Blog - Dec 29th 2006

Well, Christmas has been and gone already and we hope yours was great and would like to wish everyone a happy and healthy New Year ahead.

Our Christmas, to be honest, was a bit shit! Sean did his back in lifting Elsan toilets down the towpath, then got flu on Christmas Day – leaving the 7 month pregnant Julia with all the huffing and puffing of cooking the Christmas meal. Not an easy feat when you’ve got too fat to tie your own shoelaces! (Although we did cheat slightly and bought pre-cooked vegetables from M&S for prosperity.)

This also meant that the DooLallys had to cancel their Jericho Boatyard gig at the last minute, as Sean was in too much pain to get out of bed most of the time, which was a huge disappointment to us. By all accounts however, the evening was a great success, and the boaters managed to pack in enough drinking time to make up for the whole year, from what we were told and from the hungover state of people’s faces that we saw the following morning!

The good news for us, however, is that the Fourth Annual Floating Tionol for next year is now fully booked. Amazing to think that the event almost didn’t happen the first time round, and yet now we are oversubscribed. Credit for making the event such a success must go to pipemaker Brian Howard. (Who also made Sean’s beloved set of pipes – and quite a wonderful set they are too.) He was the tutor for the first three events and really publicized it well, using his gift of the gab to enrol students from across Europe and the US. Thanks Brian.

Next years event will have the superb piper, Leo Rickard, as the tutor. Sean met Leo at a piper’s gathering in Ireland last February, and he is a true gentleman as well as one of Ireland’s leading Uilleann pipers. It will be a great opportunity for students and audience alike to witness his playing. The Tionol will cruise from Oxford to Pangbourne and back, taking in five consecutive pub music sessions each evening. These are free to all visiting Irish traditional musicians and audience alike. We shall also have Alan Burton along, to lead the reedmaking classes, he is also a consummate and exciting piper and will be with us the first day. (You can see some of the photos from previous Tionols on the DooLallys website.)

In November Sean also attended the South Western Pipers Club Tionol in Tintagel, Cornwall. This was a highly enjoyable event, with Mick O’Brien from Dublin as the tutor and concert highlight. Mick is a strict taskmaster though: if corporal punishment were not illegal, Sean thought Mick might carry a cane in his pipes case for pipers who play a roll or triplet without enough élan!

It was also great to get down to Cornwall again and have a bit of time by the sea. Funny to think, as we live on a boat, but we do sometimes feel a bit land-locked here in Oxford. Toilet reading for us is often a stray yachting magazine where we dream of donning sails and heading out into the wild oceans for a while.

Somehow, we have managed to come back to the toilet situation! Not quite sure how that happened, but seeing as we are here – a small winge about narrowboat living: Cassette toilets.

Don’t know if anyone else had the same experience as us, but the 100 degree heat of this summer past and our Elsan toilet were just not that compatible it would seem. We are constantly trying to think of alternatives (an eco-toilet thingy? A holding tank? Regular visits to Starbucks?)

Still, this summer when a friend of ours from a previous Tionol was cruising by on the Thames, we had the opportunity to go and see his eco-toilet for ourselves. The thing was: it was massive. I mean seriously, it was like some kind of weird time machine, taking up nearly all of the precious bathroom space. Perhaps more suitable for the Star Ship Enterprise.

Also, because of the inevitable build up of methane inside, you need to get a chimney through the roof which helps the gas escape. Another downer which meant that you are constantly treated with the whiff of your own sewage as you cruise down the cut.

More suited to the wood cabins of remote Canada perhaps?

Then on the other hand we have heard so much about holding tanks and how they can build up inside and stink, or overflow, or block up. And then on top of this you often have to pay loads of money just to empty them – plus you have to move the boat to get to the place where you can empty them in the first place.

It seems we are left with no choice but to return again and again to our Elsan toilet. Or, as we said, trek up to Starbucks.

Still, in the end, perhaps the Starbucks solution ends up being the most expensive one of all. As we find it near impossible to leave the building without having spent at least a tenner.

Can someone please tell us how that happens? I mean, we only went in for a coffee and a quick dump!!!!!