my beautiful mangle

It not only  squeezes all the water out of my washing but it folds away into a neat little yellow-topped table.

Welcome to Britain

So, the main Olympic games are over and an amazing spectacle it was too. It was good to see people celebrated for their hard work, incredible endurance and ability.
The efforts made to give a warm welcome to visitors were enormous, to the point where many people were inconvenienced. We were encouraged to accept a few temporary disturbances in the "spirit of generosity", as Coe called it. And of course, this language, along with a genuine wish to be welcoming, makes it difficult to complain. For some, the disruption was to travel, for some it meant missiles on their rooftop, for some it meant local common land being built on, and for others it meant eviction from their homes. Nevertheless, between them, the Olympics organising team, the media and the police did such a good job of squashing dissenting voices, that we ended up agreeing that anyone complaining was a party-pooper. We could ignore the 180 arrested critical mass cyclists, ignore the groups protesting about Olympic sponsors like Dow (linked to Bhopal disaster), G4S (human rights abuses), BP (one of the world's biggest polluters), Rio Tinto (poisonous mining), Atos (assessing and victimising disabled people) and Adidas (sweatshop production). Nothing could be allowed to spoil the party. And it WAS a fantastic party, but these ARE shit sponsors that should never have been invited and people's objections WERE valid and important.

So, the welcome was made. The wonderful volunteers made London a friendly place and when the athletes left, many commented on this. I for one would like to always have those helpful, cheerful people on hand at every tube and train station! Britain had welcomed in people from all over the world and as the official Olympics website says, 'showed the world what makes the UK such an exciting and diverse place to live'.
But some didn't leave. Having been shown what a great place it is to live, some athletes actually have the affront to want to live here! Several have disappeared, before the games and since, and as they have black and brown skin, they will soon become aware of the other side of our welcome to foreigners.
A study this year reported that black people are 30 times more likely to be stopped by police, than white people. In the run-up to the Olympics, there has been a huge upsurge in stops by Immigration Officers. According to the UK Border Agency's instructions, "an Immigration Officer (IO) may not stop an individual based upon their racial appearance and race and colour can never be the basis of the IO's 'reasonable suspicion' that someone has committed an immigration offence", yet having heard from several people stopped and questioned, there could have been no other reason for the intervention as they were walking down the street or shopping at the time!
So, I don't think the athletes (plus a 15 year old lad from Ethiopia who was a torch-bearer) will be free for very long. Their photos are online, the very media that celebrated them are also the media that lambast asylum-seekers and refugees daily. A large part of the population has long been conditioned to regard foreigners with suspicion and asylum-seekers as scroungers, criminals and potential terrorists.
I wish the absconders the very best of luck. They'll need it now the welcome's over.

Hot boat, hot dog.

Phew, how hot it is in London! The thermometer in the cratch was reading 38 degrees, though that's an enclosed space and it wasn't so hot in the rest of the boat. Nevertheless, it's been more comfortable to be off the boat, in the park that I'm moored alongside. I was reminded of being along a treeless stretch of the north Oxford canal a few years ago in the baking heat and of hanging wet sheets and towels at the doors to cool the air. It worked pretty well I recall, so I might try that tomorrow if it's as hot again. I had an excursion to Walthamstow market which is Europe's longest street market and bought a hat! On the way back, I came across a cyclist whose dog (attached to the bike by a great heavy chain, probably a bike lock) slumped onto a patch of grass in the shade and refused to move. The poor dog, a heavily built fellow, was panting like mad. Of course I had to interfere and tell the cyclist it was too hot to make a dog run. I feared being told to get lost (or words to that effect) but to be fair to the guy, he agreed a bit ruefully and was allowing the dog to rest all the time I could still see them though he didn't seem to have a drink for the poor animal.. I don't think people realise how quickly dogs get dehydrated in this heat, running, with extra weight and wearing fur coats!

Next week I'll be camping at the Earth First! Summer gathering so I hope the fine weather continues. Blackbird will be in the capable hands of my lovely daughter.

Mice!

 I have mice. I had thought it might be creatures living in my wood store on the roof, or hungry nocturnal visitors that just came to investigate my planters but no, it/they are in the roof space, chewing on polystyrene :-(
They seem to have come in via the mushroom vents.
I saw they'd been in one high-up cupboard that's against the ceiling. Unfortunately there was a gap in the wood and they scoffed sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and linseed - trust me to live off mouse food! But they don't appear to have got into the main living-space, thank goodness. Anyway, I've sealed up that gap and stored everything edible in mouse-proof containers but am loathe to block off their escape route before they've left the boat.
So, I'm looking at humane mouse-traps on the internet at the moment, with a view to releasing them onto Walthamstow marshes. Not that humane as I've seen a kestrel nearby, intent on its prey.
There seem to be high-tech ones....

and low-tech ones..

 And being a cheapskate, I may have a go at how to Build your own mousetrap
One difficulty will be how to place a trap as I can't really get in that space between the ceiling and boat roof, though I guess I could suspend bottle traps below the mushroom vents if I remove the grills. It's a big faff, but I'd better get on with it because they keep me awake at night!

Thankful for rain

I finally got around to clearing all the wood on top of my rainwater harvesting roof and stacking it underneath, where it should have been. I couldn't find the funnel to channel the water  into the hosepipe so I used a She-pee or whatever it's called. Well it may as well be useful, I certainly couldn't manage its proper use! ("can you tell what it is yet?")

So now I have lots and lots of rainwater and am very glad of it because access to water in pretty limited on the Lea at the moment. The nearest water-point is in the Olympics exclusion zone, the next hearest is broken, awaiting repairs for a few weeks now, the third is several locks away so we are expected to call upon the coal boat to fill us up from their own storage tank. That's a lot of boats to cater for! So far, I'm ok as I'm only using my tank water for drinking and cooking and using rainwater to wash and wash up with. It all feels a bit basic but how glad I am that I did the rain-roof. And rainwater does make your hair feel soft!

foraging and friends

The other day, I had a wander in Osterley park and was reminded by the gorgeous honey smell under the lime trees that it was time to gather the blossom that makes such a lovely tea. I set out today to find some but it rained and I remember reading that you shouldn't forage for flowers etc when it's wet as they can rot rather than dry out. Buit I did walk over the marshes to explore Walthamstow and came to the market just as it had finished. There was plenty to forage there! I picked 3 onions and 2 potatoes off the ground, 4 peaches in a dumped tray of many, all a bit squashed but delicious and 4 plants in pots, in a bin. They'll have their day in the sun on my boat.
I like to support markets and small shops but I also hate food going to waste.

Later, I met up with three boater friends and through them, several other boaters, all welcoming and friendly. One lovely guy is also a keen forager and showed me 'the secret tap', a source of water that may well prove to be invaluable on the Lea, where BW have so far failed to provide enough working taps for boaters needs.
Defintely time to dust off the rainwater harvesting roof!
I enjoyed my years of travelling around the waterways alone with my dog and may well go back to that way of life in the future, but for now, I need and welcome the company and solidarity of a boating community.

dogs on the marshes

I saw a Canalworld Forum discussion about new regulations to keep dogs on leads along the towpath along the Regent's Canal, with threats of fines for non-compliance. You can see plenty of the notices on the Lea navigation, alongside the Hackney Marshes. The forum discussion seems to focus on the nuisance of dogs fouling the path (not sure how pooing on the end of a lead would be any different!), before drifting off into the nuisance caused by speeding cyclists.

I was wondering about the timing of these new restrictions. As many know, Leyton Marsh has been the subject of much protest recently, over the development of a basketball centre for the Olympics. The open land alongside the canal, where people and their dogs wander freely every day, has been dug up and built on, with heavy security keeping the community out. It's not the only shiny metal and concrete structure to have sprung up along that stretch of common land, close to the canal I see. Anyway, it seems that three dogs that walk that area had toxic poisoning within a few days of each other. Of course it may be completeley unrelated but about 3 weeks later, the notices restricting dogs went up all along that stretch of the canal.
I'm guessing that the marshes hold still water almost permanently and that disturbing the soil might release some of London's pollutants into surface, drinkable water.
Here's what a Guardian article said at the start of the year:
"The Environment Agency, which has worked with the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), the London Development Agency and other partners on the site said it had helped the ODA decontaminate 2m tonnes of soil so it could be reused."
Another report says:
 "The main site for the 2012 bid, the Lower Lea Valley, is the largest area of derelict and contaminated land in the capital"
I'm just a bit sceptic about how efficiently you can decontaminate large areas of land without releasing chemicals and other pollutants into groundwater and air. We don't often see for ourselves the effect on wildlife, but I guess the health of our own dear dogs is very much noticed.
But hey, I'm just a conspiracy-theorist.