MUSINGS

2006

'If I can't do what I want, I'll do what I like'

An occasional online journal, partly concerning music, plus the voyages of Narrowboat Salaga. All sentiments expressed are completely off-the-cuff and spur-of-the-moment; I rarely revise or rewrite anything, and it all represents my state of mind as it changes from day to day, expressed with appalling honesty and tactlessness. All of which will do me no good whatsoever, I'm sure.

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Today, Friday, the general festiveness of the festive season wore off a bit, and I started feeling a bit irritable and depressed again; it ws partly to do with having got up ridiculously late again - a problem I've been having again lately - and also the weather - the horrible, infuriating rain has started once more, after a few blessed days of dryness. Also I'd intended to go swimming, but as usual the city council in its wisdom had decided to close all its facilities early this week, so I couldn't. However, instead I went and had a look at the sales in the record shops, and was pleased at last to find the Solti recordings of the two Elgar symphonies I'd been looking for for a while. Then I went to the cafe in Blackwells bookshop - the place I feel most at home in Oxford, and

101 things

Fanny Craddock

'Parrot's oratory stuns scientists'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3430481.stm

Boxing Day 2006

Ho-hum - well there you are, another Christmas Eve and Day past. It was actually quite pleasant this year ( last year was too). It seems to be the fashion to issue Christmas Messages on blogs these days, so I suppose I'd better - though I do think it's a bit of a cheek when there is only one right and proper Message on this occasion, from Her Majesty. Anyway - dear reader(s) - I am speaking to you from my august moorings by the gardens of Worcester College, right in the centre of Oxford. I finally made it back into the city on the 22nd of December, having set out at the end of July; I knew it would be an epci journey, but not quite that epic! Of course, what really held me back was the terrible wet weather - otherwise I would probably have got back about 6 weeks ago. The last few miles on Friday were pretty grim - through freezing fog and grey cold, and having to deal with three locks and three lift bridges; the latter are a real pain, as they are virtually impossible to operate singlehanded, and of course in the awful weather there were very few people around to ask for help; and I needed to get into town as I was holding my traditional little mulled wine and mince-pies evening that day. Eventually helpful people miraculously appeared from the mist, and I soldiered on, with very wet and cold hands and a dripping nose, eventually arriving at the bottom of the canal and reversing the last quarter of a mile by about 4, in time to dash in and meet people at Blackwell's cafe, which was delightfully warm and dry and full of people, after what felt like endless days of isolation in a grey mist in the middle of nowhere. From then on it's merely been a question of doing a bit of shopping and launching into the traditional orgy of food and drink. I was on duty quite a bit at Christ Church, including the evening of the first service of 9 Lessons and Carols, when I was deputed to supervise the queues and prevent actual punch-ups between desperate people wanting to get in to proceedings. In the end it all went quite smoothly, and at the end I went in myself, and then was transferred round to a seat right by the choir stalls in the middle of it all. It was quite a nice occasion, with many of the usual favourites, plus one or two novelties - a version of This Endris Night by John Madden, and a delightful arrangement of an old English carol, As Jacob with travel was weary one day by Stephen Darlington, the director of music at Christ Church. There was a lot processing about, with the choir singing from different positions around the cathedral, and at one point there was a rather amusing moment when they had a sort of false start and had to be held back by Dr. Darlington - there was a little 'middle-aged moment' which was shared by the choir and people close by, like myself, but it was all very jocular and good-humoured. They also did two great favourites of mine - Vaughan Williams' arrangement of This is the Truth sent from Above, and Peter Warlock's exquisitely poignant Bethleham Down. The choir sang extremely well, I thought - there seem to be some excellent trebles at the moment - and the whole occasion went off with great success. It's at times like this that I like to think of myself as being just a little bit part of the great institution of Christ Church, if only a very small and menial part. It's nice to be able to go to Christmassy things like this and actually see famiilar faces and be able to say 'hallo' and 'Happy Christmas' to people. It was even more so on Christmas Day, as I dragged myself up to go the service - unfortunately I couldn't make Matins, so was obliged to go to the Eucharist, which I never find very satisfying from an aeshetic point of view (I know for Christians that is not the point!); there was a huge queue and we were unable to sit in my favourite grand pew looking straight down the church, and the service went on for ever, but the music was good, with the choir heroically battling on to the end of Christmas and their holidays, and at least it feels right to me to go to church on Christmas Day and remember that this is a religious and spiritual occasion, despite all the material excess.

Talking of excess, after the service Mr. Wicker came back to the boat and we had a good old slap-up feast, accompanied by copious amounts of alcohol. Of course we watched Her Majesty's broadcast at 3 pm - she made a joke this year! And as ever tried to concentrate on the positive aspects of things. As we both discovered after a few hours, somehow one doesn't have the same capacity for stuffing oneself endlessly nowadays as in one's youth; quite frustrating, really. Anyway, it was all quite cosy, with the stove blazing away and Christmas carols on the radio, and chucking the occsional yule log on the flames, along with occasional bursts of TV and the classic 'Gas' episode of the immortal Bottom! I performed my usual miracles of cuisine for the occasion, and reduced the galley to complete chaos once more.

As for my Christmas Message. Well, I think what's important is to hang on to the idea of Christmas as something more than just an excess of material self-indulgence and alcohol. These are, I believe, legitimate elements of the concept of 'feasting and making merry', but what we are making merry about is in the end a religious festival, and I think one can preserve that idea by deliberately avoiding the worst vulgar schmaltzy aspects and sticking to carols and the message of the angels: Peace on earth - goodwill to all men. My favourite part of Christmas is Christmas Eve, when there is this tremendous and magical sense of expectation of something wonderful about to happen - something that will change everything. It's a great ideal, and even if it sometimes seems very far from what is regarded as the 'real' world, it's worth holding on to the basic idea. You don't have to actually be a practising Christian to appreciate that this whole thing is a celebration of hope and new life in the dark, cold time of the year; it's a beautiful thought, and one we need to hang on to to keep going in this sad, confused world of ours.

Sunday 17th December 2006

Oh dearie me - what a palaver! Here it is, nearly Christmas, and I still haven't quite got back to Oxford! These floods have been absolutely ridiculous - the worst for years around here, apparently. Today I've finally made it down to the one mile section of the River Cherwell that has been blocking my way all these weeks; it's still on red on the indicator, but with luck should be OK by tomorrow - I could probably have gone through this afternoon, but I see no point in taking unnecessary risks. This chap on a boat called Dusty, who sells diesel, coal, etc. whom I've been meeting all the way down the canal, took the risk and went through, and came past later and said it was 'a doddle', but he has to get to customers tomorrow. It's a bit awkward, as I have to get to work at Christ Church tomorrow at 1.30, and I do hate being in a rush, but I hope to get through and to a bus stop in good time, otherwise it will mean a long hot cycle ride in highly unsuitable clothing, not to mention a cycle in the dark on the way back. Such are the trials of a nomadic, non-conformist life.

In between navigating and getting trains in to work I've been trying to keep a grip on 'cultural' life; I read a marvellous book about Elgar lately which inspired me to get a CD of the realised sketches for the Third Symphony - what an extraordinary phenomenon that is. Amazing stuff - an unbelievable sort of 'beyond-the-grave' glimpse of the masterpiece that might have been - and there are truly marvellous things even in the uncompleted version. Also I've started the seasonal festivities with Bach's glorious Christmas Oratorio, and today I was overjoyed to realise that I'd rescued my precious old LP of Vaughan Williams' Hodie which I've had since I was about 15, so I'll be able to listen to that on my electric gramophone. I've been working a lot at Christ Church recently, and it's been an almost constant succession of Christmas concerts, carol events and parties - this week will be even more so. I felt quite sorry for the choristers the other day as they trooped throuugh Tom Gate the other night in their funny Tudor hats for the umpteenth time to perform again - they certainly work them hard there; but they seem to have the sort of teflon-like resilience which I suppose we all have at that age. I hope finally to get to a service in the cathedral myself, rather than ushering other people to them, on Christmas morning.

Sunday 3rd December 2006

Here I am, still stuck just south of Banbury - it's getting a bit ridiculous, now - I've been here for about three weeks. But I can't get down to Oxford because the incessant heavy rain has kept the rivers in flood all this time - specifically the river Cherwell, which the Oxford Canal rather inconveniently intersects with at two places between here and Oxford. It's not that it's a particularly unpleasant place to be, and I can get into Oxford easily on the train (though it works out a bit expensive), but I don't enjoy being stuck in one place for too long - I like to keep on the move, even if only up and down the river; being static for more than two or three days allows the sense of the futility of my current existence to catch up with me. Young Mr. Baker has taken me to task for surrendering to my strange, solitary life as 'normal'. I can only say it's not the life I want to be living - merely the life I am living, for some reason, and I do try to resist total surrender. Who knows if I shall succeed?

I've been reading a biography of the 1890's 'decadent' poet Ernest Dowson, and rather enjoying it. I used to have big 'thing' about that period, and am still quite fond of some the poetry - I even once went on a pilgrimage to the Cheshire Cheese pub of Fleet Street where the Rhymers' Club used to meet. I find the idea of London at that time very romantic - I mean, it must have been horrendous in some respects ('City of Dreadful Night'), but also rather magnificent. All gone, now, except for small pockets, if you know where to look. I suppose I can sort of relate to Dowson - Yeats said of him: ' I cannot imagine the world in which he would have succeeded'. Hmm.

On a very different note, I've been very much enjoying Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples, which I have never read before. It's good old-fashioned narrative history, with lots of kings and heroes, etc., so of course I love it. And yet I believe he made sure he checked with professional historians at the time to make sure it was in accord with current up-to-date research. And it's remarkably well-written in a very readable sort of way. If only they would make it part of the school curriculum - people in this country might actually learn something about their own history and culture, and maybe some pride in it, too. But of course that would be impossible - total anathema to the hidebound Marxists and 'pc' New Labour zombies that control everything now! What a remarkable character Churchill was. I came across a book in Blackwell's the other day with his collected witticisms - needless to say I've forgotten nearly all of them, but they were very entertaining at the time. I do remember that when an over-excited mother rushed up to him and said "Mr. Churchill, my baby looks exactly like you", he replied, "Madam - all babies look like me"!

Last week on a particularly wet, gloomy day I decided for some reason to go on the train to Coventry for the afternoon. I remember going there as a kid and being very impressed with the modern cathedral, (I had a strange obsession with cathedrals at the age of 11 or so) so I thought I'd go and see if I was still impressed. Anyway, it was something to do, though a bit of an extravagance. When I got to the cathedral I was most disappointed to find there was no Evensong, as I'd intended to stay for that - they only have it two days a week, which is a bit pathetic! Anyway, at first I thought the building looked a bit dull, and smaller than I remembered it, but as I walked round I realised that it was rather impressive, even though it was the worst sort of weather to see it by, with so little light to illuminate the stained glass windows. It's most effective if you stand up between the high altar and the choir stalls, looking back down the nave, as you can then see all the windows, which face more or less towards the altar; I suppose they are designed to light the enormous Graham Sutherland tapestry of Christ in Glory behind the altar. This is quite impressive enough from the back of the church, but standing just below it it is quite overwhelming, not to say, awe-inspiring, and 'completes' the building. I'd like to see the place again on a bright summer's day, but heaven knows if I'll ever be back in Coventry again - there's little enough there to attract one. I had a look at the Art Gallery, which was pathetic, and apart from that the whole of the city centre is one enormous shopping centre or 'mall', and apparently entirely built of plastic and glass. It was like some dystopian vision of the future. I found myself looking at the people milling around and wondering what on earth it must be like to be born and grow up in such a place! Difficult to imagine.

Sunday 19th November 2006

Still stuck just south of Banbury on the canal; not unpleasant, in its way, and I've been into Oxford once or twice; at least its fairly peaceful here, and I haven't been bothered by antisocial elements - it's a bit of a trek to the shops and the railway station. During the week I visited the small museum in Banbury - it's quite good of its kind, with an interesting section on the history of the canals, and more on the Civil War (there was a siege of Banbury) and more recent social history, which made one regret the rather pleasant little rural market town that is no more. But the most striking thing was a piece of modern art called Soundpool, created by a Neil C. Smith, which was absolutely delightful. Normally I find contemporary art either pointless or positively annoying, but this was a pleasant exception. It consisted of an oval 'pool' in a room, with some sort of light projection from below that created a moving landscape of white clouds and a blue summer sky; there was a sort of 'ambient' sound going on which had an aeolian quality about it. The clever thing was that as you walked about the room, the projections and sounds changed in relation to your movements - various sounds from the environment filtered in, and the skyscape changed sounds and colours. It was quite hypnotic and terribly evocative - there was one bit where the sound of church bells blended together with the reflection of the moving skies in a way that I found very moving - it seemed to take you far away from all daily troubles, into some sort of idyllic summer world of childhood. Lovely. I only wish there was more modern art like that - doing what art ought to do, transforming and redeeming the mere meaningless contingency of existence into something beautiful and meaningful.

Today, Wednesday, I went into Oxford on the train - I went in on Saturday, as well; on both occasions I went to Evensong at Magdalen. As ever it was lovely to re-connect with this side of life in Oxford - it's always very atmospheric at this time of year, anyway, and the overwhelming hordes of tourists have gone. Today they did an interesting Jackson Magnificat (I presume the former organist of York Minster), and an anthem by Kenneth Leighton, Give Me the Wings of Faith. They were both sung very well, and I had one of those moments sometimes brought on by music, when my life felt normal and whole, just briefly. These moments just remind me how strange my life has actually become in recent years - so isolated from people and normal social intercourse, intellectual stimulation, not to mention the music world or any real, practical involvement with making music. I don't really understand how it happened, though I have my theories; the worrying thing is it's beginning to feel rather normal, and I find myself almost preferring isolation, and slightly afraid of making efforts to break it. My attempt to get a CD recording of songs is a case in point - admittedly it hasn't been helped by my computer breaking down and losing some crucial email addresses, but I was already feeling a bit bogged down and confused - it seems all to easy to just give up and pursue the soft option of not even trying to achieve anything any more. But there is something in me that rebels against this idea. If I could just get some sort of connection with something musical and constructive, like teaching or conducting or something. But I fear it's too late for that - I've become too much of an outsider.

Anyway, for some reason I've started composing a little carol; I suppose it's partly just to keep in practice, and there's always a slight chance of a very small piece being performed somewhere, somehow.

Remembrance Sunday 2006

I seem to feel sadder and sadder every Remembrance Sunday. This year I can't help reflecting on the fact that our troops are fighting and dying once again in foreign lands - doing their duty, as they (and I) would see it - and increasingly without appreciation from many here in Britain. The shortsightedness and selfishness of the average Briton of today is depressing; can't they see that the enemy we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq is just as bad - maybe worse - as any that has ever threatened us in our long history, and we simply can't afford to fail or give up? Militant Islam is on the march, and doesn't suffer any of the doubts or self-questionings we like to indulge in. Maybe it's just one more phase in the aggressive history of that religion and culture - born as it was in warfare and conquest - but that is not much consolation for us to have to live with it. Meanwhile we have an increasingly belligerent and self-righteous growing Muslim minority in this country who seem determined to demand Islamic law and ultimately an Islamic state here in Britain. Where will it all end? Reflecting on today's ceremonies, one can't help wondering what all those thousands of war-dead died for. To see western liberal democracy surrender to religious bigotry and oppression? Surely not.

This very evening four more British troops have been killed by 'insurgents' (terrorists) in Iraq.

As seems to have become a tradition, I listened to Sir Arthur Bliss's Morning Heroes again today. What a moving piece that is - the archetypal experiences of war, going right back to Homer and ancient China, up to the Great War. But it is a million miles away from our current situation. The trouble is, even up to the 1920's, when the work was written, it was somehow possible to see something noble and heroic in war, as well as its horror and misery. Now, when you're dealing with people who will attack civilians indiscriminately and without warning, and value human life so little that they are prepared to kill themselves as long as they take others with them, is there anything redeeming to be found anywhere? Perhaps the self-sacrifice of our soldiers who try to remain decent in an obscene situation, facing an enemy without humanity? But is our future to be one of ruthless killing without compunction - worse than animals? Nice thought. I feel more depressed this Remembrance Sunday than ever before; and I only expect things to get worse for the foreseeable future. When the war really comes onto the streets of Britain, as it is bound to do soon, it is going to be really depressing - not to mention frightening.

On a completely different note, I've started reading Wordsworth's The Prelude. It used to be a huge favourite of mine in my teens - in fact the copy I have was presented to me for the Lower Sixth Latin prize in 1970. A bit unfair, as I believe I was the only one doing A level Latin in my school that year! I can't quite re-capture the intensity the poem held for me in those days, but every so often I get a flash of it, and it's nice to dwell on a time that was so different and so much more hopeful than today.

Friday 10th November

Here I am in Banbury, in Oxfordshire, once again. I don't know quite how I feel about it, really - Banbury's an OK'ish place, but I have already met with some of the things I don't like nowadays about Oxford - yobby people in the streets and too many loud foreigners. It seems that the further south and east you go and the nearer to London, the more horrible things become. Anyway, at least it's convenient here for the shops and the railway station; I shall have to stay in the area until the work at Heyford Common Lock is finished - about 3 weeks, before returning to Oxford until Christmas at least. After that - who knows? I need to make my mind up what to do this winter - whether to stay on the boat or go somewhere else. I must admit I do like a break in the depths of winter - mains electricity and hot baths do have a distinct appeal when the weather is freezing and bleak! Meanwhile, if I get tired of Banbury I will probably go for a little jaunt up or down the canal, to the peace of the countryside.

Coming back onto the Oxford Canal felt quite strange after all this time - I left in summer and now it seems almost to be winter; the voyage feels tremendous to me, though of course quite ludicrously the journey could be done in a couple of days by car. After getting through Napton I had a whole day off to recover, and then was able to proceed at a slightly less hectic pace, although in the end I had to hurry to get to Banbury yesterday before the shops shut, as I needed to buy a new inverter after my old one packed up. Boating can be rather an expensive business! But I simply have to have an inverter, otherwise no music, no TV and no computer or phone charging. I came through Bourton Lock, which was a bit poignant, as I had just read about the recent death of the amazing old lady who had apparently lived there for over 40 years - most of them without mains electricity or water; she was well-known for her 'wild' garden, and her pink boat which she used to go to Banbury in once a fortnight to do her shopping. I have been through the lock several times and remembered the beautiful garden and the quaintness of the place, but oddly enough I never saw her and didn't know who lived there. There was something sad and haunting about the place - with tools left around in the garden, a bucket by the front door and various little items on the window ledges under the closed curtains - everything just as she'd left it, as though she'd just popped out for a minute. Anyway, apparently she maintained her independence and dignity to the last, in the cottage she'd lived in for so long.

- Back in the typical rural landscape of the Oxford Canal

Sunday 5th November 2006

Well - I feel completely exhausted, but somewhat gratified, as I managed to get through Napton Locks today with time to spare, which means I won't be trapped 50 miles from Oxford until the middle of December. I won't be able to get right down to Oxford before the 1st of December,though, as there is a stoppage at Heyford, but given the way I feel about Oxford these days, perhaps it won' be that unpleasant being out in the countryside and just going in on the train or bus, anyway. The last few days have been really quite hard work - my shoulders and arms are aching from all those locks; on the plus side, I'm sure I've lost some weight and had a lot of aerobic benefit! Although the weather has been quite cold, it has actually been bright, clear and dry, which certainly makes the going easier - there is nothing more horrible to my mind than navigating in the rain, and specially doing locks, with wet ropes and slippery ladders. This journey has been something of an epic - I think on the whole I should have set off earlier and come back a bit sooner, before the weather changed and things like floods and stoppages threatened. But then, I never had a very clear plan of where I was going or whether I even intended to return to Oxford at all, anyway. It's certainly been an experience, and I've seen and experienced many parts of England I never did before - rather reassuringly, there is a lot more of traditional England still out there than I expected, although of course it's all overlaid with the modern diseases of heavy road traffic, rampant ugly materialism and yob culture. Still - on the whole it has all confirmed my opinion that the further west, and to some extent north, you go away from London and the south, the more like Britain it becomes. I am returning to the Oxford area now partly as I know I can get paid work there and partly to stop and assess things, but I am fairly sure next year I shall return to Worcestershire and Gloucestershire and round abouts and see if I can base myself there.

- A stop in a particularly scenic bit of the Grand Union, on a cold and frosty afternoon, stove smoking merrily

- This aqueduct was really rather terrifying in a high wind The Stratford Canal is really rather picturesue, with its little lock- keepers' cottages -

Thursday 2nd November 2006

Attentive readers may have observed a slight hiatus in this journal - this was mainly due to the fact that my computer broke down; in the end I had to get a new one, which was a bit of a palaver, and it's taken me a while to get myself organised again. It was particularly annoying when it broke down, as it was while I was stranded for eight days at Bidford on Avon owing to the floods, and there wasn't much to do. The delay was disastrous, as if left me with very little time to get back to Oxford before the winter stoppages on the canals - in fact I am certain not to get there, but I'm trying to get as close as possible so that hopefully I can still get in to work. Which has led to a rather manic rush. I'm quite surprised at how fast I've moved; yesterday I did 11 locks, and today I performed to heroic feat of getting through the 21 large double locks at Hatton single-handed in one afternoon - a rather elderly couple took pity on me and kindly helped me through five, which was very useful, but it was still the most I've done in one day on my own. I'm exhausted and aching all over this evening! (Not as young as I was). I had a rather frightening experience at lock 4, when I carelessly let the boat drift back over the cill, and it caught on it and nearly got turned over - I managed to rush over and let the bottom paddle down in time; you realise just how uncontrollable 14 tons of steel are if you let things get out of hand for a moment. It was certainly a salutary reminder never to relax too much, specially when I'm on my own, which is most of the time, of course. When I got the boat stable and moored again I found that almost everything on the starboard side of the boat was on the floor - it took me ages to sort it all out!

Sunday 22nd October 2006

Well - I didn't get up to Stratford before the floods, after all; I've been stuck at a place called Bidford for a couple of days now. On Friday evening I found I couldn't get through the narrow arch of the old medieval bridge here, so I had to moor by a pub. I wish I had been able to get through, because I was within only a day of Stratford and the canal, but overnight the river rose alarmingly. I rang the lock at Evesham, and they advised me not to proceed, but the annoying thing was that there were hire boats merrily going on up river through the raging torrent - apparently they were piloted, which made all the difference. And of course there's been more heavy rain, so I'm stuck here; I only hope it goes down soon, as although there could be worse places to be stuck (I'm by a friendly pub and there's a convenience store yards away) it's getting a but frustrating. I was told that it might be OK tomorrow, if there was no more rain - at which it proceed to rain for about 5 hours non-stop! I could be here for days on end now - it's very annoying; it's not that it so very urgent to get back to Oxford, but it would be disastrous if I was so delayed that the winter stoppages began on the canals - I really don't want to be stranded in the middle of nowhere for the winter, with no income.

Yesterday, to divert myself, I decided to cycle to Stratford-on-Avon. It wasn't a particularly pleasant cycle ride, as I took a direct but very busy road theres, and then on the way back along quieter country roads the heavens opened and I was soaked. However - Stratford was quite interesting. Full of tourists, of course. It's extraordinary that I've never been there before. I found Holy Trinity, where Shakespeare is buried; it's a very simple grave, though in a beautiful setting in a chapel with lots of stained glass and elaborate monuments and a magnificent high altar and altar screen. The light happened to be very good, and I got some excellent photos; once again I lost them all by accidentally pulling open the battery cover on my camera when I was having some tea. Curse it! I seem to be having rather bad luck with that camera at the moment. Now I'll have to go and take some more - that is if I ever get to Stratford at all in these river conditions!

- Stratford - a real teashop at last! Even the route to the gents' loo was quite historic -

Thursday 19th

I'm moored tonight in Evesham, after a rather long day coming up from Pershore.

Setting off from Tewkesbury yesterday was fascinating - the Avon has a very different feel from the Severn, and the weather finally broke from the endless dark gloomy cloud, and there were periods of glorious autumn sunshine - what a contrast, and views of Bredon Hill, celebrated by A.E. Housman in A Shropshire Lad, - in the distance. The locks on the Avon are quite distinctive - big old double locks - and a fair bit of work, singlehanded, but a group of middle-aged Australians in a hire boat help me along some of the way. There have been some quite heavy downpours of rain, mainly at night, but so far the river hasn't reacted too fiercely - I just hope I can get up to the Stratford Canal before any serious flooding starts.

This is really a delightful part of the world - quintessential rural England, and not quite as spoilt as places nearer to London, like Oxfordshire - it all has that 'western' feeling about it which I like. I stopped at Pershore for the night - there are the remains of a great abbey there, too, but unlike Tewkesbury only the great tower and transepts were preserved to make part of the parish church; it seemed like a very pleasant town, though, with lots of fine old houses and coaching inns. Unfortunately my stay at Pershore was longer than I expected, as my alternator finally packed up, leaving me with batteries that weren't charging, so I had to call up River and Canal Rescue again, and a nice man (originally from Boston, funnily enough) turned up promptly and fixed me up with a new and somewhat superior model; it all cost £84, but it would undoubtedly have been much more expensive any other way, and the thing was going to give up sooner rather than later, so I don't feel too bad about it. Anyway it's such a relief to have it all working again properly. So I was able to set off for Evesham - a bit late, but I got here by nearly 7, feeling rather tired after the alternator episode and doing three or four big locks. It would have been sooner but I had to rescue a launch which had been escorting rowers and broken down; it was a bit of a palaver, but eventually I towed them back to their rowing clubs, where there were various youths milling around in an excited state, wondering what had happened to them.

Evesham, again, seems like a very pleasant place. The water front in the centre of the town is quite splendid, with good moorings alongside a sort of park affair. Needless to say there are the remains of another abbey here, too. the town itself has a nice, countrified sort of feel, with an old-fashioned market and a fair number of local shops as well as the usual chain stores.

- Evesham alleyways and timbered houses

- The scenic river front at Evesham All that's left of Evesham Abbey -

I've been re-discovering my old LP's on my electric gramophone; a lovely one of music of Holst, including the St. Paul's and Brook Green suites, the Fugal Concerto, etc. There is something so special to me about Holst's music; I've talked about this before - it has something of the quality of Bach's music - a sort of clarity and purity, and a way of being 'above' ordinary experience, and putting things in perspective.

- The autumnal Avon A picturesque mill - was it at Fladbury? -

.

Tuesday 17th October

Here I am in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire - a place I have immediately taken to. I came down the Severn from Worcester without incident yesterday, though it was rather a long grind; I stopped briefly for lunch at Upton-on-Severn, which seemed a nice little town. It's amazing how much more ground you can cover on a river compared to a canal in the same time, especially when you're going downstream! Which is just another argument in favour of my preference for rivers. Even the Severn was much less fearsome than I expected - though obviously it must be horrendous in a flood; I will probably venture down as far as Gloucester next time I come this way. I turned onto the Avon here at Tewkesbury, through Avon lock, where for the first time ever as far as I can remember the lock-keeper put both ropes on the bollards for me. As the Avon is run by a Trust, I knew there was a charge to navigate on it, but I was a bit surprised it was as much as £44 to go the whole way up to Stratford. Still, I suppose they've got to get their money from somewhere, though I imagine it acts as a bit of a disincentive to boaters. Perhaps that's the idea - to keep it uncrowded. There are moorings here by the lock, which is a fascinating area, with a large working mill nearby, and some very quaint Victorian bridge architecture. I had a quick walk around yesterday evening, and the place really appealed to me; a very old-fashioned English country town, with lots of old timbered houses, numerous old local shops, amazingly, the wonderful Abbey, and the junction of the two rivers as well. I immediately felt it was the sort of place I could imagine basing myself in, as well as Worcester; perhaps I could somehow base myself between the two? The problem would be that there are anything like as many casual moorings in this area, so it would be difficult for me to operate the way I do on the Thames around Oxford - but having a long-term mooring, if I could find one, would be expensive. Still, at least I've finally found an area, as I'd hoped, on this journey, that might be an alternative to poor old Oxford. If I could just find the kind of congenial casual work I have at Christ Church, all might be well. We shall see.

I finally managed to find a proper barber's that wasn't extortionate and get my hair cut, so I am feeling much less shaggy; it was getting really disgusting - I'm sure it affects my mental state. Then I went to have a look round Tewkesbury Abbey. It really is the most remarkable building - I had no idea; it gives a vivid sense of the sheer splendour and wscale of the great abbey churches that were so wantonly destroyed by Henry VIII. Nearly all the big ones we see are ruins, but Tewkesbury certainly isn't, and though all the outer buildings, including the cloisters are gone, the church itself has been preserved and restored in a very sensitive way. It is on a cathedral scale, and the interior is perhaps more magnificent than the exterior - a great soaring space with massive round Norman pillars, a high altar with a great ambulatory behind it and a number of chapels round the east end. There are a number of remarkable survivals of medieval chantry chapels and tombs - one of them of the unfortunate Duke of Clarence, murdered so memorably in Shakespeare's Richard II by being drowned in a butt of malmsey. Also some beautiful effigies which have not been defaced, including an amazing kneeling knight on the top of one chantry, facing towards the high altar. There are some remnants of medieval painting, and in some area, such as over the Choir, the original medieval colouring and gilding has been renewed, to glorious effect. Finally, around the Choir is a collection of windows containing some of the most complete and well-preserved 14th century stained glass I've ever seen. It's a place well worth visiting and one I definitely will visit again. There was an evensong on which I stayed for - it was rather good; they have a choir with trebles from some local boys' school who were quite creditable, and they sang Elgar's The Spirit of the Lord - one of my great favourites. Altogether a very satisfactory visit, even though I was having one of my really bad days from not sleeping properly and feeling a bit ill. Tomorrow, up the Avon.

Of course, after I'd left Tewkesbury I found my camera had somehow deleted all my magnificent photos of the abbey, so all I have left is a murky distant shot down the Avon.

- The friendly lock keeper guides me on to the Avon A murky view of Tewkesbury Abbey and the placid Avon -

There is a lovely picture here, though, on the Abbey website:

Sunday 15th October 2006

The weather took a long time to clear again today, from the endless grey cloudiness, but when it did it was rather pleasant. I had originally intended to go down to Eton for the annual singing competition, my favoutie music event, but decided that 5 hours train travel was a bit excessive (not to mention the fare). So instead I cycled up to Elgar's birthplace, at Broadheath, within sight of his beloved Malvern Hills. I would have loved to have gone up to the hills, but it was so misty it would hardly have been worth it. I have a dim memory of the house from 20 years ago or so, but now there is a large car park and a visitor centre, and it costs £5 to go in; all a bit soulless - but it was nice to see lots of personal effects and documents that brought the great composer to life How much his music means to me! The house is amazingly small and modest, which only throws into relief the outstanding achievement of Elgar in doing what he did. One rather nice thing was that there was a whole orchard of young apple-trees planted round the visitor centre, with lots of apples just lying around, so I put a few in my rucksack - they're very sweet, and I'm eating them now. Perhaps I will plant a few pips and try to grow a tree 'from Elgar's garden'?

I got back in good time, despite a puncture, for Evensong again. They sang Howells' St. Paul's Service and his O Saviour of the World. It was very good and most uplifting - the place has a very distinctive and satisfying sound, and the choir have a nice confident, direct style of singing which I like. Unfortunately the warbly woman priest was on duty again; it just proves my point - the whole idea of intoning the responses and prayers was to make them carry further and be more easily understood in large echoey buildings; in this case most of it was simply indistinct and incomprehensible. She was all right when she was speaking. Otherwise I enjoyed the two services very much - there's something very reassuring about the atmosphere in an English cathedral at evensong. It reminds me of the story about Sir John Betjeman being told by someone 'church isn't all about singing hymns and feeling warm and comfortable inside, you know' - and Betjeman thinking to himself, 'but it is, isn't it?' How I wish I could get some of my church music used in such places - it seems to be an insuperable problem to get any interest.

I'm beginning to feel the isolation of this voyage a bit now. I've been on the go for about 10 weeks, basically on my own, apart from the visit to Edinburgh. I am quite looking forward to getting back to Oxford, if only to have a tiny bit of a social life, such as it is - though I know I will notice and hate the rootless, 'cosmopolitan' atmosphere there, so much in contrast with most of the places I've been in on this trip. I had hoped that during this journey I would find some congenial places that felt like the Britain I once knew, where I could perhaps base myself - actually both Lincoln and Worcester could perhaps fit that description, and I have hopes of Tewkesbury. But the perennial question raises itself - what would I live on? Perhaps my ideas will coalesce when I get to the end of the journey; I find this is quite often what happens - I need to digest experiences for a while before any new move.

- The Worcester river front is quite appealing, specially near the Cathedral A certain foursquare, massive dignity -

- Elgar's very modest birth place at Broadheath Commemorated in the cathedral at the other end of his life -

Elgar is quite well commemorated around the city. I was amused that the statue by the Cathedral (framed against a delightful 60's shopping centre where Elgar's father's music shop once stood) seems to have become a gathering place of the scruffy (though not aggressively unpleasant) youth of Worcester; Sir Edward seemed to have almost a benign air as they rattled round him on their skateboards. I wonder what most of them know/think about him - if anything?

- Sir Edward presiding benignly over the scruffy youth of Worcester

Saturday 14th October

I feel immensely gratified to have made it on to the Severn, and down to Worcester. I now feel quite confident about going on down to Tewkesbury and up the Avon - so much nicer than going back through Birmingham! As with the Trent, the river has proved to be much less intimidating than its reputation promised, or my fears presaged; so far it's been remarkably like the Thames. Although I don't underestimate what it could be like - judging from the height of the banks and the number of houses raised up on platforms it must be truly fearsome when it's in flood. I've been amazingly lucky, at this time of year, and with the rain we've had, to find it in such a placid state. I set off from Stourport about 1.30 pm and made it down to Worcester, through three locks, in about two and a half hours. The locks are quite interesting - not as big and terrifying as the ones on the Trent, but older and quainter than the ones on the Thames; the lock-keepers are very obliging and open them as you approach.

I've been moored by the end of the race-course in Worcester. The moorings are not that good - concrete sides with insufficient mooring cleats, but it's reasonable quiet, except for the drunks staggering across the nearby footbridge on Friday and Saturday night. There are even early morning rowers, rather like at Oxford, though thankfully they don't seem to start quite so close to dawn here! There are one or two other boats around, even this late in the year, including to my surprise one called 'Ganesh' that is extremely familiar to me from Oxford. The waterways are really quite a small world; of course I feel as though I'm miles and miles away from Oxford, but in fact I suppose I'm not, though by water it's at least 10 days' voyage.

Today, Saturday, I went for a shop and look round the city. I've taken quite a liking to the place - like Lincoln it does feel very English and British (mainly because the streets are full of English (and some Welsh) people, unlike Oxford or London. Like almost everywhere, unfortunately a lot of nice old buildings have been destroyed or insensitively modernised, and in some parts there is a rather serious traffic problem. Also like everywhere there is hardly a single old-fashioned shop or family business left in the streets. Nevertheless, there are some quite pleasant little thoroughfares, and quite an extensive bustling shopping area, with a few old timbered buildings, like the Tudor House, and a rather magnificent Guildhall, emblazoned with gilded statues of Charles I and II, and the city's proud motto, Faithful in Peace and in War - Worcester is know as 'the faithful city', as it held out longest for the King in the Civil Wars. Upstairs in the assembly room they served teas, which was rather fun, surround by portraits of monarchs and mayors. There was a 'record' fair, where I couldn't resist purchasing a (very cheap) double video of the TV series The British Empire in Colour, which is an amazing record of a vanished world, despite a slightly irritating and 'pc' commentary. And of course there's the cathedral, which doesn't have anything like the grandeur or commanding situation of Lincoln, but has a massive foursquare solidity of its own, and a pleasant atmosphere. I went to evensong, and thought the choir was pretty good - they did Wood's Collegium Regale canticles and Boyle's Thou, o God, art praised in Sion - a most rousing piece. Unfortunately they had one of those disastrous women priests who insist on warbling the responses, a thing I find aesthetically most disagreeable. But otherwise it was a nice service and atmosphere, with a very atmospheric organ voluntary which I think was one of Howells' psalm preludes.

- Rather an elegant bridge at Holt Fleet; a pity it was rather a cloudy. gloomy day

- Two pairs of locks down onto the river; quite hard work Forth onto the mighty Severn at last (actually not as mighty as the Trent, so far) -

Thursday 12th October

Here I am, finally, at Stourport, at the bottom of the Staffs. and Worcs. Canal - the gateway to the Severn. I feel as though I've been on that canal forever; it has taken me quite a while to get down here, but the main thing has been the awful weather - it's been cloudy, gloomy and sopping wet for days, which is very dispiriting and actually makes progress slower as everything is wet and slippery. Also for about the last three days the journey has been through canyons, of red sandstone cliffs and trees, so I feel as though I've emerged from some sort of long tunnel into the daylight, and today the weather finally took a turn for the better and dried up, and the forecast is good for the next few days. Which is good timing, as I intend to launch out onto the river Severn tomorrow. After all the rain I was dreading to see the river swollen and racing, but actually when I went to look at it earlier it's remarkable placid, and now it's stopped raining it can only go down; so I'm not as apprehensive as I was. I should be able to get down to Worcester tomorrow, with a bit of luck, which will be lovely, and I see no reason why I shouldn't go on down to Tewkesbury and then up the Avon through Stratford and back onto the Grand Union and round to Oxford. I shall be very pleased if I can visit these three places by boat - two of which I've never been to in my life, rather than go back through the nightmare of Birmingham. Provided I can get back to Oxford by about the end of the month there shouldn't be any problem, though quite what I'm going to do after that, especially as Osney Lock, the crucial lock on the Thames in Oxford, is going to be closed for repairs from the 6th November until heaven knows when; I may have to spend some time on the canal - perhaps even try to find a mooring - and I won't be able to get down to Christchurch Meadow, the most convenient mooring in the city. Oh well.

Though the last few days have been rather hard work, there are some quite pleasant spots along the Staffs. and Worcs. - definitely worth a more leisurely visit in summer time; part of the problem has been feeling I have to hurry a bit to make up ground.

- Kidderminster Lock was rather picturesque, with the beautiful old parish church, as long as you didn't look the other way, towards the ring road and industrial estate! Stourport is a real inland port, with two (soon three) basins full of boats and two sets of locks down onto the Severn -

- Moored in a rather idyliic rural setting, and the rain stopped for a while, too!

- The amusingly named Bumblehole Lock

- Bratch locks are rather picturesque - a staircase of three with an actual BW lock-keeper in a little castle at the top Looking up Bratch from the bottom lock; note my sacks of coal on the roof -

Sunday 8th October

Well - it is getting very autumnal now - horrible wet and windy, in fact, for the last few days - though we had some respite today and yesterday. I feel my voyage has been going on quite long enough, but I am very far from any sort of conclusion. I'm well down the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal, away from the horrors of Wolverhampton, but I am not at all sure if I'll be able to make it down to Worcester and back round to Oxford that way now - after all the heavy rain we've had I fear the Severn will be un-navigable in a narrowboat; and in any case, to my alarm, when I checked the Worcester and Birmingham canal which I'd intended to use up from Worcester I discovered it has a flight of thirty-four locks on it! I really don't think I could face that on my own - it would take me about two or three days, without assistance! There is another route, by going right down to Tewkesbury and then up the river Avon - but that would mean even more probably flooding rivers. Otherwise I will have to turn back at Stourbridge and go through the horrid Birmingham navigations, which was the one thing I wanted to avoid - derelict industrial landscapes, rubbish-filled canals, stone-throwing kids and marauding thugs not being my idea of fun. I can't decide what to do. I shall have to try to get information about the condition of the Severn, etc, and perhaps be prepared to wait until the waters subside. It's not that it's so very urgent to get back to Oxford, but i do need to earn some money, and I had planned to return there by the end of October. Oh well - we shall see.

The journey has continued without undue incident - though I did have a problem the other day with the battery charging light staying on red, usually a sign that the batteries aren't charging. I couldn't find an obvious reason, so I called up this River and Canal Rescue thing I've joined. Two chaps turned up fairly promptly, though I was surprised and amused that neither of them appeared to be older than about 16! Though I suppose they must have been. Anyway - they seemed to know what they were doing, and they ascertained that the batteries were still charging and there was nothing seriously wrong, though we still couldn't find out why the red light wouldn't go off. So I've carried on as normal, though it always makes me uneasy when even a small thing like that isn't right, as it tends to indicate that something bigger is also not right.

I've has the stove on for the last few nights; not that it's freezing or anything, but it's getting distinctly chilly in the evenings now. It's rather cosy, though it reminds me of the effort of lighting the damn thing for the rest of the winter, not to mention cleaning it out and keeping myself in fuel. Perhaps there's something to be said for diesel stoves, after all.

In the field of reading, I've finally finished Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; it 's only taken me two years - but I've been reading it in fits and starts; what an amazing book - and written with such style, too. I've also been reading C. S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man - a very important and pertinent book, I think. Also I rummaged out an old copy of Prescott's Conquest of Peru - such a fascinating read, though a very sad story of carnage and destruction. And I've been quite taken with Disraeli's Coningsby ; I've never actually read anything by Disraeli before - it's quite lively stuff. Where he found the time to write novels, in between being Prime Minister, etc, I can't imagine. I've noticed that I am less and less able to read anything contemporary, or even remotely modern; not surprisingly, I suppose, given my aversion to the trashy 'values' of our contemporary apology for a culture. I'm writing a sort of essay about this at the moment, entitled The Re-valuing of all Values (thank you, Nietszche), which I shall 'publish' if and when it's finished. I think the Lewis book gets to the heart of what's wrong with our diseased culture, and it needs to be expounded more widely. Though I do find it difficult to write anything at all rigorous or thoughtful at the moment, as I am always so tired and sleepy after a day cruising that I tend to fall asleep if I try.

Thursday 5th October 2006

Well - today is my birthday once again; funny how they keep coming round.

Happy Birthday to me,

Happy Birthday to me,

Happy Birthday dear Laurence,

Happy Birthday to me.

Anyway - my birthdays are usually very dull these days, but this one was unusually exciting as I spent the first 5 or 6 hours of in in the Accident and Emergency department of Stafford General Hospital, on suspicion of having accidentally poisoned myself! It was all rather grotesque, but what happened was that earlier I had moored in a quite pleasant location, and noticed some quite nice looking mushrooms by the towpath, and rather foolishly decided to have some in an omelette for tea. They looked like, and I thought they were, puffballs, which are edible and apparently quite nice. It was very careless of me, really. Anyway, I ate a couple of mouthfuls, and decided they weren't particularly pleasant, and threw the rest away. But after an hour or so I started feeling a bit queasy and dizzy, and I suddenly wondered if I'd eaten something inadvisable. So I looked up some fungus information on the internet (Wikipaedia, in fact), and to my alarm discovered that amanita, one of the two most lethal poisonous fungi, responsible for the majority of deaths, are often mistaken for immature puffballs. Looking at the photos and checking the various characteristics, I became more and more convinced that that was what I'd eaten! My first reaction was to go outside and stick a finger down my throat and make myself throw up, to try get the stuff out of my system; but even then I wasn't sure if that was enough. To make things worse, the article further said that symptoms could take between 6 and 24 hours to develop, but if they did this indicated that the toxins may already have caused irreparable damage to the liver and kidneys. So I had to decide what to do; obviously if I waited and the symptoms did appear, it might be too late, so I dialled 999 and called an ambulance. They appeared amazingly quickly, and I staggered up the towpath to meet them and was whisked off to hospital. It was all quite efficient, but the worst bit was sitting in the waiting area for three hours, wondering if the 'symptoms' (presumably agonising pains) were about to start, and just what it might be like to expire from amatoxin poisoning. In a strange way I felt rathered detached about it all, and I was thinking about who would look after the boat, and how inconvenient it would all be, etc. But I'm quite sure that if the symptoms had started I would have been quite frightened (I've always been more frightened of the process of dying - specially having actually seen the process in action with more than once person over the years) than the idea of death itself, which can seem almost restful). Of course, you never know how you'll react until it happens, but I do remember the one time I genuinely thought I was about to die, in a Bulgarian airliner landing in a terrible thunderstorm, I was absolutely terrified and not at all fatalistic, as I would have wished. Anyway, eventually I was seen, and had various examinations, and a blood test, and by about 5 am a doctor turned up and examined me again and said the blood test was completely normal, and that as nothing had happened so far I was probably all right, and might as well return to my boat, but to ring 999 again if anything happened later. So I had to take a taxi back to the canal, which cost ten pounds, and got back at about 6. It's now well over 24 hours since I ate the damned things, and I'm OK, so clearly I can't have been poisoned, but I still have a strong suspicion that they really were amanita, and that the fact I only had a couple of mouthfuls and made myself throw up were what saved me. A cautionary tale, and a reminder not to do mad things like that again. In a strange sort of way it has enhanced my birthday, simply by the mere fact that I am still alive! So I can continue with my curious wandering and unattached existence for a while longer. Today it was so horrible, pouring with rain and blowing a gale, and I was so exhausted by being up all night and the stress of it all, that I didn't bother to move at all, and I got a bus into Stafford and bought myself a DVD as a birthday present to myself, came back to the boat, lit the stove, and had my Thursday half bottle of wine.

It's a funny old life, isn't it!

Saturday 30th September 2006

I find myself moored tonight at Burton on Trent, although I have now left the river Trent itself (which is no longer navigable at this point) and am on the Trent and Mersey Canal, making quite good progress across country to the west. I feel a bit sad to leave the Trent and its wide open spaces, but at the same time it's a bit of a relief to be on more manageable waterways again for a while. The question is whether I'm going to brave the Severn, on the other side of the country, which has if anything an even more fearsome reputation. I would have made better progress still if it hadn't been for the hordes of hire boats in this area; they're all from the same company, and all set off from their base this morning, so of course they have absolutely no idea what they're doing and are causing a lot of delays and general mayhem. This is forgivable, as I remember well starting out on the boat and getting into all sorts of tangles, but I was very surprised to find so many hireboats out so late in the year. Burton is a rather grotty place, I'm afraid - I was expecting a rather dignified Victorian town, full of magnificent brewery buildings, but when I cycled in earlier to get some shopping it seemed that most of the centre had been transformed into some sort of giant 'retail park' and car park, with a massive supermarket and various DIY warehouses, etc - I mean, right in the centre of the town. Perhaps I missed some nicer parts, but the impression was somewhat bleak. And there were the usual groups of feral youth wandering the wastelands, snarling and shrieking at one another; I shudder to think what things will be like later tonight!

- My last big lock on the Trent; exciting stuff! Glad to see the Nottingham Sea Cadets are well armed (note large gun on right) -

- Moored at Beeston; farewell to the Trent

I've finally been gettting to grips with C. S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man - one of the collection I brought with me to read on this journey. It strikes me that this is a very important piece of writing, and in some ways gets right to the heart of the problem I go on about all the time in this journal - the strange alienation and ugliness of the society we find ourselves in today, and the sense of being a stranger in ones own country. Although it was written in 1943, Lewis was clearly already aware of a phenomenon that is now all-pervasive - the attempt to demolish all traditional values in all areas of life, and to replace them with new, invented 'values', based on an ideology of relativism; in other words, with no values at all. This is a big subject, and I must finish the book first, but I think I will have more to say about it. It seems that Lewis, as ever, is a touchstone for me (he has been since the age of about 10, at least!)

Sunday 23rd September

I'm moored back at Newark, in Nottingham, now - I got here rather quickly, as I was assisted up the tidal Trent by the large 'Dutch' barge, Balestra - I helped its owners to put their wheelhouse back up in Lincoln, and they kindly offered to give me a tow up to Cromwell Lock, as I was a bit apprehensive about my engine overheating going upstream (you only have about a couple of hours before the tide starts going out again). I expect I would have been able to do it, but it would have been a very long and nerve-wracking process. As it was, we shot up river at an unheard of pace, and my boat had the time of its life generating a bow-wave the like of which it had probably never experienced in its life! I did have my engine running, too, and contributed my tuppence-halfpenny-worth to our progress. It was rather exhilarating. I'm hoping to get a man to do some name plates for the boat here in Newark (after meaning to do it for two years), and then I really must get on, as weather conditions are bound to get bad some time soon, and I've decided to go back to Oxford to earn some money before the end of the year.

- Under tow on the murky Trent A massive bow-wave -

I spent a couple of nights in Saxilby, on the Fossdyke, waiting to meet up with Balestra; a nice quiet little place with a lovely old church and churchyard. These quiet corners of England still survive, somehow, to remind us of what once was.

- Saxilby, Lincolnshire, a quiet corner of England.

Saturday 22nd September 2006

It's rather alarming how the days are slipping by so fast, and autumn is upon us; although actually the weather has been generally pretty amazing, and warm - I was sweating this afternoon just walking along the road. Though yesterday was absolutely vile, with torrential rain nearlt all day, but even then it was still not actually cold. But I feel a need to get on with the journey now, before the weather starts getting really adverse. Tonight I'm moored back at Torksey, waiting to go back up the tidal Trent to Nottingham, and then off across on the Trent and Mersey Canal to the west side of the country. I probably would have started sooner, but I encountered a large 'Dutch' barge in Lincoln - I helped them to put their wheelhouse up again after they'd come through the legendary 'Glory Hole' bridge, and they offered to give me some help up the tidal bit of the river, which I thought was a good idea as the tides are a bit strong at the moment, and I had visions of my engine overheating in mid-river - so basically I've had to wait for them. Anyway, we're due to set off tomorrow morning at some ungodly hour, with the flood tide, and my boat lashed alongside theirs; it should be interesting, and I should certainly do the trip a lot quicker than I would under my own power. It's all new experience.

I feel a certain regret at leaving Lincolnshire - it has a remote and old-fashioned feel about it that I like, and Lincoln Cathedral really caught my imagination. As I was coming along the Fossdyke this afternoon I was listening to this marvellous performance of Beethoven's 9th on the radio, conducted by Bernard Haitink - as is often the case when you catch things unexpectedly, I was struck afresh by the incredible genius of the piece; I must have heard it a hundred times, but I was quite uplifted. And the 'Ode to Joy' - despite its being polluted by being used as the EU 'anthem' - is just the most exhilarating thing. That real sense of joy - how indefinable it is, and impossible to pin down, yet when it comes, even fleetingly, how irresistable. How on earth Beethoven, in the state he was when he wrote the piece, and given his tortured life, managed to produce music like that! It's enough to restore ones faith in the ability of art to redeem this benighted world of ours. At moments it literally brought tears to my eyes.

Wednesday 20th September

Time is marching on and I'm itching to carry on with my voyage - not that I dislike Lincoln, but I don't really like being stuck anywhere for too long these days; I would have gone yesterday, but they were forecasting high winds today and tomorrow, and I didn't want to get caught on the tidal Trent in adverse conditions. Also as usual I am having problems with leaks on the cooling system - as soon as I fix one another one appears soon after - basically the whole system of rubber hoses, etc. is clapped out and needs replacing, but it will be a hell of an awkward job requiring the skills of a contortionist. Anyway, I've fixed what I can, and should be in a better state for a while (fingers crossed).

I was watching an interesting TV programme last night by Stephen Fry, about his problems with manic depression, or 'bipolar disorder', to use the modern euphemism. It made me reflect that over the years I've often wondered if I suffered from this to some extent. I certainly used to have periods of manic energy and self-confidence, followed by bouts of depression, for a long time. The strikiing thing that Fry and several other sufferers mentioned is that though they suffered misery from the 'down' side, the 'up' side was so exhilarating and important to their way of life that they wouldn't actually want to get rid of the problem, even if they could. My personal experience is that, since counselling I had for severe depression at the end of the 1990's, I seem to have stabilised; although I certainly do still have bouts of depression, they are not so bad or so prolonged as they used to be. On the other hand, I don't really have the bouts of 'manic' enthusiasm and energy I used to have, either, much. This would account for the curious 'neutral' feeling I have a lot of the time about things and the enormous effort I find it nowadays to try to do anything constructive or creative; maybe the 'manic depressive' thing subsiding has actually had quite a negative effect on my life? Oh well - at least I did it without drugs, though if this line of thought is right, I'm not altogether sure I don't miss some of that old self-confidence and dynamism, even if it was manic. Or perhaps I'm just getting old and tired - who knows?

Today I went to 'The Collection', Lincoln's shiny new museum'art gallery; it was quite interesting, though smaller than I expected. Frankly the art collection was feeble, but the historical museum was much better - I specially enjoyed the Romand bit. It was fascinating to see how closely the modern city follows the shape of the Roman colonia - not difficult to imagine it as it was at all. I also got to try on a replica Roman soldier's helmet! I was pleased to see that my old favourite, the Ninth Legion (cf. Rosemary Sutcliff's The Eagle of the Ninth ) was based at Lincoln - there were various artifacts left from them, and a splendid display of model Roman soldiers on parade that gave a surprisingly vivid idea of the power and splendour of a legion in full array.

Monday 18th September 2006

Today I had one of those annoying experiences that happen on boats; I got back up to Lincoln in good time, and had the idea of mooring on the side of Brayford Pool - it was the notices saying 'moorings £5 per night' that encouraged me. I immediately found myself aground and wedged at an alarming angle on some sort of underwater obstruction. A young man from a bar who was extremely sympathetic and tried to help me (unlike some other idiots who took photos and made jokes) told me there had been jetties there which had been demolished - but obviously not very efficiently. I exhausted myself for over an hour trying to get off - it was only when a very helpful old chap in a rather nice boat called Kensington stopped to assist that I got off, with him towing me and me revving up my engine; it was such a relief - I had been really worried about puncturing the hull if it had been a sharp bit of old iron girder or something, but so far (fingers crossed) I seem to be OK. But it absolutely ruined my afternoon - I'd been so looking forward to going to Evensong in the cathedral, plus a visit to my favourite teashop, but both of those were past their sell by date by the time I moored at the visitor moorings. What a pain! I had to go and buy a can of lager to help my shattered nerves - it was a salutary reminder that nasty things can happen on the waterways without warning, and one must be prepared.

- An English restaurant in Woodhall Spa And their rather charming 'Kinema in the woods'

- Boston from the 'Boston Stump', the insanely high tower of St. Botolph's

- The 'Grand Sluice' at Boston; gateway to the sea St. Botolph's awe-inspiring interior -

Saturday 16th September

I've started back up the river Witham to Lincoln, and my further peregrinations around England. I did quite well traversing some of the longest, most boring bits, and have moored at a place called Tattershall Bridge. To my horror I realised I had forgotten to buy my weekend bottle of wine in Boston, so I leapt on my bike and hurtled into the nearest town, Tattershall, in the hope of finding booze - to my relief there was a Somerfields shop, and I got in to it with five minutes to spare, and acquired the foresaid item. A bit of luck - and it also meant I had a look at the very remarkable Tattershall Castle and Collegiate Church - two magnificent bits of history standing together in a timeless landscapes, with some little almshouses (14th century) and a paddock with horses, and peacocks wandering the grounds. Once again I was struck by what a beautiful and historic country Britain is - there are so many places like this one can come upon by chance. To enlarge on what I was saying about Boston - all these lovely places feel to me like the ruins of a civilisation, with motley barbarians infesting the ruins. (I'm finally reaching the end of Gibbon's great Decline and Fall) - it's not that there aren't still decent people and places still left, but to my mind they too are like the ruins of something - a way of life, a way of thinking - that no longer actually survives as a living whole. You only have to pick up a paper or turn in the TV to see what the 'real' Britain is like. It's sad. Still - roaming around amongst the ruins has its own sort of charm, I suppose.

Thursday 14th September 2006

Today, quite by chance, I discovered that the town of Boston was presenting the freedom of the town to the local RAF base; the market square was cleared, and the mayor and council in full regalia turned out to receive a very smart parade. There was an inspection and a presentation, four terrifying fighters flew overhead very low in salute, and then the airmen marched through the town, colours flying. I must admit, in the current circumstances, with the recent RAF casualties in Afghanistan, I felt quite choked when the band struck up that stirring RAF march and their banners flew out in the breeze - it was so smart and impressive, but also somehow so poignant - memories of the Battle of Britain and the days when that flag and that uniform meant something to everyone. And the thought that there are still young men (and women) who are prepared to serve their country, even when it means being the pawns of politicians, in the service of a community half of whom are bearly aware of their existence. Most of the people watching were elderly, though there were a few youngsters who also seemed interested; but there were also some representatives of contemporary slob youth who sniggered uncomprehending or trailed across the edge of the square on bikes looking contemptuous, while the useless 'community support officers' just stood looking embarrassed - I complained to one of them at letting people be so disrespectful and he looked a bit sheepish. Yet another occasion when I felt the schizophrenia of this fractured society of ours - reminded on the one hand of our history and traditions, which ought to be so reassuring, and then confronted on the other by our contempoary degradation and loss of identity. Sometimes I just feel disgusted with what we've become, and want to leave; but then it would feel like such a betrayal of our past, and the people who are still trying to keep some sense of decency alive. It strikes me you could call this whol epic journey In Search of England, or indeed, In Search of Britain - in some sense I suppose I'm looking for somewhere that feels a bit more like the country I was born and grew up in, and had the naive idea that in some lost corner of the kingdom it might still exist. So far my main conclusion is that, sadly, although everywhere there are tantalising fragments of the country and society in which I once felt so at home, in fact the actual thing itself has been destroyed forever. I once again recommend readers to have a look at Peter Hitchens The Abolition of Britain; although I don't go along with absolutely everything he says, the book sums up far better than I can this terrible feeling of exile in one's own land, and the sense of loss and resentment at what has happened. It's a horrible feeling, and those who think I go on about it too much in these musings obviously haven't experienced it. I suppose the best thing I can hope for is to find some corner somewhere where I can hide from the worst of it; either that or leave. Of course I've said it all before - repeating oneself incessantly is one of the pleasures of advancing age, say I.

- The RAF on parade in Boston, colours flying

- Boston is quite a picturesque place, in its way and the famous 'Boston Stump' is quite something (I climbed up it!) -

On Tuesday I went to the seaside - Skegness - for the day. It's one of those traditional resorts I've always heard of, but never been to. To be honest it's nothing to write home about, and the atmosphere was a bit forlorn, with the tide right out and a rather hazy, misty atmosphere. Also I was feeling very tired as I hadn't slept very well. But it certainly felt very traditional and British, and I experienced a bit of a time-warp feeling, back to seaside holidays as a child. I must say, though, I have never seen so many grossly obese women in my life as in Skegness - is it something genetic, of merely a question of the local lifestyle?

- Skegness had a slightly desolate feeling, in places But the Jolly Fisherman was on duty in the railway station -

Tuesday 12th September

Well, here I am moored at the old sea-port of Boston, in Lincolnshire - as close to the sea as you can get by narrowboat, as far as I know. Just a few hundred yards away is the marvellously-named Grand Sluice, which is a sea-lock opening onto tidal waters - and they are very tidal, as I noticed earlier when the tide was out, and the river Witham, which I've followed down from Lincoln, was a mere muddy trickle about 20 feet down between great slabs of silt. What a gloriously epic journey it has been! About 250 miles, so far, which is a long way by boat, specially on inland waterways, and by far the longest I've done so far. And of course I'm only about half way, as I plan to return to Oxford, probably, by going round in a circuit on the western side of the country. On the whole the journey has gone quite smoothly, and I'm very pleased with my trusty old boat for performing so well; though having said that yesterday I noticed two new leaks on the cooling system, which seem to spring ever-new ones, which is a bit annoying. I'm beginning to think that the whole thing is beyond proper remedy, and it may be better to replace the engine altogether some time soon; but then I have to decide if I'm going to move on to a steel cruiser, which is my plan at the moment, in which case the palaver of a new engine would hardly be worth it. Anyway, by being careful and going at a very moderate pace I was OK yesterday, which was just as well, as I made one of those silly decisions it's so easy to make on boats and instead of stopping a bit early at a perfectly nice and empty mooring place, I decided to keep going, found the next one full, and had to keep chugging on into the gathering dusk to the next place, which turned out to be much further than I expected! Very tiresome - it was nearly 8 o'clock and starting to get dark by the time I made it, quite hot and bothered, and the engine was starting to steam rather excessively, poor thing! Oh well, this morning I just puttered down the very wide and straight river until I saw the famous 'Boston Stump' looming in the distance and reached the quite pleasant mooring here in Boston. I had a walk around this afternoon - it seems quite a pleasant place - an important port for many centuries, with quite a few old buildings and a certain old-fashioned feel in general. I did notice that though it has a grammar school (good for them!) and quite a lot of history, it's also a slightly rough place, judging from some of the people in the street, and there was also an incredible number of Poles wandering around; I know about 300,000 have come to work in Britain in the last year, but I haven't seen so many concentrated in one place. I noticed a sign of tension, as two young Poles were walking in front of me, and one of two English guys just shouted "Fuck off!" in a very aggressive way at them, without provocation. I've always like the Poles, and if we must have mass immigration (which I doubt) I'd rather have them than most - but when such huge numbers arrive in such a short time there are bound to be problems; the street incident is I'm sure just the tip of the iceberg of what is going to be a very serious problem.

I've got terribly behind with my account of the journey up to here, but I'm gradually updating it, so do check below for extra text and photos, specially of Lincoln. I need to hurry up, as I am rapidly forgetting what happened - this happens to me a lot, specially on long journeys, as the days and locations sort of merge into a hazy continuum.

Monday September 11th 2006

Five years now. Let's never forget what happened on that day.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Wednesday 6th September 2006

Back in Lincoln. Whilst doing my shopping I saw a piece of graffiti that amused me greatly - I just had to take a photo:

- Apparently I have kindred spirits in Lincoln! If only I knew who they were - perhaps we could be friends?

Lincoln Cathedral really is a most incredible and inspiring building - I'd forgotten how impressive it is, perched up on its hill and visible for miles around. As it says in the guidebook, 'Many people feel it is like a person, calling to them'. And it has a superb sense of architectural unity about it, even though it was rebuilt and altered a number of times through its history; apparently it once had spires on all three towers, which made it the tallest building in the world at the time! I did some exploring around the upper town, where the cathedral is; it's quite a charming place, and you can still see the shape of the Roman colonia that it once was - and in fact quite a few remains of Roman walls, a bath house, etc. It all has quite a different atmosphere from the lower town, where the river is, which used to be very workaday, with warehouses and wharves, but is now dominated by the new university and bars, cafes and shops. The upper town has very much the atmosphere of an old-fashioned English cathedral town, with its own high street, with a post office, restaurants, bookshops, teashops, etc. And the long and extremely steep lane that leads up the hill is quaint, though a bit touristified, in a nice sort of way. It incoludes the famous Jew's House, 13th century and one of the oldest occupied houses in the country. The sort of place I'd love to live in if I could afford it; and it would have distinct advantages on somewhere like Oxford and other similar cities in that the 'riff-raff' and brutalised classes are mostly down at the bottom of the hill and almost certaintly can't be arsed to climb it to molest the more civil element. (I must say, one of the things I've really noticed on this journey is that everywhere but the very smallest and out-of-the-way villages you can't escape evidence of the appalling brualisation of the working-classes - quite horrible, the thugs and utterly desperate and degraded people wandering around screaming and cursing at one another. It's quite shocking, and in my opinion a terrible inditement of the ghastly lowest-common-denominator populism of the Blair government and its relentless support of fecklessness and welfare-dependency. The effect it's had on our society in so few years is tragic.)

- It's difficult to capture the grandeur of Lincoln Cathedral, and the way it dominates the city and surrounding country- side

- The atmosphere in the cathedral close; old biddies going to church in the early autumn sunshine The great central tower looms over a statue of Tennyson, a great Lincolnshire man.

- One of the old gates of Lincoln: the only Roman gate in Britain still open to traffic. Fantastical Morris dancers in Minster Yard -

- The Morris men caper before the cathedral's west front, as they must have done for many a long year.

Before I left Edinburgh I met a friend, Marion at the Freemason's Hall in George Street - a very curious place - for a book launch; it was what she described as 'the sensible book about Rosslyn Chapel'; actually I thought at first that was the title, which actually would have been rather good, I think. It's actually called The Secrets of Rosslyn, which is a bit of a cop-out, designed, I suppose, to jump on the loony 'Holy Grail' bandwagon. It was a curious and interesting occasion, with a turn-out of the very posh, establishment side of Edinburgh, which you don't hear of so much these days, though it's still there, all right - just not fashionable in the 'people's republic of Scotland' that Blair's devolved parliament has inevitably produced. Then Marion and I went to the excellent Henderson's vegetarian restaurant and proceeded to stuff ourselves and get drunk while Marion explained her interesting idea of living half in Edinburgh and half in Istanbul. It would be interesting to have someone to visit there, though personally I am not a huge fan of the Turks, and have never got over the fall of Constantinople in 1453 - I still think if the place as 'Constantinople', in fact.

I also met up with Mr. Laird at Romanes & Paterson's priceless 'Scottish' tea-room, with its views over Princes Street and the Castle (sadly they've got rid of the tartan wall-paper). We debated many things - mainly as usual the decline of Great Britain and the general awfulness of Blair's Britain; we later went on to the massive Standing Order pub (a former bank) and had fish and chips, where the talk turned to more personal and autobiographical matters. It was all too short - as I said at the time, the one thing I really miss living on the boat is just the normal pleasure of friendship and intelligent conversation; I only ever have much of either when I go and visit places where friends live; I have very few friends in Oxford; for some reason they all insist on living elsewhere, and they rarely visit me. If only people were a bit more reliable about replying to emails, that would be better than nothing - I do enjoy a good correspondence; but sadly only young Christchurch corresonds regularly; everyone else appears to be far too 'busy'.

Saturday 2nd Sept.

Just to say 'THANK YOU' to the kind gentlemen who have signed the guest book - it's encouraging to have some evidence that people actually read and get something out of this journal. At times I feel as though I'm shouting into a void. By the way - if you sign the guest book and you have your own website, do put a link in, as it would be interesting to visit kindred spirits.

It's kind of people to say positive things about my way of life; but to be honest I often find it rather puzzling myself. When I stop and contemplate it all, as I did the other day, sitting on the slopes of Arthur's Seat, looking up at the clouds scudding across a blue heaven, or sitting on the banks of the Firth of Forth looking across to Fife, I really do find myself wondering what on earth it's all about! What am I doing leading this strange, aimless, wandering and self-indulgent life? (see my new motto above) - I seem to have no connection with anything, or any purpose. Not that I'm desperately unhappy all the time or anything - I seem to be able to occupy myself quite well and I take some pleasure in small things (the boat gives me something to do). But I sometimes wonder - 'Well, is that it, then? Is this what my life has been leading me to all these years - being a disconnected nomad wandering the waterways to no very good purpose, like some inland Flying Dutchman?' (at least he had an object in mind, however demented). I must admit I don't even fully believe in myself as a composer any more, however hard I try to keep going (that is, I do believe in the music, but not really in my ability to interest anyone in it). It's all very strange - it's as though my real life slipped away somehow almost without my noticing it, and I'm left contemplating some kind of simulacrum in bewilderment and wondering what happened. I need to be galvanised and drawn back into the world of the living again - but I don't see how it's going to happen.

- And the Union Flag is still to be seen flying in Edinburgh, on occasion

- Edinburgh can still be incredibly quaint And also ludicrously romantic, as in this view from Arthur's Seat -

Friday 1st Sept 2006

September, now, and autumn can't be far away - though actually the weather has been quite pleasant and even warm, most of the time. I've been visiting my favourite places, including the sea-shore at Silverknowes and Cramond, which is in fact not very far from where I'm staying. I went there the other day with young Mr. O'Donovan, to show him one of the the less well-known aspects of Edinburgh, and he was suitably impressed. We went for a drink in the inn at Cramond, which i've never actually been in - it's rather nice, and I discovered from a rather odd lady in the bar that the ferryman had not been plying his trade across the little river Almond for seven years. And there was me thinking it was only a year or two ago that I was rowed across there! Such a pity - it was such a nice way to get to that lovely walk along to the Forth Bridges.

Mr. O'Donovan in contemplative mode on the causeway at Cramond.

Today I strolled down that way again from here, and had a cup of tea in the 'tea-room'; which I have passed repeatedly for nearly the last 10 years and never found open. It is being run by a sort of super-annuated American hippy gentleman, who seemed to have floated in from Woodstock or somewhere, a few decades late; apparently he was persuaded to take the place on by a Russian lady who he was associating with at the time, only to be deserted by her almost immediately. Still, he's found another Russian lady as a substitute, and is quite happy running this little establishment on the shoreline with romantic views of Fife and Cramond Island. His establishment deserves support - if you're in Edinburgh, take the bus down to Silverknowes - you can't miss the tearoom, as it is the only building visible for miles.

While I've been looking after this flat and musing on the oddness of my life nowadays, I've been hugely enjoying a Naxos CD of Finzi song cycles. I totally overdosed on them in my teens, but it is delightful to re-discover them again now, in a new recording in which you can hear the details much more clearly. Finzi's music seems superficially simple and melodic, but the more I listen to it, the more I appreciate the marvellous subleties, specially harmonic, and the superbly sensitive word-setting. His Hardy settings, of course, are supreme - only Britten approaches him in that field - I was listening to At a Channel Firing this afternoon, and it's such an incredibly moving and powerful piece, capturing some essence of Englishness that we can only pine for in this degenerate and confused era.

I've also been reading Peter Hitchen's book, The Abolition of Britain - rather belatedly, as it was published in 1999, but basically he says, all in one volume, pretty much the same sort of thing I've been saying about the sad decline of our country, specially since New Labour took control. I don't agree with absolutely everything he believes (his views on homosexuality are excessively puritanical, and his Christian views, particularly on the theory of evolution, are rather strange and quite medieval), but his basic thesis, which is that we have suffered a 'cultural revolution' at the hands of the left, designed to destroy and subvert every last vestige of the traditional British identity that was built up over centuries, is bang on. It's rather depressing reading, as it only confirms everything I have felt for years - but on the other hand I suppose in a way the fact that he and others have written on this subject at least means that there is some sort of debate, rather than the whole business going by the board without comment. Whether there is any hope is another matter - I would like to think so, which is one reason I joined UKIP, but I have to say I don't feel too encouraged most of the time by what is going on around us.

Monday 28th August

Autumn is in the air already up here - even though it's not even September yet. I managed to go to a couple of Fringe events - not only the concert at St. Giles' yesterday, but today I went to a show called The Little British Empire, which consisted of 5 young performers doing a sequence of music hall songs - something guaranteed to appeal to me, as a long time music hall fan. They put an awful lot of energy into it all, and though the ambience was excessively 'fringe' and unglamorous, they succeeded in creating an atmosphere and generating enthusiasm from a smallish audience. I was struck once again by the extraordinary combination of innocence and urbanity that characterises the music hall genre - the product of a British culture and outlook which has virtually vanished now. All the more touching that some youngsters have taken the trouble to put together a show based on such material.

Sunday 27th August Edinburgh

Here I am back in Edinburgh for a visit to the Festival, while the boat resides in Lincoln Marina. The first part of my epic voyage around England is complete, though I intend to continue when I get back. Meanwhile this account is very much out of date, but I have put all the photos here, and hope to put in the narrative in the next couple of days.

I received a text message soon after arriving from young Mr. O'Donovan, who is now domiciled in Edinburgh, alerting me to a concert at St. Giles' in the High Street by Exeter College Chapel Choir from Oxford. It was rather nice - such a marvellous acoustic for singing - and they did the Durufle Requiem, which is such an amazing piece. As its long Gregorian phrases rolled over me, I was overcome with a sense of the poignancy of existence - these momentary glimpses, mainly through music, of something other, make me wonder what happened to my sense of 'joy' in life; if, however, as C.S. Lewis maintained, 'joy' is a desire for something that is actually lacking in everyday existence, then.......

Where I am staying I have been left on my own for a couple of days at least. I took advantage of the cable TV here to watch a delightful Betjeman programme called A Passion for Churches, which I haven't seen for an awful long time. It was a joy. How much I miss people like Betjeman in our current culture; it seems almost incredible that he could have been such a major figure in the popular imagination such a short time ago. Can you imagine a poet, with a posh Edwaaaardian accent, to boot, being on TV nowadays, amongst all the ghastly brutalised crap that passes for popular culture now? I don't think so. And as usual the film, made in the 70's, seemed to depict a Britain of some lost, idyllic era. I know this is my perennial theme, but it is so BECAUSE IT IS TRUE. We are living in a degraded and despicable version of the country and culture I grew up in, that has mysteriously been transformed and distorted in the last decade or two, and I will go on saying so because someone needs to.

I went on a brief exploration of the old town of Lincoln, up the hill, and to have a quick look at the Cathedral. I shall certainly do a more thorough exploration when I get back from Edinburgh; it seems like a place I would like to spend some time in, and I want go down the river Witham to Boston, on the sea, so that I can say I've navigated from Oxford to the ocean. I think the whole area has possibilities as a base in the future - it's a part of the world that hasn't been spoilt too much so far. But I need to look at a few other places first. The cathedral is magnificent, and has a beautiful architectural unity about it.

- High altar and east window

- The awe-inspiring west front of