40 YEARS OF BCNS
This year sees BCNS celebrate 40 years in existence. The 1st meeting was in July 1868 and throughout this year I would like to record some memories from the past. We start here with a super memory from almost the very beginning from John Philips who was Chairman for a time in both the 70's and 80's. Maybe it will prompt some more of you to write to Boundary Post.
In the Beginning.
In Boundary Post Edition 178, our retiring chairman Phil Clayton points out that 2008 will bring the society to forty years of age, and goes on the say 'It would be good if some of our founder members would get in touch and share memories of the BCNS's early days'. I am not, strictly speaking, a founder member, but the elderly are well known for reminiscing. Indeed it is hard to stop some of them, and I am one of those.
It is interesting to note that in issue 109 of January 1990, the then editor under the heading 'Twenty-one years ago', asked 'Well, how did the BCN Society start them?' and that started me on a series of little articles about those old days.
I enjoyed writing them, so it mattered not a jol whether they were ever published, or rejected by the same or a later editor. By now, at any rate, they are lost in the mists of time, and times have greatly changed. I therefore seek now to bore a new audience with a new set, in which I shall seek to notice some of the many changes which have taken place.
The Inaugural Meeting which founded the Society was held in the upper room of the New Inn, Park Street, Walsall, on the evening of 25th July 1968. First I think that I should explain that quite a few hostelries around the West Midlands had, at that time, a large upstairs room, often known as the club room. These rooms could be hired for an evening by any person or group seeking to hold a function and were of benefit to both sides of the bargain, as they provided a large suitably furnished venue to the hirer, and the possibility of substantial extra sales to the publican. To those who might now seek to find The New Inn, I can disappointment, It was not new, even in 1968, and has long since gone and now forms part of, when I last saw it, a shopping mall adjacent to the railway station.
I was not at that meeting, being busy at the time building canals in a sandy beach with my young family. However, on my return I found, in the cockpit of the modest plastic boat which was so dear to my heart, and was moored at Longwood on what was then a British Waterways mooring for half-a-dozen boats, a note telling me of the formation of the society, and when and where it would next meet.
That could, so easily, have been the end of the matter, but I had already cruised enough of the BCN and other waterways to know that it was worthwhile to seek to preserve the canals that still existed, and that of all the canals of Britain, the hundred miles which made up the BCN were, probably, the most in need of a little loving care. I therefore determined to be at the next meeting of this new society. Had I decided against so doing, I could, no doubt, have saved myself a great deal of time, of trouble, a little money, and a lot of fun.
A few weeks later I was cruising by 'car' along Woden Road, Wednesbury, shortly after the time that the first formal meeting of the BCNS was due to take place, in search of the address assigned. I found no large buildings or public halls, but eventually did find a quite modest house which seemed to be the address which I had. Somewhat tentatively I sught admission, and to my surprise, was made positively welcome by the half dozen ladies and gentlemen posed at their confortable ease in the front room of this house. It seemed that the meeting was quite informal. One person present was trying to take minutes, so would be the secretary of the society, and another was possibly the treasurer, although there being no funds, that position carried no immediate responsibilities. I apologised for my late arrival, and drew no response. Conversation, which seemed quite general, continued unabated. Slowly it dawned on me that what I had quite wrongly interupted, was in fact the entire membership of the society. I was invited to sit, so I sat, and listened to what was being said, feeling sure that I had much to learn.
Light refreshments were served, but that did nothing to slow the continuous discussion which, it is fair to say, did centre on the BCN. Time passed, rather swiftly, and I began to consider the wisdom of offering further apologies, and, having arrived late, to seek to leave early. To do so would appear to be less than polite, but nothing seemed likely to bring an end to this discussion which seemed to me to have no agenda, and to reach no conclusions.
At around midnight a decision was reached, which then, and indeed, even now, leaves me amazed. It was agreed that the meeting would adjourn forthwith, to the cold, dark, dank banks of the Tame Valley Canal, there to conduct what one of our most famous canal heroes termed an 'Ocular Survey'. Before doing so, however, we were all pressed by our host to come and see something in the back room of the house. That something proved to be quite the finest collection of Measham Pottery I had ever seen, or perhaps ever would see outside a museum. We were in the house of a family which had been driven off the cut, and onto the land, and this pottery was evidence of their treasured memories of that life now gone, but certainly not forgotten.
The instant and unanimous enthusiasm generated by the proposal to visit the nearest part of the BCN at one o'clock in the morning seemed to me to be quite mad. You may agree. Certainly I felt that I had more pressing domestic duties elsewhere, and took myself off to attend to them, leaving all the others to walk to the canal side. I had however learnt two things that night.
First that these young people probably lacked direction, but had unbounded energy and enthusiasm, and a very real love of these shabby canals which had so few friends, and second, that there never was a great big gap between the working boats manned by that very special breed of men and women who lived on and by the cut, and those, like myself, who now sought to use and improve the canals as a liesure facility.
We were then but a few years from the days of boats moving endlessly on the BCN. Nearly all the canals were then quiet, but it needed not to be so. The canal folk naturally viewed with suspicion those few new people like myself who ventured to wish to share that which had but recently been their own special and different world, but, ignorant as we were, we too loved the waterways, and our numbers were growing rapidly. Our enthusiasm, and our energy knew no bounds other that those of our lack of knowledge. We were at the bottom of what has since become known as a 'learning curve'.
One that could only lead upwards.
