‘Int Trees Brilliant?

Even if they are mostly upside down in human terms; (water-)drinking parts under ground, (oxygen-)farting apparatus above ground. Makes a chap wonder what’s going on just a few feet below the surface. What do ostriches know that we don’t?

Quick ass-ide: a chap’s just walked past with two dogs and what I assume to be his son. The dogs are on leads. The (presumed) son, what – about seven or eight human Earth years? Looks as though he’s being walked through Hell, a horrible grassy, muddy, bird-tweeting, open-air, outdoor Hell. He’s blinking as though in daylight for the first time, and his body-language is screaming ‘put me back in my room NOW with my iPiddlyPod or whatever’. So sad. Saturday Father-Son walkies.

Double oh dear – the self-same holiday hire-boat that is the star of this video below has just passed… “passed“. Different folk aboard, obvs, but ten miles and more from the hire base, and still they gave the Cardinal and me Cause For Pause (passing far, far too close, because they still can’t really steer it). The video below is an earlier bunch of… hodilaymakers… in action. Like, subscribe, and comment (on YouBoob).

I know that we “other” boaters are far from perfick and oft get it wrong too, but then those of us who are sane don’t attempt travel in winds (or ice) – and, not to put too fine a French term on it – we do give a shit about other people’s boats!

Not a breath of wind here at the moment, no other traffic, consider the width of canal shown in the top photograph on this blog post – and after half of the length of this straight (and with half still to go) the holiday boat only just cleared the Cardinal’s gunwales by perhaps six inches, with the ****er on the tiller in an obvious panic about having nowhere to steer to.

Jebus H., is it any wonder that I go on. Rhetorical question, hence no question mark.

To cite the example of the far-distant other end of the speed/weight spectrum, if you’re going to have Hertz and Budget renting Ford Escorts to civilians and letting them loose on the 24 Heures du Mans circuit and/or [choose a Formula One race venue] during events then you would at least give them a decent hand-over AND not tell them that car racing is a “contact sport”! The smaller companies (generally!) excel in this regard, taking the time and care; tis the larger corporate sillinesses that just sling holidaymakers out as though they’ve rented them a loaf of bread.

In the video what’s the likely outcome if those chaps walking the gunwales on a moving boat should they slip and fall in? Consider the rib-squishing energy of a one-tonne car moving at 60mph versus an eighteen-tonne boat moving at 3 or 4mph. Doesn’t happen often – but if it’s your ribs it only needs to happen once. People do die on the canals – for the stats: National Water Safety Forum. The point is, we do NOT want Elfin Saferty to (have to) take over the canals! It’s not rocket science, it’s just physics.

Well, if I didn’t rant you’d think I’d been kidnapped by aliens.

Actually…

No, don’t go there GF.

Queace and Piet. Serenity. Cool, calm, and collected.

Ever wondered how They re-gas the Sun? Wonder no more, it’s all done very discreetly using old gas street-lamp standards and a bit of old pipe…

The Sun puffs up his cheeks, puts his lips around the pipe, and sucks.

Actually, the Sun has got some explaining to do. It’s to be knocking seventy Fahrengezundheitings later today, but this morning was so ruddy chilly – cold feet, cold fingers, complaining nose – that some logs were thrown into Mr Stove and a match applied. Mid chuffing May!

Logs are of course just bits of tree-arse.

There was a spot of smoke on the water (again) this morning, during walkies.

Now, I’m not terribly bright, and I’m not terribly quick – my IQ is the average of my shoe and collar size – but I notice that we’re back to not mowing to the edge again, on the three or four official cuts of the Summer.

CRT Ltd cling, like winnets, to the cock and bull nonsense that this is somehow “for wildlife”.

Imagine a scenario where the outsourcing contractors are attempting to commercially insure their chaps and their ride-on mowers and their general water-side operations, and – hypothetically – a risk-averse insurance corporation offers them two possibilities, one quotation for ££££££££ while mowing to the canal edge, as of old, and one of £££ if leaving a chuffing great gap, as now.

Would the outsourcing mowing company Ltd perhaps – oh I don’t know – split the difference with the Canal Company Ltd, noting that the needs of the nice people – walkers, dog-emptiers, ramblers, and cyclists will still be met, while a., neither group gives a rodent’s rectum about mooring boaters, and b., I have no idea and even less interest in where “anglers” come in all of this? Justathought. Hashtag cynical me.

The Canal Wallahs Ltd keep insisting it’s somehow for the benefit of Lesser-Spotted Wild Teddybears or some such, and after a couple of years we boaters have simply accustomed ourselves to the reduced facility and increased dangers. Let’s face it, we ought all to be in commercial marinas anyway, were we nice people.

Oh Christ on a bicycle, here comes the Bunbury A-W “day-boat”, laden with blokes in drag.

It’s akin to living on a Far King circus ground.

They’re p*ssed now, what will they be like when they pass heading back to base at the end of this afternoon?

Ye gods, I am a moaning, grumpy old Hector.

But, well… honestly, after ten years of Canal Company Ltd all we’re missing is – nope, we’re not missing anything. I was about to say ‘missing boats like clown cars, where the doors blow off and they have a honk-honk horn’ – but you didn’t just see the day-boat passing, I did.

Seriously, is there any wonder that I get up at the crack of sparrowflap o’clock to go for walkies and/or cruise?

My day-time days are spent watching the modern world walk/unicycle/ramble/cruise past.

Gods, Greek, Roman, and any others that want to re-assert themselves, help us all.

😉 🙂 😉 🙂 😉

…and to think, it’s we “live-aboard” boaters that the Canal Company loathes and despises, chases from R Soul to Breakfast, and wants to single out to charge higher licence fees.

When asked by Fyfe Robertson during a television interview what he thought of the “Modern World” Mr Hutson crossed his eyes and replied ‘Boing. Boing boing boing. Wibble moo fribble de-clomp. Look at me – I’m a small Peruvian tree-frog and I have a water-tight bum.’

Mind you, trees are brilliant. In the early mornings. When there’s no-one else about.

Absolutely no-one else.

😉

Ian H., and Cardinal W., Intellectual, Social, & Emotional Troglodytes, both.

[…and loving it.]