My Father died in April 2011. I had been living with him since April 2003. I had been lucky to find such a comfortable home and sharing became an arrangement that suited us both, even though my eldest daughter once remarked that we lived together like students! I suppose that was mainly on account of our different lifestyles, incompatible timetables and dietary preferences. It took me weeks after his death to begin the awful task of dismantling our home. It was weird enough actually learning to live on my own for the first time in my life, but to be packing away or getting rid of everything that made that bungalow my home at the same time was very unsettling. Strangely it was my ex-wife who phoned me one afternoon and offered to help me make a start. I shall always be grateful to her for that; I was incapable of beginning the process of emptying the house under my own steam and had no clue what to tackle first. She arrived and immediately offered characteristically practical suggestions.
When the thought of continued house clearing became too overwhelming I would load my bicycle into my van and drive to any place where there was water. Parking up nearby I would use the bicycle and explore places in closer detail than was possible from the driver's seat of a car or van. Dad had given me his old bicycle, which he had of course picked up at a car boot sale. I never saw him use it although he once confessed that he had tried cycling round the garden to see if he could still do it. He was happy enough for me to use the bike many times while he was still alive, but I certainly managed to get a lot of use out of that bicycle the year he died. I cycled many miles alongside five local waterways on several occasions - The Great Ouse, Well Creek, the Little Ouse, the Wissey and the Old Nene through the Fenland town of March. I was beginning to hatch a hope that just maybe I could find a mooring in a place that I liked. If I could do that I would buy a boat. Buying a boat without first having a mooring seemed like asking for trouble. I did not want to have to worry about where I was going to leave my boat while I went to work or where I was going to leave my van while I moved the boat. It felt a lot like trying to earn an Equity Card where an actor has to have a job before they can get a card, but they can't get a job without an Equity Card!
I saw plenty of moored boats and I spoke to a few people who spent at least part of their lives living afloat. There were stretches of waterway, specially on the Wissey and Little Ouse, where boats were tied up bow to stern for what looked like miles. Conditions were also quite primitive for some people and I was not ready to go quite that far or quickly in dispensing with some of life's necessities as I saw them at the time. Most of the moored boats were very close to busy roads. Some had roads on both sides of the waterway. I had no wish to live with my head at or below exhaust pipe level where I would be lulled to sleep (or carbon monoxided into unconsciousness) by the gentle thunder of lorries hurtling past. Some of the boats on the Wissey seemed to be accessible only by wading through acres of mud. There aren't many towpaths in the Fens and facilities for water, waste and sanitation are even rarer. Sometimes somebody would give me the name of the person I should speak to, but it never amounted to anything. Several times I heard rumours of some moorings on one of the waterways that became my favourite haunt, but I could never find them. I was almost at the point of going door to door to ask if a house owner would accept me mooring a boat on their private mooring. One day I hit on the idea of using my computer and pulling up a satellite view of the terrain to try and find the mysterious moorings, mention of which I had by now heard often. I followed the course of the waterway in question on the map to the point where, on the ground, I had encountered a farm gate across the road and beyond which I had never ventured. It had been clear that the road beyond that gate led only into the heart of the farm. From that point I had always turned round and retraced my journey the three or four miles back to the van. However, on looking at the satellite view of the area I was able to see what lay beyond and indeed, just around the bend in the river not visible from the road, I counted thirteen boats in a little floating community. Had I been brave enough to cross on to private territory beyond the gate across the road I would have discovered the moored boats within a quarter of a mile.
My next river exploration was going to be back at that place for sure. One sunny August afternoon I cycled through the gates that led to the farm yard. As I reached the deserted yard a very large and very thin dog (a greyhound, I supposed) began to howl, bark and came bounding up to me. I thought I was about to become a late lunch, but I did try not to panic. I vaguely remembered reading somewhere that dogs can smell fear. I stood still and the dog stopped before it got to me. We looked at each other and I started talking quietly, in as calm a voice as I could muster under the circumstances, suggesting to the hound it would probably be better for both of us if it waited for its dinner. I will admit to not having had much experience with dogs in my life up to this point and I was acting purely on instinct; I wasn't ready to die. I must have done something right because the dog approached slowly with head bowed and seemed to want some fuss and attention, which I was happy enough to provide. As I stroked the dog I looked around for any glimpse of a creature with two legs, but I found no one to ask about the moorings. Surprisingly, I visited the farm five times, before I found anyone to speak to.
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