Days that Vanish in the Gloaming
Here it is, the end of the year. Or, there it was, at least.
It's already been Christmas and New Year, despite it still being a few weeks away just a few minutes ago. An entire week has passed in the mere seconds since I started this draft.
Scroll back a couple of weeks. A run down from the first part of the Coventry in blustery conditions; a collection of small villages, and hidden away in a canalside woodland a military firing range.
More leaf spoil problems under the boat, as the sheer volume of Oak and Ash leaves in the water choke the prop time and again through otherwise pretty tree-lined avenues.
Tamworth passes on a Sunday afternoon with my dad, and then a huge moment passes almost without comment: we pass through Pooley Park into the village of Polesworth and into the county of Warwickshire. Technically, I'm home; for the most part of it's working range, the boat will operate in the Y-shaped branches of the county's main lines of the North and South Oxford, and Grand Union canals. There's a good 30 miles yet to go to where I can work on the fit out, but that's all. This now-unfamiliar ground will probably become a spur of the work route in time to come. Without fanfare the ‘journey’ as an event of its own is over. Well, like I say, ‘technically’, at least. When I was a child travelling with my mother, each time we passed the county sign for Warwickshire she would exclaim “3..2..1..Hooray!” in celebration of coming home. Of all the times I have passed these signs in the years since, this is probably the most worthy of celebration, though I couldn’t quite bring myself to copy her.
Another notable event of this day was passing under the M42, oddly enough also on the border between the counties. Back in April last year when the boat was up near Manchester we passed over the canal at this point on our way back from holiday. From the vantage point in the Land Rover, I pointed across and said to Willow “look down there, we’ll be coming along that cut before you know it!”. Well, I was partly right, before we knew it there I was, popping along in the low winter light. Unfortunately illness and family business keep Willow away at times at the moment, so I mark the crossing in her absence; disappointed in the lack of chance to reprise the conversation in person. No matter, there has been plenty to celebrate away from here this year, and again I am joined by my dad today.
Christmas arrives, and Willow and I manage to mark it with a couple of hours on the deck; her first trip for many weeks. As we pass out of Polesworth, the bare tones of the season yell at us under the scudding storm clouds; stark colours incongruous in their surroundings. The garish green of a grass track appearing unworldly next to last summer's bleached wheat stubble. The deep purple and blanched yellow of Thorn and Salix in the hedges set against the dark soil of the churned-up towpath. December wind bites, bearing rain that flushes cheeks and blues knuckles. The water below is stirred up by floods all along the route today; land transformed from seed bed into sediment load, robbed from the field by the relentless rain of the month and dumped into the cut.
Just shy of Atherstone we tie up for the day and return to the modern world, to roast dinner and indulge for a few days.
A week away is all I manage, not being pulled hither-and-to by work makes me restless over the break; though the little dog coming to stay for a few days does at least make me put my feet up by the stove for a while (she’s quite insistent- sweeties and comfort and no argument). Then the big night arrives, passing almost without footnotes, as is the way these days. It’s been years since I passed the New Year in a pub, and to be honest it can stay that way. We did wake on the 1st with thick heads, no saints we, but “start the year as you mean to go on" means one thing above all- up and out for a spot more boating.
There are eleven locks in a flight at Atherstone, the last big incline before the final destination. Time and weather were against us today but we made a good fist of the first six, tying up as day passed again so quickly into night.
The walk back to the car took in a stretch of Old Watling Street, a cut off end of an old highway, itself a facsimile of the former Roman Road. A clutch of Georgian cottages sit beside the street, butted up to the railway which passes over the old road in a huge metal trough right in front of them. The intersection of the eras here is stark; canal, rail, old road, and now the dual carriageway of the A5 all pass at angles to one another by these houses, hemming them in on all sides. To think how the first residents may have viewed the canal passing here, itself the “modern” intrusion into the landscape. To think what they’d make of the vista now; huge scars on the land which would have borne only crops and livestock in their day. The sightlines on all sides of those houses now totally disrupted by transport infrastructure, the movement of people and goods apparently the highest work of the nation today.
The trip home is awash with the latest storm battering the country, the modern phenomenon of monsoon season over winter truly establishing itself, perhaps it too is starting the year as it goes on.
From this point the high summer is as far away as it’s possible to be, though it is now only a few weeks until the anniversary of meeting the boat for the first time and beginning to shape this project. From here it has rather taken over my life, I’ve amassed a wheeled workshop as sister house to the floating forge (which you will be introduced to later), and kitted it out in preparation for trading. I've gone back to college even, retaking qualifications that have either been lost in time (my apprentice papers from the 1990s), or fallen out of use in the course of the intervening years.
Moreover, I have reshaped my working world to free up time to actually work this project into being, and have travelled the length and breadth of England and Wales collecting machinery and tooling for all eventualities; replacing networks of association with the means to do it all under my own steam. Not all of it is new, I’ve been at the work for years; but from here on in the direction is decidedly different.
As I glide through the storm back to my other boat on the first day of the year I reflect more on the miles covered since the last new year. There are, with luck and a fair wind, many more to come.
Happy New Year to you all, and welcome to Chapter 2…
A note on Substack: though I await more information on the platforming of Far Right content on this site (there are more announcements due, apparently), I am working on moving web hosts in the coming weeks. If you begin to receive this newsletter from a slightly different domain, don’t panic, it’s just us distancing ourselves from those we’d rather not share a stage with.
