... Approaching the boatyard on the edge of town and still crawling along at about 2mph I heard a sound from behind me that made me freeze. Dogs ... yapping.
Some years ago I had a neighbour, Yappy-Dog Woman. This is how I met her.
I bought my present boat from the Bodger and the Fireman who had bought it from the Chippy who had sold up and moved to Bulgaria. The Chippy sold them his boat for a song and they thought they would tidy it up and sell it on at a neat profit, which they did ... to me. The Bodger lived on his 60' narrowboat on the next door mooring and, a couple of years after selling me my boat, couldn't resist adding to his fleet by buying what could only be described as a floating night club now up for sale. He had first seen the shiny boat with the chromed interior, polished aluminium walls and ceiling, the mirror-tiled bar and the programmable disco lights some years earlier and, for reasons I cannot begin to fathom, had coveted it since. He bought the boat which left him with a surfeit of boats for the available mooring space. He advertised his 60' boat on e-Bay. There were no takers for several months and he became despondent. His face did light up though when, in the fulness of time, he received an enquiry from a woman wanting to move up from Plymouth. She had no boating experience whatsoever, but fancied a change from living in a house and having neighbours the other side of a shared wall. She gave the boat a thorough looking at and liked what she saw. She commissioned a survey and the report came back positive. The Bodger offered to let her stay on the boat for a couple of weeks to see how she liked it. Apparently she liked it well-enough and stayed all summer. The Bodger had no idea whether she would ever pay up the agreed price, but eventually she paid a deposit and his blue face turned a little more pink as he began once more to breathe. As summer drew to a close, Plymouth Lady gave the Bodger the balance. He waited several days to make sure the cheque cleared and, on confirmation that the transaction had indeed concluded, they had a formal celebratory drinks party on the boat to which I was invited.
The three of us imbibed our favourite poisons (water for me and wine for them). Someone suggested a game of Scrabble. I used to enjoy playing Scrabble. I had a Scrabble dictionary and had spent some time learning useful two-letter words. However, by majority vote, my "Scrabble Dictionary" was deemed invalid, while the 1950s Chambers English Dictionary was decided by the two of them to be the reference of choice. I lost the game by a long way since very few of my words were in the Chambers and I had to miss several turns. None of the two-letter ones I had learned were in the Chambers either. After the second glass of wine I noticed a change in the atmosphere. The woman became increasingly abusive, loud and unpredictable. It didn't take long for me to decide I needed to leave. I was almost sorry to leave the Bodger in her gentle clutches, but I figured a man in his late sixties ought to be able to look after himself or deal with whatever was coming next - and I knew he was actually rather hopeful. The thought of that made me shudder, but by that time I was well beyond caring what happened to him. The two of them had turned rather horrible.
Within days she returned to Plymouth to wind up her affairs there. This seemed to take longer than expected, but the solitude and peace were what I enjoy most about living here. Eventually, though, she reappeared like a hurricane except that, this time, she had two Yorkshire terriers in her van. I heard them coming from miles away. This was the first that anyone of us at the farm were aware of her two boys. There were already five dogs living on the farm (along with three regular visitors, who were mostly well-behaved). Their arrival, however, signalled the beginning a a new kind of hell.
Around that time I was working on a complete new repertoire for a ceilidh project and the first performance was almost imminent. I did not realise it was possible for dogs to yap twenty-three hours of every day for months on end. These dogs excelled. I don't know if you, dear reader, have ever attempted to compose and arrange music to the overwhelming accompaniment of yapping terriers, but I would not wish that on Salieri were I Wolfgang Amadeus himself (and I assure you I have not one smidge of that man's genius ... nor any other as it happens). With a deadline fast approaching I was really struggling. I explained the situation and I pleaded with her to try and give me some peace to finish, but she didn't get the urgency. She was my new neighbour and I should learn to be more tolerant. Somehow I got through the writing and the gig was actually a success of sorts. My tunes came to have titles like "Dog In The Drink" and "Two Terriers And A Chainsaw". There may have been a connection.
Things didn't get much better. She used a shared cancer diagnosis to make friends with the Horse Woman, a powerful ally to have. She managed, though, to alienate everyone else for miles around. I have no idea what kind of skill it takes to upset the owners of the village chip shop, but she possessed it by the bucketload. She upset publicans and punters in most of the pubs within a six mile radius. She complained so hard and so often at the Bodger, that he bought a riverside plot forty miles away and left the farm after living there for more than seven years. She was rude to the Engineer, who spent a lot of time trying to work out just what the Bodger had done to his boat while he was living on it. She ordered people around; resistance was futile, specially from men who were deemed chauvinistic simply by nature of the sex listed on their birth certificates. As it happens she only called me a sexist a few times, but it hurt more when she accused me of "turning" the larger of her two male dogs who started trying to mount the smaller one. "What have you done to him? He's never behaved like that before!" she exclaimed. She spent all day shouting at the dogs and, when not shouting at them to "shut up", was perched on the foredeck of her boat, having loud and prolonged telephone conversations with traders who had failed to meet her exacting standards of whom there were many. It was a nightmare. The only relief came when she fell in the river (twice) in her first fortnight as my new neighbour. She couldn't get out of the river and on to the bank without assistance. After the second dip the Farmer fixed a ladder in the water against her mooring for the next time ... I was called out to tow her broken-down boat back a few times too.
I was there the day she went too far. For nearly thirty years a very nice couple from the Midlands had a mooring for their small cruiser at the farm. They came to visit two or three times a year. They also had two terriers. These, however were kept under far better control. Yappy-Dog Woman's boys had psychological problems. They were rescue dogs who had been raised on a puppy farm and treated poorly by (of course) men (chauvinistic ones too, no doubt). One of the Midland terriers decided to assert his superiority, presumably to shut up the neurotic yappy dogs. It was behaviour I had seen amongst the dogs on the farm many times - dogs doing what dogs do, nothing too serious. However Yappy-Dog Woman was having none of this. She asked me what I would do. I said I would leave it and let the dogs sort themselves out. She broke off the conversation she was having with me and may have thought about my reply for a nano-second before launching into a high-speed conversation with herself that ended with something like, "I'm not having this!" She fair stormed along the bank to let go at full shriek at the Midland Woman. I had never before heard Midland Man or Midland Woman swear, but there ensued such a high-octane exchange of profanities that I had to leave the scene.
There were two further incidents following this exchange. The first was that the Horse Woman gave Yappy-dog woman her sailing orders, "Be gone by Friday or I'm cutting your ropes!" Unfortunately a few weeks later Midland Man had a heart attack and died. Horse Woman regrets the way she ganged up against the Bodger. It is the only time I have heard her express regret.
"Yap! Yap! Yip! Yap! ..."was coming up from behind and it froze my very blood. I turned round to see a familiar green boat. I try not to hold too fast to grudges, so I hailed Yappy-Dog Woman as she surged past. She didn't recognise me at first, because my boat is a different colour these days, but she returned the hail.
It took me ten or fifteen minutes to catch up with her. She had pulled into a place to moor next to the town park and was engaged in a row with another boater who was there before her. Her skill at upsetting people remains almost without parallel in my personal experience.
Monday 23 July 2018
Sunday 22 July 2018
Of Yet Another Abandoned Journey
This is my temperature gauge.
"Blimey, you're late!" exclaimed The Percussionist, "I never take my books in before you!"
I set off recently, later than usual in the year, to deliver my accounts books, records and assorted paperwork to the accountant. His office is a glorious six-hour journey by boat, which is to say a less glorious thirty-minutes in the van. These last few years I have opted for the two-day return boat-trip. Part of the reason I was late delivering my paperwork this year is because I had to wait for a two or three-day window to become available. Given the inauspicious record of taking the boat on various journeys over the past six years and the likelihood of something going amiss (given my breakdown to progress ratio) I try to leave at least one extra day for a journey. Just as well.
If I haven't used the engine for a while it is usually a bit smoky to start with. I can never remember which colour smoke is good smoke and which colour is abandon ship type smoke, although I suppose the latter would in the extreme be accompanied by flames and crackling noises. Running at higher revs tends to produce a darker kind of smoke. After a while that becomes unpleasant, so I ease back on the speed and the smoke disappears. I am also an avid watcher of the dials indicating temperature (see above), oil pressure and battery charging. It was in this state that I was heading accountant-wards.
Four hours into the journey the engine stopped. I should have recognised a spike in temperature, but to get the view in the above picture I have to be crouched down and level with the gauge. Glancing at the gauge from a standing position and at an acute angle, can instil a false sense of security, as has been proven a few times in the past and, as it happened, again on this particular occasion. Luckily, in my unpowered state, I didn't crash, but I was twenty feet from either bank - definitely afloat, definitely adrift and thankfully, with no one within earshot, sight, or probably miles, to bear witness to an audible squeal of anguish and a mild outburst of language that would have made my mother frown in disapproval.
Four hours into the journey the engine stopped. I should have recognised a spike in temperature, but to get the view in the above picture I have to be crouched down and level with the gauge. Glancing at the gauge from a standing position and at an acute angle, can instil a false sense of security, as has been proven a few times in the past and, as it happened, again on this particular occasion. Luckily, in my unpowered state, I didn't crash, but I was twenty feet from either bank - definitely afloat, definitely adrift and thankfully, with no one within earshot, sight, or probably miles, to bear witness to an audible squeal of anguish and a mild outburst of language that would have made my mother frown in disapproval.
I have mentioned in the past that the shape of my boat is not exactly standard. The cabin sides are nearly vertical. The upside is that this offers me more space inside the boat, but there are couple of downsides to this phenomenon too. the less important one of these is that the wider roof is more prone to buckling caused by expansion under the sun's heat. The more significant one is that the nearly vertical sides perform the function of a sail. Eventually my "sail" placed the bow on to the bank off the port side. I ran along the gunwale to grab the bargepole in order to poke about in the undergrowth to find a safe and relatively solid place to risk jumping on to with the centre rope. I landed among reeds and nettles that towered above me and eventually negotiated the steep bank to pin the boat in place - with amazingly few stings. After that it was a matter of agility and juggling to pull the boat in as close as possible to fix the bow and stern ropes to the stakes I'd hammered in.
Once no longer adrift there was nothing I could do but wait. The engine took a long time to cool. Maybe I was being too cautious? I opened the cap to the engine's header tank and added a little water. After a slow fill I had enough to be able to see what would happen if I turned the engine over. It actually fired up first time, so I let it run for a couple of hours. Naturally I kept a very good eye on the gauges and the space under the engine for any signs of leakage. I saw nothing significant, but by this time, it was too dark to continue my journey, so I decided to stay where I was overnight and make another decision in the morning ... assuming there was still sufficient coolant in the engine and it hadn't leaked out overnight.
The level did not drop at all. With my limited knowledge I found this partly confusing and partly a good sign. I decided I was going to risk making it back to my home mooring and abandon any attempt to take my books to the accountant via river. This time there was also to be no playing silly games with identifying shades of smoke. I kept the revs right down and crept north at no more than 2mph. The journey back took me eight hours, but that involved an unexpected encounter ...
Monday 16 July 2018
Of Lords, a Baroness, Old Friends And Voices From The Ether
Well that was a weird day. I spent the most of the day in Committee Room 4 with assorted members of the House of Lords. When I switched my phone back on a text message popped up from a friend and colleague from Storyboat days (check the link on the right). Then as I was walking back to where I was staying in West Hampstead I thought I heard a voice call my name ...
The encounter in The House of Lords was the latest round in my opposition to the Middle Level Bill. It had its first readings in the Commons in 2017 and I attended and spoke at the Committee stage in January 2018. My own MP has never responded to anything I have addressed to him over the years, including three e-mails regarding this Bill. In the Commons debates our opposition attracted a little minority support, but each debate was upstaged by something to do with the European Union - one being on the day Article 50 was "triggered". The second reading fell foul of Theresa May's ill-judged vanity election in 2017 when one of our two most outspoken supporters, Stewart Jackson (Con - Peterborough) lost his seat. I rather hoped that would be the end of the Bill, but it wasn't. The incoming Labour MP, Fiona Onasanya, appeared to have other priorities and we never felt she understood or supported the arguments we were presenting. This meant that, when the second reading eventually took place last October, we had just one MP up to speed with our case, although a few props to the new MP for Cambridge who did speak out too. Unfortunately, as it was to prove, our robust supporter was the infamous Sir Christopher Chope (Con - Christchurch). During his thirty years or more as an MP, I have rarely considered myself in agreement with his point of view on anything. It was a difficult pill to swallow to realise that he was our main support in the Commons, but I remain grateful for that support and for the clear way in which he presented his and our objections. That makes it more of a pity that his demand for closer scrutiny of the Voyeurism (Offences) Bill, expected by many to pass through unopposed, will end up being the one thing for which he is likely to be remembered when his Parliamentary career eventually comes to an end.
The Middle Level Bill was passed through to, and debated in, the Lords and was sent through to Committee to undergo scrutiny. A couple of weeks ago I attended the House of Lords Opposed Private Bill Committee, this time for four days (which proved not to be long enough so the Committee had to be reconvened last week), and once again I was called upon to explain my opposition to the proposals, which I did in my forty-five minute presentation before the Lords Thomas, Hunt, Tree and Brabazon and Baroness Bakewell. It was an interesting experience and I'm going to come back to the Bill in a future post. For now I just want to get some new diary entries up and visible.
On the Tuesday about which I started writing this essay the Committee finished at 1pm. Their Lordships were otherwise engaged for the remainder of the day. Our little crew went down to the commoners' café to discuss our progress and buy our expensive sandwiches and herbal infusions - not for the users of this café the fabled subsidies afforded to members of both Houses. I switched my mobile phone back on and up popped a text message from Andy, my friend from Storyboat days. We hadn't seen each other for a couple of decades and hadn't even spoken on the telephone for many years. His message was reaching out to me in the hope that I was still using the same number. Of course I am and that was how we found ourselves chatting in a West Hampstead coffee shop later that same afternoon. I love meeting old friends. People sometimes express surprise that I am still in regular contact with friends from my school days and from college. I don't see anything odd in that at all. If they were good enough to be my friends all those years ago the least I can offer is to remember something of the experiences we may have shared and solidarity during the experiences our adult lives have brought. These days such contact is so much easier than it has ever been before the world wide web brought us all closer together. Admittedly friends drift apart for many reasons and there are many with whom I have not maintained contact. That's okay too. I daresay some of them would be horrified to see how I live these days.
Walking back to M's flat (another friend from my school days) where I was staying during the week, I thought I heard someone call my name. I turned to see a cyclist some way down the street resting with one foot on the ground and another on a pedal. I didn't recognise anyone and another man was walking by so I assumed they knew each other. As I turned to continue on my way I distinctly heard my name being called and turned again. This time the cyclist headed my way. This was weird, I don't know anyone in this part of London ... surely? He started talking and it was clear he knew me from somewhere. Damn my prosopagnosic tendencies. There was something about his manner and his voice, but naturally I could not recognise his face at all, so I had to ask. It turned out to be George, a composer I met at a composers' forum last year. He stopped me a couple of months later in Tate Modern. This was now a year after that our only prior contact being those two short conversations a long time ago. It doesn't make sense to me. I am in awe of how some people remember faces. I wish I could do it, but I seem quite unable to do so.
As a post-script, while writing this I have been popping out of the boat to push it away from the landing stage when another boat comes by. I've tried tightening my mooring ropes, but the river rises and falls according to the whims of the engineers at the big sluice gates into The Wash, so tightening my lines is often unproductive and occasionally dangerous. The wind and the wash of passing boats rub my boat against a couple of fenders I have in place to keep me from scraping off even more paint. I have tried yelling at people to slow down and it really doesn't make either of us feel any good, so these days I just climb out and attempt to hold the boat away from the side. If they really are going too fast I make a slowing down gesture like I learned to do when I was learning to drive. Most people just give a cheery wave back. I also avoid eye contact, because I am pretty sure I would be glaring at them and I don't really want to be that mad, angry boat bloke. Tilly 2 just came by and Paul, the owner said, "You don't remember me do you?" Of course I didn't ... argh! We met last summer, when we shared adjacent moorings in town and later in the boatyard when he had engine problems while I was in for a service. Apparently I gave him a cd. He said he showed it to some other people and they said they knew me. We talked about the Middle Level Bill and he thanked me for taking the trouble to stand up for boaters.
As a post post-script, I've just had a text message from another school friend. I think every time I have seen him since we left school he has been married to someone different, which is neither here nor there, but I can't help thinking about the heartache he must have experienced, although we all find excitement in our own special ways I suppose. Again I haven't seen him for years and he's coming over on Wednesday. I'm attending a Prom Concert tomorrow at the Albert Hall. I have a great life.
The encounter in The House of Lords was the latest round in my opposition to the Middle Level Bill. It had its first readings in the Commons in 2017 and I attended and spoke at the Committee stage in January 2018. My own MP has never responded to anything I have addressed to him over the years, including three e-mails regarding this Bill. In the Commons debates our opposition attracted a little minority support, but each debate was upstaged by something to do with the European Union - one being on the day Article 50 was "triggered". The second reading fell foul of Theresa May's ill-judged vanity election in 2017 when one of our two most outspoken supporters, Stewart Jackson (Con - Peterborough) lost his seat. I rather hoped that would be the end of the Bill, but it wasn't. The incoming Labour MP, Fiona Onasanya, appeared to have other priorities and we never felt she understood or supported the arguments we were presenting. This meant that, when the second reading eventually took place last October, we had just one MP up to speed with our case, although a few props to the new MP for Cambridge who did speak out too. Unfortunately, as it was to prove, our robust supporter was the infamous Sir Christopher Chope (Con - Christchurch). During his thirty years or more as an MP, I have rarely considered myself in agreement with his point of view on anything. It was a difficult pill to swallow to realise that he was our main support in the Commons, but I remain grateful for that support and for the clear way in which he presented his and our objections. That makes it more of a pity that his demand for closer scrutiny of the Voyeurism (Offences) Bill, expected by many to pass through unopposed, will end up being the one thing for which he is likely to be remembered when his Parliamentary career eventually comes to an end.
The Middle Level Bill was passed through to, and debated in, the Lords and was sent through to Committee to undergo scrutiny. A couple of weeks ago I attended the House of Lords Opposed Private Bill Committee, this time for four days (which proved not to be long enough so the Committee had to be reconvened last week), and once again I was called upon to explain my opposition to the proposals, which I did in my forty-five minute presentation before the Lords Thomas, Hunt, Tree and Brabazon and Baroness Bakewell. It was an interesting experience and I'm going to come back to the Bill in a future post. For now I just want to get some new diary entries up and visible.
On the Tuesday about which I started writing this essay the Committee finished at 1pm. Their Lordships were otherwise engaged for the remainder of the day. Our little crew went down to the commoners' café to discuss our progress and buy our expensive sandwiches and herbal infusions - not for the users of this café the fabled subsidies afforded to members of both Houses. I switched my mobile phone back on and up popped a text message from Andy, my friend from Storyboat days. We hadn't seen each other for a couple of decades and hadn't even spoken on the telephone for many years. His message was reaching out to me in the hope that I was still using the same number. Of course I am and that was how we found ourselves chatting in a West Hampstead coffee shop later that same afternoon. I love meeting old friends. People sometimes express surprise that I am still in regular contact with friends from my school days and from college. I don't see anything odd in that at all. If they were good enough to be my friends all those years ago the least I can offer is to remember something of the experiences we may have shared and solidarity during the experiences our adult lives have brought. These days such contact is so much easier than it has ever been before the world wide web brought us all closer together. Admittedly friends drift apart for many reasons and there are many with whom I have not maintained contact. That's okay too. I daresay some of them would be horrified to see how I live these days.
Walking back to M's flat (another friend from my school days) where I was staying during the week, I thought I heard someone call my name. I turned to see a cyclist some way down the street resting with one foot on the ground and another on a pedal. I didn't recognise anyone and another man was walking by so I assumed they knew each other. As I turned to continue on my way I distinctly heard my name being called and turned again. This time the cyclist headed my way. This was weird, I don't know anyone in this part of London ... surely? He started talking and it was clear he knew me from somewhere. Damn my prosopagnosic tendencies. There was something about his manner and his voice, but naturally I could not recognise his face at all, so I had to ask. It turned out to be George, a composer I met at a composers' forum last year. He stopped me a couple of months later in Tate Modern. This was now a year after that our only prior contact being those two short conversations a long time ago. It doesn't make sense to me. I am in awe of how some people remember faces. I wish I could do it, but I seem quite unable to do so.
As a post-script, while writing this I have been popping out of the boat to push it away from the landing stage when another boat comes by. I've tried tightening my mooring ropes, but the river rises and falls according to the whims of the engineers at the big sluice gates into The Wash, so tightening my lines is often unproductive and occasionally dangerous. The wind and the wash of passing boats rub my boat against a couple of fenders I have in place to keep me from scraping off even more paint. I have tried yelling at people to slow down and it really doesn't make either of us feel any good, so these days I just climb out and attempt to hold the boat away from the side. If they really are going too fast I make a slowing down gesture like I learned to do when I was learning to drive. Most people just give a cheery wave back. I also avoid eye contact, because I am pretty sure I would be glaring at them and I don't really want to be that mad, angry boat bloke. Tilly 2 just came by and Paul, the owner said, "You don't remember me do you?" Of course I didn't ... argh! We met last summer, when we shared adjacent moorings in town and later in the boatyard when he had engine problems while I was in for a service. Apparently I gave him a cd. He said he showed it to some other people and they said they knew me. We talked about the Middle Level Bill and he thanked me for taking the trouble to stand up for boaters.
As a post post-script, I've just had a text message from another school friend. I think every time I have seen him since we left school he has been married to someone different, which is neither here nor there, but I can't help thinking about the heartache he must have experienced, although we all find excitement in our own special ways I suppose. Again I haven't seen him for years and he's coming over on Wednesday. I'm attending a Prom Concert tomorrow at the Albert Hall. I have a great life.
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