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Archiver > CANAL-PEOPLE > 2006-08 > 1156033796


From:
Subject: Re: [CANAL-PEOPLE] bargees
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2006 20:29:56 EDT


Id like to apologise to anyone who got upset by my post the other day, I
didnt receive the email that has been doing the rounds where someone got
aggressive about my email. All I was doing was passing on something my grandad and
uncle said to anyone who called them bargees when we were boating, its a
phrase I still use today when taking the ex working boats to various displays.
"They aint Barges Them Narraboats and we aint Bargees neither" obviously these
days we are educating children and their parents about canals so we use
language less coarse than in my grandads days but I am just as fanatical about the
right use of terminology.
The message is getting through and fewer and fewer people are calling
narrowboats Barges and the men and women who worked these boats Bargees. In fact a
more accurate term for the job some of them did would be horse marine because
my grandad would walk with the horse for 16 hours a day from when he was a
kid and unless you got a good horse youd have to drive em all day every day.

Anyway I digress again, My apologies for upsetting anyone if anybody wants
information you have my addy and website.

Andy

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