This is my weekly letter to my Gran who now resides in Ottawa. This post commemorates a recent family reunion along the canals and waterways of England - we were thirty-five family members in all, ranging in age from eight months old to ninety-one (Gran herself!) We toured the Leicester Loop on five narrow boats seeing the middle of England at three miles an hour - the perfect speed ... indeed!
Daily sketching kept me occupied. This was Day Six from my moleskin journal - depicting the route to Coventry - where Lady Godiva rode naked through the streets on her horse. The rooftop sketches in the lower right hand corner of my journal (pictured above) are what's known as the Weaver's Cottages in Foleshill, a suburb of Coventry. Skilled jacquard silk weavers called Huguenots escaped persecution in Europe and settled here and soon thousands of local people were employed in this cottage industry.
Gran's boat held seven people in total and was equipped with a special ramp for her wheelchair. One night I tucked her into bed by saying, "Sleep tight - don't let the bed bugs bite" and quick as a whip she answered back, "If they do get out your shoe and beat them black and blue!"
