The fifth time I visited the farm I encountered a contractor at the wheel of a huge machine. Of course neither of us had any idea who the other was, but he must have recognised me as a stranger, because he slowed down; maybe it was just the desperate look on my face. I asked if he knew anything about the moorings and he answered that he didn't, but instead pointed to a house in the distance and suggested I ask there. I suppose if I'd had any sense I would have started knocking on doors earlier, but I hate cold calling, whoever is doing the calling.
The door of the house was answered by a very tanned woman who could have been around my age, but I'm rubbish at working out such things. She spoke with a Fenland accent containing a hint of what my music lecturer at college would have called an "Embassy-tipped" voice and was very jolly and friendly. She turned out to be the Horse Woman I have mentioned in earlier essays. We talked and I explained my situation and how, by this time my options had contracted to living on a boat if I could find a suitable mooring or to follow the example of a number of friends and converting my van. Given my already confessed lack of d-i-y skills the van, however much more convenient it could turn out to be, was my least favourite option. "I suppose if I had a choice, I would want a boat that didn't need too much work doing." Ever hopeful, ever naive ...
She replied that I would need to speak to her brother who wasn't there, but would be back soon. In the meantime someone who was already living there had a boat for sale if I would like to meet him? Of course, by this stage I was happy to talk boats and to meet anyone who might help me make any kind of decision one way or another. I felt sick every time the estate agent phoned to let me know another person wanted to view the bungalow and I was tired of it.
Whenever the estate agent phoned he would bring up the subject of a key. He wanted a key so he could show people round the house himself whenever it suited him and his client. I insisted that I would hang on to the keys since the house was MY home and I wanted to know who was walking round it and what they were poking around in. I had a lot of money invested in my irreplaceable instruments and a recording studio set up in the garage. There was no way I wanted everyone knowing what I kept in there or anyone touching anything. I had visions of people touring houses for sale looking for a reason to come back later after they had cased the joint. He was never very happy with my refusal to part with a key, ("... but we do this every day without problems!") though I suppose I could award merit points for his persistence. I could see he had a business to conduct, but my sympathy with his situation waned as he showed no sign that he had any understanding of the fact that doing his job would be likely to see me out on the street. It was also clear that he did not trust me to do any kind of job of selling the house for him. He was right, of course. I had no interest in leaving my home. If someone asked me why I was moving I would tell them the truth. My father had died, my siblings wanted their share of the estate, I had lost my rights to act as executor and the will-writing company wanted as quick a sale as possible (I could have added "at any price", but I wasn't going to give these strangers the baseball bat with which to do me in). I remember as I was showing one couple round the garden that the lady asked me what I was going to do. I was honest and said that I hadn't a clue. I wouldn't be able to afford somewhere to buy outright, I didn't earn enough for even a small mortgage, I didn't qualify for a council house, local housing associations only had waiting lists and I couldn't afford to pay a commercial private rent without eating into and spending within five years whatever my share of the estate turned out to be. I felt completely trapped. It seems this poor woman went back to estate agent in tears on my behalf. He was livid and contacted the will-writers. Soon after that I was sitting in the church yard of St Peter and St Paul in Wisbech, after another pointless visit to my bank and an equally pointless trawl round the estate agents, when I received a phone call from a very cross managing director/owner of the will-writing company and newly assumed executor of my father's estate, the Awful Mrs K. I had a very large strip torn off me for blocking the sale of the house and halting the progress of probate. This was ironic. It was four months after we had buried my father and they still hadn't got round to publishing the notice of his passing in the London Gazette, which is apparently the usual organ for such legally required notices and which notices are normally submitted within a few weeks of a death. The Awful Mrs K and her gang (who all seemed to be members of the same family) omitted many such actions, which would see them hanging on to my father's bequest and accumulating the interest for nearly another three years. In the end we had to get the police involved and they were very interested in this company. This particular group of will-writers (at the time an unregulated "profession") was apparently known to them for a number of similar cases. However, during the phone call, The Awful Mrs K had a punishment ready. Because the bungalow had not sold within the three months following instructing the agent, they were going to knock £40,000 off the valuation. At that point it was my turn to become upset. I remember pointing out that other homes in our area had been on the market for a smaller asking price and for a far longer time, two or three years in a couple of cases I could think of. She had no idea about the housing market in our part of the Fens. The phone call ended poorly. After that The Awful Mrs K only spoke directly to me once more, otherwise she always dealt with me only through her family minions. She would usually speak to one of my younger siblings whom she deemed more reasonable.
I suppose the truth was that I was worn out by the whole situation. I was grieving for my father in a way I had never yet managed for my mother. I was trying to keep my business going as a sole-trading, independent musician earning some kind of living income. I was trying to be creative, but I was more often simply in tears. Although I did have occasional help from my ex, a friend and one of my siblings, I was trying, mostly by myself, to clear out the house my father and I had shared for all those years. This meant selling, giving away or dumping his stuff and finding somewhere suitable to store my own belongings for when the time came to leave, specially if I had nowhere to go. All of this was exhausting and time-consuming enough without having no idea where and how I was going to manage when I was forced out.
The Horse Woman walked me down to a landing stage on the river and knocked on the roof of a newly-painted narrowboat. "Anyone home?" she called out. A smiling man, who looked to be well into his sixties, emerged and introductions were made. "This is ... what did you say your name was again? He wants to buy a boat ..." She left us to talk and went back to the house. I had to explain, neither for the first nor the last time that I wasn't looking for a boat at the moment, but that I was looking for a mooring so that I could start looking for a boat. The Boat Man and I slipped into easy conversation and a couple of hours passed by almost unnoticed. He showed me his own very tidy boat, where he lived alone with an aged and quite poorly dog. Then we talked about the boat next door. This was the one for sale. It had been bought ten years earlier by a Welsh carpenter, called "Taff" (obviously), apparently an alcoholic who had sold up and moved to Bulgaria. Boat Man had entered into an arrangement with The Fireman, who kept a small outboard-driven cruiser on a nearby mooring and together they bought Taff's boat. The boat, named Mab, had at some point been painted burgundy. I liked both ideas immediately, a nice coloured boat with classical, and supernatural, connections. As we stepped outside to look at the boat for sale two things were immediately apparent. It was now two shades of Tory blue with gold bordered panels on the sides and it was no longer called Mab. "The Fireman and I thought people might think Mab stood for Muslim Association of Britain and wouldn't want to buy it," explained Boat Man with neither shame nor irony. "We've come up with a much better name anyway," he went on. "We called it "Timeless". It's very apt don't you think?"
"It's very bourgeois" is what I actually thought, but I managed not to say it out loud.
"The name has real meaning. We've been doing a lot of work on the boat and we decided to make a name using our own names, Tim and Les ... and we've found the perfect sign for it."
Indeed they had found the perfect sign, a huge vinyl clock face without hands had been applied to one of the rear panels of the boat ... OMG, a bromance. Did they realise? The only other time I'd noticed people combining their names was when a married couple called their house "Carobryaline". That was naff even back in the 70s when the I lived across the road from them. There was also the couple I knew who bestowed a two-syllable name on their first-born devised from a single syllable taken from each of their own first names. I found the symbolism unsettling. The husband was quite proud that not only was the child named from each of their names, but that she was also made from a bit of each of them ... too graphic! That kid was lucky to be a girl, though, I suppose. Had she been born a boy they might have called him something like "Mischance"! Since then I've noticed a trend among starry-eyed and already partnered boat owners to name their boats after an amalgamation of their two names, Deblee or Debbie Too around the Fens spring to mind, but neither before nor since have I encountered two straight blokes in a project partnership doing the same thing.
"Can I see inside?" I asked.
Inside was far more promising. The fittings were beautifully rendered in cedar and oak. The previous owner's personal problems hadn't prevented him making a craftsman's job of the fit out. Boat Man and Fireman might have spruced it up a bit but the underlying workmanship was undeniable. I fell in love. The fact that it actually ticked every box I had set out for myself should I ever be in a position to buy a boat was unexpected and rather amazing. Fifty feet long, traditional stern, brand new multi-fuel stove and ready to move into.
"We had to replace the engine, because the original had seized solid. We've done lots of other work on it too," the Boat Man explained clearly very proud of the achievement.
"How much are you asking?" I enquired.
Sadly the £40,000 they wanted was well beyond what I could afford at the time and I would probably still struggle even when my inheritance came through after all the fees had been covered and the remainder divvied up.
It had been a nice encounter and a lovely relief for a couple of hours that I may have found an answer to my problems. Sadly, though, it got worse. I left the Boat Man and went back to the house. Horse Woman's brother, the Farmer, had arrived and he came to the door. Again, we talked for a long time. I explained my situation and what I was looking for. I discovered that the thirteen boats I had counted on the satellite view of the river were no longer there because the local navigation authority had given The Farmer instructions to evict them. He had a long history of disagreements with the authority and this was a case of them flexing their corporate muscle over his riparian rights. I remembered some of what he mentioned being recorded in the local paper some twenty years previously. He had appealed against all the boaters being evicted and the authority had eventually relented and allowed three live aboard vessels. Everyone else was dispersed to different parts of the waterway or forced off the system altogether. Since there were already three liveaboarders mooring at the farm the allocation was full. Shame, that was it then. Back to square one.
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