Jo Bell, the Canal Laureate, was interviewed on BBC R4 Midweek last year and read one of her poems, ‘Lifted’. She lives aboard nb Tinker and I think is moored at Stone.
‘Lifted’ describes going up in a lock – the best bit is towards the end where she describes the ‘glassy bulges’ as the water is close to the level and the way the gates shift and the boat floats backwards. This is the link to the interview; http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03k0wm9#programme-broadcasts
This link is to a short film with her reading the poem (some nice images but does not reflect the what the poem is actually saying); http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/commissions/canalfilms
and this is a link to her blog, which seems to be mostly poetry-based; https://belljarblog.wordpress.com/tag/tinker/
but has a nice description of her trip from Bristol to Sharpness in August last year!https://belljarblog.wordpress.com/2013/08/20/masters-of-the-jellyfish/
We are marking time for a few weeks yet. Various commitments have kept us at home since November (not to mention the weather!) We had planned to be out next week but have been thwarted by stoppages. We though a trip towards Bath would be nice next week once the ground paddle at the top of Seend locks has been repaired; it was scheduled for this week, but has now been put back till next week – we imagine that the hire companies had strongly objected to the timing as it’s half-term. As we’re in Caen Hill marina that would leave us with a very short cruise indeed as we don’t want to go up the flight just yet!
Oh well, better get on with repairing fence panels ….
