Yes, it’s September again, and that means it’s time for the annual trek across London, braving the public transport “improvements” on the first Sunday morning to get to the Angel Canal Festival. I usually spend the morning setting up stalls in the streets around City Road Basin, but this year apparently I was to be part of the team that was to set up the “portable belfry” – a new addition for this year.
It turned out that this:
is a portable belfry, and putting it up was great fun – a load of overgrown kids getting to play with similarly oversize Meccano. Rather than describe in detail how it’s done, I’ll just include a link to the people who apparently spend all their time lugging portable belfries across the country. Getting the bells in place was far more entertaining than it appears in the pictures, as we had to manhandle them out of the trailer and up a flight of stairs, then lift them into place using a winch – yet more mechanised fun – yay! In fact it was so much fun that we all hung around until the festival had finished to play with the Meccano again.
During the afternoon I spent an hour or so wandering around the streets picking up litter. Despite my serious antipathy towards the whole idea of working for a living, I actually enjoy doing some of the more mundane (and often unpleasant) jobs on offer when it's for free. However, I'm well aware what a luxury it is to be able to pick and choose what work I do, and how much. Most of the people who do jobs like this do so because they have no alternative, and are paid pitifully for their efforts.
This is quite an unusual canal festival in that remarkably little of it actually involves the canal. Rather, it is set in the streets around the canal. When I first came to this festival, a couple of years ago, I found that slightly disappointing, but this year I was talking to someone from one of the property developers in the area and he told me how close the City Road basin came to being filled in to make room for more up-market waterfront developments. To my eye, it’s bad enough as it is (somewhat imaginative picture from developers’ site here) but I suppose that in the middle of a city there has to be a certain amount of give and take.
So it’s probably rather good that the canal can make its presence felt among the wider community, and good that people from outside the boating fraternity can be drawn in by the diverse array of entertainments on offer. I was limited to taking photos on the telling bone so the picture quality is even worse than usual, but this year’s delights included:
Pearly kings/queens/assorted pearly royalty
Ukulele orchestra
Plus displays from beekeepers and the hawk and owl sanctuary – all in all, a pretty enjoyable day out for everyone.
