The Generic Greetings Card (and Mug) of Choice for the Discerning Canal Boater

The new old eats the old old alive – rust and decay on a C&RT work-boat consumes the old British Waterways logo – peculiarly, with Anubis standing in there, arm raised towards the bow in valediction (or possibly some sort of “Third Reich-esque” salute). 5″ x 7″, matt sealed paper, your choice of message pre-printed inside (up to 500 characters), £3.66 for one, £1.81 each for ten, £1.29 eachibode for a pack of twenty-five.

Once your brain-gland spots Anubis in there you won’t be able to unsee him.

Oh the fun that might be had with the messages you could put in these babies.

‘Thank you for raising the price of a boat licence three times in thirteen months.’

‘Congratulations on securing continued funding from DEFRA [not].’

‘Merry Christmas / Happy Birthday / Congratulations on giving birth to three evil twins’

‘My Other Boat Is a Yoghurt Pot.’

That sort of thing.

Buy Greetings Cards here or clickez vous on the ‘Merchandise’ link in the menu at the top of the page.

Also available as a mug (two sizes), print, canvas print, tote bag, tapestry, pillow, and poster.

Buy MUGS here or – yep – roll one’s mouse’s balls over the ‘Merchandise’ link in the menu at the top of the page.

Don’t forget to select – I’d guess – ‘WHITE’ as your background colour, it seems to default to black, and black seems rather unnecessarily sombre.

Right, now that the uncomfortable-for-all-concerned ‘Big Bucks International Multi-Billionaire Commercial’ part of the post is over, cop an eyeful of these splendid beasts:

Gloucester Old-Spot Ridgeback bulls, or something. Some dastardly experiment to cross beef cattle with inversely-arranged Liquorice Allsorts perhaps? If so then I’d have to separate the icky liquorice nonsense at either end and just eat the crumbly white centre bit.

So, what’s been occurring, canal-side? The usual Universal Entropy and not much else, generally. His Magibode’s Gubbermunt appears thoroughly determined to exclude any and all itinerants and NFAs – yours truly being both – from any and all of the “energy support subsidy” (transfer of money from taxpayer to private corporations) pay-outs. The latest scheme – and I use the word ‘scheme’ in its Dick Dastardly intent – for boaters insisting on page one on a residential marina mooring and fixed address.

Not even government could miss the point by that distance, so it’s quite obviously a deliberate exclusion, the politicians who were happy to fork over billions to friends, family, and cronies for PPE etc being absolutely knacker-shrivellingly terrified of paying potential pikeys a penny.

The it of It has been cold, mild, sushinethery, rainy, windy and still, as is usual in a country where our weather-related woes stem not, as many think, from regarding our weather as in any way extreme, but in the fact that we hop from one to t’other with gay abandon, one foot frozen, one foot thawed aaaaaaaand reverse. The sunshine today has brought a few boats out.

There have been hire boats hoofing up and down (it seems that the Grand Plan is for there to be no respite in that regard), and yesterday the Anglo-Welsh Day-Hire Boat from Bunbury came past – at regulation maximum revs, loaded with Loud, and towing a wave fit to over-top the Thames Barrier.

They’re all dead now.

I am in need sometime in The Soon of coal, but thanks largely to F Ace Book not allowing me to create a new account in any way shape or form, I am finding it most diffibode indeed to keep track of the whereabouts of the Fuel Boats.

Damn it much, and – as they say – to parrot-phrase Mr Bingley – damn everyone who won’t put a light in his window and stay up all night damning it!

Perhaps I ought to leave a light in my window?

The “outside world” is more insane than ever, and some auto-response in me has been to develop a habit of sleeping the clock around. The (my) dream-world is so much more interesting than the dreary shenanagins of what we’re told is “reality”. Of course, the rum in the cocoa helps in that regard.

Also the rum in the curries, the rum in the pasta dishes, the rum in the steamed vegetable extravaganzas, and the rum-on-toast for breakfast.

As dear Mother was oft heard to ask the servants; ‘Who, pray, thought to put the cork back in my breakfast?’

I quite distinctly heard a cuckoo the other day. There was a chorus of wood-pigeons and then a cuckoo, out of the blue. Ought not to have been, since I’m fairly sure that they migrate and only frequent Ingerlund during the more clement months of the year. Perhaps the collapse of FlyBe has scuppered the migration plans of some?

A cormorant spent a happy half-hour fishing hereabouts this morning. Waterlogged birds, they seem to me to be on the verge of a floatational crisis at all times.

The local swans pair have been (very easily, it must be said) trained not to bang on the Cardinal demanding food at all hours. They give us a wide berth and a touch of the evil eye when they cruise past now. Splendid.

The moorhens are very industrious on this stretch, it probably helps that the offside is well-furnished with reed beds. They sleep, it would seem, on the towpath and make manifold moorhen noises during the night.

Something, possibly a fox, possibly a pensioner in dire straits, has eaten at least four pigeons locally, and left the feathers scattered with an absence of artistry but no little show of wanton abandon.

That’s about it really.

It’s enough though, isn’t it?

Chin-chin mon Chihuahuaii. Keep taking the pills, all. 🙂 That’s all of you AND all of the pills.

Ian H., and Cardinal W.