Recapitulation, Part the Second

One of the things about having music in the head is that you (or, at least I) nearly always have music in the head. Sometimes you get something which just won't go away. However good it is, it gets a bit tiring when it seems to be on auto-loop and you can't get rid of it.

I've found this happening a lot recently. The first reason is that I discovered (via Spotify) a series of tunes by Phil Cunningham which seemed perfectly suited to learning on my accordion. I transcribed four or five of them using my scoring app MuseScore, and have been practising them when I get the chance. So, at the moment, they are always around in the head, waiting to be conjured up. The second reason is that steering Erin Mae down a long lock-less section of the Shroppie or the Staffs and Worcs is a classic cause of the mind emptying. The void is immediately filled by the first candidate to come knocking – which at the moment is bound to be one of Phil's little gems. They are wonderful, but they've been getting a bit wearing when I suddenly find that, unbidden, one of them is playing itself yet again.

When, at work, this sort of thing used to happen while I was trying to concentrate on something else in my study, I found two musical items that I could play in the background, which would (a) take the place of whatever was trying to get itself on my internal CD player, and (b) not insist on requiring all my attention (the reason why I have never been able to have music on while studying). They are Górecki's 3rd symphony and Fauré's choral music – wonderful material in their own right, but here used for a less than lofty purpose. They would drive out what else was attempting a takeover. At the tiller, these are impractical, but I have found a substitute. For last Sunday's folk session in Audlem I practised both "Autumn Leaves" and the Incredible String Band's "October Song". Now I find that singing through one of those (almost inaudibly – don't want to give the wrong impression!) has the required effect of eliminating all competing items from my mental sound space.

So if Erin Mae should pass you, and you observe the strange person at the tiller mouthing things with a slightly distant look on his face, don't think he's out of his mind (necessarily). He's merely exorcising yet another recapitulation of Loch Katrine's Lady.

Recapitulation, Part the First

Returning, over the last week, by the way we came, I haven't felt at all the necessity I blogged about earlier, of photographing every item of interest along the way, including those I might have snapped often enough before. Passing such things, the camera has mostly stayed in its case. However, stopping for water at Gailey today, I felt compelled to take a couple of shots.

What had struck me was that both the tower with its shop, and the yard with its boats for hire…

showed very few signs of life. The boats were all arranged in serried ranks, looking as though they were packed away for the winter. Some people must surely take boating holidays in October, but none of them seemed to be starting from here. So Gailey merited a repeat photo.

Recapitulation, Part the Second tomorrow, probably.

Philip

Erin Mae's engine was due a 250 hour service on this trip. We expected to be doing it at King's Lock in Middlewich but, having retraced our steps, decided to get it done at Oxley Marine, just down from Autherley Junction. Philip was on hand to do the necessary.

The first time we met Philip was on an emergency call-out on our very first summer cruise, in 2012 – one of the alternators was no longer working. We had stopped at Gailey, and my best beloved met someone on the tow path who told us to give them a call – reliable, good engineers and they won't rip you off, was what he said. So that's what we did, and Philip came out to fix the problem. Since then we've been to them for one or two things, including the last 1000 hour service, a year ago. It's still a few hours short of the 250 – we haven't done much cruising this year – but we thought we'd take advantage of passing their front door. Well, nearly – they're actually just a bit down from the junction, in the wrong direction. So coming out from the Shroppie I turned the bows left and then reversed the hundred yards or so to their yard, in order to be facing the right way when they'd done.

It was rather startling, in the summer of 2015, to suddenly see Philip steering a boat past where we were moored up in Skipton – one of those "totally out of context" moments. Only later did we find that Yorkshire is indeed his home, and he goes back at weekends. During the week he stays on his own boat at the yard.

So now Erin Mae's engine is set up for the winter. Thanks, Philip. Good service, as ever.

Collaboration

From a distance they looked like a mother with a relatively new brood. That really would be a first for October!

We slowed down and followed them and they paddled up the middle of the cut in front of us.

She really looked as though she was shepherding them to safer waters.

It was only when we got closer (should have been earlier, really) that we realised this was a multi-species event, not a mother with brood at all. The goose, we think, was a greylag, though we're open to correction. The ducks seemed to be a collection of young adult mallards. How they all got together to behave like a family group, who knows? Who adopted who?

We had a conversation today with a boater who helped us up Wheaton Aston lock. He was lamenting what he saw as a decline in courtesy on the cut. Yesterday, I have to say, we both benefited from, and were able to contribute towards, a collaborative effort with other boaters while coming up the Tyrley locks. Two posts ago I mentioned that I had re-written a couple of lines from "October Song". One of them emerged as: "But the one who finds the way of peace will never be forsaken". I enjoyed singing that.

Whittington

Never having been to the panto, I know just one or two things about our Dick. He had a cat; he became Lord Mayor of London; he nearly didn't make it; the great turn-around came as a result of his hearing Bow Bells telling him: "Turn again, Whittington!" My best beloved and I are hoping that the great reversal of fortune occasioned by reversing direction will apply in our own case as well, as we decided to turn around and return home, to get her dental issue sorted out.

So this morning we went down the last two locks of the Audlem flight to the winding hole conveniently situated just beyond them, did the great turn (and winding was absolutely the correct name for it, given the breeze), and then retraced our steps up all fifteen locks of the flight. The sun fooled us by coming out for a few minutes, and we thought: "That went well. Let's carry on." So we went up the five locks of the Adderley flight as well, and made it all the way to Market Drayton. Dick would have been proud of us!

Coupled with the need then to walk to Morrisons and back, this exercise means today has been the polar opposite of yesterday, when we lazed around for most of the day, and then went to the folk session in the Shroppie Fly in the evening.

This is the only place I've seen a hurdy-gurdy being played in the wild and, not content with one, they have two of them! (I wanted to write that sentence rather differently, but I couldn't work out the plural of "hurdy-gurdy"!) There were also singers of various kinds, guitars, bagpipes, fiddles, recorder, bodhrán, egg shakers, penny whistle and piano accordion.

In fact there were two of those as well, since I took my own and got to play a tune or two. Overall, very good fun, a nice range of homespun talent, good company, the joy of making music together. And with a good mix of contemporary and traditional – some of the songs sounded as though they dated from the time of the original Richard Whittington!

To and fro

It's been windy. On Erin Mae's roof sits the paint can I converted for use as chimney spout cover for the times when the actual chimney gets put away. It's tied on with a piece of cord so it doesn't blow away or get nicked, but is free to be blown across the roof (within limits) – and to rock. It doesn't rock much in the wind, just enough to make a noise that echoes down through the insulation and is like the sound the ducks make when they start nibbling at the weed around the water-line. It's been getting into my head as I've been sitting inside practising a song or two for tonight's folk session at the Shroppie Fly. I went out and found a new position which didn't help much, though it's now quietened down. I guess I was just too lazy to untie it and stow it somewhere else.

Faced with my best beloved's dental disintegration yesterday, we had three or four options about which direction we would take. We could soldier on, doing what we'd planned for October, and sort it all out at the end of the month. Convenient, but not very attractive. Or we could turn around and go back to Great Haywood now, and make an appointment for next week some time. Sad, but not disastrous. Thirdly, we could push on towards Chester and leave Erin Mae in the sister marina at Tattenhall – something we've done before. That then entails a cross-country trip to Great Haywood by bus and train and bus to pick up the car for the journey south. Possible, but it would save us only a couple of days compared with turning round. Or we could go a few miles to OverWater marina and leave Erin Mae there. That would be the emergency plan, with corresponding expense.

The dentist wasn't in the practice today, but they told me (a) there was an appointment available late next week, and (b) to send him an email about the problem. Surprisingly, he emailed back to confirm he'd sort it all out on Thursday week. So tomorrow we shall go down two locks to wind, and then retrace our steps.

There's an old, seasonal song by the Incredible String Band that I'm thinking of singing tonight – October Song. It's got a couple of lines I don't like, but I've re-written those. It ends: "…but mostly I just stroll along the path that he is taking." Seems rather appropriate for the moment.

Dentalurgy

We'd decided to join with Audlem Methodist Church for worship this morning. Getting up a little later than we should have led to a decision to have muesli instead of porridge for breakfast, to save a few minutes. In the middle of eating hers, my best beloved suddenly discovered she was chomping on something that definitely had not come out of the muesli packet. This was naturally very upsetting.

We'd also decided to have lunch at the Shroppie Fly, and she faced the prospect of a roast dinner with an incomplete set of grinding equipment. However, lamb was on the menu. Lamb is her favourite, and lamb was what we ordered. Most people do, after all, have two sides to their mouths. Unfortunately, when the lamb duly arrived, we found it impossible even to cut with a knife, and it didn't respond to chewing at all well, tending to bounce back rather than separate. I decided that it was not going to be a pleasurable dining experience, and my best beloved (unwillingly, since she is of far sweeter disposition than I, but with the challenge to her remaining chewing tools in mind) acquiesced in sending it back to the kitchen. The guy serving us was most helpful in organising a replacement of  pork and chicken, one of which was surely bound to be sufficiently tender. In the event, they both were, and the portions were very generous (just a shame about the undercooked cauliflower, which also resisted all attempts at cutting it with a table knife).

So now we shall have to ring the dentist in the morning and decide what to do. Being about half-way round the four counties ring makes the decision complicated, if he thinks that immediate attention is required. We were expecting to find temporary distraction from the issue this evening by joining the folk session at the very same Shroppie Fly, only to discover that they've moved it back to Mondays. We'd like to be here still tomorrow evening, but we shall see…