That Very Particular Joy of Friday Nights (and crisps)

It's a blustery, moonless, and nearly starless night tonight, with the ever-present hint of rain in the air. So, why not come aboard the Erica for a while and reminisce about inconsequential things, the joy they bring, and how they form such strong bedrocks to our lives in an unsteady world?

Journal entry:

17th September, Wednesday

“Summer has left
 And strewn all along the towpath
 Is the detritus of its sojourn.
 Rusting wires of sorrel and dock,
 Hogweed spokes like upturned
 Discarded umbrellas.
 Hawthorn berries
 Litter the ground
 Like carelessly flung confetti
 The wind has now blown out
 The willowherb candles
 A few whisps of seeds
 Hang like cobwebs.

Now is the time
 For autumn’s
 Fires
 Hips, haws, rowan,
 Bryony and firethorn.”

Episode Information:

In the episode I mention the wonderful and beautifully produced celebration to nature and life on the canals and rivers of Britain, The Mindful Narrowboat vlog.

With special thanks to our lock-wheelers for supporting this podcast.

Susan Baker
Mind Shambles
Clare Hollingsworth
Kevin B.
Fleur and David Mcloughlin
Lois Raphael
Tania Yorgey
Andrea Hansen
Chris Hinds
Chris and Alan on NB Land of Green Ginger
Captain Arlo
Rebecca Russell
Allison on the narrowboat Mukka
Derek and Pauline Watts
Anna V.
Orange Cookie
Mary Keane.
Tony Rutherford.
Arabella Holzapfel.
Rory with MJ and Kayla.
Narrowboat Precious Jet.
Linda Reynolds Burkins.
Richard Noble.
Carol Ferguson.
Tracie Thomas
Mark and Tricia Stowe
Madeleine Smith

General Details

The intro and the outro music is ‘Crying Cello’ by Oleksii_Kalyna (2024) licensed for free-use by Pixabay (189988).

Narrowboat engine recorded by 'James2nd' on the River Weaver, Cheshire. Uploaded to Freesound.org on 23rd June 2018. Creative Commons Licence. 

Piano and keyboard interlud

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:25 Journal entry
• 1:18 Welcome to NB Erica
• 2:20 News from the moorings
• 7:24 Cabin chat
• 11:46 That very particular joy of friday nights (and crisps)
• 41:12 Signing off
• 41:28 Weather Log

Transcript

JOURNAL ENTRY

17th September, Wednesday

“Summer has left
 And strewn all along the towpath
 Is the detritus of its sojourn.
 Rusting wires of sorrel and dock,
 Hogweed spokes like upturned
 Discarded umbrellas.
 Hawthorn berries
 Litter the ground
 Like carelessly flung confetti
 The wind has now blown out
 The willowherb candles
 A few whisps of seeds
 Hang like cobwebs.

Now is the time
 For autumn’s
 Fires
 Hips, haws, rowan,
 Bryony and firethorn.”

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

It’s a blustery old night with a spit of rain in the air. Scudding clouds and no moon. It’s a highwayman kind of night tonight, wild and reckless that sets the oaks and alders sighing. With little light, the water is ink black, wind harrowed, choppy and ruffled.
 
 This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into the darkness of a breezy autumn night to you wherever you are.

Thank you so much for dropping by. There are rumours of rain in the forecast for tonight, so come inside, the kettle is on, a seat is waiting specially for you, let's find a little bit of peace and quiet together in a world of noise. Welcome aboard. 

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS

These are the days that you never know quite what to wear. You might pick a raincoat to cope with the showers only to be then too hot, or leave your jumper at home as it is lovely and sunny and warm only to be blind-sided by a blustery wind that has the edge of north in it. One thing that is fairly certain is that whatever you decide to wear in the morning, will be totally inappropriate for the afternoon. We appear to be reassuringly back in the territory of classic British weather!

This last couple of weeks have been characterised by successive bands of sunshine and showers. The grass is springing back and the pastures are once again turning back to being predominantly green. The canal we are currently on is now fully open, although there were a couple of section closures due to fallen trees, but I believe all of these have been resolved. My concerns about the locks being re-used and what that may mean locally to the water levels have been allayed. There has been a slow, but important increase in traffic and the water levels appear to be holding up very well.

Although it is great to see so much green returning to the fields, it is noticeable that the hedges and banksides are taking on a definite autumnal hue – there’s a wash of browns, oranges, tans, russets, scarlets, yellows, and ochre. Vegetation is beginning to die-back. Bramble branches heavy with blackberries, now beginning to taste a little watery, hang low in profusion – as if begging the casual passer-by to reach up a pluck a freely offered fruit – the labour of those wet spring days and the heat of summer. Black bryony has done very well this year. We normally get a pretty good showing, but this year it has been amazing. Thick braids of scarlet and vermillion berries drape and hang like richly jewelled bracelets along the hedgerows. Their limp brown withered leaves hanging incongruously between them – there is something fascinating and almost gothic about the discordance of the two – the dead leaves the vibrant aliveness of the berries. Sloes are also in abundance and the blend of the two – bryony and blackthorn – as each wrap around the other, create a gorgeous artist’s palette.     

The ducks are grouping. The juvenile males are beginning to show hints of an iridescent green sheen to their heads. For the most part, they get along with each other quite amiably, sharing the sunnier places on the bankside in which to sunbathe and doze. Although, I do see the younger males beginning to assert themselves with some of the older males. Generally, it is little more than a lowered neck in the direction of their competitor, sometimes it escalates to wing splashing and angry quacks. Flight duels are also in evidence, three sometimes more, cutting low over the fields and then swinging around a prominent tree marker and back down the canal. There’s a lot of activity in the skies at the moment, particularly at dawn and dusk. Great whirl-winding storm clouds of jackdaws and then rooks call and boil slowly working their way along the canal down to their roosts. Even our local heron has become more visible recently. At times, even picking his careful – long-legged – way, as if he is pantomiming walking on tip-toe, between the boats. He stands over the water, silent, statue still with only a yawn or a quick swallow to show he is something alive. The other morning, he was standing hunched in the middle of the sheep field. Motionless as two ravens flew overhead. His grey plumage looking for all the world like a clerical vestment bringing to mind Dylan Thomas’ memorable description of Llareggub’s “heron priested shores.”        

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]

THAT VERY PARTICULAR JOY OF FRIDAY NIGHTS (AND CRISPS)

Growing up, friday was my favourite day. It was the start of the weekend and the end of the school week. I loved school, but I loved being at home more. And I loved Friday because Friday night was Crisp Night. The strength and bond of a family is not so much forged by its grand gestures or the once in a lifetime adventure or holiday, but in its little local rituals; those small shared celebrations of life, perhaps rather mundane seeming or even, to outside eyes, inconsequential, but precious nonetheless. In my teenage years, if I were ever to have been asked to describe the one thing that characterised our family, I think I would have had to say ‘Friday nights’. Although, in all probability, I would have called it ‘Crisp Night.’ For that, essentially was what it was.

I will just pause here to explain if you are listening to this outside the UK. Crisps are crunchy savoury thin slices of fried or baked potato (although it can now also include other ingredients). The Oxford English Dictionary helpfully offers a definitive definition of them as being, “Crisp: In full potato crisp. A thin sliver of potato fried until crisp and eaten cold.” It also notes that the term’s first usage appears in a 1929 edition of the newspaper, The Star, and used in reference to a “potato crisp factory.” Although its use to describe a snack that has been quickly fried dates as far back as 1390, but these appear to relate to batter rather than potato and the crisps we know and love today. They are, what I believe in the United States, referred to as potato chips.   

Crisps were a special treat. We would only ever have crisps once a week – Friday night, or at birthdays and Christmas. Although, my memories of Christmas tend to be about little dishes of twiglets into which I would daintily plunge my fist at regular intervals, than of bowls of crisps. Crisps were special fare for us and I loved them. It never struck me as odd when my friends would pop open their bags at school and eat them with such apparent disregard or sense of occasion. To me it wasn’t strange at all. Our crisps were different – they were special. My friends had their lives and I had mine – and the small triumphs of my week (and the heady oases of my weekends) were celebrated in our Crisp Nights. I had yet to realise that Dad wasn’t happy at work and so, perhaps it was for this reason, that the institution of Friday nights was first formed. To celebrate the end of another working week with the untrampled vistas of the weekend ahead to look forward to. Maybe, in some unspoken way, that was why I picked up on this feeling that Friday nights were in some way sacrosanct, special.

The crisps were stored in a battered red Crawford’s biscuit tin. It was kept high up on shelf above my head in the pantry. And it was a pantry too. A proper, cool dark narrow little room that was squashed between the kitchen and the stair, with a frosted window high up on the outside wall – that I learnt to climb up to it and squeeze through it so that I could dangle like a monkey on the outside while peering into our neighbour’s garden and kitchen. I am sure by now it will have been turned into a downstairs toilet, but for Mum, it was the pantry where everything was stored from coats and duffle bags, wet-weather gear, walking sticks, umbrellas. In fact, everything that was to long or we couldn’t otherwise fit into the cupboard under the stairs. To the left, high up, there was an alcove in which you could keep all sorts of jars of pickles, preserves, jams and anything else that you need to store out of the way. And this was where the red Crawford’s biscuit tin of crisps was kept. 

I remember that the lid was quite close fitting. You had to get your nails right under its rim to prise the lid off. The reverse side of it was unpainted and would bend and warp your reflection in its blinding depths to the sound of thunder. And there, inside the tin, lay a little heap of coloured packets. I was a connoisseur of crisp packets; Golden Wonder, Chipmunk, Walkers, KP, Smiths (with their little blue packets of salt). They crackled to the touch and defied all efforts to smell their contents, even when you ran your nose along their crimped top edges. But their colours were so vivid you could almost taste their smell. The packets were works of art in themselves. One packet, Golden Wonder’s Ringos (Cheese & Onion and Pickled Onion) were decorated with cartoon cavemen; others had a little knight with bushy moustache (he was printed in a different colour to coordinate with the flavour). Each packet deserved to be studied and was carefully read, front and back. Sometimes there were offers and tokens to collect which would be cut/torn out and stored in all their saltiness in one of my collecting tins – I had another tin (a little red Chinese tea caddy) for Milky Bar wrappers and every time I carefully lifted the lid, I was transported into a world that smelt of Milky Bar chocolate. Some of the tempting offers on the back of crisp packets were so unmissable and sang a siren song so sweet, that playtimes at school were spent raking through the bins with a couple of my friends and retrieving fist-loads of used packets. Then the postman’s arrival would be breathlessly sought. I once received the membership pack to Golden Wonder’s Rock ‘n’ Rollers – a seventies (fictional) glam-rock band. The pack contained membership certificate, posters, badges and wonder of wonder, a floppy plastic record that skipped and jumped on the record player as it played the Rock ‘n’ Rollers theme song, ‘Bet you’re gonna like them’.    

Each Friday night, on the radio, Robin Boyle would introduce ‘Friday Night is Music Night’ from the Golders Green Hippodrome and its sweeping signature tune would soar through the house announcing our time to begin. Each of us would pick out our packet from the tin. Sis and I would have given our requests for type and flavour (oh the tongue teasing choice) to mum. My favourites were always something sharp and vinegary; the stronger the flavour the better. Potato and corn snacks that would draw all moisture out of the tongue and set the roof of the mouth on fire were to me eye-watering delight. Mum and dad invariably had plain, or ‘Ready Salted, as it was called. Even today, I can’t help equating maturity and feeling ‘grown-up’ when eating Ready Salted as opposed to a rather guilty immature pleasure of the flavoured varieties. Each of us would open our packet and hand them around for everyone to share.  Equality and fairness were premium. Sis and I would carefully compare the size of our selected crisps, lest one would be short changed by the other, and dad would pantomime with a wrinkled face to show his ‘appalled’ horror at the vinegary-ness of my choice. 

Sis and I would have a glass of fizzy lemonade (the other Friday night treat) that would tickle and fizz in our noses, dad would pour himself a pint of homebrew and make mum a shandy and our weekend would begin.

In the summer we would all sit outside; sometimes on the step outside the French-windows, sometimes on the garden steps leading up to the lawn, sometimes on the greenhouse steps (that smelt of the creosote, paraffin and tomato plants). The first image that comes into my mind when thinking of Mum, is her sitting on the step of the greenhouse. Her long legs in a chaos of angles, deep in a book, or maybe writing or drawing something. Sometimes, just sitting, listening to the life of the local neighbourhood rise and flow around her, drinking in the world. We kids, would sit or sprawl on the lawn. Sometimes, if the air turned chillier, a blanket would be spread out for us and it would be requisitioned by the dogs, but Sis and I don’t care. It was friday night. It was Crisp Night. Mum and dad squashed together perched on the little brick step of the greenhouse. Most times though, it was on the steps leading up to the lawn upon which we all sat, at various heights. Right beside them grew a large, straggly lavender bush, polka dotted with bees and languid syrup-thick warmth in the summer. It would capture errant balls, rolling free down the slope of the lawn. Sometimes, unaccountably, one of my toy cars would be found there among its knotted branches. There was always a deflated football, imprinted with dogs’ teeth, lying sullenly in its tangled depths.

And so, we would gather together. This small family that defined the heart of my world. Celebrating the weekend with our packet of crisps, and synthetic tang of our fizzy drink. And the sun would slip down the pebble-dashed side of the house and the darkening sky become threaded with bats and the world would slow down. The radio would be quietly playing from inside the house and the dusk would colour the shadows a smoky velvet under the huge fir tree that covered our garden. The main road would begin to fall quiet and distant goods trains would clank their lazy lullabies across the valley. The loose-limbed tangle of branches of the trees which bordered our garden – even the gnarled, feathery arms of the lilac which I so loved even though it stained my trousers green, and in whose lofty embrace I transcended the borders of my world – would slowly melt into the dark starry-eyed night. And the scents and aroma of night would swirl like colours in the gathering twilight; honey-suckle, lavender, sweet-pea, waterfalls of lilac, warm sun-drenched bark. Even when it was too dark to read, and the ground had become too damp to sprawl upon, mum and dad’s voices would float and drift on the night air, in a slow waltz with the sleepy pigeon and collard dove purr, and maybe, if we were lucky the thrill of an owl – up Havelock Road way; and the kitchen light spilling warm moth-dancing squares over the rough paving that was strewn with the toys of dogs and children. 

On some special occasions, and I can never still determine how the choice was made, mum and dad would say, “let’s go for a drink at the pub.” The weather was always perfect – the soft golden haze of summer evenings stretching long with velvet shadows for which I still long. And this isn’t anything to do with looking back on the past with rose-tinted spectacles. The weather had to be good, because these were the days when children were not allowed inside pubs (even if accompanied by adults) and so we were consigned to using the pub garden. Not that that appeared much of a hardship. I would sometimes peer round the edge of the pub’s entrance door – if it happened to be left open – to gaze inside at the dim fug laden world of grownups inside. I have no idea what made me feel this way, but for me, they held a strangely forbidding, unwelcoming air about them. I have to say, I much preferred the outside and it would take a long, long time, before, as an adult, I ever ventured to set foot inside a pub. They still feel rather alien territory to me even now.

Instead of gathering together in the back garden, we’d all clamber into the minivan and off we’d go through the Hertfordshire lanes to Mum and Dad’s favourite locals. It is only now, that I wonder why we never went to any of the pubs in Kings Langley – all within walking distance, and some of which were really nice. In fact, from time to time when one of Dad’s friends popped round, they’d go off to the Eagle, or the Rose and Crown, or the Young Pretender. I suppose, they felt that the drive was all part of the excitement for us, and it was. The Two Brewers in Chipperfield was a favourite, just opposite the common with its war memorial and its oaks, as ancient as time. Sometimes, before our drink, we’d go for a walk in the fringes of its woods – always a place redolent with promise and mystery for me. One of my teachers had read BB’s Brendon Chase to us at school. The story of some boys who run away and live as outlaws in a great forest. Chipperfield woods would forever be indelibly associated with the forest of Bredon Chase. There was one in Sarratt that, I think, but can’t remember too much about it, only the drive there. The other favourite was the Three Horse Shoes at Winkwell. It was (and still is) on the Grand Union canal beside the rickety old swing bridge, that banged and clanked as cars drove over it. It is just a little way from the lock there too. When we were there once, a boy fell in and drowned. Well, I think he drowned, I am not sure. He could have just fallen in. Then again, it might have been somewhere else along the canal. Making sense of things when you were a small boy with a bottle of pop and a bag of crisps is difficult. The only thing I do remember was some sombre talking in low voices that sounded serious and phrases like ‘locks are very dangerous’ and ‘you should never play near locks,’ and a fire engine came over the bridge. The past becomes a faded blur of impressions, feelings stronger, more pointed, than images. From memory, I don’t recall being affected at all by the incident, only by a faint astonishment that something so earth-shattering could have occurred right under my nose and I had been completely unaware of it. But the impact of that tragedy – real or otherwise – has remained with me. Very rarely when crossing a lock on the balance beams, do I not get a flash back to Winkwell, and ginger beer, the serious shouts of men, low voices, the clatter of a fire engine going over the swing bridge, and the awful truth that ‘locks are dangerous places.’      

Crisps, of course, still played their part in these special ‘Friday Nights’ but it was the whole magical drama of the thing that took centre stage. Sitting, perched, on the rustic wooden benches in the pub garden drinking ginger beer from the bottle, so that it clanked jarringly against your teeth and the bubbles went up your nose. That was what was special. When I got a bit older, I went a bit more sophisticated and went for a tomato juice. They put a dash (sometimes, if I was lucky, more than a dash) of Worcestershire Sauce in it. I would try to drink around the dark little splodge of Worcestershire Sauce in the middle of the glass, right to the end. For some inexplicable reason, I got it into my head that this was a Bloody Mary, and so, we would sit in the tranquil paradise of a country pub garden with me sipping at my Bloody Mary with all the style and sophistication that a rather unkempt 13 year old can muster. I was only savagely disabused of my notion of the Bloody Mary much later. I can’t remember all the details – maybe it is because the trauma of it all has mercifully dulled my memory of the event. However, I was at a party with some friends and the host was engaged with plying everyone with drinks. Now, I am not, nor ever was, a huge partygoer and so I was a little on edge to get things right and give an air of…, yep, sophistication. I had noticed a bottle labelled ‘Bloody Mary’ among the profusion of gaudily coloured cocktail bottles gathered on the sideboard. Rather than resorting to me normal ‘just a glass of lemonade, please’ I thought, ‘Gosh, I rather fancy the idea of airily wafting around the room delicately sipping a Bloody Mary.’ Now, hindsight being what it is, I should have probably taken more note of the surprised look given by the host when I conversationally added, “D’you know, I don’t think I have had a Bloody Mary since I was a little kid.” But alas, I didn’t. Had I done so, it might have saved me from the indescribably foul and undrinkable concoction that simultaneously scalded my throat and blew my head apart – and also the poisonous jet of this noxious liquid that erupted out of my mouth and nose across the fine linen and crust set.

Another memorable Friday night was when we were on holiday in Norfolk. It had been a long tiring and hot day by sea in Sheringham – for me, one of the most quintessentially English coastal towns. We were all ravenous and so for a special treat, rather than going back to the campsite and Mum rustling something up on the primus with the pressure cooker – that hissed and whistled shaking ominously on its tripod legs, we went for fish and chips. In those days, although not wrapped in newspaper, they were still wrapped in paper (I can’t be the only one who didn’t love sucking great wads of salt and vinegar flavoured newsprint!). Clutching our mouthwatering bundles, we trooped down to the sea front and found a space to sit on the wall by the Lifeboat house. Just as we began to unwrap our feasts, a familiar, paternal voice broke through the seaside hubbub coming from a radio that was playing in the lifeboat house, “This is Robyn Boyle at the Golders Green Hippodrome welcoming you to Friday Night’s Music is Night”.    

So many winter’s nights when we settled down, as the timbre of Robin Boyles’ wonderful voice, welcomed us to join him and the BBC Concert Orchestra, one of us would recall us sitting on the seawall in Sheringham and how odd it is that back then it seemed like the middle of the afternoon, but now with the street lamps shining outside and the valley opposite alight with pinpricks of house lights and the red lamps of the radio mast in the distance, this seems like late in the night. And when the sound of sleety rain rattled against the windows, we’d remember the sunshine, and the feel of sand between the toes, and salty smell of seaweed and the shrieking sky-blue calls of the herring gulls.       

Those winter Friday nights were every bit as special as the summer ones. In the winter, dad would be sitting in his arm chair, in the corner, with its stretch-green Plumbs’ cover with floral print of roses and which even that had worn through at the arms and so dad had rustled up on mum’s treadle sewing machine some heavy-duty patches that were made of thick curtain material to cover them. Mum would be sitting on the floor by his feet, she hated sitting in chairs, her hand in his. Both would be lost in the world of their books. I would invariably have a small pile of comics and looking at pictures in books. I think I have said it before, I was a terrible reader in those days. Wendy had her own books, quite often with a horse on the cover, but then later she began to read books she could actually talk to mum and dad about. Nevil Shute, Douglas Bader, TE Lawrence, Chay Blythe and John Ridgeway. Books with few pictures, but interesting covers. And the dogs would sprawl, snoring, scorching in front of the fire. Until one of us would smell the scent of scorched fur and shout, “Dog! You’re burning!” Or “Pooch, you’re on fire!” And either Tilly or Sally would hrumph and flop themselves an inch or two away.

After ‘Friday Night is Music Night’ had finished with its crescendo of soprano and applause, we would select records to play. Their smooth glossy sleeves and the smell of vinyl were, to me, the height of luxury and opulence. Even the little black velvet covered tube for collecting record fluff smelt of pound notes. The little serif swirls of the Music for Pleasure motifs on the record labels and the inner sleeves filled with tiny black and white pictures of other records for sale, were entrances to a world of untold glamour. Our record collection was not particularly large, but our tastes were fairly similar. We seemed to be quite happy to journey through our books and comics to the tunes of the Big War Movie Themes (played so often dad had to buy a replacement), or Mantovani, Delius, Geoff Love, or Hot Hits for Children – although my collection of Thunderbird records and Ken Dodd’s Diddymen were perhaps too strong a meat for our Friday nights.

Memories dim and morph. Looking at the old picture of dad in that battered green armchair of his, it looks so small now. I can remember how I used to burrow into its cavernous depths, smelling of tobacco and beer and dust and family. Perhaps that front room, with the bay window that looked over the valley, with the canal running along the bottom of it, would be small too. The memories shift and distort, but the feelings don’t. ‘Friday night crisp night’. Our little Friday night ritual defined us as a family, not because it was in itself important, but because it celebrated those overlooked things and helped to express those often-inexpressible things which form the heart of a family. There were six of us in those days. Well, seven if you count the cat, Kismus-puss, but she rarely joined us for our Friday nights. Now only two of us are left. First the two dogs left, then mum, then more recently dad. But it also still remains – the hearth, the heart where we still come to recognise and acknowledge the tiny mountains of our weekly lives. And more importantly, what remains is the understanding that we don’t find ourselves or each other in the grand actions and grand gestures, but within the small, seemingly commonplace things that naturally emerge and evolve in our lives, and it is in those things that we find our roots and sense of shared values.    

SIGNING OFF 

This is the narrowboat Erica signing off for the night and wishing you a very restful and peaceful night. Good night.

WEATHER LOG