And on to number 32: familiar face of the National Waterways Festival from recent years and beyond – Alison Moore (sister of Jude Palmer) explains things from the cook’s side of the accommodation and very little about actual canals.
Q: How and when did you first get involved in canal restoration? A: The background is probably fairly obvious in terms of Dad being a
Alan Lines
big IWA character, so that featured fairly heavily in our lives growing up, and Jude getting into digging a few years earlier than me (she’s got 4 years on me). To be honest, up to that point, apart from doing some waterways for youth stuff when I was a kid I hadn’t shown any interest in it at all. Then, I remember, it must have been when I was at university, Jude asked me if I would come and be a cook on a camp, in South Cerney, and this is where I’m going to demonstrate my complete lack of technical or any kind of interest really actually in understanding canals – I don’t even know what canal that is. We stayed in a village hall, it was a Christmas camp, I didn’t really have any idea. She [Jude] said “Don’t worry there’s this really nice lady as well called Sue Burchett – she’s done quite a lot of cooking so she’ll help you out if you get stuck.” I remember, it was Tory’s [Burr] birthday, so one of the dinners we did was a special thing for Tory and she’d said what she wanted which included something like parsnip soup – and I was thinking “I’ve never made parsnip soup in my life” but it was actually very nice. The other thing I remember about that camp was it was the gold and silver jubilee – I can’t remember whose jubilees they were, presumably something to do with IWA and WRG. I remember that Simon Jones [brother of Eddie] had the most outrageous gold lamé suit ever and Mummy Cool [Jenny Worthington] had the most outrageous hot pants – Kylie would have been impressed. I also remember being in the back of a van on the way back from a pub with Eddie Jones singing some really quite rude songs so that opened my ears to some new words. That was still when we had benches in the backs of the van and you just piled in. I think broadly it went well. There were two things that went horribly wrong: one was I was suffering horribly with a cold and I was a bit bunged up and I dumped about half a tub of chilli powder into an apple crumble thinking it was cinnamon and didn’t taste it until I served it up. Eddie got the first mouthful and looked a bit surprised but then carried on and everyone else steered clear. The other one was the jelly omelette. I’d made this huge jelly – very optimistically – in one of those huge mixing bowls. I had no idea how I thought that was ever going to set, in hindsight. But I’d never cooked for that many people before so I assumed you doubled the quantities. I was trying to find something to tip it out into and the only thing was one of those giant frying pans so we had a jelly omelette – it all collapsed. I put in midget gems thinking that would be a nice surprise to find some sweets in it but they kind of half dissolved so there were just these revolting lumps of sticky stuff. That was pretty unpleasant. Apart from that I think it was a huge success. Oh and I can never go back to I think it was the Sainsburys because Mike [Palmer] and Frankie [Can’t remember his surname] and somebody else... there’s a trolley with no wheels on, abandoned in the vegetable department there. I really enjoyed it and I never got anywhere near a canal. I had a great time, loads of new people. People who just seemed to have a really good laugh with each other. It was a bit strange because I was clearly an outsider – but not an outsider ’cos I was Jude’s sister. I remember Gav [Gavin Moor] ringing up Jude about something and I answered Jude’s phone and he started talking. I said “You need to know it’s not Jude”. He said “who is it then?” and I said “Al”, so he said “Al who?” and I said “Al Moore” and he went “That’s my wife”. Very, very strange conversation.
Q: What did you do after that? A: I flirted round the edges of a couple of things – I turned up briefly at Salford [IWA National Festival]. I was living either in Nottingham or Lincoln and because I’d only relatively recently passed my driving test I hadn’t really got that mental map of the UK. I knew the rough motorway I was looking for and I knew that Liverpool was quite near Manchester but unfortunately I went the wrong way and did end up in Liverpool. I remember, when I finally got there, walking into the end of a WRG panto with Jude with her arm strapped up. I just sorted of tagged along and helped people out – you know when you don’t quite understand what’s going on and it’s all sort of happening around you? The following year, I decided to drive to Worcester to see Jude and stay on the Worcester [National] camp for a few days. It was just bizarre – this festival in the middle of the race course. Mike said to me “do you fancy helping out with breakfast” – yeah – really happy to do that. He said “Stevie
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