Trevorthelockeeper’s Weblog

1.0 Introduction

From pen pushers to puddle pushers the work of a British Waterways employee has been punctuated by risk assessments, method statements, acronyms, mnemonics, and training courses et al. Increasingly over the years there has been enough bits of paper entitled ‘Thou shalt’ and ‘Thou shalt not’ to give Moses heartburn. But there again a media tycoon once lamented that half the money he spent on advertising was wasted. He just wished he knew which half. But from fatality to mild irritation, nobody can deny the decreasing number of accidents. But it’s not all just due to a large portion of rain forest that’s been regurgitated and scribbled on. It’s much, much more subtle than that. It has required a change in thinking at both macro and micro levels. 

My fellow attendees of a course entitled ‘Behavioural Safety’ have agreed that what we learned, and how overnight our working approach shifted, is every bit as important as anything that could ever be written objectively about Health and Safety.

2.0  Behavioural Safety.

Let’s face it, health and safety has been put at the very top of everybody’s agenda using threats and morbid stories. It takes an unusual character to arrive home like an exuberant fly half just because they’re still breathing or not about to do a bit of porridge. And most importantly, whether we like it or not, we’re all responsible for ourselves and our fellows, whether work colleagues or customers. But how does a green employee tell a wrinkly coffin dodging crane driver that he’s operating in an unsafe way? How does a main board director, who generally only ever smells fresh paint (Sir Bernard’s words, not mine!), stop somebody doing a bit of Chinese grinding (i.e no goggles)? There isn’t time to write anything down, dob someone in or grass somebody up. There are, however, years and years to say “If only I’d said the right thing, and in the right sort of way, they might still have had a finger/eye/ spleen/job/life….”.

2.1 What is it?

Someone, somewhere, sees something that they think is dangerous. In this example, they are not empowered with rank, relevant knowledge, or experience, whereby if they were, they could cease the operation immediately (shotguns have been largely discouraged because of a general fear of paper work and a natural awareness of the ability to sometimes miss the point).

But what everyone has is the ability to communicate effectively. They might not know it, but they have. Maybe this skill is mostly unused and rusty. It can range from theatrical verbosity to Rooneyesque txt mssg spk. But everybody has it.

This is behavioural safety. The ability to apply effective communication, using tact and imagery, to stop a potential accident.

  The HSE say that 95% of accidents are caused by a lack of behavioural Safety.     

2.2 What it’s not!

The attempt to introduce Behavioural Safety by British Waterway as a concept to the work force was an inspired idea. But once the go kart has been built, pulled to the top of the hill and loaded with kids, it then has to be let go. A manager cannot apply behavioural safety without first divesting themselves of all pips, badges, gold braid and authority. This would be missing the point entirely. A manager has other well tested means for accident prevention. But how many times has an employee left the scene of a potential drowning, knowing full well, that while the sound of his departing van fades, the kids will be straight back in the lock. But if another kid came along and told a story about how his friend drowned, the panic, the bulging oxygen starved eyes, the screaming, the devastated family, then there’s a chance, with all honour intact, the other kids just might get bored and find something else to do.

3.0 The course

Within a cash rich organisation, every employee from top to bottom, should attend a course on the subject. This, we know, isn’t going to happen. It’s also a bit like learning how to handle a loaded motor and butty or a spoke shave. Five minutes to learn, but a lifetime to master. Roughly speaking the course was split into three separate areas..

3.1 Idiots guide to psychology

The instructor (call me Dave) established his credentials. He was an ex para with a bloodied knife, degree in psychology and great sense of humour. He had our full attention. He discussed body language. By the end of this section the girls were sitting demurely as only a pot of honey can, the chaps were sitting as confident as Arnie and gene pools to the wind, and everybody was secretly recording how to come across as a model citizen at the next police interview.

He touched on Transaction Analysis, the study of how conversations can be dissected by observing three states of interactivity. Parent, adult and child.

We discussed, a lot. Fear of embarrassment, pride, inarticulacy, brain to mouth coordination etc.

And then came the whammy. How would we, the green employee, tell the wrinkly coffin dodging crane driver that he was operating like a bit of a pillock? He, to counter of course, would inform us that he’d been a Professor of Pillockology for thirty four years and inquired as to whether our parents were a) as inquisitive and b) indeed, married.

Oh dear

3.2 Scary videos and stories

Dave didn’t muck about. We got both barrels of yuck and gore. If we’d had the temerity to fall asleep, we’d of had nightmares. But there was a different moral to these stories. Yes, written procedures had been put in place, but they lay neatly stacked, largely read but undigested in the metaphorical cab of a waterways van.

The point was, in each case, there was a fellow employee who could of prevented the accident if only they’d been introduced to the concept of behavioural safety.

Gulp

3.3 Role play

“Here’s the scenario, now over to you” Oh thanks, Dave. It’s alright for you, you charming knife wielding academic who can charismatically run up and down Everest before settling down to a breakfast of six inch nails on unsalted buttered plate washers, confident in the knowledge that, by the end of the day, half the Glaswegian Constabulary would be confessing to a murder that never happened, and the other half thirsting to perform in Swan Lake.

Needless to say, Andrew Lloyd Webber would have paid us to keep the day job.

Cringe

4.0 Application – The easy bit

So, how can British Waterways allow behavioural safety to become as natural as breathing to it’s everyday operation? Here’s the gobsmackingly simple truth about it. Once one understands what it is, they’re well on the way to being able to practice it.

“I knew that”, we all said by the end of the course. Yes, but so did the lemming say that to the parachute salesman.

4.1 The difficult bit

We’re all different, and communicate in different ways. There are also myriad combinations of any given circumstance.

The task, however, is identical.

To stop, using a conversation, a potential accident, but also to change somebody’s thinking so they modify their ways for the future occasions when you’re not there.

Some of the elements that can inhibit the facilitator can be as follows:

Fear or looking like an idiot

Fear of confrontation

Fear of looking like a goody two shoes

Fear of appearing to not behave like a team member

Fear of a clumsy approach or entrée to the subject

These very real fears cannot be ‘trained’ out of somebody on a course. They can ,however, be taught to mull over or discuss scenarios (whether fabricated or historic) and imagine how they would deal with it.

5.0 Conclusion

What is ‘behavioural safety’ again?

To stop, using a conversation, a potential accident, but also to change somebody’s thinking so they modify their ways for the future occasions when you’re not there.

It’s worth reiterating. 95% of accidents are caused by a lack of good safe behavioural practice.

Trevor The Lockeeper

 Seven weeks before the arrival of the new little lockeeper Mrs Lockeeper insisted I attend the last parent craft evening. I’d managed to miss all the others but had finally been outflanked. Mrs Lockeeper had walked the dog, hidden my chainsaw, popped to the pub to see if it was still there, finished a letter to the bank manager, changed the oil in the car and generally pre-empted any excuse I might possibly come up with.  

We arrived at the clinic for the evening meeting and six other couples appeared. They were all familiar to each other and I was the only one who nobody knew. I got the searching eye as they tried to work out what the complete opposite to an immaculate conception was. They all waddled in. Even the men. The meeting was led by a health visitor. I tried to keep a low profile as it was obvious I was far too old for all this. They watched a video nasty about babies and had a discussion. Then I got poked in the ribs and was very rudely woken up. The thing that had been preoccupying my mind was the fact that we again going into flood. The drive would soon be under water, and the cattle on the hill behind the lock house had ensured that the field was uncross able except by a medium to large size tank. How was I going to get Mrs Lockeeper out to the maternity unit. The Fire brigade with their fast rescue inflatable owed me a few favours as did the police diving unit.   

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 That’s all for now folks. I haven’t written any more since  pre Emma (Bunny Smunchkin Pie) Lockeepers birth. All went well, and she’s five next month (26/02/08). Hope you’ve enjoyed, and I’ve got loads more to write, it’s just finding the time!! 

Soon after I’d retired to the water I was skippering a plastic trip boat running a scheduled waterbus service and also doing day trips for the London Waterbus Company. This particular plastic boat (Water Buffalo) was moored in the pool of Little Venice behind an old working narrow boat butty called Nebulae. I’d never met the owner but was getting concerned that her hull was rubbing away on the coping stones. I installed a tyre fender. After a storm I had to rearrange her canvasses. One day I pulled in on the plastic boat  and  saw a rather large man pacing up and down by Nebulae. He was looking worriedly at the boat. I went to introduce myself. His name was Michael. He shook my hand, but after the regulation two up and three downs, wouldn’t then let my hand go. I told him about the fender. He said he’d noticed. I told him about the canvasses. He said he’d noticed. He wanted to buy me a pint. I said I’d noticed, but asked if we could not walk in to the pub looking like senior and junior jewellery designers from Putney that were very much in love. He let my hand go. We went to the Bridge House and we were soon with ale.

Nebulae had been converted inside and was a marvel. From the outside she looked much as she would have done in her working days. But under the canvass covered hard shell, she was a tribute to oak, brass and ingenious design. Not only could she comfortably sleep eight strangers or fourteen friends, she had a ten seater solid oak dining table and every conceivable gadget and accoutrement for a serious dinner party. Her traditional boatman’s cabin had been restored to the last detail and she was truly a one off. There was no escaping the fact that the restoration and conversion of Nebulae had cost industrial quantities of money. Michael was in the film business and money wasn’t an issue.

That meeting marked the start of several years of friendship and countless wonderful hilarious times. Michaels first love was for his four children. His second love was for Nebulae. That day I’d first seen him pacing up and down, he’d very nearly reached a decision to sell his beloved boat. She was simply too much to handle, both from a boating point of view and the setting up for a dinner party. And Michael loved to (dinner) party. Now I was to be his boatman. This involved basic maintenance, cleaning, setting up ready for a dinner party, steering the boat down into Regents Park, moor up under Michaels favourite tree, join dinner party (if Michael hadn’t over booked, in which case I ate in the cosy back cabin) and then back to the mooring in the wee small hours. There was also the added bonus of his complete blessing to use his boat as my own.

To my shame I have to admit that she never got the attention she truly deserved, Michael lost a few bottles of wine and I was sometimes perilously close to being rude to his guests (I once suggested to a son of the Queen that they were talking rather a lot of Bravo Oscar Lemur Lemur Oscar X-ray), but I was always made to feel that I had ‘given Michael his boat back’. The combination of the business he was in, coupled with his considerable charity works, meant that he knew everybody. From the Royal family, down through all the knobs in between, to me. I welcomed the guests on board, steered the boat down to the park while Michael did his warm up routine. This entailed an interesting chat about canals, boatmen, history etc, and by the time I joined the table everybody would hush reverently until I’d sat down and been handed a humungous glass of wine. Typically Michael had built me up to a position I could never live up to, one of the gnarled old working boatman I simply never was. But, hey, this was showbiz.  Hollywood superstars, politicians, rock stars etc, had all been levelled to the extent whereby if he’d suggested they do the washing up they would have felt honoured.

We then ate. The food was always simple in a posh sort of way, and was presided over by the real boss, Beatrice. Beatrice was Michael’s Portuguese housekeeper and sabre toothed guardian over his life, from clean socks to potential assassination attempt. There was more ‘beavering away behind the scenes’ in Beatrice than a girl’s public school trip to the ski slopes of Andorra.   I learned a great truth about showbiz, stardom, and celebrity status. With one or two exceptions, the bigger they were, the more they understood about Michaels inverted snobbery, and enjoyed the relief of enforced humility, subsequently having a great time. The smaller they were, well, they just didn’t get it, and if I couldn’t get there with the deflating one line-er, then Michael would. With one set of Royals, we actually had so much more of a laugh with the body guards, we (meaning Michael) invited them and some of their colleagues and wives for dinner and had a wail of a time. In 1996 we took Nebulae down to Bristol for something called the Festival of the Sea. We were moored up amongst seven hundred boats and ships in Bristol harbour. Our berth was opposite a Royal Navy minesweeper (Cottishall?) Modestly, Michael happened to mention that the last time he’d seen that ship was when he’d dined on it with Lord Louis Mountbatten. Bloody typical.  

And then there were the extended trips. We would take the boat all over the country, Michael coming and going as his business allowed. I always had to periodically return to work on the trip boats in order to keep the wolf from the door. Guests great and small joined us for sumptuous meals cooked by Michael. Sometimes we would cruise into the evening after everybody had gone home. We’d bring all the leftovers out and have a candle lit binge on the roof of the back cabin. 

Michael died of a brain tumour in 1998. His coffin was put onto Nebulae and carried up to Kensal Rise Cemetery. His memorial service was held in The Odeon, Leicester Square. I remember having a hug with Michael shortly before he died. He already had two first class sons and two first class daughters, making me the son he never needed. I already had a first class father making him the father I never needed. We laughed about that, a lot.  A few days later Ben (Michael’s son) was delivering Michaels ashes back to the boat in order for us to set up a little shrine in the boatman’s cabin. He phoned me to say that he was on his way, but that the box he was carrying didn’t feel like his father. Before I could stop myself I suggested that Michael had lost weight. At first I thought I’d really blown it. Then, typically as one would expect from a son of Michael, the long silence became punctuated by guffaws of laughter.

We created a little shrine in the boatman’s cabin and let it be known that anybody could come and spend a while reflecting with him. When this happened, I would greet the guests, pace up and down the towpath, and see them off afterwards. Very soon afterwards I honoured a previous engagement and hosted a dinner party for one of our friends, Rhod. After all the guests had gone home, Rhod and I were chatting. Caroline (Rhods other half) had gone off to the rear toilet for a wee. The washing up was waiting patiently to be turned back into to neat piles of cleanliness. Suddenly, a lot of plates, cups, cutlery etc, flew across the cabin, strangely nothing was broken. Caroline came rushing back from the little room, expecting to find Rhod and I with knives drawn, only to actually find us sitting a few yards away and looking a bit non plussed. Michael was making his presence felt. On another occasion my lovely New Zealand friend, Katie Jane, was washing up after another meal, when all the kitchen bits (spatulas, wooden spoons etc) flew out of their wooden containers above her head. She nonchalantly told Michael to stop mucking about and calmly put them all back again. One night, my friend and I, Charlie (Charlotte), were telling Michael stories over a bottle of whisky. We cried a bit, but laughed a lot. Brass decorations started flying about. Something wasn’t quite right. A few days later, the final guest was having a bit of a reflect with Michael in the back cabin, and did what I never could or would ever have done. She opened the box. Inside was a piece of paper with a name on it. It should have said Michael E W Samuelson. Instead, it said, Herbert L Miles. They’d given Ben the wrong box. That’s what Michael was trying to tell us. Two tearful employees from the crematorium met me to do the swap. I promised never to tell the family, a bit of a porky as it turned out. 

Nebulae is moored up at Hanham Lock as I write. 

 Oscar Wilde once said that whisky mixed with water is the ruination of two drinks. Worse than that, whisky and canal or river water can be the ruination of a healthy pair of lungs. My worst ‘falling in’ story involves a bike, a friend, a ninety degree bend in the Regents Canal, and a few pints of beer. The friend, James O‘Regan, and I had been trying to buy shares in a beverage company by attempting to impress the shareholders and board of directors with an aggressive and significant increase on their turnover. By the end of our strategy meeting, as much as we tried to search for it, we’d completely lost the plot. James, whilst being ‘two up’ on my bicycle, realised we were about to get very wet unless I remembered the ninety degree bend in the canal. He got off. I carried on pedalling. I think I was six foot over the water before I remembered that bicycles don’t have a reverse gear. I was back pedalling faster than a bumblebee in a vacuum cleaner, but still got very wet.  Apart from that occasion, I have remained remarkably lucky. There was of course the time the yeti and I were rescuing a boat in one of the minor floods. It was dark, the gunwhales of the boat were narrow, I slipped and fell in up to my waist. Not that the water wasn’t deep, it was just that I managed to hold onto one of the ‘riser’ poles as I slid in.“Wooga, wooga, bang, bang”. Well of course nobody was going to know I’d fallen in unless he split on me. We went for a beer at the Lock & Weir. Our friends might well have believed my story about Mrs Lockeeper not having time to dry the washing properly which was why I had to go outside three times to empty my wellies, if there was such a thing as a discreet wookie. 

What does give me great pleasure to relate is the time that Mrs Lockeeper fell in.Mrs Lockeeper doesn’t like pubs. The only reason she ever goes into one is to make me come out of one. How can a Lockeeper enjoy a pint of beer when their wife is either staring at them malevolently or theatrically taking a notebook and pencil out of their handbag and scribbling down houskeeping numbers with a great big minus in front of them? Unless Alan invited her for a drink. Alan is from up North. He is a jolly good looking earth moving machine operator type chappie with a full head of hair and a full wallet. He was the machine operator on a contract to dredge parts of the river, and I stupidly said he could park his caravan in our garden for the duration. One evening I was looking forward to putting my feet up after having cooked the supper, washed up, helped the kids with their homework, washed the kids, washed up again, walked the border collie pup, and looked up ‘self rightous’ in the theasaurus. Mrs  Lockeeper and ‘poor lonely’ Alan were at the pub. Across the river at around midnight I heard the sound of an outboard engine being revved to within an inch of another trip to an outboard engine shop. Mrs Lockeeper and Mr ‘my other car is a 360 degree twenty ton pose mobile earth mover’ were leaving the Lock & Weir pub. When they’d finally tacked and slalomed over to my side of the river, Alan got out, unfortunately about five feet from the bank. It must of finally hit home to him what Mrs Lockeeper had been saying to him all night. But she was proven wrong. He couldn’t after all, walk on water. Mrs Lockeeper got out as well. She stood in eighteen inches of water and clambered on to the jetty. She suggested that the lock cut needed dredging, and wondered out loud where one could find a dredger driver at that time of night. The ‘sorry you haven’t got a gorgeous full thatch of chestnut hair, you bald London git’ dredger driver eventually surfaced and swam to shore. She’d been standing on his shoulders. The lock cut was one dredger driver plus Mrs Lockeeper’s two shins deep.  

One winter Saturday afternoon Megan the border collie pup on heat, Alan the ‘I can teach you how to appear at a backdoor looking desperately undernourished three times a day anywhere in the country’ macho machine operator and I were having a quiet beer at the Lock & Weir. In walked a fisherman. He asked if anybody had a piece of rope. We said we had several, but thanked him for asking anyway. He said somebody had fallen in up river. Being a bald git makes me more aerodynamic and faster than the ‘I could be a hairdressers model anytime I wanted to’ merchant, and while Alan was still putting his comb back in his back pocket, Megan the border collie pup on heat and I had the dinghy fired up and were planing upstream. After half a mile, three nesting coots who must of come to the conclusion that it would be quicker to start from scratch, a pair of shagging water voles who’d got an unexpected gobfull of water and five swans who thought they might have taken a wrong turn at Avonmouth later, we found one man and his dog in the water. The bank was very steep but his dog had found a little ledge at the waters edge to sit on. I tried to be tactful. I suggested it was a spooky coincidence that his skin colour was the same shade of blue as my newly decorated bathroom. He said he’d simply been walking straight down the towpath and just slipped in. I suggested that in future he allowed for the fact that the towpath was a bit bent in places. He said he’d be writing to his MP. I hauled him and his dog into the boat. His dog was interested in Megan the border collie pup on heat. Megan was interested in the dog and started reversing a lot. The man said he was cold. I suggested that he might like to keep warm by trying to get his dog out of mine. I set off for civilisation. By the time we arrived we were met by two fire engines and an ambulance. My first thought was that Alan must have broken a nail and called the emergency services. Then I realised that the fisherman had dialled 999. I handed the now sweating man over to our phosphorescent friends. They said they couldn’t take the dog and so I had to look after it until the man’s daughter arrived. I went for a swift pint. What seemed like hours later the two dogs had lost several pints of pheromones and I, several pints of patience. Alan reappeared from some small room with a mirror. He had indeed broken a nail by hastily putting his comb back in his back pocket, but was told that all emergency services were busy looking for a wet die hard roman towpath walker. The dog was by this time so worked up he had lost all sense or care about pretty border collie bitch recognition. As any leg would do I handed him to Alan and took the dinghy home. That must of ruffled his hair a bit.  

Probably the most dangerous incident involved a hire boat at Hanham. Two families were on  this particular boat, and all concerned seemed quite sensible. But nevertheless they’d been drinking a little wine. They were just pulling up to the Lock & Weir pub when they started a bit of horsing about. The result was one man in the water at the back of the boat being tickled by a propellor that had been ordered to go full astern, being held round the waist by another man who couldn’t let go in order to take the engine out of gear. They were reversing straight towards the weir. The man in the water was not only in danger of going through the propellor, he would also have prevented any scratches on the underside of the boat that might be caused by the weir ledge, due to the fact that he was the twain that would ensure the two would never meet. With twenty feet to spare, one of the wives came out on deck and was told how to put the gear lever in neutral. Two of my quick thinking friends had shot across in a dinghy and got an anchor down. Whilst the emergency services were on their way they put me on board and I checked the chap over. He had got away with a sliced shin. We then moved the boat onto the pub moorings.  

I know three stories about people going through a propellor.  One involved a trip boat company (The Jenny Wren) I had occasionally worked for in London, one family that were friends of my sister in law lost a nine year old son, and one friend of mine, Captain Rick, had a son who was a sub officer in the firebrigade. They had been called to an incident where a women had gone through a propellor and the whole watch had needed counselling for weeks afterwards. 

One time I nearly had a chat with the angels was in London and involved a trip boat called Perseus, (operated by the London Waterbus Co.)  I was to skipper her first trip of the season and had the job of ‘de-wintering’ the engine before taking sixty old ladies on a tour.I did all the engine checks and fired it up, letting it warm through nice and slowly. After about ten minutes I started to move two adjacent trip boats (Milton and Gardenia) so I could manoevre Perseus out. Then the engine revs started to increase. And then they increased a bit more. I left the boats drifting about on long lines and clambered back down into the engine ‘hole’. The revs still increased and very soon the engine was screaming. The engine stop wouldn’t work and smoke was billowing out from places where it shouldn’t have. Desperately trying to remember where the pulley belts and nasty high speed spinning things were, I tried to feel my way towards the injector pump. I found it but it ignored my attempts to disable it. The noise was incredible and visibility was long gone. I decided to retreat as I was sure something was about to give, and I didn’t want something giving through me. Out on the back deck I could see that the whole pool of Little Venice was covered in a pall of smoke. Two boats were drifting aimlessly about and two people were running down the towpath armed with fire extinguishers. The only thing I had control over was the engine throttle, and thanks to my good old dad and his lateral thinking, the only way I could change any of these horrific conditions was to give the engine full throttle. Quite quickly the revs died away and the engine ground to a halt. I think I said ‘gosh ‘ a lot. My friend, Ray Farrow (our British Waterways policeman), was very out of breath when he finally got to me and couldn’t speak, which was a shame, because everytime he did speak, he said something terribly funny.

It turns out that the world and his wife had either experienced or had heard about an engine ‘running away’. After a couple of days I wouldn’t have been surprised if a baby in a passing pushchair hadn’t leaned towards me and told me that if only I’d put a rag over the air intake, I could have stopped the engine quite quickly. When I’d ckecked the oil, the level was fine. What I hadn’t noticed in the gloom of the engine room, was that there was about two inches of diesel on top of the oil. The lift pump had been leaking fuel into the oil sump all winter, and when the engine had warmed up enough, it started burning fuel from the bottom of the cylinders. Woops. The mechanic who came to look at it said that this paticular type of engine could develop seventeen and a half thousand revs once it had run away, which compared quite unfavourably with the two and a half thousand it was deigned to achieve at maximum.My giving it full throttle had drowned the process.Everybody then proceeded to tell me all their ‘con rods though the eye ball’ stories. Every now and again I wonder what I would have done if the engine had run away after the old ladies had got on board. They probably would have mentioned the war.  

Christmas. Now there’s a funny thing. While I was living in London and before I joined British Waterways, I was a freelance waterman, which basically meant you found work wherever you could. Every winter I had to work in a dry dock of some kind praying for the phone to ring about a bit of sporadic tug work, trip boat steering, salvage etc. One year I had finally had enough. After one particularly cold day, I climbed out of a dry dock and vowed to never get back in one again. I was cold, filthy dirty and thoroughly miffed off. My local pub was in Little Venice in London where I lived. After a bit of a clean up I went for some sympathy and a pint. The Bridgehouse was being run by Dennis and Jenny who were, and still are, dear friends of mine.  Dennis suggested I work behind the bar for a couple of months. I would be warm, well fed, and amongst friends. I accepted.

Within two weeks they said they were moving. Was it something I said? No, and would I like to go with them? Again I accepted. The next thing I knew I was working in a pub near Hampton Court called The Albion. After a few days I found myself at five pm in the evening with the place all to myself. It was the day before Christmas Eve. In walked two suited gents who had obviously just got off the train. They had also just as obviously come from an office party and were feeling no pain. I got the finger clicking ‘I say, my man’ treatment, but managed to serve the gin and tonics without saying words like snobby, git or anal retention. I couldn’t help but overhear the banter. They were lamenting the fact that Aunt Agnus was coming to stay over Christmas, the amount they had spent on the regulation vogue presents, the endless round of drinks parties and the bladder control problem during the sermon at midnight mass. Commercialisation, that was the problem. Nobody understood the essential message behind Christmas anymore. The moaning went on and on as the gents swayed, sipped and tried to out stare the optics.

Then one of them delivered the funniest line I have ever heard. “Whoever invented Christmas should be crucified”.

With that I was on the floor. What a corker!! I  wouldn’t be seeing the chaps for a good few minutes. They would be writhing on their backs in the same way I was. Then there would be a bit of back slapping and wiping away of tears before a congratulatory drink and the occasional mirthful outburst as the line got repeated like a wanted hiccup. I dragged myself up off the floor with a new appreciation of original wit. Perhaps I’d written these two off too quickly. Maybe I’d even buy them a gin and tonic. But when I did finally get up I was faced with two stony expressions which exuded a great distaste for the decline in standards amongst suburban bar staff. Had the landlord panicked and employed an Australian? How could this happen in Hampton Court? Well this was too much for me. Back down on the floor I went. I’m still not sure which was the funnier. The line itself or the fact that after all that lamenting the pillocks hadn’t realised what they’d said. Shortly after they left. I think I said ‘Gidday’.

(I’ve told this story over the last few years to anybody that would listen. One day I was recounting it again, when somebody said they’d heard it before. I’m not surprised it’s out there in Burb Myth land, but, like peeing in a wet suit, I have this warm comfy feeling in the knowledge that this really happened to me)  

Some years later the boot was on the other foot. I was born on Gatwick airport runway. Or to be a bit more precise, I was born in a little bungalow in a village called Lowfield Heath which was subsequently levelled to make way for the Gatwick Airport runway extension. When I was six months old we moved to a place called East Grinstead. My father chose this place for no reason other than it was West of where he worked. This meant he had the sun behind him on the drive to work in the morning, and again, behind him on the way home. He was clever like that, my dad. The only reason I mention this is because East Grinstead was not known for anything outstanding at all. If a house burnt down the local priest would hold a thanksgiving service for the break in the monotony. In East Grinstead people have no accent. Or rather it’s an accent devoid of any regional, cultural or class bias whatsoever. That is, unless you were born in the East end of London, in which case you were a posh git. 

My tug and I, Olton, were assigned to a dredging contract in Limehouse Dock on the River Thames. This entailed several months of towing long trains of mud barges to and from Bow Locks (try not to say this too fast when relating the story to a Presbyterian minister or any commitee member of the Womens Institute) where they would be emptied and could be hauled back to the dredger for the process to be repeated. For this contract I was given four Thames  Lighterman as crew. I was quite nervous of these gentleman at first. They were all four foot eleven inches tall, as skinny as rakes excepting very respectable beer bellies, and all a hundred and fourteen years old. They were also as strong as oxen and had been trained since birth to work dumb barges on the Thames (i.e row, pull, push, strap, etc) These craft would more usually be called ‘lighters’ or ‘hoppers’. When I was first introduced to these bionic gnomes I fully expected them to call the shots. But no. They had been brought up to do everything the tug driver said. How on earth was I going to tow a hundred yards of barges and a thousand years of knowledge with credibility. I could turn a train of lighters on a ninety foot line in their own length on still water, getting it right most of the time as long as nobody was looking, but this was different and our first team brief involved a lot of feet shuffling and few words. 

Eventually and largely silently we got on with what we thought might work. Luckily for me it generally did. In short we all quickly became firm friends and on the return journey’s with the emptied hoppers I let them steer the tug in exchange for stories. One day, fairly early on, I was getting ready to pull six abreast hoppers off a wharf. This involved me holding the tug against the incoming tide while the gnomes ran up and down the gunwhales of the hoppers strapping bows to sterns as I slowly pulled away. I was composing a piece of music (a hobby of mine I haven’t yet mentioned) and was just berating the cello section for coming in half a beat too late, when I realised I was losing the nose of the tug. We had to go, and right then. I gave the signal and nearly got away with it. Three lighters jerked their way reluctantly behind the tug before the tow line parted between lighters three and four. This was unfortunately after the gnomes had let go number six. I  watched the flooding tide spiral them upstream on the remaining three lighters with little to do except unclog blocked nasal orifices. I did a bit of long legged leapery and managed to tie off the lead lighter on a pierhead leaving the three of them to flap about on the tide. I then span Olton round on her stern and chased after the errant lighters and the stranded Lightermen. After I’d caught them up I was profusely apologetic as we reined the hoppers in. They looked at me with curious expressions. A tug driver had never apologised to a Lighterman in several hundred years and besides, as they generously explained later, there was nothing they hadn’t seen, nothing they hadn’t done.

It was a Friday and they took me for a swift beer after work. To a Lighterman, a swift beer means drinking a quantity similar to a small incoming tide. At one point in the evening the gnomes went into a huddle for a couple of minutes. They were debating something important. Many loud whispers and a few punches later they emerged. Tony, the lead hand, drew himself up to his full height and inflated his chest heralding a great burden of responsibility. They had decided to invite me to a real pub. The last Lighterman’s Pub in London. I felt the wash of a great compliment and accepted the offer after a ceremonial pause and a grave smile.

The five of us jumped into a taxi and drove for about fifteen minutes, and after crossing the river, were set down at the entrance to a dimly lit street. From the looks of our surroundings this was either where we’d asked to go, or the driver had refused to go any further. Whichever way, a pair of double yellow lines were the only things Charles Dickens would have found unfamiliar. Fifty yards later and a hundred and thirty eight years previous, there was a pub. It was called the Kings Arms. I was quite glad about this, because the nickname my gnomes friends had given it was surely illegal and physically impossible.

Raucous male laughter mingled with agonised ‘it hurts so good’ female screams to rattle the grubby but ornate etched glass windows. We entered. Well, I was pushed in, like a little steam engine going in full reverse having seen something on the line ahead but with the heavily laden goods wagons behind it fancying a decent rail disaster just for a laugh. The goods wagons split up with waves to various familiar faces leaving me to shoulder tap, side step, cough loudly and ‘so sorry to bother you’ to the bar. A girl with dumplings that oh so wanted to boil over came to serve me. With her opening line she informed me I was her darling followed by a question which suggested she’d never seen me before in her life. I shrugged my shoulders, smiled meekily and quickly recognised my Lighterman friend’s brand of ale. I ordered five pints. Then I went completely deaf. Or so it seemed.

Oddly I could still hear my gnomes across the crowded bar. But one by one, like the last child to realise the teacher has walked back into the classroom, they too fell silent. If it had been a Hollywood film there would have been the sound of a stylus scraped to the end of a playing record. I had committed a cardinal sin. I had said something along the lines of ‘please may I have five pints of your finest ‘Old Kidney Nemesis’, please. What I should have done is taken a particularly coarse metal file and a pepper pot full of very explicit words relating to the various parts and processes required for making baby rabbits, and set about filing the beginnings and ends off the words followed by a comprehensive and liberal sprinkle.

A rather large elderly gentleman in a very clean white singlet was next to me at the bar. He turned his benippled badminton court sized chest towards me, keeping his head pointing slightly downwards and towards the mirrored back wall of the bar. A spider would have had a problem holding on to his forearms as his tendons raised and lowered the ten fingers that now fell in and fell out with military precision. In short, the badminton court with a pink bubble on top suggested  I’d walked into the wrong establishment, and would I require any help choosing which window I would like to use for my imminent and much aided exit.

I turned to my new friends, the dumplings. They wobbled under shrugging shoulders. No help there then, but it was briefly nice looking for an answer. I turned for the door. The last time I’d been in a fight I’d stupidly taken on the inside of a wet paper bag and been left meekly calling for help. One of the gnomes (George) appeared just as I turned. He buried his head in the badminton court’s midriff and had a muffled one way conversation. The pink bubble paled a bit, held up ten fat fingers, and smiled at me in a conciliatory way. Everything was suddenly all right.

Somebody approached me from behind. Things were suddenly not all right. I was asked menacingly by  a somebody that resembled a large barrel and the evil Sheriff of Nottingham why I hadn’t taken the trouble to treat my completely neutral accent to the parts, processes needed to make little bunny rabbits and the filing treatment. Had I no respect for where I was?  I replied that, conversely,  I’d usually found that honesty was the best policy and all my life I’d resolutely refused to change my accent for anybody, anywhere,  as a mark of respect. A silence ensued. The high ranking barrel looked down at his midriff. It had a ‘Danny’ gnome in it. Another one way muffled conversation happened indicating that my answer would have to be accepted or the barrel would be opened and the pristine white badminton court would end up a funny colour. The pub relaxed and to cut a long story short, I wasn’t allowed to buy a drink all night, I was forced to say ‘accountant’ to the point of ill health and was invited to several baptisms, funerals and Christmas dinners which would have given even a halitosis burdened tax inspectors’ diary log jam.  

Leaping ahead to the codicil at the end of a whole bunch of stories with the gnomes, due to mechanical failure, I had to pick up another dredger and invited George and Tony along as crew. I’d offered George the wheel at some point but soon afterwards he suddenly remembered the date. The second ‘Marchioness Disaster’ enquiry was only days away and he became so upset by this I had to take the wheel back from him. For the next couple of hours I got the whole story as to what allegedly had actually happened on that fateful night where so many young party goers lost their lives on a party boat called the Marchioness, it having been rolled by a coaster called the Bow Belle on the River Thames in central London. George was actually steering a party boat behind the Bow Belle and actually saw the whole thing. Tony was actually steering another trip boat coming down stream minutes afterwards and together with their crews, actually rescued thirty or forty people.

 #########  I have deleted the details of  what I was told  #######

This, coupled with witnessing the event itself, got to George. He spent two weeks in Guys hospital after a suicide attempt. At various points of my scribings, I’ve been phoning old friends and checking that my memories are as scribed. I spoke to the Tony gnome and he confirmed things were as I’d said, but also told me that George died (peacefully) in early 2002. Bless ‘im.  

Being a sole Lockeeper has its advantages. There are lots of opportunities for delaying some of the most unpleaseant tasks until a future date and there’s generally nobody around to contradict whatever slightly fluffy answer you’ve just delivered to a puzzled boater. The disadvantages do, however, out way the former. That future date always comes around and there really is lots and lots of grass to mow.

So I wrote a pleading letter to my MP and received a sweet reply suggesting I talk to my boss. This was an interesting concept and well worth consideration. After several days I took the plunge and phoned up the office in Devizes, introduced myself to the chap who vageuly remembered interviewing me, and put across a well crafted and succinct case for an assistant. After two years, a maiden speech in the house by my MP, a threat of grass blade 3861/s being left to grow over the regulation 50 cm and evidence sent to Devizes of a stress induced nosebleed, the boss finally agreed.

The great day came and he duly arrived at Hanham Lock in his jolly modern and pristine company car. Sitting next to him was a yeti. This I took in my stride and got on with the business of looking responsibly worn out but in control. The boss mouthed something terribly managerial through the tinted car window, pushed out the yeti and sped off back up the lane.

And then it dawned on me. Could this possibly be?…no they wouldn’t do this to me….oh, goodness, they had.

So I did what any full blooded and fearless Lockeeper would do. I screwed my eyes shut and proffered a non flea bitten hand.

 “Wooga, bang, bang,” it said, shaking my hand. I winced and swiftly put my bent hand under my armpit for some natural first aid and realignment.“Wooga?” It enquired. I answered. Lockeeper, mowing, strimmimg, customer relations, painting, crisis management whilst avoiding most flying objects and small children.“Bang, wooga, bang”. Nathan, machine operator for an earth moving contractor, ex-rock starry type drummer, keen fisherman, plagerised Shakespeare sonnets for a hobby, natural talent for scaring small children and returning flying objects to whence they came.I was impressed. Stig then dropped a black dustbin liner on the ground and rummaged through what I recognised to be various items of uniform. He pulled out a shirt and trousers.

“Bang, bang, wooga?” No, there was no one around. Knock me down with a feather if he didn’t completely de cack down to his birthday fur coat and pulled on the uniform. In my shocked state I blessed my luck for two reasons. Firstly there was nobody using the lock, and secondly, the hair on his head started at the top, and through 360 degrees, when straight to his toes, therefore protecting the finer chords of my delicate upbringing.

 “Wooga?” I duly went off to get some petrol only to find on my return the wookie dancing delightly on his former attire. He set light to the clothes and did a regulation cave dance around the fire as the resident wildlife leapt for their lives. Megan the border collie pup appeared from the other end of the garden. She stopped, inclined her head endearingly to the side, and then charged.“Wooga, bang, bang, wooga!!” Again I was impressed. Quoting Shakespeare and running at full pelt down a rutted lane with a merciless pup snapping at your hairy heels can’t be easy.I let Megan have a bit more excercise before calling her back. I’ll swear she can look smug sometimes.

“Bang, bang?” Megan, me, fireworks, pretty looking pekenese, tuna sandwiches and fifty quid in bloomin’ court costs, I replied. “Wooga” it said resignedly. I agreed, but the relationship with the border collie pup was going to have to be a success if he wanted a flourishing career as a Lockeeper.“Wooga”  I said, and set about obtaining details on how a wookie takes his tea. 

One day the most amazing thing happened. After two years with nothing but a bent screw driver I was told to take the van to a big tool shop and get some tools. All the things I’d so desperately wanted, and all in one afternoon. Spanners, generator, drills, grinders, chain saw on a long stick and other assorted goodies. It was like a Lockeepers Christmas without the wrapping of presents on Christmas dawn just before the kids get up. So the yeti and I decided to do a lot of nut and bolt replacements on the locks. After a morning of grinding, winding and bolting at Weston Lock, I loaded up the wookie and pointed at the van. I told him I’d be along in a minute as I needed an overdue pee. One has to be discreet about these things as I was constantly having to remind the wookie who had already traumatised two old ladies, one priest and an Alsatian.

Into the bushes go I and enjoy the relief. About a quarter of the way through what had been a successful operation I felt a scratch on my arm. And then another one on my leg, followed by two on my head. I’d never really had a problem with wasps. If one appeared around my sunny summer lunch I’d sit quietly, tutting smugly and nicking other peoples beetroot until the screaming died down. Another thing I wouldn’t of thought I would have a problem with, is if a giant came along and relieved itself all over the roof of my lock cottage. I might give my hands an extra wash after next dead heading the flower baskets, but would more likely look on the bright side of clean gutters and not telling Mrs Lockeeper why the washing hummed a bit. But my world was about to change, mainly because wasps don’t share my sunny philosophical disposition.

Once I realised what was going on I went into a bit of a panic. Obviously I had a few things to weigh up which included pain, modesty, getting far away and quickly etc. I ran down the towpath trying to flick off a thousand damp wasps with one hand whilst reneging on a deal I’d done with my bladder with the other. I think I remember saying ‘Aaaaaaaagh’ a lot. I reached the van where the wookie was just finishing loading the tools. It took one look at me and froze. As I approached at high speed its expression changed from one of perplexity to ‘The Scream’.

A boat went by. Normally I would have smiled  a greeting and the yeti would have waved a stick and wooga bang banged politely. As it was they were met with the sight of a very earnest Lockeeper desperately holding on to his gene pool while chasing a very panicked hairy rug who obviously didn’t like that sort of thing. If wasps had been bigger they might of seen what was really happening and maybe even had a little sympathy. Eventually the wasps decided to go home for a bit of a towel down and I cautiously checked out another bush.

The last time I’d been stung by a wasp it was while I was on a motorbike. The wasp on this occasion took a bit of an exception to being accelerated from very nearly nought to sixty in an instant and quite understandably dumped a load of bee poo into my wrist which in turn took exception and did a great impression of an long thin snake settling down to digest a big fat monkey. This time I knew I had been stung over twenty times and going by my previous reaction I imagined I was going to end up looking like an enormous bunch of grapes. A sheepish wookie appeared from behind a tree.

“Bang, bang Wooga?” What a silly question! Of course I was in great pain. Of course I couldn’t deprive medical science of monitoring the anaphalactic shock of the decade. Of course I’d let him drive the van on this one special occasion.

 One hot engine and four bald tyres later we arrived at the Royal United  Hospital in Bath. Within minutes I’d been stripped down to the waist and plugged into a spaghetti making machine. As luck would have it, the wasps were largely firing blanks and except for three or four large swellings in embarrassing places I was going to be fine. Later on that night, after a successful response to a burst of affection, I discovered Mrs Lockeeper researching Bee husbandry on the Internet

The wookie found it couldn’t take the strain and moved back to the Himalayas.

A few weeks after it was absolutely confirmed by somebody who apparently knew about such things that Mrs Lockeeper was brewing another little Lockeeper, I was told to take one of my rare and precious days off. I fought hard and argued for days, but eventually gave in. We were to go and get the lump scanned. I was nervous but managed to drive to the little cottage hospital in the middle of nowhere without scaring too many other drivers. We were a trifle early, and so I hit out in the name of my diminishing freedom by rebelliously rolling and smoking a cigarette. I made sure I was several yards away in a force five gale to the lee of the car, but I still had the assorted daggers treatment through the almost hermatically sealed car window. Then we went in through some double doors and I found a desk that had a ‘Reception’ sign hanging over it. What ‘Reception’ actually meant in this case was that the desk was a focal point for incoming gossip and while Mrs Lockeeper rested her weary bones I was made privvy to much more information than a certain Celia Ponsonby-Smythe would have liked via a nail file toting lady who resented the aging process with  vengence and a builders trowel. I coughed politely a few times which only succeeded in making the lady rifle through her hand bag and retrieve a half eaten packet of cough sweets. She slid them to me with a smile that might easily have been a nervous twitch.

A swinging door burst open like an overdue boil and another lady covered in lots of hospital bits bustled out with great importance. She called out a name. Mrs Lockeeper raised her hand. She got told she was a ‘poor dear’. I got a cold stare that exuded accusations of fault, blame, assault, selfish gratification and a few other crimes against womankind. What had I done wrong? Since when has having a nightmare about being attacked by a big marsh mallow in a tight fitting plastic bag been a crime?

The sterile Bodicea took Mrs Lockeeper through the swinging doors and all became calm. I sat down, picked up a magazine that seemed to be about how to get, keep and then torture a husband, while still making sure I was in earshot of the ongoing saga of Celia Ponsonby-Smythe, a particularly well put together dairyman and some assorted veg. The doors again opened a little bit and a summoning finger I knew so well told me to put down that magazine and follow. I followed. We then went down several corridors and passed lots of women on the way. Was I the only bloke in this place? Couldn’t there have been another chap around to soak up some of the vitriolic stares I was getting? Apparently not.

We entered this little room that had a desk, a bed and a photocopier with a television on it. Mrs Lockeeper got to partially disrobe and lie on the comfortable bed, while I was made to stand in the corner. The photocopier got turned on with one sterile hand and a fistful of wallpaper paste got splattered over Mrs Lockeepers middle with another. Then a computer mouse got splurged in with the wallpaper paste and bingo, there it was. On the screen was a picture of deep space. Lots of little white bits surrounded by total blackness. I suggested we changed channels. Bodicea ignored me. And then I saw something. It was an alien. Bent backbone bits, razor sharp teeth and a head the shape of a marrow that would have made the judges gasp at a village fete. For the first time I began to feel sorry for Mrs Lockeeper. What if it thought she was John Hurt and fancied a bit of fresh air? Mrs Lockeeper and Bodicea cooed and chuckled about what this supposedly perfectly formed alien was up to. It was doing somersaults, forward rolls and using Mrs Lockeepers bladder as a trampoline. It was due to invade planet earth after Christmas. I don’t think I said a lot on the way home.

  A diary entry 

Once upon a time, far far away in the land of the grown ups, there was a princess. She gazed out of her office window and lovingly thought of the seven dorks who sweated and toiled for long hours up and down the Kennet and Avon Navigation, without her ever hearing a complaint. The phone rang and reluctantly Snow White turned on her hearing aid. A boater had phoned up to say they’d struggled to open the old antique gates at Weston Lock in Bath. Snow White leapt into action, turned off her hearing aid and phoned Doc, the leader of the seven dorks. The gates had to be replaced and the seven dorks had only three weeks to do it.

The date was set and so exactly one month later Grumpy, Sleepy, Dopey, Sneezy, Happy, and Skivvy all assembled at the lock side. Dawn was just breaking as they waited inside their vehicles, champing at the bit in eager anticipation. Doc climbed out of his truck carrying a red flag. He studied his watch thoughtfully. After what seemed like an age, Grumpy got out of his van, went over to where Doc was standing and went through the whole procedure of little hands, big hands and how Mickey Mouse must have double jointed shoulders. Three, two, one, GO! The red flag swooshed down.Well, children, you’ve never seen anything like it. The doors of the assorted vans, cars and lorries flew open with such verve you would have thought Snow White had said it was about time she took the seven dorks out for a well earned drink. A big metal box the size of a shipping container arrived on the back of a low loader and was craned over a hedge. Suddenly it was filled with every conceivable tool necessary for replacing a pair of lock gates.

The little legs of the seven dorks were moving so fast it looked like they were all hovering around on clouds. A lot more lorries arrived, some of them were meant to, others just wanted to watch the perfect and precise ballet that only Creativity Within Time and Motion graduates fresh from the Keystone Cop College could pull off with total credibility and good critical reviews. The new lock gates arrived, followed by a toilet cubicle, a greasy hamburger wagon, and a brand new, two storey staff accommodation facility. On the upper floor there were seven little beds, a kitchen, showers, reading room, picture gallery, amusement arcade, and a flower arranging studio. The lower floor was taken up by a particularly spooky ghost train ride, reserved especially for any curious wicked witch or uninvited officials from the Department Of Health And Safety.

The seven dorks now had everything they needed to effect a perfect gate replacement program and so with it already being nine thirty in the morning, six of them played a few hands of cards before retiring upstairs to bed, leaving Skivvy with very detailed instructions as to what was required and by when. But, dear children, if you might be thinking that somebody had forgotten the most important ingredient of any fairy tale such as this, you’d be right. But fear not, little ones, because just in the nick of time, Snow White got on the blower and talked animatedley for several minutes to somebody with a deep booming voice. Seconds after the call had ended, the heavens over Weston Lock were split by a lightning bolt followed by torrential rain that fell in a smug sort of way, as only rain can when it knows it has exactly three weeks to defy any weather forecaster without having to change its mind.

And so the allotted time past. On the very last day, Doc, followed by the other dorks awoke from a very deep and peaceful sleep. Changing out of their embroidered silk pyjamas they retrieved the various bits of once immaculate work clothes and assorted wet weather gear that had been percolating happily away in a barrel of liquid mud, and put them on. Outside the clear blue sky was so perfect it took away the slight downer that sub zero temperatures can apply and they trooped out singing a funny song about elevated gardening implements.

 Skivvy was lying exhausted by the lock side, the pristine new gates gleaming their soft blackness against an exquisitely dry and perfectly crafted concrete cill, the hand rails and paddle gear gleaming glossy white in the early morning sun. Just as Snow White pulled up, they thought about waking him, but ended up voting that he, being a Lockeeper on the River Avon and twice their average age, would rather be left to his dreams of a land where fact was often stranger than fiction. And that, George, conludes my case for the defence.  

Many years ago in London my friend Ed once suggested that if you were patient enough, anything one wanted would eventually come floating past your boat. Indeed, over time he had been proved largely correct although my used television business failed and the pretty girl I had once had to resuscitate stayed very depressed and suicidal. The River Avon seems to be just as generous, but the people who live along its banks tend to be less patient. The proof of which can be seen in the form of a very nice pub table from a grateful landlady up river (i.e it managed to get into the back of my truck straight from the pub garden without ever knowing what it would be like to get hung up in a tree). The Lock & Weir Pub across the river from Hanham Lock was, at the time, managed by Dave and Cath. Cath, being of Irish descent, knows how to talk and does. Dave does as well, but not wishing to admit more than absolutely necessary that he’s from Birmingham, often doesn’t. Just after the big flood of October 2000, the three of us were surveying the damage. They’d been badly hit and should you ever go and visit, look at the optics and imagine what it would be like in there when the water reached them. Or better still, drink six and a half pints of Ossicle Imobiliser and experience the full effect. Dave raised an eyebrow. Cath translated. He had a barrel of beer he had to write off as flood damage and would I like it? Oh Bless him. Would I like it? Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back? A whole ninety pints of the old spleen thrasher. I modestly accepted and had the barrel aboard my dinghy before he could say ‘it doesn’t rain as much down here as it does in Birmingham’.

Never having had anything to do with the non expensive end of a beer pipe I gathered various bits of information needed to serve up a decent pint. Meanwhile enough people had heard the rumour about my great gift. All of a sudden, largely thanks to Mrs Lockeeper who hates drinking beer only slightly less than she hates me drinking it, I had an imminent party foisted upon me. The afternoon came and as Mrs Lockeeper was hosing down the kids I crept out onto the patio and allowed myself a little teeny weeny tester. It was cloudy. It wasn’t just cloudy, it looked like brown paint. I’d done everything I was told to do. I’d laid it down at the right angle for the right time, I’d spiked, spiled, danced the top secret ceremonial cellar man’s half naked with cucumber ritual jig (woops, sorry chaps). I was gutted. With three hours before the curtain twitching, earwigging, ‘you can’t keep a free barrel of beer a secret for long around here, you bald London git’ brigade arrived, I was in a bit of a panic.

A few phone calls later I had learned a few advanced cellarman tricks. These involved a top hat and a whole bottle of gin (only a cellarman would know what I mean). The guests arrived and looked disdainfully at the half pint glasses I was proffering. I was soon pushed aside and  glasses the size of buckets were filled and drained again and again. It must have been all the emotion of having to give away all that free beer that obliterated any memory of wishing anybody farewell.

Blow me down if Dave didn’t offer me another barrel a couple of days later. I was a man torn. There was no way I could have another party. Mrs Lockeeper would have ordered me to build a two berth dog kennel, and anyway Megan the border collie pup snores. There was also no way I was going to turn down the offer. I had a bright idea. Well it seemed so at the time.

 Up river at Saltford Lock, there is another pub called the Jolly Sailor. The pub had also been flooded out and was being refurbished. The top gates of my lock were immovable having been firmly embedded in thick silt and logs. Some work was being carried out on the adjacent weir, and amongst the workforce was a team of divers. I spoke to the chief diver chappie. He ignored me. I mentioned free beer, as much as he and his team could drink. I became his best friend. Roger, the landlord, collected the barrel of beer from the Lock & Weir, borrowed my cucumber and set it up. Two days later my gates were trouble free, unlike me. Mrs Lockeeper didn’t believe me and hid the paraceutamol. One day I was sitting on the patio after a hard days mirth. I was the contemplating the gentle slide down to my retirement, now only a short score and five years away and the onset of mercifully feasible strategic deafness. I was dreaming of talking to the two kids on the telephone, one at university, one living in a commune in Basingstoke dedicated to the world wide abolition of home work, the governmental lobbying for free ice cream and if there was time between ‘Eastenders’ and a team tantrum about who’s turn it was to fill the ecologically sound dishwasher, world peace. I was dreaming of all the extra time I could spend at the pub when I wasn’t going to be bothered with questions about homework, embarrassing questions concerning the birds the bees, and why if I was such a perfect child, did my mother come round and say how I my bedroom had always been untidy, my table manners had always been atrocious and how nice it was to be able to hand children back at the end of the day.Mrs Lockeeper, however, had different plans. On this perfect dreamy day, she appeared out of the back door bearing a little plastic stick that managed to get between her and the toilet bowl. It had apparently turned blue. I’m not surprised. 

I used to be able to go for long periods without sleep. There was a time when I was young, I was in London, and sleep was for those who couldn’t let a youngster put one and a half lumps of sugar in their tea without mentioning the war. To cut a long story short, but without a war, I got older, and reasons for a lengthy spell in bed became more to do with sleep and the flu. The month was October, the swollen river stood testament to the atrocious weather we’d been having.

Megan the pup (still only a few months old) decided to go exploring one evening. An hour went by but I was completely unconcerned by her absence. She was first generation working stock and I’d already decided not to get too attached to her. Sixty two minutes went by and I was frantic with worry. In my mind she’d got completely lost and was lying in bits on a railway line, on the A4174, in the swollen river, a hundred and two different scenarios, with me playing the villain in them all. The weather was deteriorating again as I donned my waterproofs and wellies. I searched everywhere, all night, in the pouring rain. By ten to eight in the morning I returned home for the final time, and completely exhausted I de-donned the waterproofs and went to bed. Ten minutes later Megan ‘yippety yipped’ to be let in. I nonchalantly tore down the stairs as I prepared my best ‘where the flippin’ hell have you been’ force five expression. It didn’t make it past the door frame as a perfectly dry and mystified puppy got pummelled, bounced, kissed and subjected to lots of baby talk. I had a few things to do, all achievable on ‘slow ahead’, promising myself a bit of shut eye later on.

A few hours later the great storm of October 2000 hit. It continued all evening and most of the night. A friend in the Environmental Agency phoned. He told me the storm was a monster. I said I knew as I was standing in it. As my friend was in a nice cosy response centre with wall to wall computer screens, coffee machines and the comforting thought of lots of compensation should anyone break a nail, would I keep them updated? Could he pass on my number to every one of his four hundred colleagues who were manning the emergency help desk? I was desperate for sleep but agreed. I also had some planning of my own to do. The river was not only breaking records it was having designs on my CD collection. I watched the river rise some more.

The phone rang. What were the water levels doing? I told them. The phone rang again. I was informed as to what the river levels were doing. The phone rang. What was the river going to do and when? I made a suggestion. The phone rang. I was informed as to what the river was going to do and when. Oh for goodness sake. I think if I’d started a rumour about a three legged Shire horse called Dobbin rescuing stranded boaters and was desperately in need of refreshment  the phone would have run minutes later and I would have been asked to boil up some barley. The phone calls went on every hour for the next forty eight hours, during which time my knackered little phone and its two rechargeable batteries had had it’s fill of water levels, flooded cottages, fire brigades, ship abandonment’s, rescue helicopter priority lists, three legged horses (ok, I was tired and finally weakened), drowning sheep and the falling share price of  Amalgamated Guinean Mushrooms Inc. (somebody on the EA help desk wasn’t pulling their weight). The fourth day without sleep found me and two friends out and about in my dinghy cutting, retying, strapping, baling, ferrying, whilst dodging  whole islands of debris the size of a small housing estates, which in fact some of them later turned out to be.

After everything that could be done had been done, as well as a few things that were too much fun not to do, I retired to bed. It was an exciting few days that I wouldn’t have missed for the world. That should have been the end of the story  regarding my fatigue. Blow me down if Joe (the then ten year old) didn’t get gastric flu and came in to remind Mrs Lockeeper and me every hour for the next three nights. I’m feeling sleepy just remembering it all. 

My stretch of the Bristol Avon starts at Hanham Lock and twists and winds it way for eleven lovely miles, rising about twenty feet through six locks, to Bath. Three of the locks, (Keynsham, Saltford and Weston) I can drive to very easily. Kelston Lock requires a bit of ‘off roading’ through farmland and Hanham Lock is so close I’ve had to learn to dampen the enthusiasm when getting out of bed. Then there’s Swineford Lock. A visit to Swineford requires more thought than the rest of them put together. First of all I have to drive through a sewage farm. This is heavily guarded by an electric sliding gate that simply oozes attitude and is so formidable it was probably bought second hand from a South American drug baron who’d been paranoid since birth as well as having had more than his fair share of door to door double glazing salesmen. The gate has since been ordered to stop being so threatening and snappy, presumably under threat of being lowered to the ground and condemned forever to the gate hell of being used as a cattle grid. This is just as well, because before this happened you had to pull up to a white line and wait. You then felt the chilling stare from a particularly malicious  electronic eye. So chilling you could hear the question it was asking itself. Was this white truck carrying a band of fearless and particularly inarticulate American Marines who would, once released, ‘Hut hut hut’ their way to spraying some rather lewd graffiti about the natural processes of the residents of Bath on the pump house wall? I mostly  passed the test as the gate usually opened, slowly, malevolently and with an air of something impregnable that knew it had complete control over your possible exit. Just inside the gate there was a string of abandoned vehicles. I never dared looked inside any of them in case I found a skeleton. On one occasion I was placidly going for the increasing gap that was just wide enough for me to pass through, (for placid, read ‘foot hard down, screaming engine, first gear selected, drop clutch’) when the gate suddenly chose to nurture its feminine side. I was halfway through and the gate changed it’s mind. This type of situation was not totally alien to me what with me being married to Mrs Lockeeper, but at least under those circumstances I didn’t have to explain viscous sky blue paint deposits down either side of the works van. After negotiating the sewage farm version of the front door belonging to the father of a particularly cherished daughter, the drive past all the filter beds accompanied by an aroma that levels paupers and peerage alike, is relatively restful.

On the other side of the sewage farm there’s another gate. This leads into a field across which I must drive to Swineford Lock. This field is part of a large and top secret farm that’s a sanctuary for animals that would, if ever their existence were publicised, send an animal behavioural psychologist blubbering to the offices of the nearest evolutional theorist. In this field there is a herd of heifers that are so intelligent I’ve taken to proffering the kids home work every time I can’t answer one of their questions. By the time I get there they’ve already been semaphored of my imminent arrival. They crowd against the double gates which open inwards. I undo the padlock and drive the truck slowly into the gates forcing them open. Now completely surrounded by a heaving mass of black and white Mensa graduates (Bovine Division) and with gates getting sky blue paint deposited on them, I wind down the window and suddenly give them the finale of the 1812 Overture at full volume. They dash off, pretending to be startled, for enough of a distance minus one metre for me to get through, out of the van in time to close the gates and get back in the van. They dash back. After about three attempts, I win. This is because I’ve put on a size thirty four over coat, and like a demented Dracula, flapped my way towards them, buying myself time and distance before dashing back to the van. I then have to get across the field. The van is buffeted, licked, nearly overturned and accelerated until I then reach another gate where I have to do it all again.

 The tricks they play never cease to amaze me and I wish I had more time to tell, but I think the reader might get the message. If the reader has, please now read this offering backwards because I have to go through it all again in reverse in order to get out again. 

If anyone ever says to me “I hate pigeons, they’re flying vermin”, I tend to not say anything. It’s true, they carry all sorts of diseases and there are a lot of them. But if there was only one left in the whole wide world, they would be treasured, revered, apologised to and their last few years would be pandered to by an kindly molly coddler. It’s not their fault. They don’t know what they are or how to control their bowels when flying over you. This is how I tend to view every single living thing. With one exception. There is one species of animal that I will never be able to bring myself to feel sorry for, under any circumstances. I’m talking about the Mustela Vison. If anything ever deserved to be made into a pair of gloves or a coat, it is the mink. If Kenneth Graham had made the mistake of including a mink in ‘Wind in the Willows’, he would very soon have found that most of the cast would have been eaten by the second chapter, and the rest of the book would have ended up in chewed up tatters. And on my river, I’ve got loads of the little….blighters. They eat everything. Should anyone be interested, they should get themselves a book on wildlife on Britain’s canal and rivers, make a list of everything in it, and they would end up with a mink menu. Come to think of it, one could  probably use the Encyclopaedia Brittanica.

I had to start trapping them and managed to get rid of them in my local area for a while. Over a period of about three months I got rid of two families. I hated doing this more than I hate the mink themselves to the point where I always had to get somebody else to do the final dispatching. Having a pot shot at a distance I considered fair game, but a trapped animal? I couldn’t do it.

I have the pleasure of being the guardian of Nebulae, an ex working canal boat. Every year for the past ten years at the end of winter, I open her up and ‘air’ her ready for a good spring clean. I forgot about the wretched mink. They duly moved in. I didn’t discover this until I was getting on board with my father who had kindly come down to do some electrical work on her. I was greeted with loud unafraid squeaks and an absolute mess, not to mention a very nasty smell. My father and I retired to the pub. This was going to require some thought.

 My only option was to do what any full bloodied and fearless Lockeeper would do.

I waited for Mrs Lockeeper to come home.

I came up with a plan and explained it to her. I then had to come up with another plan. Plan B was similar to plan A, the difference being my involvement didn’t require me to be visiting a sick relative in Bournemouth.

Remember  Malcom? The man who will shoot at anything that moves, and if it doesn’t move, he’ll shoot at it until it does? He’d previously lent me an air rifle, and being Malcom’s, it had a sniper sight and had been re bored specifically for taking out police helicopters. As sinking the boat had been one of my earlier strategies anyway, I was relatively happy to aim the gun downwards from a position where I could pot any escaping mink. Mrs Lockeeper role was to enter the boat from the stern and bang two saucepans together, hopefully driving the mink down towards the business end of my trembling gun. I don’t really understand why the mink weren’t frightened of her because she sure scares the hell out of me, with or without saucepans.

In the door that leads from the boatman’s cabin to the rest of the accommodation, there is a little viewing hatch with a sliding door. Mrs Lockeeper opened the door, and the head of a mink poked its head around the side and gave her a bit of a look. It was described as a look which was somewhere between ‘no milk today, thank you’ and ‘Don’t try and tell me those saucepans are loaded?’. The next thing I knew I was minus a gun, plus some saucepans, and dreaming of Bournemouth.                                                           

Customers could be funny things. After a few years of ‘jobbing’ on the water in London, I finally took the Queens shilling and joined British Waterways as a ‘lengths man’. Within days of joining I was put in charge of a marvellous tug called Olton. Towing on the inland waterways had largely been put out to contract but I happened to have hit a purple patch. My mate Ed and I shifted serious tonnage to and from any wet bit of London we could get to. Hard work but great fun. I was also put on a rota for weekend and holiday cover Lockeeping duties at Limehouse.

The ship lock itself, originally the size of a small national park but now reduced to a mere Sainsbury’s car park, had electrically operated gates, and the entrance itself was traversed by a swing bridge that even Captain Smith would have slowed down for. It led off the River Thames into a basin that was once a busy coaster dock, now largely only used for pleasure craft. A two man team would operate these big toys and on weekends in the summer and Bank Holidays it could be extremely busy.

As a Number one, you carried a company cellular mobile phone, an office remote mobile phone, a two-way radio for talking to the Number two, and a hand held VHF for talking to incoming and outgoing traffic, and if you really had nerves of steel or accidentally got the valium muddled up with the aspirin, your own personal cellular phone as well. If an amorous porcupine had approached me bearing roses and chocolates I would have been polite but firm.

On one of these extremely busy days I was co-ordinating a visiting yacht squadron outward bound, whilst trying to wrestle another two yacht squadrons coming inward bound. (Put your hands in shark infested reinforced quick setting concrete, try interlocking your fingers one by one and you might have some idea of the problem). All my quills, except my own personal mobile, were firing off at the same time. I think at one stage I was telling my Number two the history of the Limehouse Accumulator Tower, telling an inquisitive foreign engineering student to hove to and keep his squadron in a ‘stationery against flow’ single order holding pattern, whilst negotiating split second timing of the opening of the swing bridge to a commodore who must of thought he was earwigging a conversation between a drug crazed bunch of timeshare saleswomen and a representative from the Office of Fair Trade. I had to laugh, telling myself that all I needed now was for my friend Isobel to phone me up and see if I was available to baby-sit that night. Well then things took a turn for the worse. My friend Isobel phoned me up and asked if I could baby-sit that evening. Character building stuff. I think I said yes.

 There were lots of ‘firsts’ for me while working at Limehouse. One of them being the first and the last time I’ve ever sworn at a customer.  One lunchtime the VHF crackled and a wife came on the blower. She informed me that she and her husband were both experienced narrow boaters but had just taken delivery of a large Dutch barge and it was bigger than anything they had handled before. How were they to bring it into Limehouse? From the window of the Harbour Masters office I was looking out on a strong ripping spring ebb (place garden pea in fire hose, turn up to volume ten, observe and discuss). I explained that I couldn’t really tell them how to do it, but would suggest how I would do it. In short this involved turning for the dock entrance upstream and flying across the river while keeping the bow of the boat towards the upstream pier head, turn at the last minute and being mindful of a slight whirlpool effect. Voluble bridge chatter carried on for a bit. Shouldn’t they go downstream to the Thames barrier and beat back up? Yes, they could, if they trusted their newly acquired engine to a) maintain and preferably make way against the flow in which case I would leave a note for the morning shift to have coffee, sandwiches and two divorce lawyers standing by or b) not get depressed if they couldn’t find anybody the middle of the North Sea who could machine brand new con rods for a very knackered engine.

Within the hour I was wibbling about with bits of paper and occasionally checking the camera pointing upstream towards Tower Bridge. A nice antique Dutch barge came trundling down the river at a great rate of knots. This in itself wasn’t a problem although boats can have expressions, and this was definitely a ‘If you think your going to inherit my estate now you’ve pushed me down this ski slope in my bath chair then you’ve got another think coming’ type expression. To my horror I saw the barge manoeuvred across the fairway to the wrong side of the river. My suggestions for coming into the dock pre supposed the starting point to be the right side of the river. If they carried on and executed what I’d said then there would be a almighty great……. followed by several smaller but still major ricochet type…… Oh my goodness.

 Eventually the boat was in the lock and the husband was climbing up the ladder telling the world about my impending anatomical rearrangement. I waited on the lock side, praying he hadn’t ever practised law in America and thus had a basic sense of right from wrong. At one point halfway up the ladder, knife between teeth, he said that he should have listened to his own gut feeling and gone further down for a safer turn. I called down to him quite loudly, employing an anglo saxon phrase, requesting that he enlighten me as to at what point his gut told him to break the normal rules of t