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Kate_MM

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  • Gender
    Female
  • Boat Name
    Morning Mist
  • Boat Location
    South Oxford

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  1. Thank you everyone for your ideas, suggestions, comments and information - all really helpful. Now I just have to write the play! See you in June...
  2. I didn't know that! Love to know more... Here's the original acknowledgement from the first edition of Idle Women by Susan Woollfitt
  3. Thank you - a very good pointer! I'll get in touch with them Thank you - I've downloaded it. It's fascinating how much related material is turning up. Just need to turn it all into theatre now!
  4. Don't feel to bad - it's a very commonly perpetuated myth!
  5. I haven't seen the maypole one - the school will love that! And I think I can find the source for the boy on the fence because I have seen that somewhere else. Thank you xx thank you, I know of the archive but haven't searched it in relation to this - but it would make sense with FMC being based in Birmingham
  6. The nickname did come from the book, or more accurately, the title of the book - Susan Woolfitt's daughter Harriet suggested it based on the IW National Service badge. The term was never used by the trainees or anyone else during the war. They were only ever known as 'trainees' as far as we have been able to ascertain. Oddly, the origin of the term is only ever acknowledged in the first edition of the book (I have a photo somewhere - I have glimpsed a first edition, no chance of ever owning one). Which is a shame because despite the 120+ performances of Idle Women of the Wartime Waterways that Heather Wastie and I have taken to many corners of the system as well as the numerous talks given by the acknowledged expert, Mike Constable, the myth that it was a nickname created by the boatmen or the women themselves persists!! As to the Bottom Rd story I would agree, Susan Woolfitt was there. Rose Ramlin is a fictional character but her story is based entirely on the interviews Sheila Stewart recorded, a key one being Ada Littlemore, so we drift into the interesting area of memory and shared stories versus the factual.
  7. That is exceeding interesting. The boatmen of the north seem to be a very different breed from the Midlands and south - the 1923 strike was very much initiated by the union rather than the boatmen, whereas the Liverpool bargemen were clearly acting independently. Thank you, you have widened my horizons, although whether I can work that into the show is probably questionable if accuracy is to be central! The only other strike I had come across any mention of, and I'm not sure it really was a strike, was resisting the instructions of the 'company' (not sure which but probably the GUCCC) that pairs that had delivered a load to Tyesley from London had to use the Bham & Fazeley, known as the Bottom Rd, to go on to Coventry to load coal. They hated it because it meant double locking and bowhauling the butty through the single locks. thank you again x That is brilliant information - I am in touch with the history society but have yet to actually get to ferret in their cupboard! Knowing this might be there has got me very excited. The children in yrs 4,5 & 6 are so looking forward to creating their own show about an event that happened in their village. I have never worked with a school so committed and involved in a project.
  8. Thank you, a really good suggestion. I was already planning to search it for 1920s village stories but I confess I hadn't thought to add the boatmen's strike, so a very useful prod! Haven't started that yet because, although we have ACE funding it doesn't cover everything and we need to so some fundraising to contribute 10% of the budget. So, we currently have a small crowdfunder going to cover a subscription to both the news archive and the 1921 Census. I'm hoping the census will reveal the boating families with links on the bank. Also I did know that an extra teacher was drafted into the school but hadn't come across mention of teaching the adults - something I can definitely bring in. Or the delays because the horses needed some attention. Is that something you have sourced from the archive? Thanks again x
  9. Hi, thank you! I do have the Braunston village website link, and, I think, most of the images on Bing. But the Narrowboat piece (although I'll have to ask if they will release a copy for me) and the steamershistorical are both new and very useful. Thanks again x
  10. I hadn't heard the thing about the bugs - but it makes sense. And good point about the black bonnets, I think a lot of people think that black was the norm because it's what you see in most photos - probably because it happened to coincide with Victoria's death!
  11. A century on from probably the only strike by boatmen... or at least, the only one that seems to have made the history books. I am currently researching this for a new play to be premiered at the Historic Boat Rally at Braunston in June (and for a new show to be performed by Years 4,5,& 6 at Braunston Primary). It is part of a bigger village/canal community theatre project part funded by the Arts Council. Tim Coghlan of Braunston Marina is also supporting and we will be crowdfunding as well. Do you, or your boat, have any links to the strike? Do you know of an FMC boat that was there? I haven't found a definitive list, just one photo of Australia. I would love to hear from you and be able to include your contribution - which will be acknowledged in the programme, website etc. I have found various resources online and identified some long standing Braunston residents who come from boating stock and whose parents or grandparents took part. But I'm sure there is more out there about the strike. But I'm sure there are more stories and recollections (albeit passed on - I doubt there is anyone living who can remember back that far!) that would both contribute to telling the story but also add to our knowledge of boating heritage. A little more about the project can be found here: https://alarumproductions.org.uk/portfolios/braunston-1920s2020s/ By way of background: Alarum Productions focusses on telling the stories of the waterways - until now, mostly the stories of women - in ways that are thoroughly researched and carefully presented to be both accurate and entertaining. We have performed Idle Women of the Wartime Waterways; Acts of Abandon and I Dig Canals at the historic show and toured widely. Not as widely as Mikron, but there are only two of us and we aren't quite as young as them! The current Towpath Talk has a nice piece by Tim C about Arts Council support for arts on the waterways (us and Mikron). And I don't why it loaded sideways...
  12. I think something similar was worn by many women who worked outdoors - whether on the water or on the fields - as protection from sun or rain. My sense of life for boatwomen was that they were unlikely to wear something to signify their occupation, I'm not sure they saw it as an 'occupation', more life that you just got on with! One thing that does seem to be clear is that they would always wear a head covering of some sort, even after the bonnet went out of fashion (according to Ramlin Rose, in the early 20s).
  13. I think it was always a struggle once the railways came - although both world wars provided a brief renaissance, with more cargo. There was one boaters strike - a century ago, in 1923. Although in some ways it wasn't a 'boaters' strike because it was very led by the TGWU union who were keen to sign up inland waterway boatmen as well as the river and estuary workers. It involved FMC boats, lasted 14 weeks from mid August and was focused on Braunston where around 50 boats stopped. It wasn't a tale of worker triumph I'm afraid, the boaters came out of it with only a slightly less worse deal than the company had offered in the first place. But it's a fascinating tale and I'm currently working on two productions to tell the story - one will be at the historic boat show in June at Braunston Marina and the other at the primary school (so not public). There is also mention of 'a sit down strike' over the insistence during WWII (not sure by who) that the GUCC (and possibly other) boats who had delivered their cargo of wood or aluminium to Tyesley for onward travel to the Birmingham factories travel on to the Coventry coalfields to collect coal for London via The Bham& Fazeley, known as 'the bottom road'. It was supposed to be saving water. They hated it, it was filthy (some of it still is) and involved bowhauling the butty through every one of the single locks. I've seen two accounts of this - one in Susan Woolfitt's book Idle Women (the source of that famous nickname) who talks about a sit down strike, but also in Ramlin Rose where the trainees are credited with refusing to fight their way through it and insisted on returning via the GU to Braunston and then up the North Oxford. Which is the more true, I don't know!
  14. I think I know the one you mean - a much simpler version designed for camping/festivals/occasional use. The one I saw was an over engineered affair I saw on a Youtube video in an American tiny home. I don't know why I get sucked into watching these things, fascinated by all that tidiness and minimalism that I will never achieve perhaps... 🙂
  15. I love the 'human used food expulsion system'! HUFES... I have seen a waterless loo that uses a disposal bag with some kind of absorbent gel in. You load up a roll of them, and after each use the loo seals the bag and you end up with a sort of long sausage of your used food. It struck me as rather expensive and wasteful as well as very dependent on the proprietary liner bags. Not sure what you do if you run out...
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