A retrospective

Thursday, 25 November 2010 00:55

Or in plain English - a look back

Not only did we look back but we went back, in reverse, to Thrupp Wide this morning.

Ah ha, I hear you say - water or elsan or just an opportunity to show off John's reversing skills with our new "ordinary" propeller? I suppose it was all three actually. It was a gorgeous sunny day as you can see and here is the view from the other side of the lift bridge

The poem, Heron, is written decoratively on Oxford Canal-style cast iron sculptures. It is a short but evocative poem -

"Dead-centre down the still canal
A blue ghost flies with a mussel shell
Clamped lightly in its bill

Folding the daybreak's river mist
With the creaking steps of its flight
Past the diamonds and daisies on the cratch

Of the narrowboat
Clove-hitched to a cast-iron bollard
Past the dredger's hopper, the humpbacked bridge

Then drops the empty shell
Still hinged by a thread
Among flints and ashkeys on the tow-path"

The lift bridge itself, named Aubrey's Lift Bridge (221), now electrified, the instructions defying logic, looked wonderful in the sunlight.

My mention of a new propeller - you should have seen the state of our old one. It was on its last few turns before it fell apart! It was irreparably damaged by ditch crawling for two years on shallow, un-dredged canals! Maybe a few piles of bricks and supermarket trolleys underwater didn't help either.