WORDS once SPOKEN now CAPTURED
March 2, 2025
On the Leading Edge of Spring
Send us a text Along the towpath winter slowly fades. If we are not quite in spring yet, we can feel it close at hand. Join us tonight as we celebrate the shifts in light and tone across the landscape and from deep within in ...
Feb. 9, 2025
Orion Still Looks Down (On the land my shadow knows)
Send us a text It’s a bitingly cold, sleety night. There’s a warning of snow in the forecast for later. It’s a perfect night to sit together around a warm stove snug inside the Erica’s cabin, while the wild world rages outsid...
Jan. 12, 2025
Wrapped in Freezing Fog
Send us a text Join us aboard the Erica , as we sit around the stove on a raw night of ice and freezing fog. Tonight, we reflect on boat (and other) life in the times of hard frost, the trials of swan and kingfisher life, and...
Nov. 17, 2024
The Days of No Shadow (... and then a deer barked)
Send us a text Recently, Britain experienced a blocking high pressure system, leading to an extended period of ‘anticyclonic gloom.’ Such are the conditions in which myths are created and, as the story of Blodeuwedd and Lleu ...
Nov. 3, 2024
"Stretched into Tales that Leave a Mark"
Send us a text Two rather wonderful things have happened recently which has prompted me to take a reflective look back at this podcast and the journey we have taken together. One of these was being sent some excerpts of essay...
Oct. 6, 2024
A Touch of Autumn (Apple picking time)
Send us a text Join us on the narrowboat Erica on a moonless, star-filled night as we celebrate autumns, real and imagined, present and remembered. Although October (at the moment) is far from 'golden', it is apple picking ti...
Sept. 8, 2024
It turned a bit wet (Afloat in Hiroshige's rain storm)
Join us tonight as Erica a wends ‘snailward’ home through a heavy rain storm - recorded, aptly enough, during another heavy rain storm! Hear also about our adventures with a drowning pigeon. Journal entry : 3rd September, Tue...
Aug. 11, 2024
Holiday Interlude (& the Cap'n's Dad)
We’re on HOLIDAY! And so, a rather truncated and spur of the moment podcast tonight. However, join us as we enjoy a spot of tranquillity canal-style. We also hear a lovely story from one of our long-time listeners and lock-wh...
July 14, 2024
Spun by Wonderment (above Hemel Hempstead)
There are times that can touch us deeply. Very often they are not about finding a place of peace or somewhere outstandingly beautiful. It is something else. Something beyond these things. It is about encountering something wo...
June 30, 2024
Living inside the Seasons
This episode was inspired by a sentence in Beth Kempton's Wabi Sabi and explores how calendars can connect us more closely to the world around us. Join us tonight as we explore the year through the eyes of some Japanese poets...
June 16, 2024
The Children of the Children of Lir
Join us on a wet and windy night as, tonight, we listen the strange and untameable tale of Fionnghuala, Oadh, Fiacra and Conn, the children of Lir, and meet up with our own (children of the) children of Lir who share their ow...
June 2, 2024
A Sunday Morning in May
Sometimes episodes have a mind of their own and take you to unplanned places they think you need to go. This is one of those episodes. One ‘soft’ Sunday morning in May in John Clare country. Journal entry : 31st May, Friday “...
May 12, 2024
First Impressions (On canal life)
In tonight’s episode we meet a couple of beautiful spring flowers with some fearsome reputations and go about spring cleaning a very messy and cluttered boat with the help of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows . Journa...
April 14, 2024
Just shadows on a summer lawn
For us the river of the year has, so far, been roaring and fierce. It is difficult, at times, to see the bank or to even know whether we are floating or sinking. However, that is only one small part of the picture. What follo...
March 10, 2024
On Surveys and Winter Warmth (Listeners' questions - 6)
As the slow march of Spring travels along the canal and towpaths, tonight I answer two more questions: How do we keep the boat from freezing when we have to leave it unattended, and how long does it normally take to buy a nar...