A Narrow Boat trip Down Memory Lane.

Last night Peter and I watched an episode of Great Canal Journeys following the actors Timothy West and Prunella Scales as they navigate down canals. It is interesting to see the places they travel through and especially poignant as Pru is in the early stages of dementia though it is not very noticeable. 

Back in the day my mother was friends with Tim and Pru. I recall going to Stratford upon Avon with my mother when I was about 10 where Tim showed us around the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. I remember the vastness of the rehearsal room and being allowed to go right out onto the main stage. We also watched a performance of the RSC which as there were Roman soldiers in must have been Julius Caesar.

In last night's programme they followed the canals around London, through Regent's Park, Camden Lock and down to Limehouse Baisin. When we were first married we lived in East London and I spent a lot of time helping on a city farm and looking after people's horses. Every now and again I would ride Cream Boy along the towpath next to those canals. And there was the occasion when I and a number of teenagers who hung round the city farm went swimming in the canal (shorts and t-shirts) next to one of the locks.

Last night's canal trip ended at Limehouse and featured Canary Wharf (with the pyramid on top) which was built when we were living nearby. At the time it was the tallest building in the country and it's now the 2nd tallest. There weren't so many other tall buildings around and when we returned from our re-enactment weekends and were approaching London from the higher ground to the north it could be seen from many miles away. In our family this led to it being called "The Big Building".

The programme ended with a visit to The Grapes or The Bunch of Grapes as it was known for most of the last 500 years. It's only 5 mins walk from the first school I taught in and we've been in there a number of times. Nothing much has changed probably not even since Dickens wrote about it. A bonus for me was that the landlord is Sir Ian McKellen (Gandalf). 

Back to Devon - it's still warm and mostly wet. I've spent the day pottering about, tidying up and sorting cupboards. Tonight I meet up with a lot of people from work for our Christmas do. Once again it's at The Motel. Hopefully we'll have a table in the main room near the dance floor and I might even be tempted to get up and dance.

I'm getting better at this IT stuff. This morning I found out how to fix Chrome so that all the pages I was viewing before I turned off the pc reappear when I turn Chrome back on. I had that before but not with Windows 10. All I had to do was type in my request to Google and follow the instructions on one of the many sites that came up. Simple when you know how but baffling when you've never done it before.