No boating today I have to go to Peterborough. So its off the boat at 0830 past Lapworth school (Where the signs saying "parents are asked not to bring and take their children from school by car" was clearly not working. Particularly for with the 4X4 brigade who only seemed able to park on the footpath) Then Train to Birmingham for train to Peterborough. Bought a great book which was recommended to me called "1599 a year in the life of Shakespeare"
So no boating but maybe an excerpt from a book called "The Flower of Gloster" about Lowsonford where we were on Sunday night. The "Flower of Gloster" was written in 1911 about a trip on a horse drawn boat called The Flower of Gloster down the Stratford canal. The author, E. Temple Thurson hired a hand (Eynesham Harry) his boat and a horse called Fanny for this trip in a different age. This is what he said about Lowsonford.
"You could well spend a summer in the village of Lowson Ford and forget the world is moving around you. It is an event, unparalleled when a boat comes through the lock to Stratford. All the children rush down the street to watch it as it passes through the lock.The fat lock keepers wife wakes from her long somnolence, bestirs herself under the admiring eye of all the children, though she has nothing whatsoever to do. Her big woolly dog, of a breed as I have never seen before or since, rouses himself from the sun warmed coping stones of the lock and follows after her. Oh Lowson Ford, I can tell you, is wide awake when a boat goes through. Then Lowson Ford turns on its side once more, and for many a month to come sleeps like a baby in its cradle of the hills."
So no boating but maybe an excerpt from a book called "The Flower of Gloster" about Lowsonford where we were on Sunday night. The "Flower of Gloster" was written in 1911 about a trip on a horse drawn boat called The Flower of Gloster down the Stratford canal. The author, E. Temple Thurson hired a hand (Eynesham Harry) his boat and a horse called Fanny for this trip in a different age. This is what he said about Lowsonford.
"You could well spend a summer in the village of Lowson Ford and forget the world is moving around you. It is an event, unparalleled when a boat comes through the lock to Stratford. All the children rush down the street to watch it as it passes through the lock.The fat lock keepers wife wakes from her long somnolence, bestirs herself under the admiring eye of all the children, though she has nothing whatsoever to do. Her big woolly dog, of a breed as I have never seen before or since, rouses himself from the sun warmed coping stones of the lock and follows after her. Oh Lowson Ford, I can tell you, is wide awake when a boat goes through. Then Lowson Ford turns on its side once more, and for many a month to come sleeps like a baby in its cradle of the hills."
Sentimental perhaps from a different age but somewhere, somewhere, in its hidden recesses a little tiny bit of this spirit still remains.
No comments:
Post a Comment