Archive for January, 2008

Somebody Has To Do It – Chapter 2

January 10, 2008 at 4:35 pm · Filed under Humour, Life

                                                             Chapter Two   

Two months passed by quite quickly. My duties were to mow, strim, paint, oil grease etc, six locks over an eleven mile stretch of river, as well as chat, introduce, and generally wave my employers (British Waterways) flag. This I had done with great joy as well as try and prepare the cold and empty cottage for Mrs Lockeeper and the two kids. And then the day came for the big test.  I had done all I could, keeping the place as empty as possible, following the unspoken rule that inside the house was hers, outside was mine. Over the coming months I was to successfully negotiate the neutrality of the patio, but meanwhile a removals lorry came down the drive followed by my pride and joy, an old London taxi I had bought a few years previously. It pulled up behind the big van and then, well, burst. Out came two happily screaming children, two unhappily screaming cats, one philosophical guinea pig and Mrs Lockeeper. My ever changing life was about to take another turn in a way that only a box of paper clips would understand. I found something terribly important to do with a pressure washer while Mrs Lockeeper organised the removals men into a highly effective team.

They say that behind every man of great social consequence or financial significance, stands a women. Well I can personally vouch for this fact. Not that it applies to me of course. The only time I get to stand in front of Mrs Lockeeper is whilst doing the Conga at a New Years party, but I do understand the concept. Mrs Lockeeper deserves a whole book all to herself. Luckily for me she would never read anything I would write about her because having just summoned me to bed with her own inimitable ‘I’m not telling you to come upstairs but if you think I’m going to come down with a bladder full at two thirty in the morning to find you sitting in front of a French film that’s so explicit it doesn’t require subtitles snoring my prize plaster ducks off the wall then you’ve got another think coming’ type of expression, she then settles down to read a trashy book that usually has a title containing words like All, Men, Are and Bastards. Later that evening, the great movement complete, I knocked on the door of the cottage to see how things had gone. Mrs Lockeeper was watching telly, the kids were in bed and she kindly allowed me in. So far so good.

Over the coming weeks we achieved much. The kids settled down to a good school and started showing signs of appreciating living in the country. I got fed and supplied with a clean uniform. One day Mrs Lockeeper instructed me to scan the  newspaper for a second hand electric cooker as ours was starting to show psychopathic tendencies. In this I was entirely diligent. In a free ads newspaper I scanned ‘C’ for cooker until I found what we needed. I then drove all the way to Wales, loaded the goods on all by myself, paid the money over and drove home again. On my arrival I was met by an expectant Mrs Lockeeper with a critical eye. Had they cleaned the grill? Were the feet all on the same level? I got out of the car and started to explain. Unfortunately I was followed by a little Welsh Border Collie puppy. It was an innocent mistake. Next to ‘C’ for Cooker was Collie. Some thing’s are worth the pain. I wanted to call it Cookie, so it was called Megan.                                                           

I soon found that living by a lock and being a Lockeeper could sometimes be awkward, especially when it came to taking a rare day off. On one of these days, I was sitting on the patio with a mid morning cup of coffee. We had a few friends round enjoying something similar. They were all ‘normally’ dressed while I was wearing nothing but my dearly loved arctic dressing gown, steel toe capped work boots and a large straw hat. A boat arrived from Bristol and started to make its ascent up through the lock when one of the crew disembarked with a question. They proceeded to walk past all other sensibly attired people and started to pose their aforementioned question to me. Having finished this perfectly polite and normal enquiry there was a silence. It wasn’t just anybody’s silence, it was a Mrs Lockeeper silence. It was a silence the likes of which one would probably witness if they accidentally walked into a changing room full of starving American football players bearing a quiche.

“Does he look like he’s on duty?” said Mrs Lockeeper.

Several things then happened. The boater twiddled nervously with his beard, burst into tears and ran back down to the boat, the children went and did their homework, our guests  made their apologies and thought of something terribly important to do with the U bend in their staff accommodation’s toilet, and all migrating birds within a two mile radius decided that they wanted to be off early to get a good spot on the rock face. Curiously enough this happened more than once, and on the last of these occasions, I enquired of the boater how on earth they managed to clock me, in my attire, as being the Lockeeper.

“Because you look so laid back” came the reply.

Oh, if only they knew.                                                           

 I was getting used to expecting the unexpected. London was loud, busy, sometimes dangerous and intensely varied. But ostensibly sleepy Hanham Lock made London look like the Gobi desert on a quiet Sunday afternoon. Megan, the border collie pup and I were out on our constitutional one afternoon when I spotted a mink in the river. It swam to the bank, and I, growing ever curious about such things, wanted to see if it had a home nearby. Even as an ex-townie I knew I wouldn’t find a little front door and a ‘Please wipe your feet’ doormat, but I hadn’t seen a mink des res before. The river was very low, and a little beach had been left at the bottom of the vertical bank. No sign of the mink, but I could clearly see its hoof marks. And alongside, a purposeful, hungry, ‘Don’t mess with me ‘cos I’m well hard’ set of footprints. These size 14’s belonged to a large animal. It had come out of the water, walked along the little beach, and had calmly got back into the river. A domesticated dog would had clambered out, woofed a ’phew’, whined and padded about trying to compute loads of excuses not to get back in again, the bank being too steep to climb up. This was something different. Over the previous couple of weeks there had occurred a series of events that, in isolation, meant nothing. Megan the pup found the hind leg of a deer and wouldn’t share. She would normally have nipped the heels of Mike Tyson given half a chance, but on a separate occasion she was found cowering terrified in a corner of the garden after a bit of a barking session. She’d met something big. The carpet in my study started getting squelchy because the cats refused to go out. Trails of blood down the drive, strange and unusual nocturnal noises. I came nervously and yet excitedly to the conclusion that we had a big cat in the area. After a bit of research I discovered that four people I knew had seen a big cat over the last six months, two very recently. I also found out other snippets of information. They liked to hunt mink. If a little river carved through their territory, they’d happily swim it. There are big cats all over the country in the wild. But this was so close to Bristol it could have stood for Mayor.

So I had no choice but to do what any full blooded and fearless lockeeper would do. I called for Malcom.

Malcom is a curious mixture of somebody Bristol should be terribly proud of while also requiring several stints in a secure unit for the incurable shot potter. Should you ever encounter him in the Lock & Weir Pub, you know you are sitting within feet of enough assorted weaponry to liberate Wales. If his mane of hair shuts like curtains across his steamed up glasses, his shoulders hunching in a camouflage jacket that could only be removed by major surgery, then you know he is dreaming of invading Poland.It was not an easy decision. I’m talking about a man who goes hunting squirrels with napalm.Malcom arrived and climbed out of the turret. He had brought a camera with him and I wasn’t at all surprised to see, ‘NASA- DO NOT REMOVE’ stamped on the side.He was in an eloquent mood.

“Where?”.

I took him to the little beach where the prints had by now increased in number. After what seemed like several hours of light meters, angles, and computer programming, he took a photograph and started to pack his things away. One photograph! I’d shot off two reels of film over those wretched prints having borrowed a camera from my mum. Admittedly I’d forgotten to take the lens cap off, but at least I’d made an effort.“Probably a fox”. A fox!! A measly fox? If it had been a fox it would have been so big we would have been able to see where it had banged its head on some of the lower branches. I called the Evening Post. They took the photograph off me and sent it to the Zoo. I’m still waiting for an answer. A fox indeed. I toyed with the idea of taking Malcom to the Zoo and show him 38,000 species of fox. But even if he came along lightly armed he would still scare the animals. Curiously enough I haven’t seen any sign of the big cat, since Malcom. 

Loyalty is a curious thing. I seem to remember during some America/Arab negotiations about Saddam Hussein, somebody on the Arab side said ‘he may be a sonoffabitch, but he’s our sonoffabitch’I think it was a Tuesday. It had been a beautiful summer day and I’d been up river doing Lockeepy type things. Mrs Lockeeper had spent the day doing Mrs Lockeepy type things and would have normally been in her usual good natured mood that can only be darkened by a few cubic inches of semtex, or me. I arrived home and took my place next to Mrs Lockeeper on the patio ready to enjoy our ritual of tea and banter which generally involved me trying to pursuade her that I worked hard for a living.

I had previously come to the conclusion that God hates waste. People on boats can do gobsmackingly funny things especially when they go through locks. The locks are often in the middle of nowhere and its a tragic shame that so much mirth is wasted because it goes unwitnessed. So, Q.E.D, God invented the Lockeeper.

Mrs Lockeeper had been shearing one of the children on the patio just after lunch, and was interrupted by some shouting.

“Where’s the Lockeeper!! This paddle gear doesn’t work”.

After several renditions of this and other variation on the theme, Mrs Lockeeper went down to the source of the noise which turned out to be a family on a wide beam hire boat, enjoying a day trip. Or not. She encountered one of the most dangerous scenarios one can ever get on a river or canal. Somebody who once knew somebody else who had purchased a parrot from someone’s second cousin who had once bumped into somebody else who had once seen a canal boat from a great distance and therefore knew everything there was to know about boating. In this case it was the matriarch of the tribe. Mrs Lockeeper explained patiently how to use the paddle gear and encountered such rudeness that she almost had to resort to riding off on John, the Spanish horse (went off on Juan). This was the news that welcomed me back to the fold. Armed with the knowledge that it was only a day hire, what goes up river, must come down river.

I did what any other full bloodied and fearless Lockeeper would do when someone was rude to their wife.I prepared to dead head the marigolds.

Two paths lead down from the house to the lock, both lined on either side with a total of one hundred and forty two marigold plants. In times of crisis, America has an large arsenal of nuclear weapons and a loud hailer, China has about a billion soldiers, the Italians apologise, and I have my marigolds.

Later that afternoon the familiar wide beam hire boat appeared down the lock cut. Dad and the two teenage kids were standing on the fore deck of the boat ready to disembark for the lock. A steady stream of orders were coming from the back of the boat courtesy of a black hole with earrings. I got into position and prepared the ambush.

Commercial boat people will rarely comment on other peoples boat handling, employing the much more powerful insult of saying nothing at all and in some severe cases, utilising nothing more than a category five stare. I started at the top of one of the paths and began my calm and methodical assault towards Frau Hitlers ego. She’d been rude to my wife. The boat was in the lock. Clearly a demonstration of expertise was required for my benefit. The Frau started a loud delivery on how not to hang up a boat in a lock. This should be good, I told the marigolds as the exquisitely maintained paddle gear was wound up. They hung up the boat. I couldn’t have done a better job of getting it oh so horribly wrong.

The pressure was really on as I got halfway down the path and still resolutely refused to look at them. The lock was reflooded amid shouts, screams and curses. Still the orders came thick and fast, but the Frau’s voice was beginning to crack under the pressure of my relentless dead heading. The water was let out of the lock and a gate was opened. Just the one gate. It was a wide beam boat. You need to open two gates for a wide beam. She must have been in a hurry. She’d been rude to my wife.  With only a few marigolds left I heard the engine revved hard and waited for the bang. I had to watch. Afterwards she went down inside the boat to get on with some embroidery because the crew were very convincing with their threats.

I had no sympathy. She’d been rude to my wife. Loyalty is a funny thing.    

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Somebody Has To Do It – (Tales of a Lockeeper) – Chapter 1

January 9, 2008 at 8:33 pm · Filed under Humour, Life ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

                                                                                                                   

I drove my van the third of a mile down the lane towards the lock cottage. I still couldn’t quite believe that this was where I now lived. It was a beautiful February day and London seemed further away than the four weeks ago it actually was. After work I decided to take the dinghy across the river for a swift pint. Mrs Lockeeper would be in London for another two months while the kids finished term and so such actions didn’t require any excuses or chicanery.

Across the river were two pubs. Low beams, flag stones and real ale was the Old Lock & Weir, while the Chequers was more a high beams and ‘I want to be a hotel when I grow up’ sort of place. I thought I might introduce myself again to the Lock & Weir, just in case they’d forgotten my previous five(?) visits. Half a pint of ale later, a man walked in and asked if there was a man from British Waterways in the pub. A pretty safe bet in any pub within spitting distance of a canal or river on a Friday afternoon. I was duly pointed out and the man explained that a group of children outside had spotted a sporting game bird, complete with bell and leather leash, hopping about the field next to the car park. They had seen me arrive and hence the messenger. I volunteered the fact that I was from London and had only really experienced the odd aggressive pigeon, but this produced nothing more than a few gallic shrugs. I asked the landlord for a few scraps of bacon, and when I’d finished them, he kindly gave me some more. Looking at the faces of the children, something which always makes me check my wallet, I knew there was absolutely no way I was going to be able to catch this thing, but some show of willing was needed.

 Making everything up as I went along, I suggested that everybody left the car park, leaving me to wrap my British Waterways sweater around my fist in splendid isolation. With bacon in place I then decided to spend a few minutes wandering up and down the car park calling ‘here Rover’, at least looking as if I had a clue. A crowd was now gathering as I furiously sent telepathic messages to any lost game bird in the area. The deal was, I wouldn’t bother it, if it didn’t bother me. After a few minutes I gauged that the ‘honour’ meter was showing half full, and was just about to tuck into the bacon when I heard the tinkling of a little bell. My heart sank as I watched this pterodactyl fly up from the field and into a large tree about fifty yards away. ‘Stay there’ I screamed with a telepathic salvo. I turned round at the crowd of eager faces and hoped they couldn’t register the rictus qualities of my smile. I turned back to the thing. Suddenly I felt like a little sparrow. I prayed it was good at aircraft recognition. It launched itself out of the tree, and flew a wonderful pendulum arc, swooping down, and then with perfect air braking, fell the last few inches onto my closed fist. It would probably never experience sitting on a washing machine, but it mattered not. My fist was shaking, partly through fear, partly because I was having to hold this blooming great bird at maximum reach. I think I said something like ‘Hello’.

The children were delighted with the turn of events, the hawk thingy was delighted with the bacon, I would have been delighted sipping a pina colada on a beach somewhere, but it clearly wasn’t my day  for delight. As it turned out, attracting birds in car parks outside pubs is easy. But now I’d pulled, what on earth was I going to do? All I could think of doing was asking somebody if I could sit in their car, with thingy, whilst I tried to come up with something sensible to. The same chap who had originally sought me out offered me his very little car to sit in. I asked if he had another vehicle, preferable an artic lorry. He said he didn’t. We, my bird and I, got in the car. Thingy was obviously somebody’s pride and joy and very happy to be frightening the living donuts out of a poor lockeeper. It was very well trained, as the poor chap would have found out when he next emptied the ashtray. A chap called Kevin, who just happened to be an ex press photographer, took some photos.

The manager of the Chequers came out and said he knew all about such things. I didn’t believe him, he’d said he knew how to keep beer. But by the time he’d finished sporting his credentials, he had been handed my bird and I was ordering another pint in the Lock & Weir. 

    During the winter months, the River Avon responds quickly to rainfall and a few days later the river was in flood. Not a big noisy American flood, just a little English swelling. But it was threatening to go, if not American, then perhaps a trifle European. I was still new to all this and so overlooking the flooded lock from my rocking chair on the patio with a cup of coffee in hand I watched the river rise with great interest. The trees on the island opposite me were bending obediently and I couldn’t help noticing that a little spindly tree on the other side of the river was looking particularly picked on by the wind. My interest increased when the troubled tree became uprooted and started scurrying up and down the lane. It then occurred to me that this tree was trying to attract my attention. To my surprise it retrieved a bicycle from behind a hedge and pedalled furiously off up the towpath.

About half an hour later it appeared again, only this time on my patio.“Hello, I’m Chris”, it said. “My boat’s about to sink and I can’t get to it”. I was faced with a vision of long hair, John Lennon glasses, twigs in lycra and a ‘I don’t want to be a nuisance but…..’ smile. I didn’t beat myself up for mistaking him for a tree, because in my own mind, the jury was, and still is, out on that one. Anyway, I never was one to judge, and as I was clearly in a position to help, offered the use of my little rescue service. This consisted of an old flappy inflatable dinghy that was powered valiantly by an antique two horsepower Seagull engine, and a geriatric border collie call Gemma.  I ran through a few safety ground rules and even through the long streaming hair I could tell the tree was nervous.“I can’t swim”, it said. I mentally ran through a few calming retorts and chose one.“Don’t worry, if you fall in swimming is not really an option”. This seemed to satisfy him and he relaxed into a level two tremble. Just then a tree trunk went floating by face down at high speed, but I thought it tactful not to mention it. 

We clambered on board the dinghy and I hit the outboard with a hammer (you’ve got to ascertain who’s boss from the start with a Seagull). Twenty minutes later after promising never to hit it again (a bit of a porky as it turned out), we ventured out from the lock cut onto the main river. We could barely make headway, but luckily the boat needing attention was outside the Lock & Weir pub, only a little down stream from where we were. The boat was indeed about to go under, trapped by its own lines. We had to work fast, and at one point I had a one leg in the dinghy, one leg outstretched on the gunwale of the ‘sinker’, and arms a kimbo trying to hang on and tie ropes at the same time. Pausing for thought to re check my work, a little black and white nose pushed its way under my armpit and demanded attention. I never really did work out whether it was a nuzzle for affection, or the critical eye of an extremely intelligent old boat dog. After putting fresh lines on the boat I got ready to cut the offending ties. By this time a small crowd had gathered outside the pub and we were blessed with several onlookers desperate to give advice. Thanking them softly between clenched teeth, I got out my knife, resisted the temptation to quote something dramatic at the gallery, and did the deed. Up the boat came like a flamboyant whale, deftly knocking the knife out of my hand. Applause from the gallery would have been more welcome if the Seagull engine hadn’t stalled just as I untied the dinghy. Accompanied by diminishing cat calls and more advice, I spiralled my way over the weir, wondering if the engine might prefer the starting rope pull in my left hand, or the hammer in the other. The dog stayed tactfully silent. 

 

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