Time...

A day or two spent afloat on the narrowboat Dalriada is a time to relax and reflect.

The busyness of life for us as a family seems to be a constant, and has rather felt like this since long before service as a church leader. There seems to be so much to do and so little time to do it, whether it's juggling work, family and other commitments. It felt the same when I was working in corporate environments, in the civil service, wherever.

Are we allowed to do nothing, to relax and 'waste' time? I rather feel it is essential that this is exactly what we do. To regard time as such a precious commodity that it cannot be wasted, must always be applied to a useful purpose, is rooted in a rather strong Protestant work ethic. Time is a gift from God, and it must as such be used seriously and purposefully. I recall reading Karl Weber on just this sort of matter, how modern capitalism (and its child, consumerism, that Weber had yet to meet) with a regard for growth as an inherent virtue and workers being subservient to their work, is a distortion of a theology that took this idea of time as God's gift, and also that success in the use of this time is a sign of God's grace.

This idea is deeply rooted in our society, and even consumerism with its subtly crafted calls to individual worth to ensure massive sales of mass produced goods, is a development rather than a deviation from this model of time and worth. Work hard and reward yourself, because you and your success are worth it. God does not figure highly in this, not anymore, although there is some prosperity gospel proclamation in the bigger, shinier churches (who are obviously favoured by God, otherwise why be big and shiny?)

So back to time off, away relaxing. Not as a reward for using time well, because we have been successful or otherwise. Time off to be human, to enjoy simple things, to listen to birdsong and see the wind rippling the waters of the canal, is just as much a good use of God's gift of life and time as is earnest, focused, hard work.

Jesus came that all would have life in all its fullness. And that fullness is in peace, time as family, time to just relax and 'be.'

Technology meets wilderness...

I'm not sure a narrowboat moored in the centre of Kirkintilloch qualifies as a 'wilderness' location but there are certain parallels.  Today is my post Easter Sunday off - a month or so after Easter Day - and I'm sorting stuff out.  The deck scrubbing and red-oxiding of rust spots on NB Dalriada is waiting while I sort out my technology.

As an Episcopal priest with a massive 'canonical area' (denominational parish) I spend a lot of time out and about, often in breathtakingly beautiful locations, often miles from anywhere.  I also spend increasing times on the island where my house is not.  Mary also runs her holiday business from these places.  And a narrowboat moored in Kirkintilloch and many other points on the canals.  Selling holiday lets, keeping in touch with colleagues in Scotland and elsewhere, and also an increasing amount of pastoral work, demands connectivity and, for me, the use of Skype and now also Google+ hangout videoconferencing.  But all that needs connection and a place.

Remaining connected is important.  I am not a cutting edge technology person - I use it when it's useful and ignore it when it's not.  But this week my rather ancient Nokia's screen finally reached the point of unreadability due to scratches - it was a keypad phone, 3G but only just.  This phone has been the nerve centre for webmail, map browsing, Google etc. for the two years ministry/Spinnaker View running in Scotland.

So this morning, I am sorting some of this out.  A little bit of shouting at our 3G provider produced some improved contracts for the kids' phones, and a conciliatory Android smartphone, which I have (reluctantly) switched to.  The pain of learning a titchy touch-screen's keypad will pass, and I am far too tight to buy a tablet.

And now I have the warm glow of things coming together.  A modest 'add-on' on my 3G contract allows the new smartphone to be a wireless hotspot (and my Aberdonian roots like a mere one month rolling contract!).  The resurrected netbook (new motherboard from ebay), D2's iPod touch, all the data hungry devices, all of this is suddenly connected to broadband while we are tied up in the marina! Skype and videoconferencing (within data reason) suddenly beckon wherever 3G signal is to be found.

Which still raises issues with wilderness.  The old definition of wilderness (used in Duke of Edin award hiking planning etc.) was to do with distance from habitation.  The new definition feels like distance from suitable electromagnetic comms bandwidth.  And we still have some battles to be fought there in the hinterlands of Argyll and Bute.

But let me bask a little in the glow of satisfaction as I blog via my new portable wifi hotspot.  The frontier of my personal EM wilderness has been pushed back a little, here in wild Kirkintilloch! 

Holiday over...

A ragged end to a week's holiday, as we return and the answering machine and e-mails and lovely folk popping round seep back into life.
A week on a narrowboat, with a little sailing and a lot of just being, is a good holiday. Having no identity other than a person who's on a narrowboat. Or in the cinema. Or at the theatre. Or in the shops. All good things to be.
What did we do?
Sailing to Auchinstarry, to pump out and fill up, with a canalman who used to be broker in the city.
Sailing to Stockingfield Junction in Glasgow, through a pretty deprived area of the city (ah - I have story about that that I must re-tell here on day...).
Meeting eleven hired narrowboats with Swiss canal-buffs all 'doing' the Scottish canals.
Rekindling the children's dislike of clowns - and hopefully letting them glimpse what mime and performance art can actually do (ah - I must blog about minimalist performance art and liturgy sometime)
And coming back, ready for more - including tomorrow's baptism (ah - I must blog about baptism and witchcraft, when it feels right).
(and ah - I must change back the answering machine)
A good holiday!

A tale of two launches - part 1...

The first launch, on Friday, was the return of NB Dalriada to the clear-ish waters of the Forth and Clyde Canal. The shot above is the 'before' one - before she was pressure-washed, scraped, sanded and blacked with four coats of Intertuf 16 bitumastic hull paint! Living on her for three days or so in the week, at an angle of 16 degrees from the horizontal, was interesting. You fall faster as you walk towards the stern, and climb as you walk forwards! The engine would overheat after two hours running with radiator immersed in air rather than canal water, but that's long enough to top up the batteries so the basic systems will work.

Four coats on, looking rather neat and tidy, three days for the whole thing to fully cure, and she was ready to go back in on Friday. Mary came and crewed for me, once the kids were dropped off at school. Tommy (from the Forth and Clyde Canal Society - stars all!) winched us back into the cut, we dropped a line around the upwind bollard and Mary part held, part paid-out as we turned her against the wind so we were pointing back up the cut towards Kirkintilloch and the marina. The wind was a little interesting getting back into the marina, but we slid gently back in beside NB Twizzle and tied up with barely a scuff on the new blacked paintwork.

All in all, a satisfactory process. The frustration (or enjoyment if you like that sort of thing) is repeating the whole blacking process again in two or three years' time. Dalriada has been out of the water twice in 2010 - this time, to be blacked, and when she came out to come north (see further down this blog). Boats don't much like being out of the water. Land is not the true environment for them!

The second launch - in about 3 weeks' time - we will be popping along to Govan to see Duncan, the sixth (and probably last) Type 45 destroyer be launched. A slightly different scale of event - and she will have needed a little more then 20 litres of hull paint to black her boot topping! But I'm sure she's ready to take to her natural environment too!

Duncan at Govan

East is east and west is west

Freshly returned from holidaying afloat on NB Dalriada (NB = narrowboat - official designation for a 6'9" wide canal craft!) with a good, relaxing time had by all.

The journey started at Kirkintilloch, Dalriada's home base, nicely situated at the mid-pointish of the top pound of the Forth and Clyde canal (pound is the bit between locks - top pound is the flat on the top!) The top pound goes as far as Spiers Wharf and Maryhill Locks in Glasgow, so we basically started a few miles from Glasgow.

Destination: Falkirk Wheel - which is a spectacular feat of engineering, and, on a windy day, a fantastic opportunity to get your boat blown embarrassingly off course in a busy basin with hundreds of Japanese tourists photographing it. We avoided the embarrassment this time - not too windy, and wriggled into the wheel!


The view from the top!

We then journeyed the 32 miles to Edinburgh - right into the heart of the city. Plenty of braid weed (which ties up your propeller and stops the boat going or steering), and fun and games having diesel pumped into the boat and certain waste fluid products pumped out of the boat - these things can never be done quite when and where you want. Plenty of interest in Dalriada - she still says that she comes from Gloucester, which is quite a haul at 3mph from the Union Canal.

Now Edinburgh - where do we start...? Mary and I met here as students nearly 25 years ago. We know the place pretty well. Even some of the more 'interesting' bits that we sailed through have strong memories (Wester Hailes...)
asically, we love Edinburgh a lot, and it was wonderful to be there. But after the boat passes through and we disturb the water, or we visit the castle, or have a pizza at Mamma's in the Grassmarket, a little later there's no trace of our visit. We are all transient visitors.

So I loved this permanent footprint that the Union Canal builders left behind them in 1821, on the sides of bridge 61, just before you go back into the Falkirk Tunnel.

The left hand face is looking towards Edinburgh - smiling! The right hand face is looking towards Glasgow - grimace. Or is it that you pass the grimace as you go towards Edinburgh, but are greeted by a smile as you return to Glasgow. Hmmm. Take your pick of the preference for east and west.

But I still tend to read the Scotsman rather than the Herald. A dangerous admission for a clergyman in Argyll???

Stop-press - Volcanic Ash Cloud Fails to Stop Narrowboat Movements

By Our Scottish Correspondant. The journey of NB Dalriada from Gloucestershire to Kirkintilloch has been successfully completed despite the threat of volcanic ash in the diesel air intakes of the 17.8m long inland waterways vessel. The skipper, Andrew Swift, said, 'We were rather concerned that the Icelandic ash cloud might disrupt the diesel's performance on the tidal River Carron, a critical part of the journey if a trip out to sea via the Forth Estuary was to be avoided. We ignored all specialist advice and went for it, and suffered no permanent damage other than to the whisky supplies on board.'

The journey of this six-year old Pinder-built barge required a fully-integrated transportation strategy, with water, crane, lorry, car, bicycle & train all being used for different phases of the movements. Whilst swinging the 16 tonne vessel in the air near a yacht on blocks, crane operator Barry was heard to say, '@#%X me, that was close! I'm glad my insurance is paid up.'

NB Dalriada will now remain in newly completed Southbank Marina in the up-and-coming area of Kirkintilloch. This base is in close proximity to Glasgow, the Clyde coast, Falkirk and the Union Canal to Edinburgh. Crew and visitors alike can enjoy the local flora and fauna and rides on the extraordinary Falkirk Wheel.

Dalriada on the cusp...

Two bright yellow packing crates, a pack of packing tissue and a roll of bubble wrap - enough for the movement of a nearly 60' narrowboat from the south-west of England to central Scotland? It seems slightly sparse packing materials, but all we are packing is china and glass inside Dalriada as she goes northwards.

Plans maturing - two boats (I hear this morning) and coming out of the water on Wednesday morning first thing, at Sharpness Marine (that would be Paul). Nice and early, so Tuckey's have a good day to drive (that would be Barry). The next morning, assuming all has gone well on the way up the road, weeds and greenery waving in the M6 slipstream, Dalriada will arrive at Forth & Clyde services at Grangemouth, to be craned onto blocks (that would be Stevie).

When the tide is right (and what that might be remains a bit of an arcane mystery, best known to the local British Waterways RIB drivers and licence issuers (that would be Donald and Sandy)), we will go in off the blocks and be ready to head up the Carron.

Now, doing that is a little exciting - the Carron is less scary than the Severn, but the Severn can be very scary! A running river with the tide running too, a shallow bit with a low bridge, and turn into some pontoons at the mouth of the sea lock with wind and water playing with the rather underpowered narrowboat (that has no bowthruster, of course). Now the experienced if slight mad chap from the previous post (that would be Tim) and his sidekick (that would be Ron) aren't able to help us, so we will be a bit on our own and in the hands of the standby BW chap that day (that would be Iain).

Oh - and the whole thing has been arranged by the nice lady from Tuckey's (that would be Monica).

We seem to be in a lot of other people's hands on this one...

Apply liberally for immediate relief...

A chat with 'Ron' who is actually called Tim - and a great relief. He is very happy to furnish with a (possibly monosyllabic) canal-type person who knows which of the arches of the Carron bridges to aim for and will have the correct vocabulary of grunts and mutters to communicate with the sea lock people and onwards. All that is dreadfully unfair, as they are all very nice, chatty people who will be very helpful.

Tim did then go on to talk about taking narrowboats up the Forth to Stirling (mooring at the boating club on Riverside) and even the future possibility of a link to Loch Lomond from the Forth & Clyde Canal. Better half (BH) blanched at hearing my end of this conversation, and expressed a desire for Tim to accompany me on such ventures whilst she sipped gin on the side of the canal/raging river/stormy loch. And to think I spent £80 on a life jacket for her!

Generally, much relief that knowledge is available and willing to get us into the system up at the Scottish end of Dalriada's journey to her nominal home!

Speed bonnie boat like a bird on the wing

Some discussion on the dates for Dalriada's transportation to Scotland. Plan A - May 4th out the water - feels a bit close to the moving date proper. Plan B (under development) - the week after Easter week - would work better.

Plans are very fluid - reflects the state of life at the moment as the Gloucester end begins to be melted down and the Cowal & Bute end remains hypothetical.

For the boat, the key (we hope) is someone called 'Ron' who knows all about getting boats into the tidal Carron and up to the Falkirk Wheel basin. 'Ron's are worth their weight in gold!