fee for the Well Creek Trust and basket for fresh vegetables, but every time I have attempted to get ready to carry out my plans I've been struck by yet another new tune idea. In between mixing seeds, fruits and grains for breakfast and medical routines popping the pills that are supposed to be keeping me alive along with boiling the kettle for a hot compress, followed by massaging my eyes and applying ointment for a recently diagnosed eye condition with enough hot water left over for ablutions, I've had to stop and write three tunes. Again I've no idea whether they are any good, but why, after months of little in the way of creative ideas, have the ideas started to tumble out of my head again? It happens from time to time, but normally I'm not in a situation where taking the time to actualise what is in my head is convenient or even possible. I first became aware of this phenomenon in 2005 following a serious change in my personal circumstances. It got quite bad. I would be woken up several times a night with the clamour of the music in my head. This was when I first took to keeping a manuscript book nearby at all times. I had been very unproductive for about thirty years and I felt a responsibility to record all these tunes that appeared to be coming as a gift from the muse. I would also have to leave for work early knowing I would have to stop driving more than once to be able to make a note of yet another new idea. I was afraid that ignoring these tunes would leave me dry again and I couldn't risk that. Friends observed that I was becoming a little obsessed and no doubt it was some form of hyper activity after spending so many years in depression. Whatever was the cause, it was exhausting, even if it supplied some of the best tunes I composed for The News of the Victory. Eventually I had to let some of the tunes go just so I could get some rest and the episode calmed down after a few  months. These days, in between new ideas, my head is littered with ear-wormery leaving no space for my own thoughts. This noisy mixture of sound that goes unnoticed by anyone else, gets quite jumbled up with sounds that pop up over the radio or on a podcast and I am left asking myself every time I compose whether anything I have written is actually original or a plagiarised rebranding of someone else's work. I suspect it's probably closer to the latter, but often I don't know for sure. And, oh Best Beloved, I promise I have tried to keep a little more balanced.

Returning to the major topic under consideration it is a mystery to me why, when I have an idea for a blog essay, I don't seem to be able to get straight into it. There generally has to be some irrelevant diversion. Apropos of nothing so far, it is a complete mystery to me why my boat collects massive quantities of cott around the prop, while other boats cruise through known weed patches untouched. I believe I may have made reference to this mystery a couple of essays ago. 

Meanwhile out in the real world, why are the loaves of bread I make so inconsistent when I turn them out of the pan? I only use a breadmaker, so the variations can only be in the ingredients or the amounts, rather than the processes. Usually they turn out elegantly enough, but sometimes the end result of more like a large rock cake! I've had two rock loaves recently and don't know why. I'm guessing that the proportion of flour to water has varied sufficiently to make a difference, though I do measure everything as carefully as I can. I've been through five breadmaking machines over the past twenty-five years, but this one has started producing these mutant loaves. Why?

Thankfully they taste okay, so now it is lunchtime and I shall cut myself a slice or two, slather them both with humus and garnish them with onion. Then, O Best Beloved, I shall disembark with my bicycle and go about the day I thought I had planned

P.S.

Those who know, know 😉

Of Another Ending Or Just An Hiatus?

For many years it has been my great privilege and pleasure to organise a monthly session in Downham Market, Norfolk, for creators of original music and poetry. I inherited a "folk and acoustic music night" when the previous organiser needed to move on to other things. I'm trying to remember how long ago that was and I'm guessing around ten years ago, maybe more. 

These evenings started off at a café and shop specialising in selling and cooking locally produced food and beverages in Downham Market High Street called The Hop And Hog. It also had a licence for selling alcohol. The songwriter, musician and (presently four times published) author, Nico Dobben, knew the owner of the café and, along with musician and agit merchant John Preston, started the music and spoken word evenings. It was a place where one could order a home-cooked meal and enjoy not just the produce of local gardeners and smallholders, but also local musicians.

Sadly the Hop And Hog went out of business and we lost that very nice venue. If we wanted to carry on a new space for music was required. Rescue came when the new manager of Denver Windmill offered us a room at the mill. Although out of town the room was a good size albeit not easily accessible. One needed to be able to climb steep stairs inside and outside the building and dodge round the millstones to reach a room more usually used as a workshop space for teaching bread-making. It was during our time at Denver Mill that I took over the project. Seeing the number of very fine poets and songwriters among our regulars I felt that there was an opportunity to make a feature of original creations. Thus was Downham Songwriters & Poets created. People who wanted to perform covers or traditional songs had increasing opportunities among a growing number of open mic nights in the region. Again, sadly, there was trouble at t'mill and it too went out of business; we lost another venue. Was a pattern developing here? The Mill has since become home to another open mic session every month and also hosts regular festivals, the next one of which will be in one week's time.

In need of a new place for Songwriters & Poets I contacted the landlady of a pub back in Downham. I felt our numbers may improve if we were able to find a venue back in the town itself. For a few years we shared the bar at The Cock with locals who just wanted a quiet drink and, being a Friday night, members of the Norfolk Symphony Orchestra after rehearsals. The orchestra players disappeared after a while of tolerating us invading their social space and it was an ongoing issue to encourage a listening audience when people just really wanted to go to their local boozer for a night out. The number of people although good at first became a shrinking one and that made more apparent a tension between the political views of the regulars and the bunch of left-leaning dissidents who invaded their space. I found this quite an interesting situation as it gave me an opportunity to listen to and discuss with people completely outside my own echo-chamber. However, the differences came to a head in June 2016 on the day after the referendum to leave the European Union. Most of us were reeling from the way the vote had gone. As we gathered before the session began we moved chairs and tables into position in silence. Many of us were close to tears. The remain lobby had lost the vote overwhelmingly in our portion of the Fens. Our evening eventually got underway and was in something approaching full-swing when the vicar came in and delivered a sermon castigating "you lefty layabouts" who had never done a day of "real work" in our lives. He headed off any suspicion that a vicar might be accused of the same thing when he declaimed he had been a steel-worker in his pre-vicaring life, which he clearly felt qualified him for delivering his lecture. I had never spoken to him before and he knew nothing about me and, I suspect, nothing about most of the rest of our group. There was even less chance of any of us setting foot in his church after that experience. It was completely uncalled for and an arrogant imposition to interrupt our event. If ever there was a case of a man of god misreading a room this was it. Of course, the evening fell apart at that point and after that night we never went back.

Obviously we required yet another venue. There were other pubs in the town so we were not short of places to try. I took advice from those of our number who lived in Downham and one person sounded out the owner of The Crown. The Crown had a history as far as folk music was concerned. It had been a home of the old Downham Market Folk Club in the 1970s and possibly the 1960s and 1980s for all I know. My band, The News of the Victory, had played in the upstairs function room a couple of times in the 1990s, so it felt that moving to The Crown was a bit like a homecoming. They also had a number of function rooms, even after the upstairs hall had been converted to guest accommodation rooms. We were shown to The Stables that were occasionally used as a dining and function room and which had seen several changes of use since its venerable coaching inn days. We were told we could arrange it how we liked for our evenings. It was a completely separate space from the rest of the pub so there would be no need to disturb the regulars who weren't interested in the music and poetry. It was a good venue, with very easy access via our own entrance. There was no rent to pay with the pub benefitting from more bar sales and with even an option of food. For a time it looked like a good long-term solution. Sadly, once again events overtook us. The pub owner also owned The Jenyns Arms, a well established pub/restaurant at Denver Sluice. The Jenyns Arms was a popular, foodie restaurant. At some point the cellar was flooded and a lot of furniture was in danger of ruin. The Stables at The Crown was the only option for storage, so we lost that room. However, we were offered another room there. The Fox Dining Room was more compact and much closer to the bar. It was the space which felt most like the folk clubs I had known from my teenage years of going to folk clubs, although I don't recall another with a grandfather clock. The downside was that it was only accessible by a flight of five stairs, which were sadly beyond the ability of some of our regulars to manage. Then came covid and for us, as well as for everyone else, everything had to shut down.

Once we could eventually think of meeting again, we needed a space. A priority was for accessibility. One of our regulars suggested we try Discover Downham. It was the town's heritage centre, not quite a museum, though with plenty of artefacts on display, that had been converted from the old fire station. It was a nice enough room but lacking any of the atmosphere of any of our previous venues, there was no bar and we had to pay for room hire for the first time. There were also strict getting in and getting out limitations marked by the appearance of caretakers who jangled metaphorical keys. It did have a car park and our entrance was from the car park so in that sense it was convenient, but I never did get used to a complete lack of atmosphere apart from that with which our wonderful contributors - both performers and audience - endowed it. It definitely put the "function" into "function room". I acknowledge that the committee had attempted to add atmosphere via the display of artefacts and notices about the history of the town, but it certainly was not like any of our previous rooms with its fierce fluorescent lighting and noisy heating fans. I think the lack of a bar and having to pay for a multi-purpose space made creating an atmosphere more challenging. It was more like going to a parish meeting.

Like anything though else we got used to it and it has been a joy to be involved with some wonderful evenings of song and poetry there. We also attracted a small and loyal audience to support the performers. We had some people turn up speculatively and some grew into contributors to the evening's entertainment.

Now, though, it is time for me to hand it on to someone else. I don't know what Songwriters & Poets will become, though I suspect it will go from strength to strength. Many thanks to everyone who has turned up to support the evenings during my tenure. I have laughed, wept, shared my songs and poems and I have cajoled, counselled and encouraged new, aspiring  and returning performers. These last few years have provided a richness of local creativity that I shall treasure. It also made me feel part of a town I have always felt had something special, even when I have never lived there, except for times when I moored my boat nearby. I shall no longer be able to maintain that feeling, though for these years past I felt part of the extraordinary scene that Downham Market has encouraged. Maybe if I ever have to move on to land there are plenty of worse places to end up.

Of Dancing & Inheritance

I love this photograph, though my prosopagnosia strips away some of the pleasure. My son assures me this really is my parents, even if I can't see it! What joy there is in dancing! My mum and dad loved to dance and this photograph expresses that joy perfectly. I think she radiates joy in this image. A love of dancing runs in the family. Had she lived, my beautiful mother would have been a hundred years old this year. 

Sadly she didn’t live to see the next three generations enjoy dancing - it is, however, a wonderful inheritance from two lovely people. My father went to tea dances twice weekly until a few weeks before he died. In the long-ago days before covid, the innoculations and my two strokes here is that legacy, three generations of my family dancing to my band, The News of the Victory playing my composition, "The Divine Miss M". For me, the very worst thing about my degree of recovery from the strokes is that I no longer have the confidence to dance beyond a bit of shuffling about.

Of course, the legacy carries on and the ripples spread far beyond family. My mother would have been so happy to know that her granddaughter set up and leads this institution while her great-granddaughter has graduated from a college in the USA having completed a course in musical theatre.

Of The First Busk Of The Spring

It has been a long, cold, windy, watery winter. It was another sunny day today and it would have been such a waste to stay home on the boat when I could be out playing music in the street. Recent weekends have been tempting and then the weather made a choice to stay in the warmth and shelter of the boat even more tempting. There is also the competition with the karaoke crews in town who start off at about 8am and keep going until the market closes at 3pm and the streets clear of people. Yesterday there were no other people singing through cranked up p.a. systems and I was able to set up and enjoy myself for a couple of hours. People passing were very generous, so I guess some of them enjoyed my music as well. The man who dropped a fiver in the hat told me he plays guitar too (a Gibson Hummingbird apparently). It feels good to be getting back out there and doing my Marshlander thing.

I am clearly out of practice. Today is the first time I've sung in the street this year, but songs I've been singing in the boat to try and get my fingers, feet and voice moving deserted me at diverse moments. It wasn't a concert, it was street music and another instrumental verse as folk were ambling or dashing by made few odds to them. It is strange how the memory decides not to cooperate in the middle of a song as I try in vain to recall lyrics. I could understand if  these lapses happened in the same part of the song each time, but it's nothing like that. Holes can appear anywhere in the song where the lyrics should be and that is always frustrating. However, I do know that as I get out and play more regularly again, the words will reappear and reassert themselves.

At least busking still brings me joy!

Of Tales On Two Wheels

I love getting out on the bicycle. I cycle up to the lock most days in the boating season and into the village two or three times a week for fresh produce from a farm gate. Sometimes I cycle up to another village if a letter needs posting. My bike folds neatly into my boat and is a joy to ride. Sadly I feel the effort required to cycle at the moment, even here in the flat Fens, but there is nothing like a ride in beautiful fenland as the earth bursts into life with the energy of a new spring. I haven't had to light the stove for two or three weeks now and I don't have to wear a hat to bed at night and I rarely need to connect to a shoreline for electricity. Yes, I love this time of the year after a dreary and grey winter.

Today I needed to replenish fresh fruit and veg supplies. I bought potatoes (new and old), carrots, calabrese, sprouting broccoli and apples. I suspect some of these may not have been grown on the farm ... I was tempted by the pointy cabbage, but decided to give it a miss this time. On the way back I took a few photos. The only trick now is to work out how to import them into this blog. Such things used to be a lot more simple, but my phone no longer seems to speak to my laptop the way it used to. The computer is about fourteen years old and I can only run it when the sun is shining because the laptop battery no longer holds a charge for more than a couple of minutes. The operating system has upgraded as much as it is ever going to, so my work around is to send e-mails to myself.

Here are some beautiful views by the lock. The empty lock-keeper's cottage was bought a couple of months ago by friends and it is a joy to see how they are bringing it back to life.

My electronics may be temperamental, the boat and the van may decide not to cooperate every so often, a guitar string occasionally snaps or a harp reed clogs up, but somehow the bicycle never lets me down.