I've just been flipping through some pictures (can you do that on a computer?) and I remembered putting up a gallery of pictures taken at Fazeley Junction and threatening to put up more …

For those of you, who don't know what or where Fazeley junction is, I'll explain:
Great Britain has a network of inland waterways. The Romans started the idea – they built several navigable canals, such as Foss Dyke, to link rivers, enabling increased transportation inland by water.
The United Kingdom's navigable water network grew massively as the demand for industrial transport increased. The canals were key to the pace of the Industrial Revolution. Roads at the time were unsuitable for large volumes of traffic.
So many canals were built during the 18th and 19th century that things almost got out of hand. Now the country is so riddled with canals that you might ask what's holding the place together.

Fazeley Junction is a junction near Tamworth where the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal meets the Whittington and the Coventry Canal.



I took an interest in photographing the various junctions around the Midlands a few years ago and hope to photograph more on my next visit to the island.

The gallery I'd put up for Fazeley has just been revised and two more have been added: Lapworth Junction, where the Grand Union Canal joins the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal and Fradley Junction, where the Coventry Canal meets the Trent and Mersey Canal.

By the way – if you are interested in touring Britain, you couldn't do it in a more leisurely fashion than renting a narrowboat …

On December the 25th we celebrate Christmas.
This is because on the eve of December 25th Father Christmas clambers down our chimneys right?
Wrong!
Go and read your Bible again and come back when you know what we are really celebrating!

Father Christmas,or Santa Claus, as he is also known, was a Greek bishop from Patra* in the 4th century who gave his whole inheritance to the poor and, reputedly, had a soft spot for children.
He dedicated his life to serving God and was made Bishop of Myra while still a young man. Bishop Nicholas became known throughout for his generosity to the those in need, his love for children, and his concern for sailors and ships.
After his death on December the 6th in Myra he somehow turned into a saint – Saint Nicholas.
Something to do with some manna that grew on his grave.
The anniversary of his death became a day of celebration, St. Nicholas Day.

The cult of the saint spread from Italy to the rest of Europe during the 11th century.

I spent some years in Germany and originally thought the Germans must be impatient because Father Christmas arrived there on the 6th of December and not, as we Brits and those Americans expect him to, on the 25th.
It took a visit to Turkey to make some sense of the mix up that somehow occurred while the cult was crossing the English Channel.

While in Germany I often heard of, but never saw Knecht Ruprecht, Saint Nicholas' attendant. The children were threatened that, if they hadn't been good during the year, they would get a beating from Ruprecht, rather than presents from Santa.
Imagine my surprise, then, the first time I bumped into Santa here in Switzerland. He was accompanied by a bearded guy in a cassock who, for all the world looked just like Santa himself – except, that is, that both his cassock and his face were black.
This, I supposed, was the guy who is forced to climb down the chimneys in Santas' place.
His name is Schmutzli which just happens to sound like the German word for 'dirty'

Schmutzli carries Santas' sack for him and a switch and, just as in Germany, the children get the choice of a present or a beating.
Thankfully, Santa creeps down English chimneys during the night and doesn't bring an attendant along. I don't think I'd have been able to bear the strain of not knowing whether to expect, a gift or a clobbering!

The whole of eastern Europe has similar traditions to Germany and Switzerland and I find it strange, that in crossing The Channel, Santa got muddled and thought he was Jesus after all.

You might like to read about the various attendants he has …

Oh, by the way – Happy Nicholaus-Tag

*Don't ask me how they did it, but both Patra and Myra are now in Turkey