He records how his wife retained his mother's old spare button bags after she died:

My wife Jan spent a great deal of time caring for Mother in her final years. She cherishes the small things Mother left, things valuable only to those who loved her. Jan is a quilter, and she especially loved Mother’s collection of buttons.

For Christmas this year, she decided others needed to share this legacy. This is the note she wrote to the women and girls in our immediate family. The button bags were given to Mother’s granddaughters and great-granddaughters.

His wife's note to the next generation in the family begins:

Granny was very frugal, as were most women of her era.  As garments would wear out, Granny would cut off the buttons before disposing of the garment, saving them for future use. 

The buttons on your bag are some that she saved.  She would have thought it very special that they were placed on a bag made just for you, her granddaughter, with special keepsakes inside. 

Not a lot to do with canals, but I found it most charming, and - as you can see - it has a lot to do with buttons.  This counts as relevant to the subject of my blog, I think. 

Granny's Buttons by Jim Ainsworth

My own Mother wasn't a clothes button collector, although being brought up in WW2 she was frugal in her own way.  Granny Buttons acquired her soubriquet from her routine of always bringing packets of chocolate buttons to her grandchildren.

If you want a canal connection, here's another heartwarming story: 

Over five years ago I reported on how NB Emerald was burned by vandals at its moorings near Wolverhampton - and it only had the necessary 3rd-party insurance - owners Dave and Julie never imagined they'd be the target of arsonists.

The distraught owners were homeless, until fellow narrowboater Dave Pokhan stepped in to organise not just a collection to help rebuild it, but to arrange sponsorship from local businesses. 

The story is here on my post Emerald News and Friends of Emerald progress - and follow the links back to the original post).

Yesterday I passed Emerald, now beautifully restored.   Apparently it's now going to be called M2, or is it Em II?  It was hard to tell with our brief and shouted conversation as I passed. 

It took 18 months of restoration, but they got their home back, and more beautiful than before. It seemed churlish to ask them about insurance, but I'd love to know that side of the story.

Anyway, here's how it looks now - lovely, although rather more mauve or taupe than emerald.

I was quick off the mark to apply, six months ago. Indeed, my application was the 116th received, so was in good time.

While there's sadness, then again it would have needed considerable effort and organisation for Granny to take part. And it would have required setting off for London a month earlier than planned.  So, really, everything is for the best.

As a consolation prize, they have offered me two tickets for a 'prime viewing area', which presumably means the right to be close enough to actually *see* the procession.

My ideal vantage point would be on London Bridge, looking towards Tower Bridge. There is no greater river view in the world. 

But all bridges will probably be closed on the day. They must be. Just think of all the juveniles waiting to droll and spit on the royal barge as it passes beneath. If you haven't been spat on by a yob on a bridge, you aren't a real boater.

I was spat on by a yob near Salford Junction last summer, and the humiliation was compounded by drops falling into a pint mug of ale I was about to drink. 

Some years ago Granny was about to pass under a bridge in Manchester and I waved to two young boys, who waved back cheerily. As I came out the other side, a rain of maggots fell on my head, and the boys whooped with delight, waving their now-empty bait bucket.

Maggots found their way down my collar, and I had to stop, change my clothes and spend an hour sweeping up the wriggling detritus. I still found maggots in the bedroom as I was getting ready for bed, and dreamed of alien monsters for days afterwards.

Hmm, when I come to think about it, I'd rather be on the bridge than on the boat.

(Sven Latham has an excellent account of the Four Counties Ring from a week's trip he did back in 2007).

There's a sense of change in the air for me. This is the longest voyage I've taken in 18 months, and the longest one Granny has been on since it returned to Willington last year.

I'll endeavour to return to a daily blog. You know, the way Granny used to be. The good old days.

A year or so later - as I remarked in Yes, 23 in a row is a record - Neil of nb Herbie said he'd seen 23 'Canada goslings' following a single parent.

Alan Weight wrote to me last week: 

I was sorting through my father's photos last week when I came across one he'd taken when out sailing off the Isle of Wight and thought you might be mildly amused.

I can count 30 geese in the pic (taken on APS film) but as you can see, they continue off either side of the pic, so who knows how many there might have been!

Any advance on 30?  What surprises me about this is that they are on salt water.  I know there's a lot of coastline in Canada, but I hadn't realised Canada Geese were also seabirds.

Max has campaigned for over fifty years to get the Droitwich reopened.  He started, he told me, with a letter to the Birmingham Mail in 1959, protesting at plans to close and fill in another stretch (I forget which,  but his sharp mind will tell you if  you ask).

Assorted work parties laboured casually during the 1960s to stop the route being completely overgrown and squatted-on by local farmers, who'd grown used to extending their fields into the line of the canal. 

Finally, in 1973 the Droitwich Canals Trust was established and restoration, rather than just protection of the route, began.

Read the history of the restoration on the Droitwich Canals Trust at www.worcs.com/dct/newhistory.htm, but it doesn't mention those first fourteen tough, lonelier years for Max. I'm not sure if there's a website that chronicles his own personal struggles at this time.

Sadly, his wife Jocelyn,who helped so much in the early years, died a few years ago, before BW committed itself to finishing the restoration.  But it must have been gratifying for him to have the rest of his family with him, and to complete this journey on her behalf.

The slideshow here hosts a selection of the photos I took, including operation of the sideponds on the top locks. When

I think this is the first time sideponds have been opened for public use on the UK canals in many years (apart from the Foxton and Watford flights), and may set a precedent for reopening many of the others around the country. I'd never seen these sideponds in operation before and was intrigued.

When the Droitwich Junction Canal opened in 1854 it must have felt like a demanding and thirsty cuckoo to the longer-established Worcester & Birmingham Canal that fed it. 

This is because the first three locks are twice as deep as the W&B's locks above. 

So it was inevitable that BW had to bring the sideponds back into operation, setting a precedent for all the others around the country.  As ordinary boaters learn to use these useful lock 'extensions' and more are brought back into use, it might help ease the water problem around the rest of the country.

Above: The side pond starts to fill at Lock 2 of the Droitwich Junction Canal. Note the boat still high in the lock.

Below: And - voilà! - the boat is almost gone from view, as half the water drains from the lock into the pond, ready to be reused to half-fill the lock again when the next boat comes up.

This allows almost half-a-lock of water to be reused for each filling, reducing the canal's thirst.

Anyway, such a pleasant and rewarding day for Max and his family.  They cruised on Horik, a boat that Viking Afloat granted to Max for a long weekend in tribute to his efforts.

Teddington Lock in winter dusk, on 30th December 2008. Monty Python fans make pilgrimages from around the world to this site, to honour the location of the legendary Fish Slapping Dance:

Where Remembrance Day is about the 'glorious dead' (and is usually filled with war poetry),  A Farewell To Arms  is perhaps its reverse.  It answers the question 'How should those who survive conduct their lives?' 

The answer, says George Peele, is generally in thinking about the present and the future, not the past.  His poem is about an old soldier, a retired knight, who puts aside thoughts of youth - he wants to spend his time serving his queen (or 'goddess'), who still lives:

  A FAREWELL TO ARMS

  His golden locks Time hath to silver turn'd;
  O Time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing!
  His youth 'gainst time and age hath ever spurn'd,
  But spurn'd in vain; youth waneth by increasing:
  Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen;
  Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.

  His helmet now shall make a hive for bees;
  And, lovers' sonnets turn'd to holy psalms,
  A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees,
  And feed on prayers, which are Age his alms:
  But though from court to cottage he depart,
  His Saint is sure of his unspotted heart.

  And when he saddest sits in homely cell,
  He'll teach his swains this carol for a song,--
  'Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well,
  Curst be the souls that think her any wrong.'
  Goddess, allow this aged man his right
  To be your beadsman now that was your knight.

The beadsman (or bedesman) is someone who prays for the soul of others.  The dictionary says 'paid to pray', but the poem suggests it can be someone who does it for simple duty.

George Peele was addressing Queen Elizabeth I, so this is not a poem for republicans, except where the queen is a metaphor for those who survive. 

I rather like the lines:

  Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen;
  Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.

and

  A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees,
  And feed on prayers, which are Age his alms:

Of course, eventually doing anything on your clapped-out knees is an impossibility, but you get the metaphor.

Here's my father's last visit to Granny Buttons, at Loughborough in December 2006, with my sister.  His knees were too far gone to come aboard, sadly.

"How are you, Daddy?" we'd ask.

"All right above the knees!" he'd reply chirpily.