So I have now reached the bit of the story I have wanted to tell for more than eight years. It is also the bit of the story that I have never felt I had the time to explain. I promise that none of the following is exaggerated; it is all as it happened and accurate. I hope I can remember it all!
The young man’s voice calling me out of the blue about a boat he had for sale belonged to … let’s call him “Robbie”, for reasons that will become more obvious, I have changed his name.
Robbie was the owner of a 36’ Springer narrowboat on the mooring adjacent to Boat Man. I hadn’t really taken any notice of what lay further along the river when I had had a look at Timeless a few months earlier. I didn’t know when Robbie phoned me that I was only a couple of weeks from the sale of Dad’s bungalow being completed.
Robbie had heard I was looking for a boat and that I couldn’t afford Timeless. He and his girlfriend, strangely also called Robbie, had lived together with their dog, who wasn’t called Robbie, for four years, at least a couple of which were on their boat. They were still in their teens.
I went through the (by now) usual routine of explaining that I wasn’t actually looking for a boat until I had secured a mooring. Robbie thought the farmer would be okay with letting the mooring to whomever bought the boat, so I arranged to have a look.
I went back to the farm one evening in early December 2011 and met the friendly Robbie, girlfriend Robbie and not-Robbie the dog. We talked boats. He was at pains to tell me how much he’d spent on the (probably) thirty year-old boat and about all the work he’d done since acquiring her a few years earlier. Until this point my knowledge of boats was very basic and strictly acquired on a need-to-know basis. He showed me the gas heater for hot water on demand, the taps, the lit stove that made the whole boat warmer than toast and the shower big enough for two. I arranged to return during daylight for a demonstration of the engine and a short trip. He had bought the boat for £12,000 he said, and had spent £6,000 on installations, upgrades and paint. Therefore the asking price was £18,000. Simple. But not quite. What I knew about Springers was that they were a mass produced low end of the market boat in the 1970s and 80s that rarely held a good price. The asking price was considerably more than the boat was worth if it had been put up for sale in any competitive way. Robbie, however, proved a tough negotiator and was prepared to give nothing away. His asking price was the final price. I was desperate not to become homeless and he could see that. I knew I would be able to afford the £18k when the house was sold, so I caved, outmanoeuvred by someone a third of my age. I asked him to check that the farmer would indeed let me take over the mooring and if that was okay I would find him £400 from somewhere as a deposit. He wanted £5,000, but I knew that £400 was all I would be able to lay my hands on at that time.
That evening Robbie phoned again to report that the Farmer had said, no, he wasn’t willing to let a stranger rent the mooring. We talked and I reaffirmed that I couldn’t buy the boat without a mooring. I also mentioned that I had met the Farmer back in the summer and that we had a long and interesting conversation. Robbie said he’d have another word. A couple days later he phoned again to say that the Farmer remembered meeting me and remarked that I “seemed okay” and so, yes, I could rent the mooring! This was probably the first genuine bit of good news I’d had that didn't end up biting me. The following day I withdrew the deposit from money I’d saved up to pay my tax bill and took it over to the Robbies. The boat was very small and I don’t know how two people and a dog had managed to live on it for years without going barmy or one throwing the other overboard. They must have been very much in love - more on this later. We arranged for me to pay the balance when I had some money in my account from the sale of the bungalow. This was one of the few concessions The Awful Mrs K had made. She’d already decided I had been awkward enough and she didn’t need to have any bad publicity from making me homeless while she dined on the interest of my father’s savings. My siblings had convinced her that I should have £40,000 the moment the sale went through, so that I could pay the balance and move on to the boat the same day. This figure was plucked from the cost of Timeless and would give me enough to pay the £17,600 balance on “Loretta”, named after the male Robbie’s late grandmother. I was, of course, sorry not to have been able to spend the money on Timeless, but had I done that I definitely wouldn’t have had a mooring, but I would also have had no money left to settle the debts I had incurred during this horrible year and was still paying off the loans after the maintenance payments situation following my divorce. I had reached the end of my credit in all my accounts, so things were very tight.
As I mentioned in the last essay, I knew the sale of the bungalow was nearing completion, but I was not expecting contracts to be exchanged and completed on the same day. The estate agent gave me forty-eight hours notice that I had to be out of the bungalow by mid-day on Friday 11th December. There was still so much stuff to move and I lost half a day of that with the stupid contract he forgot to ask me to sign earlier. One of my brothers and his wife took time off work and, while his wife scrubbed behind everything we moved, my brother and I also worked solidly. We filled the skip again with stuff that should have been recycled … sadly among the bits that went into the skip were so many of Dad’s tools, including two Workmate benches, going to waste. We took a lot of furniture to the local Sue Ryder furniture shop and bags full of clothes to Oxfam. The objects from the house about which I hadn’t really been able to make a decision, things like the upright piano I wanted to keep, plus all my remaining books went to G’s barn. It was frantic. The high top Mercedes Sprinter I had bought a few months previously really earned its keep during that period. On Thursday night I slept on a mattress on the floor. Somehow, and I’m still not really sure how, we had the whole house cleared by 11.30am on the Friday. The only thing I had left to move was my computer. It was connected to the internet, so that I could check my bank account for incoming money and transfer the balance to Robbie’s account so that I could sleep on the boat that night. I’d set up Robbie’s details and successfully transferred a notional figure of one pound to Robbie’s bank account that morning, so we knew it worked. I had informed my bank I would be transferring £17,600 of the £40,000 that would be appearing in my account during the day, so all I had to do was wait for confirmation that the sale had been completed. At 11.45 BT disconnected the phone line including my internet connection. Brilliant! We had been doing rather well till that point.
There was no reason for staying in the house now, so I packed the computer into the van and shut up the bungalow for the final time. The estate agent could have the wretched keys! My brother, his wife and I went into town and I dropped the keys and went to the bank to explain the situation and ask if I could use one of their computers to deal with the moneys. They agreed. It was the first time in many long years that the “bank that liked to say ‘Yes’” actually said ”Yes” to me. The three of us decided it was time to treat ourselves to a well-earned late lunch. We were so late for lunch that we could only find one place open that would let us sit and eat the sandwiches they sold us - not much of a celebration!
We had been told the sale would be completed at around 1pm. We did not get the news that it had happened until just after 4pm. Luckily the bank was still open and I used one of the bank’s computers to admire the bottom line containing the most money I had ever had in my account and to transfer out the money I owed Robbie. It was done …
I phoned him straight away to give him the news. He said he would confirm the transfer and call me back. He called me back. The only sum showing was the one pound that I had transferred that morning. We thought it was just a delay in showing the amount in the account, so we rang off and waited. Bro, wife and I realised we could only wait, so they decided to go home. I was working on Saturday so they said they’d be back on Sunday morning to help me move the washing machine out of my van, down the river bank and into the “washing room” shed Robbie had constructed on Loretta’s landing stage. Robbie called back every few minutes to say he had still not received the money.
Here is an account of that day I wrote at the time:
“Well, things were obviously going too well. Against all the odds the house was actually emptied in good time. Sat on the floor awaiting confirmation of completion. BT switched off the phone before we heard so I drove into town to use the bank's computer to transfer payment to the boat owner. That seemed to work okay up to a point. That is to say a boatload of money has left my account, but not made it to his. We did a test transfer this morning so we know the link is good. There is a bank in Wisbech that has a doorway I shall be occupying tonight once I remember where I've left my sleeping bag among all the temporary repositories of my belongings. What's the point of banks I wonder yet again.”
I forgot to mention that I have a degenerating eye condition for which I had a hospital appointment that same day at 6pm. I was examined and a new gas permeable contact lens was ordered. I would have to collect it next time I went to France, since that was the only address I could give people at the time. After the appointment I phoned Robbie one last time with no further news and, on my brother’s insistence drove off to book a night in a hotel in the town - my first night of homelessness.
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