a collective memory of the canals We’ve seen more than you can write down; cuckoos and choristers, moorhen sex, chemical toilets and terrapins, Anderton Boat Lift and Foxton Locks. Curious cargoes and mystical beasts, steam boats and herons, working pairs. Giant pedal organs on tiny little boats, midnight dancing at Mountsorrel weir. The winter approach […]
Canal Poetry
Bridge 1
Last night, The Unicorn was full of them – old boaters-turned-gongoozlers, who raised a glass but not a finger as I steered into the bank. Yow’ll mek a boat girl yet, grinned Joe the Tug. He’d know. Fifty years ago he courted Rose by leaving flowers in the bridge’oles where her boats would pass. Today, […]
Boat
Tonight you moor at Tixall Wide beneath the giddy bats. A heron tries one leg. The boat is tethered, browses between bank and channel. In dry dock once, you saw her settle on the bostocks, wondered at her bulk; that welded self as helpless as a brick. Her power’s in suspense. You don’t need to […]