Abingdon to Henley - and beyond

We set off early from Abingdon - in blazing sunshine, which made a welcome change - and thoroughly enjoyed seeing people heading off to work.  As everyone knows, part of the loveliness of having a holiday is knowing that other people aren't, but we soothed our shadenfreude-tainted consciences with the thought that at least they were walking or cycling along a beautiful riverside. We even tried to look a bit miserable as we waved at them, and you can't say fairer than that.

Or maybe you can.  We've seen and talked to yet more young people who see life on the inland waterways as their only chance to have a stake in the unfair society we've built for them. They are the lucky ones, too - they can't see any way that they could ever buy a house, but they still have enough money behind them to be able to afford a boat, just about.  We met a young couple in Reading yesterday who've been living with parents for five years so as to be able to buy what's known as a 'sailaway' - this is a boat with an engine but not much else.   It had grey primer on it, no loo or shower yet, but they were so pleased and grateful and proud, and it was a joy to see.  We keep meeting them at locks, and it's lovely.  But they had parents who were able to help; not everyone does.

We've also just been through Henley on Thames, which doesn't make you feel much better.  Beautiful riverside homes, but for miles either side there are 'No Mooring' and  'Private Property' signs (sometimes both nailed to the same tree - we were very sorely tempted to moor up there!).  Even where mooring is allowed, it costs £10 a night. It's not the money exactly, and we wouldn't dream of parking up in someone's back garden, but I really don't see the harm in pulling over next to a rural riverbank.  

It's also not as if the river is busy (it's raining pretty much all the time and the Regatta was over by mid-July), so it seems a quite unpleasant aspect of Henley:  controlling, exclusive, and just wrong.  On the plus side, we saw another boat flying an EU flag today - much beeping and smiling and waving, and even shouts of "Yay, Vince Cable!"  

Well, I'm more of a Corbynista myself, as you know, but I'm absolutely there with Vince that "the old have comprehensively shafted the young. And the old have had the last word about Brexit, imposing a worldview coloured by nostalgia for an imperial past on a younger generation much more comfortable with modern Europe".  I'm very glad someone is saying so.

Things ARE so much harder for young people these days.  My dad was rescued from Dunkirk (and knew the value of a united Europe first-hand), and he and my mum lived on a council estate till the year after I was born.   The house we moved into cost £5,000, and it was entirely possible for one person on very ordinary wages to afford it.  That same house is 'worth' getting on for a million now, and would be completely out of reach for a butcher, which was my dad's job at the time.  People who own houses now really don't know how lucky they are - we all like to think it's our own cleverness, but it it's not:  housing poverty is a choice that has been made, election after election, by the older and better-off to continue to profit at the expense of  the young and the poor.  I have been one of the lucky ones, but I'm hopeful that the young and the poor are finally starting to realise how thoroughly they've been shafted - and that a fairer society will eventually come out of it.  A society that fails to look after its weakest members is unsustainable in the long term, as I'm sure Marie Antionette would agree.

So, enough of politics!  Today we went through Days Lock at Little Wittenham, which is the home of Pooh Sticks!   Apparently the National Pooh Sticks Championships are held here every year as a fundraiser for the RNLI.  That seems slightly bizarre on the Inland Waterways, but it's a good cause regardless - and actually everything is a bit bizarre on the Inland Waterways, including the almost total eradication of the word Isis.  The Thames, upstream of where the river Thame joins, used to be known as the Isis, as was Oxford University's student paper and a dog in Downton Abbey - all gone now.

Another thing gone - temporarily - is our resolve to make this a healthy holiday:  walks on the towpath, lots of vegetables, and only a moderate amount of booze, that was the idea.   We're doing ok on the walks and the veg;  not quite so well on the booze.   Drinking does seem to go with the boating territory (we're seeing a LOT of bottles at the recycling facilities we pass, and some of our fellow boaters do seem quite pissed, not that we can cast aspersions) but we're still going to have to acquire some discipline from somewhere if we want to stave off alcoholism and bankruptcy.

In the meantime, here's a song about drinking too much.  It's very dark but very good, and was written by Charles Aznavour (something I also find bizarre).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6i5mOgWd6s