Of Good Times And Bad Vibes

 Here we go again, I’m sorry. I have loads of stuff I could have been writing about over the past few months, but I never got round to it. There may be infill, but I wanted to write this while the events were still fresh in my mind. 

Today I went busking in Huntingdon. You may know, or even remember, that I pick up my bOat milk from the farm at King’s Ripton where the oats are grown and turned into Pure Oaty and generally combine it with a trip into the town centre to provide a little street entertainment. My favourite spot was always in the High Street. For the past few visits, though, I’ve favoured a spot near Holland & Barrett, because the High Street spot was often taken already. There always seemed to be a lot of footfall as people made their way between the High Street and Sainsbury, but I rarely seemed to attract much in the way of tips. Last time I earned less than £5. Today I thought I’d try and get to my old spot on the High Street. Fortunately today it was clear. The sun was shining, the first tip was dropped in the hat during the first line of the first song. I had a good feeling about this spot. I was right. There was a steady flow of smiling people and tips. One woman dropped a couple of pounds in the hat telling me the combination of sunshine and live music had made her day. Definitely comments like that make busking so worthwhile. There were children and animals in plentiful supply and I turned at one point to find a boy out with his family flapping two £10 notes at me. Wow!

Eventually I’d gone through most of my usual repertoire and stopped to begin packing up. Wheeling my trolley back towards the car I saw the man of North African appearance (he later claimed to be Algerian) I’d seen on my way to my spot. He was in position pretty much as he had been before. Sitting on the ground on a blue sleeping bag and leaning against the wall. Now I had some money I was happy to share some of my day’s earnings. In front of him was a sign declaring, “I am very hungry. God bless you”. As I was about to drop a coin into his hat I was interrupted by a young man and his girlfriend, who had completely swallowed the Tory Party’s primer on migration. The young man was an out of work plasterer whose diabetes and recovery from addiction had led to his homelessness and joblessness. He railed at the Algerian man sitting passively in the teeth of a verbal onslaught of cliché’s including “he’s not homeless, he turned up in a van with others this morning”; “they’ve all got iPhones”; “he can sit there with his sign and people give him money, if I sit out with a sign I get done for begging” and the tirade continued. His girlfriend explained she had cancer and was losing her hair. They were both clearly upset that they got nothing from the state and this foreigner was getting everything. He pulled boxes of prescription drugs out of an orange carrier bag. He challenged the Algerian to tell him what time it was when it rained last night. He knew because he was soaked through in the rain … It was horrible and at times very threatening. I thought he might attack the man. I felt sorry for them all. None of them had asked to be dealt these particular hands. He demanded to see the iPhone, which the Algerian denied having. He asked how much money the Algerian had begged yesterday. While this was going on people came up to give food, which clearly heightened the irritation of the plasterer and his girlfriend. “I’m hungry,” he said, “but you don’t see anyone giving me food!” I pointed out that most people probably wouldn’t know he was hungry, homeless and penniless if he didn’t tell anyone. The couple were joined by someone else they knew who suggested the man should sell his iPhone and use the money for food. This got pretty heated and I felt I couldn’t just walk away from this situation. I asked how he knew the Algerian had an iPhone. It seems a woman told him so yesterday … “Ah, I see, and how did she know?” 

“I’m not racist, but poverty (did he mean ‘charity’?) begins at home innit!”

I started to point out that he was playing right into the hands of the government and its disgusting migrant rhetoric. I wanted to tell him he was attacking the wrong target and that he only needed to think through some of the stuff he was saying to realise how illogical it was. If the man arrived in a van, who was driving? If he lived in a house who owned it and how many others lived there too? As a migrant he couldn’t work legally if he did not have the correct papers. If he acquired money through begging where did the money go? Quite likely in “rent” for his shared accommodation. I’m inclined to believe he did not have a mobile phone. Why would he if he were enslaved?

At my suggestion the plasterer and his girlfriend moved on, but I passed them still railing against the injustices of his situation to some of the other members of the Huntingdon underclass. I feared the situation was going to escalate and the Algerian was at risk. I continued back to my van and loaded up my instruments. Then I went back to see if the Algerian was okay. He spoke passable English, French too and asked me if I spoke Italian, which it seemed he knew. I assumed he spoke Arabic and who knows what else. He gave all the appearances of a well-educated man who had somehow ended up in this terrible situation. It seems he has had issues with local homeless people already. 

Government policy is pitting the have-nots against each other. If only they could see it. The plasterer should have been hammering on the door of his MP and demanding fairer treatment. Somehow I doubt that’s going to be seen as an option. I walked around the town looking for a “Town Ranger” to warn her of a possible confrontation in escalation. Naturally neither of the TRs were to be seen. I went to the town council office to see if they had contact details. No one answered the entry phone in the town hall lobby though I buzzed several times. I went to a nearby charity shop assuming they would have a number, which they did. “We call them the ‘powerless rangers’ said a man in the shop. They can’t do anything.” Nevertheless I was given a mobile phone number, which went straight to voicemail. I called 101, the non-emergency police number. The Cambridgeshire call centre tried to put me through to a more local contact, but it rang for fifteen minutes with no reply. I got back to my van and set off for home having used up my three hours of parking. What a mess!

Buy My Music

 Marshlander's Music - 

It strikes me that I ought to pin something to the top of this page because there is, occasionally, a flurry of people who want to buy my music. The place to get it from is:

marshlander.bandcamp.com

Obviously, more will be added if I ever get round to recording it. I began work on another album last year, but illness, accidents and life in general turned other activities into priorities.

The reason for adding this now is that several people I met on my recent travels in Europe have asked where they can buy my music.

I've been out busking several times over the past week or so. Rather than write a full essay for each time I've chosen a few highlights.

Wisbech

I played for a couple of hours in Wisbech one afternoon. Argos has closed down so I set up on a flat surface (hooray) under the entrance “porch”. I didn’t account for the change of wind direction or the sideways rain. Oh well. Downham tomorrow then.

Downham Market

My usual spot in Downham turned into a wind tunnel. I eventually called it a day after nearly two hours and getting rained on four times. Many thanks to Groovy Sue who came over from her market stall with a tarp to help keep the instruments dry.

Peterborough

On Monday I planned to go to Ely, but issues with the van meant Peterborough was closer. Of course you realise that "issues" is a euphemism. After busking in Downham on Saturday I went to the gym for a bit of exercise. On my way back to the boat I noticed flashing blue lights in my rear mirror. Like any good citizen I pulled into one of the few lay-bys on that road, but guess what ... the blue lights pulled in too. I'm sure someone out there recognises that sinking feeling when one has been pulled over by the police. I was trying to work out what I'd done wrong and couldn't think of anything. I recently replaced the stop light that had blown so it couldn't be that. I could have been speeding. I have an intermittent fault that means my speedometer sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. When it's having a rest I have to guess my speed, but I'm not always sure I'm accurate. This was one of those times. My garage has tried to repair the fault, but it requires a discontinued part for the gear box, that's the trouble with a seventeen year-old vehicle. I guess Citroën weren't confident it would last this long. The rain had started up again so I wound down the window (don't mock, my window has a hand-operated winder, okay?) to let the rain in while a policeman looking the same age as one of my grandchildren sauntered up.

"Afternoon, sir, do you know why we've stopped you?" I confessed I did not. "Your MoT was due at the beginning of December ..." my life flashed before my eyes. I couldn't believe it! Having bought the van in July, or maybe August, I'd got all my dates a bit confused. Admittedly the events surrounding the purchase of the van had been very stressful and had taken place during a very, very stressful year. I was still fretting that I had left my stainless steel flask and the bottle bag made from recycled fabrics in which I carried it (made by Zoe, who trades as Ideal Chaos) at the used car lot somewhere near Maidenhead. I'd completely forgotten to check the date the MoT was due. Well now I knew. Unfortunately there really is no proper excuse for being nearly four months overdue, so the policeman pointed out that he had to give me a ticket. He was very polite. In fact he was so polite that he informed me of my rights twice ("You have the right to remain silent, but anything you later rely on in court ..." etc) as he completed different parts of the pro-forma on his phone. I'd never been read my rights before. He allowed me to carry on back to the boat since I was so close, but I would not be allowed to use my van unless I were driving it to the garage for the MoT test. That put paid to any more busking for a while then. This all happened on a Saturday and there was no reply from the garage until Monday. Apparently this was also MoT season, which I didn't know was a thing, and the garage could not do anything about my van for another week. However they could let me have a courtesy vehicle at the end of the week. At least I would have some wheels for the following weekend.

I wouldn’t normally busk in Peterborough, because parking is so expensive, but I decided to work until I’d earned the car park fee so I could park the courtesy car loaned me by the garage. I was coming towards the final half hour when this happened. No way could I compete with such a loud intrusion. However nicely he played his extended Walt Disney medley all I could do was to pack up early.

I much prefer my small towns!

This is the sound that stopped my busking set ...

King's Lynn

I enjoyed busking in Lynn today. I don’t busk there very often, but I found a good spot in Norfolk Street. A street sweeper came by and told me I was improvement on yesterday. “I could listen to you all day,” he said. “Yesterday’s busker only played one song over and over and it stuck in my head for the rest of the day! It drove me nuts.”

Another man, a professional drummer, wanted to talk drums and guitars. That was cool. Also cool was the little girl who went by several times, sometimes with mum and sometimes with grandma. She stopped for an extended listen. Every time she passed by after that she waved and called a greeting. It was also nice to see an acquaintance I haven’t seen for a while. Many thanks to Chloe for buying me lunch. Strangest and perhaps saddest tale of the day was the man who told me how he and his wife have been kept apart by the U.K.’s hostile attitude towards foreign nationals. The strangest part of that encounter was that a complete stranger explained he'd met her on Chaturbate!

Thetford

Having busked in King’s Lynn earlier in the day I set off for Thetford to attend a session of the Open House Music Group (Thetford). I was made very welcome. Nice to meet lots of friendly people. There seemed to be a bit of a Roy Orbison theme going on, but I stuck to some tried and tested Marshlander repertoire. I sang For Pete’s Sake, Burning and had a request to sing Blame It On Me. Thanks to Mike, the group organiser, for the invitation.

Hunstanton

Which brings me to Good Friday. It was such a lovely day, more busking was called for, so I set off for Hunstanton. I left quite late (after lunch) in the hope of missing the traffic that would undoubtedly be heading for the seaside that day. That didn't work so I took some of the back roads I knew through West Norfolk and didn't arrive in Sunny Hunny until 3.30pm. I assumed my friend, Adrian, would probably have the bookshop open so I pulled in to see what the score was. The shop was indeed open and had been very busy during the morning. Once again I chose a very slow part of the day to set up. Barely raising a two figure amount of cash in tips was more than made up for by the fact that a few people actually stopped and listened. Now that is pretty rare and rather nice when it does happen.

Of Censorship And Grown Up Audiences

I was looking forward to playing an evening concert set for grown-ups, but this line in the contract came as a surprise:

“On stage no swearing or explicit lyrics glamorising drugs, guns, or sex.” 

Is this normal these days? Is it down to interpretations of “explicit” and “glamourising”? Is “sex” some kind of ill-advised euphemism for misogyny, homophobia and child-abuse or are lyrics about these deemed acceptable whilst those that celebrate the joy of consensual sexual experience are banned? I have so many more questions about this and where it could lead. Apart from anything else, a fellow musician pointed out, "Well, that's fifty percent of your set gone!" He could be right. The other fifty percent is what I sing in the street when out busking, so I guess I'm already used to censoring myself. One never knows who is listening.

I’m going to have to seek clarification. I can’t help feeling very uneasy about this degree of attempted influence over an artist’s material or presentation. I suppose For the record, and in case anyone wants to book me for a future event, I have not yet written any songs specifically about drugs or guns and I am fairly certain I’m not very glamorous … Maybe I'm just worrying unnecessarily. Who listens to the words anyway?

Of The Joy Of Getting Back In The Street

 “Aw, are you packing up?” she said. 

“I’m afraid so,” I replied, “I think two hours is probably long enough for the people round here to have to listen to me …

She made a noise as though to agree (rather too readily, I thought) and then said, “Never mind, take this pound coin anyway.”

She dropped a warm coin into my hand. I wondered how long she’d been holding on to it. 

The kindness and generosity of strangers never ceases to amaze me. As strangers do we fell to talking … about the weather, how the day had gone, the general state of “things”. She let slip that she was sixty. I was amazed because I really thought she looked a lot older. I guess that’s what a hard life and constant pain can do. She suffers with fibromyalgia and is expecting to die when she reaches sixty-five, as happened with her mother and her sister - at least that’s what I thought she said.

Today was my first busk out since January. Ignoring the sets I played on the European mainland in February this was my first opportunity. Much of January had been affected by very cold weather, I was out of the country in February, while March (up until now) was a non starter owing to the weather and the persistent cough and cold I’ve been fighting off since I returned to England. I had hoped to get out yesterday, but it was raining again. As I was heading towards Huntingdon today I drove through the light rain forecast as a forty percent probability. The sky brightened a little and then greyed over again. I found my favourite spot in the shopping precinct and set up. It was quite windy, but not specially cold. 

When I was in Venice I bought a selfie stick that screws on to a little tripod. I thought I would like to do some live filming. I recorded a little introduction. Then I recorded another segment showing what my spot looked like when I’d finished setting up. I thought I didn’t record any more - which was a pity because the first few songs went well - not well enough for anyone to drop a tip in the hat, but well enough to have been recorded. I was curious to see what the balance is like. Then, when I got home I discovered that my phone recorded everything from my pocket. The balance was all wrong, of course. I have a long way to go before I manage to video anything that looks as professional as fellow busker, August Radio Project. 

It’s funny how it goes with busking. I don’t do it for the money, but the tips are handy. I think I was on my fifth song before a woman dropped the first coin of the day in the hat. After that there was a steady flow. It’s not even as though the money is the most memorable part. I keep a record, because I declare all my earnings for tax purposes, but I’d never remember what I earn in each spot without referring to my diary. No, what is memorable are the characters. One young man came by. He was carrying a guitar slung on his back and a huge smile on his face. He asked about the Footdrums declaring he’d never seen anything like them before. Had I made them? I explained, probably for the hundredth time, that they were made by Pete Farmer in the USA. If I don’t get a commission, maybe I should get a discount when I eventually upgrade to a newer version with more pedals. We chatted for a while as he explained he was looking to start using foot percussion. I love that this particular message is being spread abroad. He dropped a fiver in the hat and my heart raced a little in excitement and then faster still as he started picking through the heavier coins. I thought he was picking out some change for his tip, but he was gathering coins to weigh down the five pound note so it wouldn’t blow away. I reached into my merch box and brought out an old cd of my ceilidh band. I’d normally give a Marshlander greeting card in return for a paper donation, but I’ve run out of stock. Still, I suppose this would be one way of running down the remaining stock of 700 or so CDs - not that they sound anything like Marshlander, although the tunes are all my compositions. Later I gave another CD to a woman who also put £5 in the hat. 

People walked by, some smiled as we made eye contact while others resolutely looked away. There were several people out with dogs yesterday too. One dog stopped and stared. It seemed to be listening to my music with great interest. Is that even possible? Maybe it was more interested in my scent … Another dog walked by with a notice strapped to its back that it was in training, though for what, I’d no idea. A gaunt and heavily tattooed man, dressed in black leather and wearing slicked back black hair approached. He dropped a few coins in the hat. My “thank you” was his cue for engagement. 

“You look very happy. You have a great aura,” he declared. “You live your own life and do just what you want. Good for you!”

I confirmed that I feel very fortunate and am pretty much my own master and that I love my life. He grinned and stretched out his arm. We bumped fists and he wandered off into the afternoon with a “Good for you, mate, good for you!”

A little girl of about two years turned to stare. This brought the accompanying grandparents and dog to a halt. Grandma fished something out of her purse and the girl approached cautiously as she held out a coin. I asked her to put it into the hat which she did. As I finished the second verse of “Be Home Soon” she stood still and stared at the drums. I stopped. “I have a special song if you have time to listen,” I offered, “You might know it.” I looked up at Grandad and he nodded his approval. “Why haven’t you got any shoes?” she asked, “Are you cold?”

“No I’m not cold, but you see these drums? They are very special. Most people play their drums wearing big shoes or boots. I love my drums and like to treat them kindly and with respect, so I always take off my shoes to play them.” She turned a very serious face to me. I changed to my C harmonica and played the first two bars of “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star”, which I keep as a party piece for the very young. As I started singing she turned and ran back to bury her face in Grandma’s coat. I kept going and she didn’t join in the singing, but after a while she began to dance. Arms outstretched she spun in circles and then raced around me and my rig and the nearby street furniture. She leapt into the air and she cartwheeled as best as two year-olds can. “She’s a very good dancer,” said  Grandad. I couldn’t help but agree. Grandma gave her some more change to drop into the hat. She dropped 20p in and put the rest into her own pocket. That was hilarious. We waved our goodbyes as I changed harps again and picked up “Be Home Soon” where I’d left off. 

Apart from a misty drizzle for a few minutes the rain held off. By the time I’d finished my set the sun was out and shining in the periodically blue sky. I’d had a lovely time and it felt so good to be out in the street again after being otherwise occupied for the past six or seven weeks.

I continued packing up after the sixty year-old woman left. Another older woman who was wheeling a bicycle stopped. Like me her teeth had not seen a dentist for a long time. Her hair was greasy and lank while yellow may not have been the best colour to be wearing given the state of her clothes. “I heard you earlier,” she admitted. She’d come out on her bike because she was bored and lonely and didn’t know what else to do. She explained that she only eats one meal a day, usually fish in the evening. She comes out to catch the shops before they closed. She liked to buy her fish from Iceland because the fish from Waitrose don’t taste as fresh. I said, “That would make you a pescatarian then.” She looked puzzled, so I explained. “I often wake up at two in the morning and I can’t think what to do. I can’t go out on my bike at that time of night. During the day there’s nowhere else to go but round the shops. That gets boring.” I could see her point. She suddenly became conscious of the state of her clothes. “I really ought to put these in the washing machine,” she gestured to indicate her coat and skirt. A few days ago, while on her rounds, she bought a cake from Greggs and she fancied some ice cream for a change. She bought a pot and ate the lot before it melted. 

“Cake and ice cream when you normally prefer fish. How did you feel when you were finished?”

“Very, very sick,” she admitted. “It wasn’t as nice as I thought it would be.”

Of The Last Tree

I shouldn’t have been around to witness this. I should have been on the first of five trains that day that would eventually take me over the Swiss border and back again into France. Unfortunately the abuse of rail workers by management and governments in France and the UK meant that I had to put my plans on hold for a few days while the workers were forced into standing up to the bosses. 

Every now and then, workers from the drainage authority turn up. The task of the day determines the vessel in or on which they whizz past creating more wash than any hire boat. Generally I wave and they ignore. One could become a little sensitive to this were one so disposed. I convince myself it is neither a personal slight nor an instruction from management that they avoid being seen to fraternise with the natives, but rather the necessity of being focussed on the task either at hand or impending that contributes to a general air of surliness that pervades these encounters. That doesn’t prevent such dourness radiating vibes of barely concealed aggression. I’ve seen that aggression given voice in the responses to perceived criticism on social media pages. I’ve no wish to mess with some of these über-masculine types in the real world who make me a little nervous. I’ll continue to wave and they’ll probably continue to ignore. 

I’ll hazard a guess that my fascination with aquatic and peri-aquatic bird life is no secret. Friends frequently send me photographs of kingfishers and I’m always staggered that other people have managed to capture the beauty, wildness and utter indifference to humanity of these amazing creatures. That they can skim the water so close to the surface and at such velocity elicits feelings from my deep well of awe. I think they truly live their lives at a difference pace. We probably appear to them as snails might appear to us. You might remember some of my close encounters with kingfishers since I have referenced them often within these essays. Families of kingfishers have used the bank opposite me for their nesting burrows for generations. The farmer here remembers seeing them using the same burrow sixty years ago. I am pretty sure that he holds them in at least as much affection as I do. I know he feels very strongly about protecting their environment. The burrow is a hole in the bank protected within the roots of a well-established (white?) willow. I don’t know how long this tree has been growing, but it is the only tree on that side of the river for possibly a mile in each direction. This makes it an incredibly important tree. It is home to many species of fauna and provides respite and shade to many others. Swans hang around for days when they need a place of shelter or shade. I have seen many species of the usual garden, river or woodland birds rest among its branches and some less usual ones as well including pheasants, herons and hawks settling to roost. What is very much not part of the Fen landscape is tree cover. Some farmers have allowed small stands of woodland to develop away from watercourses, but these are mainly to provide cover for game birds. Trees growing along the banks of the Fenland waterways are few and far between. There used to be more willows between “my” willow and the lock, but these were heavily coppiced a few years ago and are still recovering from the shock. They no longer appear to sprout any growth. One perception among people round here is that the authority hates trees and they would prefer to see their river banks looking like a well-tended lawn. I don’t know how true this is, but when I see how any trees are treated I can see why so many people think this way. Presumably a “lawn” is easier to tend than a tree. I’m guessing that there is a balance between maintaining the bank of a water course that suits the requirements of all its stakeholders, of whatever species, and the ease with which that bank can be maintained. One day many years ago, some workmen turned up to take the tree down. The farmer, fully tooled up, discouraged them from their intention very, very quickly indeed. I love it that he loves the tree too.

One day recently one of the weed cutting boats fitted with a hydraulic rake arm arrived. It was accompanied by a powered raft carrying three men in several layers of high visibility protective clothing. One of them pull-started a chainsaw into life and with a lot of shouting began hacking away at the branches of the willow. Naturally being very anxious that the tree not be damaged I climbed out of the boat and watched, fixing them with a very hard stare (yes, thank you Pooh). They wouldn’t have heard me above the noise so when the chainsaw powered down I hailed them and tried to remind them that the tree is the only home for many species. “Please be careful of the kingfisher burrow,” I called across to them. Families of kingfishers have been using it for at least sixty years.”

“No kingfishers here, mate,” came a somewhat irritated reply. 

“I’m still seeing them,” I responded. “They use those low branches outside the burrow to perch on while they are fishing. There’s not much else they can easily use.”

Clearly irritated by my interference he pointed out that there were plenty of perching places on my side of the river. Of course, he was correct in that they often perched on my tiller, my prow, or the grabrail of a nearby houseboat. One day the farmer’s grandson had been fishing and a kingfisher even perched on the end of his rod; the grandson didn’t dare breathe! The nuances of further discussion did not seem to interest the workman. The chainsaw fired up again. I went to find the farmer. I thought he’d want to know. Fortunately he was at home and came down the steps to the river. He tried to attract the attention of any member of the work crew, but they were on a mission. When the chainsaw stopped again for refuelling he took his turn to hail them. I was dismayed at the amount of growth they had cut back. They were now very close to the burrow and several branches overhanging the river had been lopped. I was in two minds about this aspect of the job. From spring to autumn the river is much busier and boats heading towards the lock are forced out into the river by the overhang. That’s no problem until something is also heading this way from the lock. I assume that heading off a collision with any of the moored boats was probably a reason for the carnage. My concern was that they were going to trim off the overhang today before coming back to finish the job later. I decided to phone the drainage authority. I was pretty sure they’d appointed a conservationist to the company. I spoke to the receptionist, “Could you please call off your boys? They’ve cut the tree back enough for boats to get by and I don’t know how much more damage they were planning on doing.” The man I needed to speak to was in a meeting and would call me back. Meanwhile the farmer’s discussion with the trio of doughty vandals had taken a distinct turn southwards and a torrent of abuse came our way. I’m not quite sure what caused it, but I did hear, “Why don’t you mind your own fucking business and get back on your little fucking boat!” Apart from the fact that the farmer didn’t live on a boat of any size or purpose, resorting to that kind of abuse was a realisation of the testosterone-fuelled aggression I’d been anticipating all along. While the farmer could easily deal with any amount of that, specially had they been on the same side of the river, he decided to make a phone call of his own. The person he was calling was in a meeting …

Everything went quiet. The helmsman of the workboat was on his phone. I went back on to my “little *** boat” which, incidentally, was several metres longer than theirs and managed to speak to my friend, Nick. Nick is writing a book about kingfishers as it happens and was due to submit it to the publisher for proofreading the following day. Nick assured me that the kingfishers would not be using the burrow at this time of the year. They’d be quite likely to be patrolling some of the dykes between the fields where it was less exposed. I could expect them to start pairing up again in a month or two when the burrow would come back into use. 

It stayed quiet. The workboats moved up towards the lock and their next project. I’m pleased to say they did leave some of the lower part of the tree and here’s a photograph I’ve just taken from the galley window. Whether it would have been cut back any further without us intervening I couldn’t say, but I could give them the benefit of the doubt and hope that they didn’t not want a confrontation any more than I did.

The willow on the right was joined by an elder that colonised the space on the left a few years ago

Of Fire And Ice

 I haven’t written much about the boat recently. To be fair until the past two or three days I haven’t written much about anything. I think I’ve caught up with the most recent busking news, but I’m going to bypass a lot of what I missed out last year. It’s not as though anyone needs to see a blow-by-blow, day-by-day record of the life and times of old man Marsh. Although I may have to share some of the many ways I didn’t die during the past twelve-month, as recorded in my nine-minute song, “Breakfast For The Creepy-Crawlies” … I’ll have to get back to you on that one.

For most of last year, I had no heating inside the boat. Of course given the record-breaking heat we experienced during the summer that didn’t always matter, but my back boiler burst in March, soon after I got home from hospital after the stroke - did I mention the stroke? I’ll have to look back and check. 

Over those heat-crazed months I tried to find someone to effect some repairs for me. I suppose there really is a labour shortage because I couldn’t find anyone able to help. The closer I examined the on-board log-burner with integral back-boiler, the more I realised I was completely out of my depth even to try. So many bits had fallen off the stove, lighting a fire was going to be risky. Even the wooden frame surrounding the tiling was being scorched and I didn’t fancy being another statistic. Friends offered to help, but many didn’t have marine experience. I wanted a bona fide job carried out by an engineer who could be properly accountable. I spent months waiting for heating engineer after heating engineer to get back to me as promised or simply to return my calls. I approached the engineers at the boatyard. They build boats, for heaven’s sake, but they wouldn’t touch the job, they’re not allowed to do stoves any more! Eventually I put out a plea for names to other single-handed boaters on Facebook. I received one promising suggestion. To cut a long story short, Des from Ship Shape Stoves came out to the Fen, dismantled my stove and took it away to refurbish it. A fortnight later, at the end of October he came back and reinstalled it. When I say “refurbished” the only salvageable parts were the two side panels. However, he did a great job and I’d recommend his work to anyone. It was such a relief not to have to put on extra clothes to go to bed! Since then I’ve had heating more or less as required. 

The past couple of weeks has seen the river frozen over and the boat frozen in. I was certainly pleased to have the stove back working. 

Then there are mad dogs and Englishmen. C was someone I didn’t know although I was to find out later that we had met each other across the table during the 2018 Middle Level Bill discussions in Parliament. He was trying to get his boat through to Ely, but in the words of Ernest Shackleton, “Oh deary, deary me!”

He’d passed my boat one day, but didn’t make it as far as the lock. He was stuck in the ice for several days. The day after he’d passed my boat I cycled up to the lock and saw he was stuck. I checked he was okay and we had a long chat. He didn’t need anything at that moment. Over the next few days he tried shunting ahead and astern, but didn’t make a lot of progress. In the end he gave up trying to get to Ely and decided to ride the thaw en route to March. 

I heard the ice breaking long before I saw the boat come round the bend. He stopped in the middle of the river and was sometimes standing on the bow and sometimes balancing dangerously on the gunwhale thrusting his barge pole in and out of the river to break up the inch-thick ice rather than risk damaging a neighbour’s grp cruiser by crashing straight through it. Not bad for a septuagenarian cancer survivor, I thought, but still barmy. I started up my engine and began shunting forwards and backwards in an attempt to break up some of the ice around me to relieve some of the pressure around his boat. Eventually he drew level and said he’d had to try and get back to March because he’d been stuck in the ice for ten days and ran out of water several days ago. I knew having no domestic water was a serious business so we manœuvred his boat alongside mine and tied him to me. I connected my water hoses together and within an hour we’d filled his water tank. At least he could wash now!

We may still see some of the world from different points of view, but I am very pleased to have got to know the man a little more. My memory of our previous encounter was not particularly positive. We probably have more in common than that which in the past has divided us; a good lesson to learn, I think.