Narrow Dog to Wigan Pier Read online

  At least it was not raining in the tunnel, though from time to time streams came down from above. I don’t see too well in the dark, and found it hard to separate the buttress ahead from the one behind it and chose the wrong one and ran bang into the rock. Over and over again I ran into the rock. You didn’t have inches to spare, you had fractions of inches, and sometimes you had nothing and the front corners of the boat were grinding into the stone. I tried letting the boat find the water – a trick that only a sophisticated boatman like me can pull off. You let the tiller go slack and a well-behaved boat like the PM2 will seek the deeper part of the channel.

  No good doing that, said the British Waterways man – there is eight foot of water here so there is no pressure to keep her in the middle. She will just bang into the side.

  She just banged into the side.

  Then a mighty hand slapped me across the top of the head and hit me again and again as my hard hat thumped into the geology. I crouched until only my eyes were above the roof and the boat scratched through. A trout stream went down my neck.

  An earthquake – a roar and a roar and the boat trembled in its channel and a smell I had not smelt since Pembroke Dock, when I stood with my mother on the station platform and the locomotive hissed and clanked and inside the upholstery smelt of smoke.

  Heavens – a ghost train!

  Steam and smoke poured into the tunnel and the roar reached a climax and slowly died and the canal stopped trembling.

  A light ahead down on the left – how can there be a light down here?

  I turned and looked down a passage which linked the tunnel to railway tunnels alongside. There was a bloke and he waved his lamp and my British Waterways man shouted to him. He turned to me – It’s a safety check. He is following us in the railway tunnel.

  Ahead a blank wall. Just a blank wall.

  I considered my position – I could drive into it, or do an emergency reverse, or jump overboard. I could not reverse for shame as I had my pilot with me on the back so I kept going. It was the strangest feeling – all the evidence of my senses told me I was going to break a lot of crockery and probably bend the hull of my boat, but the rock wall slid aside like Open Sesame and we motored on, with a couple of minor collisions and the pockets of my coat full of water.

  How was Monica below with the whippets? They hate noise and bumps scare them. We had held a board meeting in the morning and decided that one tranquillizer was too little and two too many so one and a half, mixed with Spam Lite. (Spam Lite is very nice, even without tranquillizers.)

  Monica came up – My turn.

  I wanted to explain that this was not women’s work but my knees were so tired with crouching and my neck was sore with the cuffs across the head and I would kill for a sit-down so I swapped with her.

  She started chatting with the Waterways man right away and she seemed to have brought the boat to a halt as the banging had stopped. But look carefully through the window – we are moving! It’s just that she isn’t hitting anything.

  I sat down and stretched out. The best thing about boating is stopping boating.

  The dogs were not whining but Jess was panting so two pills next time poor dears. She put her upper body on my lap in her special way and looked into my eyes – Don’t let them hurt me, master, with the shaking and the bangs.

  Jim lay tight against my chair with his head between his paws.

  I dozed as we slid along – an occasional bump, and chatter and laughter coming from the back counter. As we came out of the tunnel a steam train barrelled by – it looked not in the least ghostly as it hissed and chuffed and thundered.

  We moored up and the British Waterways man and Monica said Goodbye. You’re a grand steerer, he said.

  He wasn’t friendly to me like that – he didn’t seem to think I was a grand steerer at all, telling me what to do all the time. I looked at the new scratches on the boat. Good job we took those navigation lights off – they would have been swatted off the side of the boat like flies.

  We have crossed the Pennines, said Monica. From underneath.

  Tunnels allow water to be stored above them to charge the canal. They are always the highest point of a canal.

  The Huddersfield Narrow Canal climbs to the Standedge Tunnel and then drops towards Manchester and the West Midlands. Going down, the locks were empty and we had to fill them before sailing in. So it was slow, but the canal pounds now had more water in them. Monica explained that we were bringing our water down with us and I think I understood her.

  You reach an understanding with your partner when you are boating. A raised finger, a little wave, and you can convey all the information needed as the lock goes about its furious business. It is like your own language. For example look up at Mon now from the boat – you can tell what she is saying –

  There are three green beetles coming down through the woods. They are two and a half feet long. They have already eaten one of the dogs and if they get on to the roof of the boat we are done for.

  What the hell are you trying to say? I shouted.

  Monica shouted back –

  When the lock fills I want you to pass me my green coat and a blanket for the dogs to sit on.

  Like I said, your own language.

  But it did not matter as we were in Paradise Garden. Greenery crowded round – the rich greens of high summer, leaves and ferns and flowers. Buddleia, rosebay willowherb, yellow loosestrife, meadowsweet, foxgloves, purple vetch – heaped over each other, searching for the light and space over the water.

  And Himalayan balsam. In full purple flower with seed pods forming.

  There are all sorts of seeds – seeds that fly, seeds that beg to be eaten, seeds that persuade animals to bury them, seeds that stick to you, seeds that float, seeds that give you a fruit if you will throw away the stone. There are seeds that tumble across the set in cowboy films.

  The balsam seed pods are full of sap and get fuller and fuller and tighter and tighter until one day they are ready and then if they are touched the pods twist under the pressure of the sap like an explosion and the seeds fly out. It is a successful method of distribution – if you seek a monument,17 look around you.

  Monica told me that in Tiffin Girls’ School when she was teaching there one of the staff pinned to the noticeboard an essay from a little girl in a lower form –

  There are many ways of reproduction in nature. However personally I prefer sexual reproduction.

  Stalybridge is defined by the canal, which goes straight up the high street, in its new concrete channel. We moored under a block of flats and in the evenings there were flashes all the time – people were taking pictures.

  Each morning I went to Tesco for a paper and outside was a big chap who looked like a murderer – fat and fully tattooed, with slitty eyes. He would sit and hold the dogs until I came out. He said he was sorry we were going and Jim licked his tattoos.

  As we left the couple in the flat nearest to us leaned out of the window and wished us well.

  We stood on the back of the boat.

  What do you make of the Huddersfield Narrow Canal? asked Monica. It was opened after we started boating fifteen years ago. People worked very hard on it and it is a jewel in the crown of the canal restoration movement.

  The bloody thing in unnavigable, I said, like the restored Kennet and Avon18 with its swing bridges. It is a snare for poor boaters who have to struggle through locks that don’t work and pounds with no water. And no one goes along the Huddersfield Narrow Canal – how many boats did we see? It was all for us – very flattering but consider the amount of the national wealth that is being wasted on this useless facility.

  Will you remember the journey?

  I will never forget the green valleys, the trees and flowers, the mills, the mills. Every quarter of a mile a mill – usually derelict, usually elephantine, but always beautiful. The soft grey stone with black shading, the rows of windows always in proportion. However big a mill might be, it looks in bala
nce, comfortable. The chimneys confirm the shape, give the mills a vigour, a finish. To hell with the fancy architects in London – they should come up here if they want to learn about style.

  It wasn’t much fun getting stuck, was it?

  You could find a bank with enough water to moor but before you had started to put your pins in the level would drop. And then when you found some water the bank would turn out to be solid stone. You would wake up with the boat listing and you were stuck for hours. It was awful.

  What about the Standedge Tunnel?

  Like the rest of it, unnavigable. Destruction to your boat, hell and banging and thumping and no sense in it.

  So what is the final verdict on the Huddersfield Narrow?

  Great – I shall never forget it.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  STONE

  In a Somer Seson, Whan Softe Was the Sonne

  Now it is ending – ten years of adventure

  Big small dogs – Doing dreadful things to his maggots – I could have lost Mon and Jim and the Phyllis May – The Pain in the Arse – The sky had leaked on to the distant fields – Those waves are still coming in – I bet they lay rusty eggs – The mermaid winked at me and her bosom heaved – You work your side of the street and I’ll work mine – When Ulysses arrived at Ithaca he felt like a bloody good sit-down

  ARE JIM AND Jess small dogs or big dogs? asked Monica.

  Small dogs.

  But they are tall, and they are all muscle.

  But look at them alongside a big dog, like a Newfoundland. Or a greyhound or even a retriever.

  Well, they are certainly not small small dogs.

  They are big small dogs.

  Yes – big small dogs.

  It was getting dark as we moored. A ghost train raved and thumped and shrieked over the viaduct above us, invisible, furious. A narrowboat came by and the geezer shouted Are you going up tonight?

  We were not going up. The Marple Flight was sixteen locks and if you don’t do it in one go you will cause an obstruction and you will be disgraced and British Waterways will find out you are the chap who buggered up a stretch of waterway because you were too much of a weakling to go up the Marple Flight in one and he will issue it in an email and people will not say hello any more as you pass in your boat.

  You have to say hello to everyone you pass on the cut or on the towpath, and to each dog and squirrel. The greeting should be set at just the right level. If one of you is raising a finger the other must raise a finger as well. Morning, nice again now must be met with four words of equal weight – Hello, better than yesterday.

  It is not acceptable to ignore a greeting, unless of course you are a fisherman, who lives in a different world, and has drawn in his rod and is looking down and doing dreadful things to his maggots. I don’t expect by right a reply from a fisherman but to be fair I usually get one, perhaps because our engine is quiet and does not disturb his fish. Our friend Pauline expects a reply from every fisherman and abuses them from the boat if they keep their peace.

  Next morning out of bed at six thirty and away. It is cold and overcast. Past the geezer, who is moored at the bottom of the flight.

  Monica has put the rain jackets on the dogs and I am carrying their foam beds as well as a lock key. The locks are so close together that there is no exercise for the whippets but if we leave them in the boat they suffer so much it breaks your heart. They call it separation anxiety in the colour supplements but it just means they want to be on the scene. I settle them down near the top of the lock and they snuggle down in their beds and look out over the top and everyone who passes says Aaaah.

  Let’s walk up to the edge of the lock and look in. My God it is deep and I get the vertigo. But at least it’s empty – the PM2 can sail in when I have opened the bottom gates. Heave ho my darlings and Monica will push open the other gate with the boat.

  Now back to the top of the lock – there are steps and verges and steps some shallow some steep and I have the vertigo with the depth of the lock and my pills make me dizzy just be careful – it doesn’t matter how slow you are we’ll get there but don’t finish up dead in the bottom of a twenty-foot lock like that poor chap a few years ago and he was a canal expert who knew all about the history. Didn’t do him much good in the end knowing all about the Jam ’Ole Run.

  Now fit the key on to the paddle gear and turn Oh damn it’s one of those – put your full weight behind it and get a click of the ratchet, now another click, now three. Now pause and then give it some wellie – look at that water flooding up under the boat and just under my feet a hole puffing and gasping as the air comes out from somewhere and goes somewhere else.

  Look down – Mon OK? I hope she doesn’t start making signs to boss me about. This is my lock and I am setting the pace. I won’t rush her don’t worry. I shall never forget that fool girl on a trip boat who rushed all the paddles up one day on the Grand Union and there was so much water coming in that the Phyllis May went out of control and could have filled and sunk. Just think that girl was working on a hotel boat with a dozen guests. I am afraid I shouted and was coarse but if I hadn’t stopped her I could have lost Mon and Jim and the Phyllis May.

  Now the gate paddles – Heavens what a rush – keep the boat back Mon, well done. The water pushing up the walls.

  Walk over and pet the dogs – you are comfortable now, darlings, because your master loves you and brought your beds. Your master is a very fine fellow and most attentive to his ungrateful hounds.

  Push on the gate – no, too soon.

  Now here we go. A nice smile from Mon as she comes out of the lock. Now close the gates and don’t forget the dogs this time and on to the next lock, just fifty yards away round the corner.

  When we looked into the next pound we could see that it was empty, a basin of mud. So I went ahead to open paddles and let some water through. You are not supposed to do that if you are not a British Waterways man and I am not and I didn’t know what I was doing but working from first principles it seemed to me if I opened one or two paddles up ahead I could flush some water down and perhaps even float the boat again. I did this and Monica slithered across the pound and shuddered into the lock, her prop banging on the bottom with a noise like the death of a machine.

  The geezer who had passed us last night appeared, swinging his lock key. He was slim, half my age, bronzed, with hairy legs and white teeth. He was one of those chaps who do a lot of boating and it’s his thing and he thinks everyone else is a civilian who should have stayed on dry land and he measures his own worth by how fast he can get through the locks. This sort of chap is known in the boating community as a Pain in the Arse.

  He ran up to the lock. Running is not safe around locks.

  What time did you start this morning? he asked, annoyed that we had slipped on to the flight before him, and now he would have to stay behind us for the whole flight and he would have to work our locks with us otherwise we will be here all bloody day.

  He started rushing around and yelled incomprehensible instructions to me full of technical words for paddles and pounds and keys and went back down to his boat.

  His boat was stuck solid and all his shouting from the bank would not move her and we carried on up the flight and the shouting died and that was the last we saw of him. Perhaps he is still there.

  On the Macclesfield Canal we were five hundred feet above sea level, with the Pennines on our left and the plains of Cheshire on our right. It was early evening.

  In a somer seson,1 whan softe was the sonne,

  I shoop me into shroudes as I a shepe were,

  In habite as an heremite unholy of werkes,

  Wente wide in this worlde wondres to here.

  I wasn’t dressed like a shepherd, unless shepherds wear T-shirts these days with slogans on them saying I’m the Biggest Bitch on the Beach, and it was not necessary to wear shawls on this lovely evening.

  On the left green beyond green, and the fields seemed to vibrate and sing. And befo
re the fields swaying grasses along the towpath, and flowers red and purple and yellow and trees like a statement that all this had been here for a while, was here when Piers Plowman wandered into the world wonders to here seven hundred years ago, and he felt just the way we do and don’t let any bugger think they can take it away.

  On the right the land of lost content!2 Away over the plains of Cheshire the eye reaches towards the horizon and meets a blue as if the sky had leaked on to the distant fields.

  What is this Macclesfield Canal? This upstart waterway, this route home of which I expected nothing. It is more beautiful than the Camargue, more luscious than Georgia, more green than the Burgundy Canal, and (Write it!)3 more beautiful than my own Trent and Mersey at Aston. I have wandered far in the world on my little boats, and seen many wonders, but today let’s hear it for the Macclesfield Canal.

  We moored where we could see the blue horizon and settled down to a chaste dinner of Diet Coke and pollock. I hate Diet Coke and don’t ask me why I drink it. Pollock is my favourite fish because I used to catch them in Milford Haven when I was a boy. They taste of nothing, but to me they taste of Milford Haven.

  Outside the boat a terrible commotion. Honking and screaming and splashing and quacking. I knew it was a fight because when I was in the Coronation School and a fight would start it was the same cruel and joyful shouting as the circle gathered together, with the fighters in the middle.

  Five hundred Canada geese in a crowd in the middle of the cut. In the middle of the crowd were two large specimens. One got the other in a Canadian Stranglehold and held his head under the water, then the other countered with a Flying Wingbash and thumped him six feet across the cut and followed him and got him by the throat feathers. The crowd were shouting and waving their wings – Come on, kill the bugger, hey hey hey, honk honk honk!

  The fighters rolled over and over and lay in a bed of foam for a moment and then set on each other again. Slowly one was winning. How any of the geese knew which one was winning I cannot tell, because Canada geese are so alike they must forget which one they are themselves.