Spun, Serviced, Spun, and Sodded Off

Still no room at the inn (any of the Anderton moorings). Nothing respeckable, anyway. I might have moored with the bows hanging over the weir, and that dismal, S.A.D.-inducing nonsense opposite one of the marinas was still available (which should tell you all that you need to know about the word ‘dismal’). Not much room anywhere else, either. Nigh-on twelve miles of cruising later though we’ve found somewhere to call “home” for the night.

Opposite Bramble Cuttings, the Broken Cross Boat Club’s Private Playpen. Nothing will induce me to use those moorings again. I moored here, on the towpath side, because there are some rinky-dinky mooring rings hidden in the undergrowth, and because the boat that was flapping loose last time I wam here is still flapping loose. I have tried to re-tie it to the planet, but there’s just no ironmongery in use – just soggy and rotten wooden sticks and, of all things, a river anchor. It’ll be loose again by morning if it’s not already (and I’m not poking my head out to look behind to see).

There’s no name, no number on the boat so oneski it’s pointless asking the Cycling & Rambling MisTrust Ltd to get in touch with the owner, and twoski – not having name or numbers displayed indicates that it’s a renegade boat (probably not licensed or insured or saferty-cerstificated), so I’m not telling C&RT about it. They can do their own narkery.

I’m quite safe mentioning that boat here – this blog is written without a wholly inappropriate rising inflection at the end of every sentence, yeah?, so C&RT can’t understand it?

Andertonville looks quite respeckable (on the surface, at least) but to get to anywhere else requires a re-foray through some heavy, heavy industry. There’s a “nutrition” factory…

… and then there’s Tata Chemicals. There are lovely signs everywhere that read along the lines of ‘Do not stop. Should a siren sound leave the area immediately. If you are on a boat that does 3mph maximode then we recommend that you put your head between your knees and kiss something hairy, pale and squidgy a short but heartfelt goodbye – you won’t make it out in time.’

It’s not that the canal goes right through the middle of the factory, since the canal was here long before the factory, but that planners have allowed the factory to spread where’ere it will.

Better yet, from the looks of those almighty cranes, they’re extending. Are we great caretakers of this planet or what?

Yes, correct first time. What.

For a factory with hissing “steam” vents and bulging, patched-up pipework and huge vats of something everywhere I do wonder that they can’t keep a fence standing.

Nor can I help but remember Flixborough whenever I cruise through there.

Still, four and a chunk hours later we’re back out in some countryside. That’s Bramboid Clutterings in the distance, on the offside in the photo below.

Rather splendidly, the bridge just ahead is called ‘Hell’s Kitchen Bridge‘ – but I have no idea why.

Naturally, within two hours of mooring up I now have a(nother) boat immediately behind, and no fewer than two squeezed in on our bows. The Universe is losing its touch, it’s ordinarily much more swift than that in its prompts to induce me to sing ‘Don’t fence me in’. 😉

Still, it was last while it niceted.

A pot of fresh coffee and a dog-dish of pasta/chili-tomato-wotsit/olives doesn’t half taste great when you’ve been looking forward to them all through Tata Chemicals and beyond.

I’ve done loads of housekeeping of late. FaceBook has been consigned to life’s u-bend and double-flushed. They showed me the door, and all because an automated algorithm detected my opinion running counter to the mainstream narrative. I commented on someone else’s post suggesting that the best course of action globally would be immediate revolution involving the hanging of all politicians. Apparently that ‘…goes against [their] community standards…’

Who knew that FaceBook had any standards? Certainly any that aren’t written on dollar bills from advertising revenoo.

Twitter is history too. I have – I had – over 10,000 “followers” but any tweet of mine was lucky (?) to be shown a dozen times – according to Twitter’s “statistics”. My ID was “shadow banned”, again because I expressed opinions that only one out of ten cats said that they preferred. My ID was not allowed to “like” tweets of a certain (anti-Establishment) nature, or retweet same. Even the most bland tweet of mine simply disappeared into the dark, winnet-speckled sphincter that is Current Online Social Media.

I do feel cleaner now though. Of late that’s Microsoft, YouTube, Google, FaceBook and Twitter all squeezed out of my life like the contents of a custard-boiler pimple. AVG’s gone too – the company that writes and distributes computer viruses so that you have to buy their (or some other corporation’s) “anti-virus” product to protect yourself from the company that supplies the viruses and the “cure”…

Sadly I have yet to find a way to use the (in)humane killer on my bank account. I used to bank with Yorkshire, a nice, stuffy old bank (bring back Williams & Glyn’s, please!) but that [***er] Branson’s mob, Virgin, bought them, and for the moment I am stuck with a bright-red bank that regards everyone’s average age (and IQ) as being between eight and thirteen & three-quarters. Oddly I need more money, much more money in order to have a chance of changing my bank, and the chances of that are about the same as are Red Rum’s chances of winning Wimbledon this year.

If only I might expunge C&RT from my life too, how jolly* I should be.

*Not really. It’s being so miserable that keeps me happy.

🙂

This blog and WordPress will stay – until and unless WordPress begin eagerly to embrace the censorship requirements of (any) government, U.S.A., or English, or otherwise.

Still, onwards and upwards. I discovered an old box-set of half a season of Northern Exposure a few days ago, and there’s an entire DVD’s worth yet to (re-)view.

Splendid.

Chin-chin for the mo, chaps and chapesses.

IGH.