Ashton Boatman

Every year there used to be the Tameside Canals Festival on the second weekend in July. I decided to leave my hair and beard uncut until then and get sheared at the festival for sponsorship. As the months passed by I started to look like an old testament prophet.

Plans for the festival weekend became complicated when one of my nephews arranged to get married in Somerset on the Saturday of the festival weekend.

I was living aboard Hazel at the time. She was becoming increasingly difficult to keep afloat. Three days before the Canals Festival she sank. This was both distressing and embarrassing. We really didn't want a sunken boat while the  festival was on.

When I  was at Ellesmere Port many years ago we had a friendly arrangement with the Fire Brigade. They would turn up with pumps, raise the boat and put it down as training.

Nevertheless, I gathered together what pumps I could and hoped for the best.

On the Friday we set up our stall ready. Early in the morning I clad myself in the poshest clothes I could find and set off in the van. I got there in good time to see Robert and Marie wed, but had to be very careful about alcohol consumption at the reception afterwards.

The cab in that old Transit had comfortable seats to sleep on and the sun was quite bright by the time I woke. I drove home, over the high moorland way, and changed into my scruffs.

When I reached Portland Basin I was pleased to see that there was a fire engine on the wharf. They usually put in an appearance at the festival to promote their charity work. 

Even better, I knew one of the firemen. I asked if they'd help us to raise the boat. They couldn't wait to get started. Immediately portable pumps were set up and hoses  rolled out from the appliance.

Ashton Packet Boat Co lent us their Coventry Godiva pump but it was reluctant to work at first,

We were nearly there when a problem cropped up. It was the end of the firemen's shift. They had to return to the station and hand over to another group of firefighters. Most of the water was out but she was still not sitting high enough to stop some serious leaks. The fire brigade were the only ones with equipment that would pump down to the last few inches. If they left immediately there was a real danger that she would go down again, I persuaded them to hang on for another ten minutes. By then we were able to handle the remaining water with a 12 volt submersible pump.

The fire brigade left. I stood on the wharf, soggy and dripping, wondering about my next move.

I was secured to a chair in front of our stall. Spider's wife ( sorry, her name was recorded in a cluster of brain cells that are now deceased) had volunteered for the mammoth task of shearing me.

The sharp eyed may have noticed a boat in the background called Squeers. Why anyone would name their boat after the unscrupulous  proprietor of Dotheboys Hall School escapes me. Anyway the owner of that boat watched our boat raising. He also observed some inebriated spectators drinking strong lager from cans and, for some reason, thought they were part of our crew. That evening he went on to a waterways forum and railed against the Wooden Canal Boat Society, saying that we were a load of drunken layabouts and if we ever got that boat restored he'd show his whatsit on the town hall steps.

We're still waiting, and will wait in vain as I've been told that the gentleman concerned has since given an account of his wrongdoings to St Peter. It demonstrates the folly of jumping to conclusions, then going online and sharing them. Of course, it may have done our charity some reputational damage. I know it did when somebody spread a rumour that we were funding the boats by drug dealing. However silly the rumour, some people will believe it and pass it on.

It was October 1974 when I arrived in Chester on a pair of floating chicken hutches. 

becoming a teacher I soon discovered that I had innocently sailed into a conflict between posh boaters and ‘undesirables’. Because

of my ramshackle boats, I found myself classed in the latter category.

As one of the chief ‘undesirables’ decided to emigrate to Holland he had to dispose of his assets here. This gave

 me the opportunity to buy a full length boat for £100. A simple BCN joey.

The boat carried a metal plate in each end with the number 9 painted on it, her Stewarts & Lloyds fleet

number. She had been part of the huge fleet that used to carry products from Coombeswood tubeworks. Her top

bends were painted yellow, denoting that she had later belonged to Alfred Matty, canal contractors.

I later discovered that one of the tricks of the seller was to tow away unattended boats, sell them to several

people, then disappear, leaving his victims arguing about who was now the rightful owner. Happily. I was never

challenged about the ownership of number 9. 

At the time I was engaged to an R E teacher called Kathy. The romance of the canals had really got to me

and I envisaged a future living in a back cabin. She saw herself enjoying life in a nice semi detached suburban

house. We compromised on a full length conversion of our new old boat.

When she visited to view our future home, I pointed out that the boat needed a name. “Call it ‘Lilith’” she said,

explaining that it was Hebrew for a screech owl and that she’d solved someone’s final crossword clue that day by

knowing that fact.

It turned out to be rather more than that!  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith

I found a mooring for “Lilith” on a farmer’s field at Croughton, halfway along the Wirral line of the Shroppie. It cost 50p a week!

It was clear that before beginning the conversion I would need to do some work on the hull.

Opposite my Chester mooring was Taylors boatyard.

(Photo by David Dixon)

Alan Parry was busy there rebuilding a classic Taylors cruiser,

“Barbara Joan”, which had been burned out by vandals. I asked him where I could get some oak. He advised that

I shouldn’t waste my money on oak but should just go to the local timber merchant and buy lengths of red

deal. “It’s just as good” he claimed. I was puzzled by this but took his advice as he was a proper boatbuilder.

Eventually it dawned on me that he was just being kind. He assumed that, like most wide eyed youngsters

that start doing up an old wooden boat, I would soon give up. He wanted to protect me from wasting too much money.

Work really started in the Easter break in 1975. I bought the longest piece of 2” X 8” red deal that they had at

the local builders merchant and somehow balanced it across the saddle and handlebars of my folding bike,

then carefully pushed the contraption the mile to my boats. I loaded it on to the roof of one of my tatty craft,

then set off to deliver it to “Lilith”.

I chipped out a plank, cut rough scarph joints on the ends of the new plank and bolted it into place. As I

removed one plank, those around it started to disintegrate, so I repeated the process on them.

Soon I got to planks that were curved and so the wood needed steaming. I had no equipment so I approached

Alan Parry again. He lent me a gas fired industrial wallpaper stripper to generate steam. David Jones, who

had taken over Taylors yard, let me use some space and the master boatbuilder, Arthur Howard, lent me some big G clamps.

I put the plank into a long plastic bag, scrounged from a carpet shop, then led steam from the wallpaper stripper

into it for a couple of hours. Whilst the plank was cooking I set up a crude former. I put a stout wooden

beam on to blocks so that it was off the ground, then put two more blocks on top of this at what looked like

the right distance apart. When the plank was ready I removed it from its bag and laid it on top of the blocks,

then used the clamps to bend the floppy plank down to touch the beam halfway between the blocks. I would then

lash the plank down so that the clamps could be removed and returned to Arthur. Next morning I would

release the plank, now hardened to its curve, load it up on to the boat roof and take it out to “Lilith” for fitting.

This method would not work on most boats. Luckily, joeys are of a simple shape with no complex curves or twists.

In the 1970s ex Stewarts & Lloyds joeys were everywhere as they gradually dispersed their fleet. Of all the wooden joeys that were in once in every corner of the network I’m only aware of 4 survivors. Birchills is in the Black Country Living Museum. Daisy now belongs to Forces Veterans Afloat and has been somehow re-bottomed in re steel. There may be another one called Flute. Someone kindly did some research and discovered that No9 was originally built in 1901, though how much original material survived is a moot point. As Lilith she is now celebrating her 125^th year, though more than 50 years after her restoration began, she now needs lots of new planks again.

I was shocked recently when a someone who has never restored a boat told me, in an authoritative tone, that Queen was beyond repair.  Queen is probably our most important boat from a historical point of view, being the oldest surviving wooden motor narrow boat and a style of boat that died out in the first quarter of the last century.

Like most wooden narrow boats that survive today, she provides just a pattern, a set of ironwork, a history and a lot of work. Providing that the main structure survives, albeit full of fungus, nothing is beyond repair. There may be philosophical questions like, if you've replaced all the wood is it still the same boat? You could ask the same about 160 year old Talyllyn , still hauling trains on the Talyllyn railway. All her working parts were renewed in about 1960. 

A museum minded person may prefer to follow the preservation route. At Ellesmere Port they've put most of their wooden boats into dry storage in an industrial unit. That's fair enough, but no-one will ever see them in action on the canal again. 

When we restored Hazel we replaced every bit of wood in the hull. I have seen boats that have been restored that bear no resemblance to their original form. With Hazel  we carefully made accurate moulds to ensure that new planking would bend to the same shape as the original. For each plank we carefully made spiling boards to transfer the shape on to the new wood. At 12 inch stations we copied the bevels of the edges of each plank into a bevel book so that the edges of the new planks could be planed to fit each other, just like the old ones did.

Essentially, transforming boats like this is what the WCBS is set up to do. Hazel  has gone from a complete knacker to a boat that gives lots of people the opportunity to enjoy the canal, while still remaining faithful to the pattern set by boatbuilders in 1913.

Back in the 1970s I was chief boat pumper out and vandal chaser off at Ellesmere Port. I was well into replanking Lilith  and already contemplating the task of restoring Forget me Not. She became a bit of a problem to keep afloat and I doubt if there were many people who thought she'd ever become an active motor boat again.

Being slipped for restoration in 1987.

And at the Braunston Boat Show 1995, loaded with 10 tons of stone setts for delivery to Braunston Marina.

It took a long time and everything was done on a shoestring, but we did it. For Hazel  we had much greater resources, but still much less than the cost of just taking her to a commercial boatyard and writing a big cheque.

To do this requires strategic thinking rather than tactical thinking. When we raised Queen from the bottom in Buckinghamshire we had no prospect of restoring her in the short term. To leave her where she was would guarantee her destruction. So began over 30 years of careful conservation.

When an opportunity came up to buy a water drip Bolinder engine, of the sort that powered her from 1924 until 1947, we bought it. They don't come up often, especially at affordable prices.

It was the same with Hazel. The stem and stern posts were a tree from someone's garden in Wythenshawe, years before we were able to start the restoration. The wood for the bottom was donated by someone in Aberdeen, delivered, then stored until we had the funds to start work. I'm constantly on the lookout for suitable trees being felled. Just going to B&Q doesn't work.

Now we're moving into a time when we need to do more tactical thinking, bringing together the funds, the materials and the skilled labour to get Queen up and running again. If you can help please leave a comment.

Queen as we found her 1994.

I'm unashamedly left wing. i know a lot of people will have a negative reaction to that, but I try not to let that get in the way of who I can be friends with. I work in a charity that is, by it's nature, non political.  I generally draw the line being friends with people who spread hatred. Myself and our volunteer organiser at the time once had the task of telling a volunteer who was a member of the British National Party not to come back. His Facebook was full of posts about burning mosques down. However, that wasn't the main reason for ejecting him. He was stalking a female volunteer about 25 years his junior, good looking and definitely not interested.

I take my inspiration from the likes of Gerard Winstanley, William Morris and Peter Kropotkin, which makes fitting into the political spectrum difficult. The Green Party are the nearest to my ideals, but, for as long as they've existed, the chance of them gaining any real power has been vanishingly small.

Along with many others, when the Labour government got elected after 14 years of Tory misrule, I was elated. I knew that they wouldn't be perfect, but, at least there would be an end to the incompetence, class hatred and corruption of the Tories.

After being confined to the spare bedroom for a bit the man came to fit extra handrails and I had the run of the house again. Soon, with the help of friends, I started to make forays outside, walking to the park or round the block. Soon I was able, with the aid of a stick, to walk to the corner shop. I was making a really good recovery. I could walk short distances without a stick, albeit rather jerkily. I was very proud of my progress. We all know what follows pride!

Before my stroke I had about 240 items listed on Ebay on behalf of the Wooden Canal Boat Society. A few people got very upset because their purchases didn't arrive as I wasn't in a position to post them. I gave Emuna my login details and she managed to delist them all while I was in hospital.

Ended listings on Ebay don't stay in limbo for ever, they eventually disappear and you have to start from scratch if you still want to sell them. I didn't fancy that, so I started to re-activate the listings. The first time I got a sale I had a lift to and from the shop, where sales items are store, with Canis in the van.

Next time I had a lift in, then walked to the 'bus station and got a 'bus home. It was the Hazelhurst circular service. Em had warned me about this 'bus being full of unpleasant young people who wouldn't let her have the priority seat and told her she didn't need her wheelchair. Sadly, this kind of behaviour towards disabled people is all too common. My experience was very different. The passengers were mostly old ladies. I had a nice chat with a lady  in her eighties who still enjoys line dancing as we travelled up to Hazelhurst. I eventually got off at the penultimate stop on Henrietta St as the 'bus returned to Ashton.

I enjoyed that day, but it exhausted me. One effect of a stroke that takes a long time to go is extreme tiredness. I rested the following day. 

My confidence was building. I kept looking at my unemployed bike in the garden. 

I sold another item so, before Em was up in the morning I wheeled it out on to the road. My first attempt at riding wasn't successful. I tried to start off with my left (good) foot but found that my right foot couldn't find the pedal quickly enough to keep going. I tried again starting with my right foot, and I was on my way. 

Although I was keen not to fall off I wasn't too worried as I've fallen off bikes loads of times and never done more damage than scratches and bruises. 

By carefully timing my arrival at traffic lights I reached the shop with only one stop, with a handy kerb on my left to put my good foot on.

Stopping at the shop was a different matter. I fell over, but didn't hurt myself.

I soon had the items wrapped up so I set off again to post them at the corner shop near home. My route took me through the market place which, being currently regenerated, had narrow walkways which were crowded. I got stuck behind some ambling pedestrians and had to go unsustainably slow. The proprietor of a stall selling electricity or time share or somesuch took the mickey out of my wobbly  riding. I responded fiercely. I simply couldn't keep going at that speed so I dismounted successfully, if a bit unsteadily. A shrivelled old lady with two sticks came to ask if I was OK. We had a brief conversation about our ailments. She had arthritis.

With no suitable kerb for getting started I had to walk to the Prince of Orange before I could remount. From there I headed past  the council offices and up Penny Meadow as I'd mislaid my favourite hat at the Jasmine Cafe. It was shut, so I carried on to the traffic lights. The uphill bit was  hard but I managed.  I followed the back streets then managed a wobble free stop at home. Success!

My riding could only get better, or so I thought.

Next week I had more sales, and the WCBS newsletters needed posting. I arranged to meet Helen Kanes at the shop to help me get these things done.

My ride into Ashton was straightforward. I reached the shop before Christine arrived to open up. As I came to a halt on the pavement I thought through my strategy for dismounting, then, something strange happened. My mind suddenly went blank. The bike, inevitably, toppled over, depositing me on the hard paving slabs. My right hip took the main blow and it hurt.

Someone came out of the hairdressers with a chair for me to sit on. Passers by helped me to get up and sit in it, but the pain was excruciating every time my right leg was moved.

Christine and Helen arrived to open the shop. Somebody called an ambulance, then Helen waited with me for a hour or so until it arrived. I kept insisting that I was only bruised, but deep down I knew that it was worse.

When the ambulance arrived the crew confirmed that my hip was broken. More excruciating pain as they loaded me on to a stretcher.

Helen came with me to the hospital where I was quickly Xrayed. A day later I was fitted with half a new bionic hip. Apparently the socket bit was OK but the ball that fits into it was smashed.

Once again I'm learning how to walk, this time with the aid of a zimmer frame.

I've been riding bikes since I was 8 and in that time I've fallen off countless times. Each time I got cuts and bruises, but nothing to worry about. Of course, in the past, my bones were made of rubber.

I'm 73 now and the rubber seems to have transmuted into bone china.

I've just been studying adverts for electric trikes.

          I'm not sure that friend is the right word but that line from Simon & Garfunkel seemed appropriate. When I was little we lived in an old stone cottage. In an alcove in the hallway stood a big solid austerity wardrobe where my mum kept her rarely worn posh going out clothes. It was dark in there and I hurried past it because I knew that behind the wardrobe was a tunnel where undefined monsters lived. They had only one aim, which was to get me. I didn't know what they would do to me but I knew it wouldn't be nice. I believed that my mum was trying to protect me, but my dad was in an alliance with them.

I once confided in my big brother about this, then immediately regretted it as he, unsurprisingly, scorned me for believing in bogeymen.

We moved from that house when I was 13. By then, of course, I no longer held that belief, but I still preferred not to linger in the hall.

Since then the bogey that has threatened my well being has had a name, Depression. It has grabbed me and dragged me into it's lair halfway through each decade. The last time it got me right inside the tunnel, so that I thought I would never get out, was the mid 1990s. That was 30 years ago. The bogey has grabbed me since, but I have learned ways of fighting it off. Writing about it is one of them.

I started to feel it's claws  in me last week. I started to feel increasingly gloomy . Yesterday I woke up and felt totally powerless. In my normal life I work hard to make changes for the good. My focus is on trying to use whatever skills I have to make the world a little bit better and a little bit more likely to survive for future generations. Some may think that silly selflessness, do gooderism, denying myself the enjoyment of the many things that are available to consume. in our brave new world. Some might think I would do well to jet off to Thailand or somewhere, at the expense of the next generation, and have a good time. In fact, I find what most people see as a good time just boring. I enjoy my life, except when the bogeys get me.

 When this feeling comes on me I feel like everything I do is a waste of time, but what else would I do? Everything is futile! Nobody understands. What's the point?

I start to go on about the curse of Cassandra. Cassandra's curse, in Greek mythology, was that she had the gift of true prophecy, but nobody would believe her. In 1973 I learned about the greenhouse effect and the Limits to Growth report. I decided to live more simply as a result. I sort of hoped that everyone else would catch on, but the promise of infinite happiness in the never never future through more and more consumer goodies was too powerful for most people. Many still attack viciously those who point out our real parlous situation, such as the brave young Greta Thunberg. 

50 years after learning about these things we are on the edge of global tipping points. If we go over them our planet will be plunged into an unliveable hothouse. The billionaires who are driving our suicidal economies are digging themselves survival bunkers in the Arctic.

My big dilemma has been, where do I go from here. My life's work has been saving a collection of wooden boats and trying to put them to work on jobs that are in some way good for the Earth and/or people's well being. Now I wonder if I should give that up and concentrate on trying to save the planet. There will be no use for old wooden boats, lovely as they are, if we collectively go over a tipping point. Perhaps I should get political and campaign to keep the oil fueled loonies of the Right out of power.

I'm not a natural campaigner, more of a digger and knocker together of bits of wood, so I'll probably carry on as I am, despairing of the stupidity that seems to be ruling the world at the moment.

I think a lot of people who feel as I do deal with it by consuming alcohol or drugs. I can see how tempting it must be to imbibe a substance that takes away the despair, even on a temporary basis. I'm lucky that I've never had that temptation get hold of me. I find it hard to spend time with addicts as they seem like people who have just given up on life. On the other hand, genuinely recovered addicts are often inspiring. However, I have used a little pill that helps to keep the bogeys away, St John's Wort. A herbal compound that helps to stave off depression.I now have a problem. A side effect of St Johns Wort is to thin the blood. Now I've had a stroke I'm prescribed blood thinning medication, so I can't take my worts lest my blood becomes too watery. 

I'm wondering if that's the reason for my current low mood.

Following the Green victory in the Denton and Gorton election my right wing friends seem to be concentrating on attacking the party for its rather liberal drugs policy. Let me preface my comments by pointing out that I do not have skin in this game. I am not dependent on mind altering chemicals legal or illegal. I do however live in a town where chemical abuse, including legal alcohol , is obvious and linked to health issues and petty crime. The war on drugs seems to have been lost here.

Let's scroll back to 1996. We kept most of our boats at the Boat and Butty yard in Runcorn. The Boat and Butty was set up by the wonderful Peter Shrubsall, Shrubbie, and his partner Marion. Unfortunately Shrubbie died in about 1985. Marion carried on the business but did little more than call in every month to collect mooring fees.

Our boats were occupied  by young people who kept them afloat and formed a loose community.   After "Forget me Not"s launch in 1994 I moved there and lived on "Raymond". There were other people living there on their own boats, including Ginger.

Nobody really disliked Ginger but he was shuffled away to the far end of the moorings because of his need to stick needles in himself. His partner, Linda, had a similar need to fill herself with alcohol. I remember seeing her getting into a taxi to go for rehab. I have actually seen healthier looking corpses.

Ginger needed to be in Runcorn because it gave him easy access to the drug dependency unit in Widnes. This supplied most of his needs. Because of the War On Drugs it was closed down. The only way that Ginger could get what he needed was to engage in the retail trade for illegal substances. A continual stream of sad shuffling people started to call at Ginger's boat. Unoccupied boats on the moorings were broken into.

 Retailers need wholesalers, who arrived in a black BMW.

Ignorant of what was actually going on I challenged these people. They claimed to be plain clothes police but could not prove it.  I said that in that case I'd call the real police. They said that if I did that they'd kill me. I don't give in to threats so I rang the police. I asked them to be discreet. 

The police were soon there, sirens blaring. They leaped out of their car, truncheons drawn, shouting my name. Discreet I said. The BMW had gone.

Usually when someone says they're going to kill you they don't mean it literally. It was pointed out to me that these people probably did mean it. Being stubborn I stayed on, spending each night in a different place. The nice friendly community evaporated. Most people kept their heads down. There had been several drug related murders in Liverpool recently. One person started a campaign of vandalism against me, damaging my possessions. I believe that he sank "Raymond" while I was away. I later learned that he had been told to make the place safe for the drug dealers with threats against his daughter as an incentive.

All hell was let loose. The criminals ruled the boatyard and the police seemed happy to let it go on as long as only hairy hippy boat dwellers were affected. All night cars and motorbikes were coming and going providing a delivery service. 

The man who was damaging my property was actually in touch with someone well known, who I can't name but some people will be able to guess, who put it around the canal grapevine that I was funding the boats by drug dealing. If this had been true we might have them all restored by now.

We started making plans for moving our boats out of Runcorn. Luckily we'd been invited to move them to Portland Basin.

Suddenly things calmed down. I read in the local paper that 3 men from Kirkby had been arrested in Widnes outside an industrial unit. Inside the warehouse was the biggest indoor skunk growing farm busted up to that point. The 3 men were in a black BMW.

Friends of Raymond took over that boat. Sometime later I delivered some of her fittings to one of their members at Braunston. He opened his front door and, when I announced who I was, he took a step back and looked scared. I hate to think what he'd been told about me. Canal gossipmongers can do a lot of harm.

All the above happened because of the WAR ON DRUGS. It was similar when they banned alcohol in the USA. More people died of alcoholic poisoning, crime increased and the only people to benefit were the Mafia.

In my view the only political party with a sensible and responsible drugs policy is the Green party.

The political world is in complete turmoil at the moment. The two parties that have had the field to themselves throughout my lifetime are both deeply unpopular but we still have an undemocratic 'first past the post' electoral system which makes it possible for a party to take full power even though the majority hate them. We also have most of the "free" press owned by right wing billionaires, who also own the social media platforms. Add to this the avalanche of hate stirring AI generated memes from Russia and it's hardly surprising that the public space is so discordant. Rational debate is replaced by name calling and point scoring. People aren't listening to each other but trying to undermine each other.

At various times I've been a member of both the Green Party and the Labour party, and I haven't liked either, though my political sympathies lie in that red/green axis. 

People support particular political factions for all kinds of reasons, not all of them rational. It may be that they find a particular candidate attractive, or they have a hatred for a particular social group. It is often that a party represents their short term interests, or pretends to.

To me, the obvious starting point is to ask what sort of a society would I like to live in. Since you ask. I'll tell you!

First of all it has to be sustainable, globally. There's no point in living a perfect life, whatever that is, if it's going to lead to a population crash through global famine caused by climate breakdown. Even if we don't expect it to happen in our lifetimes, most of us care about the next generation. "Well, it'll see  me out" is the most irresponsible phrase I hear, and I hear it often. Frequently from people who have children who they profess to love!

From the above follows the need for fairness. As things stand most of the worlds resources, be they land, money or industrial facilities, are owned by a relatively small proportion of the global population. Whether they are the 1%, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos et al, or just someone who owns agricultural land or a factory in Bangladesh, their income is derived passively from other people's efforts. The majority are trapped into working hard for somebody else in order to pay rent or a mortgage for somewhere to live and to buy food that they don't have time or space to grow for themselves.

Those who live by owning wealth have sometimes worked hard to attain that position, others have got there by lucky gambling but the vast majority have simply inherited wealth. Sometimes they've managed it well, sometimes not, but the fact remains that their comfortable lives rely on others having less comfortable lives.

Now, the status quo regarding wealth distribution may be alright if it was possible for everlasting economic growth to drag everyone out of poverty. The theory is that because the sum of wealth keeps inexorably increasing the eventually those who now work hard for a dollar a day or less will eventually drive SUVs and fly halfway round the planet for their holidays. By then, the owners of everything will be flying in private starships and enjoying their superyachts on the Martian canals. This is the theory of economic growth, but its pursuit has already run up against, or beyond, the capacity of our planet to sustain it. Most of the world's population still live in poverty.

In my view, we all need to live simply,so that others may simply live. That's not a message that most people want to hear. They have been trained to equate greater wealth with greater happiness, but it is not necessarily so.

In order for everyone to enjoy a comfortable life it will be necessary to redistribute the wealth, not just money but, in the words of the old Labour party, the means of production, distribution and exchange.

Clause 4 of the Labour party's constitution, so triumphantly expunged by Tony Blair and his pals, was often referred to as a nationalisation clause, but not necessarily so. There are many ways to skin a cat, if skinning cats is your thing. I am more of the Kropotkin/William Morris school of socialism rather than the Marxist/Leninist school. One of my more right wing friends insists on referring to me as his favourite communist. I know he means well, but it's highly inaccurate. Although the original Communist vision was one of liberation, I can think of little worse than the centralised bureaucratic nightmare that the Soviet Union became. Even worse is the unashamedly National Socialist surveilance state that the People's Republic of China has become.

In general, people of the left have a rosy view of human nature. Those on the right tend to believe that everyone is out for him/herself and continually in conflict with one another. Both are wrong, but often people feel the need to behave as though they are jungle dwellers because that belief is so widely promoted in our culture. In fact our species has only risen to prominence on our planet by its ability to co-operate and to devise rules to live by.

We all tend to assume that other people are pretty much like we are. In fact people vary widely. That's OK. If I need a brain surgeon I need someone with enormous specialised knowledge, very precise motor skills and a calm disposition. That's not me, but I can build them a very nice boat. Our different traits complement each other.

The difficulty comes with the 1% who lack compassion. This is to do with an undeveloped part of the brain. If treated well as children they often develop the ability to co-operate and find a suitable niche where they do good rather than harm. They often make good brain surgeons! If brought up in a dog eat dog culture they can become axe murderers, CEOs or dictators. Such people, commonly known as psychopaths, mostly lean to the right politically, but will actually adopt any ideology that they see as giving them a route to power. Mussolini began his political career as an anarchist.

Revolutions have a problem. Overthrowing the unjust system and replacing it with something better seems a good idea, but there is always resistance, often armed, from the status quo. To organise a fight the revolutionary group needs strong leadership. which is usually taken up by a psychopath, be it Napoleon, Lenin or Mao. These people develop a cult following that empowers their followers to behave without compassion and negate the original objectives of the revolution in order to keep the glorious leader in power. As the Chinese say, "he who fights the dragon becomes the dragon."

More peaceful transitions can also lose their way. Unfortunately the Labour party took their excellent clause 4 to mean Nationalisation, which is a very distant and indirect form of common ownership. In 1945 they had a once in a lifetime chance to change over to common ownership, but they blew it. Instead of giving core industries to the the workers they nationalised them, keeping the same boss/worker conflict and making them easy for the Tories to privatise again. I think the reason that the Labour party took the route of Nationalisation rather than worker ownership was that it retained well paid roles for powerful individuals and for trades unions, which would be redundant if the workers owned the company and elected the management.

My MP is Angela Rayner. She gets a lot of flak for everything she does. A lot of this is clearly mysoginistic or classist, relating to her humble beginnings. She's made  some mistakes regarding her slightly unconventional housing arrangements, but those who criticise her for this are actually experts at getting away with dodging tax. I like her, though I don't always agree with her.

Angela came up through the trades union movement which is, quite rightly, devoted to improving wages and conditions for workers. During her short period of access to the levers of power she got legal improvements to these things. These changes have been heavily criticised for making small businesses unviable. No mention is made of the fact that many small businesses are paying crippling rents to those who live by owning rather than by working. Often that rent money is being sent abroad and so is lost to our economy. The media never mentions the drag on our economy caused by high rents. Wages largely go back into the local economy.

Trades unions have been declining in influence throughout my lifetime. Essentially they are part of capitalism, a necessary voice for workers confronted by the immense power of capital. The problem is that capital is now global but unions are national. The bosses can say 'If you don't like it we can relocate to China". We need global trades unions to defeat global capital. The only one of these is the Wobblies  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_World who are seen as a threat by most unions, who seek compromise with capital rather than overthrowing it. The Wobblies are still active, and actually growing in Britain. https://iww.org.uk/

I feel that the current Labour Party leadership, with Morgan McSweeney as puppetmaster, have worked a con trick on the British public. The biggest threat to democracy and the well being of ordinary people are the handful of people who own so much of our planet's resources that they are actually wealthier than many nations. Our allegedly socialist leaders have done secret deals with them in order to gain limited power. Don't get me wrong. The Labour government are slowly sorting out the mess left by the Tories and will do better for ordinary people than their predecessors, but, they're not interested in tackling the ownership of resources. They're happy that the rest of us pay rent to the owners of everything rather than taking back ownership. Did you know that the pipes delivering gas to your house are largely owned by a Chinese billionaire. We get the crumbs left over after the tax free rents have been paid.

One of the things that I have learned about recently is the exsistence of cults in politics. Like most people, I used to see cults as things like the Moonies, The Scientologists or the Branch Davidians. In fact there are many unrecognised cults that play a huge and unhelpful part in politics. MAGA is an obvious one but they exist on the left as well as the right. How do you define a cult. Perhaps a good definition would be 'a set of beliefs held tenaciously even to the extent of denying or refusing to consider evidence to the contrary'. If Trump tells his followers that prices are going down they believe it, even if eggs are costing more. Along with cults goes the idea of a magic man. Someone who is infallible and goes against conventional thinking because he's such a genius. Brexit was a cult and Farage it's magic man. Devotees still will not acknowledge what a disaster it's been or that Farage is no more than a conman. Through Reform UK Ltd he's now leading another cult based on the fallacy of white English superiority.

I could never wholheartedly get behind Jeremy Corbyn. Corbynism got too cult like for me. I recall a vicious attack on Facebook by some Corbyn devotees of a rather vulnerable lady who dared to suggest that the Blair government did some good things. It did, and overall it was better than the Tories, but, by using PFI for almost everything we ended up paying more rent to global financiers. Jeremy Corbyn was an unlikely cult leader but the left made him one because they wanted a magic man who would solve everything. In fact he did not have the management skills to lead a darts club, ran a clueless election campaign and walked straight into the antisemitism trap set for him. I disliked his support for dictatorships, just because they were left wing, and could never understand his apparent fondness for obvious psychopath Vladimir Putin.

Today is the day of the Denton and Gorton byelection. It's a first past the post contest and currently Labour, Green and the Nazis , call a spade a spade, are pretty much level pegging. I live in the next door constituency with similar demographics. If I had a vote I would use it to support whoever was most likely to defeat the Nazi. It's hard to know who that is because the polls put them all so close. The danger is that the Nazi will get in with 1/3 of the vote, while 2/3 of the voters can't stand him. That's first past the post for you! In 1933 63% of voters did not support the National Socialist party. They didn't get the chance to vote again.

I worry about what the makeup of Tameside council will be after the May elections, I expect Labour to do badly. There are already some independent councillors, about whom I have mixed feelings.  Perhaps we'll get some Greens but, in view of the amount of casual racism locally I fear we could get an influx of Fascists.

I don't know if anyone has noticed but I've been rather quiet so  far this year. The Happy New Year greetings had barely faded into the void when I was struck down by nasty flu virus. Emuna was determined not to catch it so I was banished to the spare bedroom. She  gingerly pushed food and drink through the door and carefully disinfected anything that I'd touched.

By 7th January I was beginning to feel better. I was declared no longer a biohazard on the 8th and allowed to get up and do the washing up. I thought I'd return to work on the boats on the following day.

At about 1pm I suddenly decided to leave the washing up and go through into the living room. I forget why. As I walked through the dining room my right leg suddenly gave way. I grabbed a dining chair with my left arm to avoid falling on the floor. I soon realised that my right arm was limp and useless. It began to dawn on me that I was having a stroke.

Emuna was upstairs so I called her. The sound that came out of my mouth was unfamiliar to me. She came downstairs and I explained in my distorted voice that my arm and leg weren't working. I realised, to my horror, that I was dribbling.

Em said "I think you might be having a stroke". "Corse I'm avin a bloody sthroke" I blurted, "Geranambulance". Emuna dialed 999. The operator said she'd make me top priority but we may have to wait 50 minutes.

I was still clinging to a dining chair so Em fetched her wheelchair. Between us we managed to manoeuvre me into it.

The ambulance arrived in 15 minutes, along with 2 cheerful and efficient ambulancemen. They carried out the necessary checks to ensure  that I would survive the journey, then wheeled me up the ramp into the ambulance, still on Em's wheelchair. She followed on with her stick and we were all strapped in.

I'd never thought much about strokes. I'd imagined that my risk was pretty low. Here are two things I didn't know about them. For an older person like me the risk of one quadruples after a bout of flu. When you've had one your emotions become amplified and sometimes uncontrollable.

Emuna is good at humour, we share a sense of it. She tried to cheer me up. Consequently, as the ambulance rushed through traffic, sirens blaring, I was laughing fit to burst.

They took us to Stepping Hill hospital at Stockport, the main stroke facility in our area. I was rapidly wheeled through corridors. When we entered the stroke unit the staff immediately went into action. It was like a well ordered military operation. I was fitted with a canula, checked over, taken to have my head scanned, about time some would say, then, when the doctors were satisfied that they understood my condition, thrombolised. This is when they pump a cocktail of drugs into you via the canula to break up the blood clot and prevent further damage. The sooner this is done after a stroke the less damage is likely to occur. I was lucky. I later  met someone who had been lying on the floor for 2 days and 2 nights before he was found.

We were taken to a side room to await a bed allocation. The staff were clearly busy. One nurse said it was the busiest  day she could remember. We wondered if it was linked to the flu that had been going round, from which some patients were clearly still suffering. I was thirsty, but every time  I asked for a drink I was told they had to check that I could swallow first. Another thing I didn't know was that strokes often take away one's swallowing reflex. Food or drink will go straight into the lungs.

Eventually a nurse found enough time to check my swallow reflex, then make me a cup of coffee.

I was moved to a ward and started to remember how congenitally uncomfortable hospital beds are. Em had an adventurous bus journey home in a blizzard, including tentatively descending a long,dark, deserted and icy flight of stone steps when changing buses in central Stockport. Later that night I was moved to another ward and settled down for a restless night. The natural discomfort of the bed made worse by the fact that my right arm and leg were just immovable dead lumps of meat.

As I blinked into wakefulness after a fitful night's sleep I started to realise how lightly I'd been let off. Several people had tubes feeding them through their noses. Some were confused and would pull out their tubes, bleating constantly for water, which they couldn't have. On the second night a man came in who was so connfused that he thought the nurses were attacking him. The little movement I had in my leg meant that I could walk with two people supporting me. 

A big moustached South Asian man came to scrub me to within an inch of my life, He looked like he would be more at home riding a white charger across a desert wielding an immense bejewelled sword. 

The doctors on their rounds were like the United Nations. The head doctor reminded me of Henry Kissinger, partly his looks but particularly his East European accent. Other doctors included a very tall young Sikh, a beautiful Muslim woman wearing a hijab and a colourful dress and a smart young African man. Thank God for immigration.

I've heard it said by my more right wing friends that nurses spend lots of time drinking tea and chatting. I've never seen that. On the stroke wards they are rarely still. Their shifts are 12 hours and they rarely get a break from the constant demands of patients.

Hospital food is not wonderful, though, to be fair, it's improved since last time I was in. Nevertheless, there was still too much refined starch and sugar to be healthy. Em visited every other day. A friend started bringing her. She brought wholemeal sandwiches with tasty and healthy fillings, bagels, fruit and sugar free cake. I got visits from therapists, speech, occupational and physio. I was given tongue twisters to practice. I was taken for a walk the length of the ward.

I'd been promised a transfer to Tameside, nearer for Em. The problem was finding a bed, then finding an ambulance to take me. Suddenly, one night, two young ambulancewomen appeared at my bed to whisk me away. As we travelled I enjoyed intelligent conversation about life, the universe and everything with the young Northern Irish woman who sat in the back with me while her colleague drove.

At Tameside it was a similar routine. The man opposite me was pretty much totally paralysed, though he could eat if spoon fed. Others were nil by mouth and some were deeply confused. The daily doctors round was similarly diverse, though less colourful. Three of the chief nurses were little Indian women, so similar that they could have been sisters.

Each day I looked forward to physiotherapy. Very soon I was able to walk to the gym with a quad stick. I was soon moved to a room of my own. After one night I was moved back because someone came in who needed to be isolated because of an infection. After a few more nights I went back to the single room. It seems the infected patient, who was nil by mouth, had been crawling out of bed and trying to drink from the sink. I enjoyed having my own space where I could practice moving about without well meaning nurses intervening.

It was lovely having visitors, with one proviso. Having a stroke makes you tire easily. Having visitors is tiring. One day I had thee visitors. I enjoyed seeing them all, but I was shattered by the end of the day. I felt sorry for some people who had hordes of family visiting all day. I know that sounds ungrateful, but that's. how it is. 6 weeks after the stroke, I still have to conserve my energy.

At last, after about a month, I was released. I'm waiting for some rails to be fitted by the stairs but my walking has got good enough that I can carefully move around the house. My arm is making less progress but I'm confident that I'll get it back eventually.

I wonder how much this would have cost in America!

I've just finished reading The Breaking Wave by Ian Marchant. Ian was, apart from being a very excellent fellow, patron of the Wooden Canal Boat Society. The book was his final novel, published just a few weeks before he died from cancer. He had been determined to get it finished.

                         I'm not a great reader of fiction, though I suppose this is more Faction as it's based around actual events and actual characters in Ian's life. A couple of the characters echo aspects of himself. It's central theme is the re-creation of a band that broke up acrimoniously in the 80s. It finds the different characters from that band, now all living very different lives, and includes a romantic element. It would actually make a really good film. In the last few pages there are links to actual recordings of the band that inspired it. 

I was puzzled about musical genres though. Music is something that I don't know much about. I like it, almost any of it that stems from a genuine creative impulse rather than just the desire for wealth and fame. I don't have strong views, though I suppose I feel more comfortable with some genres than with others. My dad put me off classical music and, particularly opera, by constantly telling me that it was superior to the rock and pop that I liked as a kid. A childish sort of my music is better than your music game, akin to the Beatles v Dave Clark Five arguments that flourished in junior school. I was of the Beatles camp (and history proved me right). Nowadays I'm even beginning to warm to opera. 

As I lived most of my teenage years in the sixties I have a particular affection for the music of the time. I ceased to follow musical fashions when glam rock came along.  In the mid 70s the whole hippie vibe that had made the previous decade so wonderful was overturned by a a new youth subculture that seemed to love harshness, discord and spitting a lot, ie  punk! I hated it and all the NO FUTURE negativity that seemed to go with it. 

I knew Ian as a writer and entertainer. The only music that I observed him performing were comic pisstakes, along with his friend Chas Ambler under the name Your Dad.  I knew that Ian used to be in bands, but for some reason I thought they were punk bands. I'm not sure now what gave me that Idea. Perhaps early ones were, but The Breaking Wave, certainly wasn't. Possibly it was something that Ian said that gave me that Idea. I knew our musical tastes differed. His tastes were very clear cut while I could listen to almost anything (though I can't stand modern manufactured pop). Perhaps it was our age difference. He was 5 years younger than me, a big difference in younger times. Ian would have been about 17 when punk reared its ugly snarling blaspheming head. 

Anyway, I've referred to Ian having a punk past a couple of times recently, and now it occurs to me that that might be wrong. Perhaps someone who knew him as a young man would like to comment. 

The book is good and should be the basis of a film. Something like Four Weddings and a Funeral springs to mind.  It combines exploration of characters with a band movie theme, romance, an underlying tragedy but it would be a sort of feelgood film. Any film directors reading this?  

Read the book (but don't buy it from Amazon as Jeff Bezos already has enough money)  Sorry the photos aren't very good.