Of The End Of A Holiday And A Winterising Failure

My exit from the church didn't quite go to plan. I thought I was there until the 5th January. However, the e-mail I had sent asking for information from my two artist friends elicited the 14th January as the return date from their Antipodean odyssey. This was not at all expected and was, naturally, a sledgehammer blow to my excitement about going home to my boat. I also had a gig on the 14th, so I would now need to be extra careful about making sure I planned everything properly and had everything I would need in whatever place it was needed. P. had gone back to France on the 2nd. Three more days alone in someone else's house was bad enough, but bearable. Another nine days beyond that felt like a life sentence. A little solace was offered when I realised that the boiler engineer did not actually return to the UK until the 9th, which at least meant that I would be likely to be able to get the boiler working and the house warm for their return from their summer holiday. A return to the ice, fog, and freezing temperatures of the Fens under a high pressure system would not have been the most welcome of homecomings for them after their scuba exploration of the Great Barrier Reef.

I planned my exit carefully. It was, of course, unlike me. I would use the last couple of days to move my instruments and other paraphernalia out of the house. Having brought over several personal items to avoid me having to search through their cupboards I would also remove some of my cookware and unused foodstuffs. I would wash everything that needed washing on the penultimate day except the bottom sheet and pillow cases. The remaining bedding I could wash on the morning of departure after I had used it for the final time. I was sleeping under one of my own duvets (and two of theirs on top of that), so there was nothing that needed washing in any hurry there. I was also using my own towels and pillow, but there were other pillowcases on the remaining pillows so they would also go into the washing machine. Sorted.

The day before the day of planned departure my phone rang at just after eight in the morning. It wasn't yet warm enough to get up so I was still in bed reading "Jollity Farm: A History of The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band", having crept back under the stack of duvets following morning matins with sooty vacuum cleaner and pellet boiler worship.

"Hi, we're back. I got the dates mixed up, what with the time zones and everything. We stayed in London last night and we'll be home this afternoon; probably leave here around lunchtime ..."

I got up then, spurred into action in the panic of a whole twenty-four hours less than I was expecting for executing my impeccable exit strategy. Everything went into the washing machine, I made some porridge and some ginger tea for breakfast, went outside to feed the tits, the robin, the pheasants five and Clayton Peacock and launched into the clearing up. By that time I estimated I had three or four hours to make the house welcoming. A quick check on the leaking stopcock (up three flights of stairs in the attic) revealed that my repair had held and the bucket I had left under the valve contained very little water. I packed my belongings into their cases and bags and began loading the van. With everything out of the way I could use one of the other vacuum cleaners to clean through the two floors I had been inhabiting for the past six weeks. Washing up, done and put away, fresh linen on the beds, but the guest bedroom worried me.

P. has a friend, well these days we both have a friend, The Divine Miss M. During a tragic 2016 she lost her mother, the stepfather she had known since she was eight (her biological father having passed away when she was very young) and the home she grew up in. P. felt that leaving her on her own for this first Christmas would be very difficult for her so we had invited her to stay. I'll admit that in the early days of our relationship, I was very jealous of the tiny amount of time I would have with P. I always found it difficult to share him. I had to come to terms with the fact that he and La Divine had been close friends and dancing partners for more than three decades. They saw each other most weekends and for many of these past few years they had plotted, planned, administered, choreographed and rehearsed some amazing and beautiful shows. The French for "show" isn't "le spectacle" for nothing. In the time P. and I have been together, I have known him and La Divine take their performances to various parts of Switzerland, France and Italy. I have always been very proud to see his work from the audience. Occasionally I was even roped into the performances as an extra dancer - men, as ever, being in short supply for such endeavours. One day I may go into the parting of the ways between them and the Swiss company with whom they worked. This isn't that day. Much as I have had to learn to accept and embrace their friendship I could not have seen her spend this Christmas on her own either. So, she had come to England with P. - her first visit to the U.K for forty-three years. If I were to intimate that my French is actually better than her English that would be an understatement. It still amazes me that there could be someone less fluent in a second language than me. She knows, "Hello," and not much else. Even after all these years she cannot pronounce my name except with a rolled r and a stress on the final syllable, so charmingly French. She is, however, incredibly patient with me and she is one of the few in P's circle of family and friends who I am sure does not judge me badly for having made such little progress with learning French during the past fourteen years. Our conversations are slow and my French falteringly constructed as I try to get my brain into the reverse gear demanded of a rosbif attempting to speak French while simultaneously trying to remember vocabulary, tenses, gender agreements, conjugations, declensions, pronouns and the occasional idiomatic phrase. I'm not sure, actually I know, that I don't understand much of what she says to me, but we manage simple conversations ... of a sort. I am pretty sure she appreciates my efforts, though I daresay she finds them highly amusing. She is, however, one of those French people for whom manners are everything. I shall never know what she really thinks of my efforts to speak French. It would not cross her mind to pass comment nor would she, I suspect, pass judgement.

I stated that the guest bedroom worried me. Try as I might during the final couple of weeks, after P. and La D. had rentréed, I could not air the room enough to clear the odour of her perfume. I hoped my friends would be able to cope with the aroma of expensive and persistent parfum even though I had washed everything I could find that might harbour the residue.

This tale is long enough already, but there is a little more to share. I expected my friends to be back by two in the afternoon at the latest. That would give me time to return my belongings to their usual scattered locations. I really needed daylight because I wanted to get some water back into the tanks on the boat. At 4pm they phoned to say they were just leaving London. Daylight was fading fast by then, so I hid the key, sending a text to say where, and set off to salvage what daylight I could. Filling up with water is an operation that uses three linked hosepipes from a standpipe in the farmyard to my water tank under the foredeck, a distance of some seventy metres. The bank is slippery and often muddy, the steps to my jetty often lose their fastenings to mock the unwary in their crazy realignments, while other people on adjacent moorings, which I have to cross, have bits of metal and wood sticking up at awkward angles. As much light as possible is advisable. I started to fill the tank, but being completely empty it wasn't even half full after an hour. I had to get back to the church, because there were things I needed to show my friends rather than leave for them to discover. I had also planned to go and perform at a new local open mic that evening where two friends were also debuting. Naturally all this delay put everything back. Rolling up the hosepipes I stumbled in the darkness into a metal spike on a neighbouring plot and still bear the remnants of the graze that ran the length of my shin, blood staining my trousers and running into my sock. My friends couldn't find the key, so I had to talk them to the spot, before I set off having only half filled the tank. They had wondered what state the house would be in when they arrived home. She thought I may have wrecked it and and had had to undertake a frantic last minute cleaning operation. He said that he didn't think I would do that. They both met me with smiles saying it was cleaner and tidier than when they had left. Thankfully it was also warm. That was my main concern for them. In their hospitable way they insisted I stay for something to eat and, of course, we talked and talked.

By the time I left them to take instruments and equipment back to my lockup it was gone eight. From there I went to the open mic just in time to see my friends, having completed their sets, packed up and ready to leave ... yes, the venue had been that awful and I was rather relieved I hadn't made it in time either to share their misery or to inflict the misery of my own performance on a small, but largely indifferent, audience. This audience was, it seemed primarily made up of the members of one family who had come to support a fifteen year-old BGT wannabe who was warbling her way through her extensive karaoke programme by the time I arrived. My songs of lust, blasphemy, death and dissent would probably not have been well received.

I got back to the boat after midnight which, after having been unlived in for the previous six weeks, was morbidly cold. I had set the fire earlier in the evening needing only a match to make it spring into life. Of course, the matches had taken umbrage, as had the kindling, newspaper and even the walnut shells I collected for starting up a fire. All had a moisture content that prevented a fire from catching. In shame I dug out a firelighter and broke the paraffin block into smaller pieces. I lit that instead, which eventually set fire to the kindling, the nutshells and the paper. The coal nuggets were the only part of the procedure that caught light in the expected order. I turned away from the fire, which had taken hold in the stove to fill the kettle for a warming nightcap. As the kettle began to boil I gradually became aware of a hissing sound. I turned and lost my footing on a wet galley floor. Water, a filthy black cascade of water, was actually pouring out of the stove and on to the floor. I screamed a few choice obscenities and pulled at the steps by the front door to reach the stop cock between the cold water tank and the main pump. I rushed to the back of the boat to switch off the power to the pump. Still the water kept flowing I grabbed towels and bowls, rags and a dustpan to scoop up as much of the evil black liquid as I could. It was quite a sight to see the fire roaring and water pouring through the ashpan under the grate and over the floor. It found its way through the nooks and crannies along the port side to emerge as a black pond spreading from under the washing machine in the galley and from there into and through the bathroom. Its progress was being checked slightly by the fitted carpet at the entrance to my cabin. It was a hell of a mess. Eventually the water stopped flowing, but I was still mopping up at two in the morning.  Welcome home.

Of Sitting For Old Churches

December disappeared more quickly than seemed decent for a month equipped with a fullness of thirty-one days. It was an odd month, though, because not only did it seem afterwards to have disappeared quickly it also felt as though it took an excruciatingly long time to happen while I was in the middle of it, especially for the weeks I was living on my own. This essay explains a little of what happened.

During the Grand Boat Repaint last August some friends asked me to consider house-sitting while they went away on holiday to The Other Side Of The World for a few weeks at the end of the year. I am pretty sure they thought this would be a jolly jape, not to mention a mutually beneficial scheme. They saw me as being doomed to a cramped and cold existence on my boat and they had an old house in need of a bit of security. These are the friends who would not take a "thanks, but no thanks" in answer when offering me a bed for a few days when what I actually wanted was to spend August living in my van as the boat was being blasted back to bare steel. I had a lot of other things to do during August, so I had genuine reasons for not taking up their offer, but I failed to find excuses for turning down the invitation for the last few days of the month. I went to stay. They were indeed lovely hosts, but I was really looking forward to getting back home to my newly repainted boat after four or five days and may not have been the most gracious of guests.

I thought about the offer of a stone and mortar dwelling for December and eventually agreed to look after their house. Obviously it would be doing them a favour and I do find it hard to resist an offer to do someone a little kindness if it is at all within my power. This offer though had one or two advantages. Their "house" is one half of a deconsecrated church (the half with the church tower) in a remote part of the Fens. They said a house like theirs needs people in it and that I could invite whomever I wanted for company. Since it was Christmas and New Year, I could even host parties there. Of course, P. was the first person I thought about. I know he likes the house and it was going to  be lovely to have his company there over Christmas. Not being on the boat would mean we would have all that time together without being forced to squeeze past each other several times a day, even though the squeezing past had long ago morphed into a lovers' game that never fails to amuse. Then I realised it would be the first time ever I would be in a position to be able to invite my children and their families over for Christmas. I thought also that an Old Year's Night with friends and the sharing of music and poetry would also be pretty good. It began to look like a more attractive offer.

What they didn't know, and what was holding me back, is that I am always very wary of leaving the boat in cold weather. I am terrified about returning home to burst pipes and the floor awash. The first year on the boat I left one of those oil-filled radiators running on a low temperature and came home from France to an enormous electricity bill. Other years I went through the rather odd boating ritual of "winterising" the boat which, as far as I could tell, meant emptying all the water out of the calorifier and the cold water tank, disconnecting the main pump, leaving the taps open, isolating the gas bottles from the galley appliances and hoping for the best. Of course, the longest I had been away during the colder months before was six days. This time I was being asked to be away for six weeks.

Fortunately, my friends' house is mere yards from a navigable river. The obvious solution was therefore to take the boat with me and keep an eye on it daily. I had walked along the river bank in the summer and, while mardling with some of the less aggressive looking boaters, managed to make tentative arrangements for a temporary mooring for December for what I would normally pay for my own mooring. Then I began to do the sums. Two sets of mooring fees, diesel for the journey, but the biggest outlay would be for the river license I would need to travel on this waterway, which was managed by a different authority from the one where I am normally resident. Navigable inland waterways in England were once mainly managed by British Waterways and the Environment Agency. When British Waterways lost the gig The Canal and River Trust took on the franchise. There are a number of other smaller waterways authorities too, but these two are the largest players in the game. I am normally resident on water managed by neither of them so I would need to spend several hundred pounds on a license to cover me for up to two months. Where I live there is actually no mechanism for registering boats, so in order to get a license, I would need to be registered - obviously at yet more expense. Despite my general antipathy towards adventures, I still thought this one would be worth it.  P., though, is far more cautious about what he sees as unnecessary expenditure and tried to talk me out of it. We started to add up the costs and it was clear we were possibly approaching a four-figure sum once we threw everything into the mix. Another consideration was that this was happening during the same time that Karl was going to be be returning to install the new canopy for the cratch (see earlier posting). I couldn't fairly expect him to travel those extra miles. In the end the decision was made for me. I discovered a stoppage (a closure of the waterway) about a mile from my home mooring to allow for river dredging was in the offing. If I didn't manage to get back in time I would be stuck the wrong side of the stoppage for three months. That would not be convenient at all, so I decided, reluctantly, against taking the boat. I planned to visit the boat every couple of days and to keep an eye on it.

I became a church mouse at the beginning of December. The church had had time to cool down from its usual inhabitants' heating habits. There were two forms of heating - a large wood burning stove in the large kitchen and an even larger pellet-guzzling boiler/stove that fed the hot water system and a rudimentary central heating system in the living room. This beast took up almost half of the living room space. The rituals required for getting it to fire-up and stay functioning were elaborate. It had its own specialised sooty vacuum cleaner and matins consisted of the sound of the vacuum sucking out the previous day's unconsumed, but burnt, offerings. The beast fed on pellets made from compressed sawdust which fed into a sacrificial chalice, via an augur mechanism, from a huge hopper on the back of the burner. Starting up the boiler involved the use of a blowtorch applied in a thirty-second blast until some of the pellets glowed sufficiently strongly to stay aglow in the stream of air that was pumped up through the chalice containing the offering. Each day was a dies irae. There was a straightforward electrical timer attached to the assembly and I had taken lessons. I had even filmed the instructions on my tablet for later private study as I had been receiving them. I knew what to do. I also had the name and telephone number of the local heating engineer should there be a problem. He had installed the boiler and, it had been alleged, knew all its foibles in a disconcertingly intimate way. What could possibly go wrong? I was equipped for everything - everything, that is, except how cold I would be. I kept the boiler working until it switched itself off at 11.30 each evening, but I could not get the radiators to warm up at all. The boiler was also well enough insulated to prevent any convected heat warming the air anywhere in its proximity. After a few nights of near frozen hibernation I went back to my boat for my hot water bottle. This, along with three duvets on top and my sleeping bag (which I always keep in the van) opened out underneath the bottom sheet, did actually help me stay warm. I did not get up very early for the first few days unless I had to go to a school for work. I needed the sun to shine so that I could at least imagine what being warm was like. This was my routine until the boiler packed up altogether and I was forced to boil kettles for my hot water too. This wasn't so different from being on the boat after all ... until I ran out of logs for the wood-burner.

Not having permission to expose my friends' home to intrusive scrutiny
here is a peacock - one of the daily visitors to the garden who came
for his breakfast. He would sit on the step and lean against the glass back
door to the kitchen. Since both my friend and myself have long been fans of
the music of John Fahey, he could only ever be called "Clayton".

I do find old buildings fascinating and this was no exception. Much as I love strange corners and hideaways, this was also the home of my friends and I had no interest in peering into spaces beyond what was necessary to ensure all was well and to locate cookware, cutlery and any other bits and pieces necessary for the day-to-day. I was uneasy enough looking for clean bed linen! This was an issue of trust. Snooping is not an honourable way to repay any such trust as they must have had when considering asking me to house-sit. Something one of them said to me before they left, though, made it sound as though that was what he was expecting me to do and that any curiosity would be quite normal. I thought that was weird enough, but when in later conversation with an acquaintance who asked me how much of my friend's underwear I had used (actually, he said used), I could only think WTF!! Seriously, is this how other people behave? At the end of my six weeks I had no idea where any of his or his wife's clothes were kept apart from a few coats on a hook near the front door and a virtual Imelda of footwear that lined the walls in the bedroom I was using. I mention this mainly because it helps explain part of the picture in the next bit of the story and partly because I still can't believe such behaviour was actually expected.

On my first day there I had a look in each of the rooms just to make sure everything looked okay. There was, however, one room on the top floor to which I couldn't open the door. I assumed it was either locked or that my friends knew about it. I didn't really give it another thought until my children and grandchildren came to visit just before Christmas. I gave them a tour round the house and it was only then that I noticed that the floor near the locked door was wet. I had been told there had been a leak somewhere and thought this was residual from that, so I put some towels down as per the written instructions left for me. A day or so later I had to roll the carpets back. Eventually the floor had dried sufficiently for me to be able to force the door open enough to be able to squeeze into the room. Once inside, though, I saw water running off one of the oak ceiling beams. I had been warned about roof leaks and there were buckets set out strategically and perhaps I should have been more curious and pro-active. Unfortunately this water was also dripping on to a book shelf and on to stacks of craft materials. I moved everything that was under the worst of the flow and found more buckets and towels. I also went up into the attic to look at the roof but that actually seemed dry and I couldn't see water coming in from the outside. There were, however,  two cold water tanks and an expansion tank (this last being way above my reach and I would need a ladder to get anywhere close if that's what I needed to do). The water tanks were underneath and behind a barrage of stuff, which I moved by torchlight. Eventually I found the cause of the leak, a stopcock valve that needed replacing or tightening. Water was not just dripping, it was flowing along the shaft and on to the floor of the attic and from there into the room below. I found the main stopcock and shut off the water. Now, not only did I not have heat, I didn't have water either. This was turning into a bit of a nightmare.

There was nothing for it. I would have to interrupt the holiday and get some advice about what they wanted me to do. Among his many skills he was a builder and he had installed the plumbing so he knew his way around. I fired off an e-mail and received an answer some hours later. At least now I knew where to isolate that part of the system so that I could have running (cold) water in the kitchen and bathroom. It took a while, but eventually I located an adjustable spanner and tightened the stopcock to the point that it would now probably take two weeks to fill the bucket I'd put in place rather than two hours. The advice about the heating was to clear out the hopper and see if there was a jam. I'd already tried this twice after having looked for a similar problem via YouTube, but I did it again just in case I could do it better this time. In fact I cleared out that hopper many times over the next few days trying to locate and release a pellet or sawdust jam. The effect of this jam was an insufficiency of pellets being released into the chalice to keep the fire alight. As it happened this was not the problem at all (which may explain why I couldn't fix it), although I wasn't to find that out until near the end of my stay. Calling the official installer/engineer was out of the question for another week or so, because he was in his "other house" in France with his family. The best I could do was to try and get some more logs so I could light the woodburner in the kitchen. I didn't know where my friends got their logs from, but fortunately a mate of "the engineer" (the one who had helped me wth my boat and whom I mentioned last year) sells logs. I sent a text message to him and he sent back his mate's phone number. Within twenty-four hours I was half a load of logs better off and a ton worse off. It had been longer than I realised since I had needed to buy a large quantity of logs. These logs were really good, though, and burned beautifully. I really didn't expect them to be so good. At least now a huddle round the stove was an option.

There was an outcome. The boiler engineer returned from his French sojourn and when I phoned him on the day of his return he was on the doorstep within the hour. There was no jam. The motor that drove the auger was not working properly and needed replacing. Luckily this man knew that this Heath Robinson system had a similar motor for driving another bit of the boiler that had long ago packed up. He dug into the guts of the beast and cannibalised the other motor. At last the boiler started to work. Once it was working I also discovered the need to switch on a pump in the upstairs bathroom to circulate water from the boiler to the radiators. It never did become warm, but at least the chill was off the air - five weeks after I first moved in and a week before I eventually moved out.

Of The Vanity Of Journalling

How can it be the last day of January in 2017 already and I haven't yet written anything this year? Happy new year to both of my readers - even to the one who describes this as a "vanity blog". Of course I wouldn't see it that way, because it sounds rather a derogatory term, but if it does turn out that I am writing purely out of vanity I shall have proven only that I don't know myself as well as I thought. My intention in writing this online diary has always been simply to record some of my thoughts before I stop having them or lose the ability to record them as well as using it as a vehicle to practise writing. Before I "publish" this, by clicking the onscreen button and making it available to an audience outside of my own head, I shall have spent hours in the writing and even more hours in poring over the words many times. Only when I think I have reached the point where further tinkering is simply more procrastination will I publish. I find it curious that there is even the possibility that someone I have never met in real life will see this, read it and even weirder that they feel disposed to comment upon it. I have never sought that kind of interest although being noticed does pander to something akin to vanity - albeit as a by-product rather than as an intention I suppose? However, it is here and all who find this page are welcome, lest you get any impression to the contrary. Is a readership a "bad thing" ...  discuss?

Perhaps I am being a tad disingenuous too, because I do actually have a readership in mind and that readership is my children. I don't think they will ever know that I have written this for them, unless by some amazing coincidence one of them stumbles across this account and puts parts of the puzzle together, but I hope that amongst all the ranting and the rambling about bimbling about, they will get a feel for how much I love them all and how I think about each one of them every single day. I spend far too much time revisiting my failures as a parent, but there is never a day goes by where I don't think about my children, the youngest of which are a decade beyond the age I was when the firstborn arrived. I try to tell them how much I love them and how proud I am of their achievements, but one of the characteristics in our family is that we have never been that good at talking and listening to each other. At times we have excelled ourselves in both skills, but the timings need to synchronise too. One side needs to be able to express itself at the same time as the other side needs to be empathetic and ready to listen. I have been cut to the core on a few occasions to learn that one or other thought I didn't care, when all the time I was mostly doing what I could to hang on to my own sanity in order to be able to care for them in the best way I could and in a way I thought they should be cared for. I guess it's true that I would have given my life for any one of them. I regret that I didn't always find the resources within me to live for them. There were too many times when it was challenge enough to keep living for myself.

Talking of by-products, it has appeared to be one of the by-products of divorce from their mother that I am finding a voice with which to begin to build verbal intimacy with them. When we all lived together there were tensions far too great for either of us to give our children the parenting they should have had. We stumbled from inadequacy to inadequacy. I lost my belief in the god of our cult and in prophets and holy books. As a heretic I had nothing of importance to offer. When I came out I became a liar and a tool of Satan. Is it ironic that the bargepole in my life is now put to far better use?

Perhaps the drive to write is one of the hangups from my Mormon upbringing. Mormons used to be obsessed with "keeping journals", perhaps they still are although I wouldn't really know these days. I always failed to keep a journal as demanded by "the prophet". It's not that I didn't do it. I wrote quite a lot of diary entries in lots of different books and somehow, along the way, most of them have gone missing or become damaged and all my half-started notebooks have become estranged from each other. I used to love buying a brand new journal, I was always taken with the beauty of a hardback notebook and the completeness of the untouched page. I loved the anticipation of starting afresh a project that was going to be the real thing this time round. I love to write with a fountain pen too, but the moment I committed pen or pencil to paper the book was ruined. I would make a mistake and have to cross things out and the page would look terrible. The marks on my pristine book couldn't ever be undone and I could never just tear out a page and start again. That would be a crime against a book. A book has to be whole. A missing page is an aberration. When I looked for a replacement I could never find the same kind of notebook for the next volume, so all my efforts were recorded in an untidy, uncollected miscellany of mismatching volumes.  Much as I wanted to record my ideas I always felt thwarted. My discovery of the word processor in the 1980s made life a little easier.  My first Apple Mackintosh computer, with its integrated nine-inch monochrome screen and the floppy drive that accepted disks with a very satisfying "thunk" was a revelation. Of course I tried keeping my diaries and journals on disk, but storage formats changed and storing disks was unedifying. No one would ever know what was on those disks - I never even knew what files were in my disks! They all contained a mixture of work and personal projects, word processed documents, poorly drawn diagrams and spreadsheets; occasionally even the odd musical composition. As the months and years went by each medium of storage accelerated into obsolescence. Now though, having discovered blogging and this website, I feel I can write and enjoy writing on my computer, my tablet or occasionally even my phone - although for the latter it is not only the window but also the keys that are far too small to make it that pleasurable an experience.

How did this happen? I was going to write about something else and somewhere en route I became sidetracked. I shall change the title and start again on what I thought I was going to write.

I would wish you a happy 2017 in all sincerity, but we really have got off to a rather bad start.

Of A Cratch That Itches (cont.)

And indeed yes, more photographs now.

This is the frame that Karl from Titan Boat Canopies fitted:

And here is Karl modestly standing next to the cover he measured a couple of weeks ago and installed this morning.

While here is a view of the outside world from inside. This all looks like a big improvement on the last cover. More space, more visibility, window covers and, I hope, less flapping and no leaks!

Of A Cratch That Itches

This is just a short post, because rumour has it there are two people reading this who like to hear about the boat. You may have seen the photographs from August when Timeless became something else. After the beautiful paint job the old blue cratch cover just didn't look right. There was damage to the port side of the cover and I suspect it was either a large rodent or a malicious angler. Since anglers tend not to eat through heavy duty nylon zips I think the former was the more likely culprit. A couple of weeks ago I took off the old cover and removed the cratch frame. This is what the boat looked like underneath the tat:

I do hope you note the beautifully repainted wooden window frames. That is my contribution to the beautification of my home. Karl, from Titan Boat Canopies, fitted a replacement stainless steel frame and measured up for the new cover, which is due to be fitted tomorrow. More photographs to follow, I suppose ...

Of An Autumn Journey Part 2

Here's the second part of the story of my October adventure, that I've put off writing for a while.

The Saturday morning cruise along the Sixteen Foot was uneventful and peaceful save for the noise of the engine. Near Chatteris we turned right on to the Forty Foot Drain. The journey was a swanucopeia. There were so many swans I ended up slowing right down in order to avoid breaking up families. Swans have two approaches to narrowboats. Juveniles panic and flap on ahead of the boat. More mature birds turn through 180° and ease their way in the opposite direction until the boat has passed. With the juveniles flapping on ahead, eventually putting some miles between them and their parents, I wondered if and how the families ever find each other again. I have seen, back at my home mooring, singles, pairs or small groups of cygnets without the usual adult attendance. Maybe this has been their fate? Near Ramsey Forty Foot I saw something that didn't look right. Given the behaviour of most of the swans en route it looked like one was sitting in the reeds. It wasn't attempting to move. As I approached I thought it may have been dead, but then I saw its head move. As I passed I could see that one wing was splayed out rather abnormally. The bird was somehow stuck in that spot. There was nowhere that was easy to stop and moor up. Taking the boat up to the bird would not have been very sensible and the poor creature might have been badly frightened, so I hailed a nearby photographer and tried to explain the situation to him. He was able to investigate. I don't know the outcome. I suspected a fishing line may have been involved, but I shall never know.

 Just beyond Ramsey Forty Foot, the temperature gauge soared. I suspected a burst hose or a failed jubilee clip somewhere in the cooling system, so I pulled in and staked the boat to a remote bank. When the temperature cooled enough for me to check the fluid levels there seemed nothing much amiss, so I started the engine again and progressed gently along the cut. Perhaps it was just an airlock still in the system. The plan was to try and get into Ramsey before dusk. I really could have done without the overheating blip, although an overnight stay would not have been a huge problem. The only huge problem would have occurred had the engine not started again.

The light was beginning to fade as I passed Wells Bridge at the confluence with the Old Nene. Just beyond that, and off to the left, was the turn into Ramsey High Lode. I had not been along here before. I have met several people from Bill Fen Marina over the years and Timeless had received her coats of blue in the floating boatshed outside the marina. It was interesting to see what it actually looked like - rustic and homemade, as it happens. Nothing like the paint shed in the marina at March.

Passing the marina entrance I continued along Ramsey High Lode. What would have happened had I met another boat coming towards me I can only guess. The waterway, though navigable, is only wide enough for one boat for most of its length. One of us would have certainly needed to reverse. As we approached Ramsey the bank climbed up to the right and for quite a distance we passed underneath what I can only describe as a bus and truck graveyard. Truck-dwelling friends, I wonder if you know of this place. I am sure it must be spares nirvana. Finally, just as the light was fading altogether there was the winding hole, the public mooring and the end of navigation at the north end of the town. The waterway continues into a tunnel that passes underneath a new development of flats and disappears off to who knows where? Pubs, supermarkets and the town centre are but a short walk from the mooring. There is something to be said for exploring late in the season, because no one else was there, save some young anglers. It was very easy to moor up. P. and I decided to eat out again and we set off towards the town centre.

Approaching the mooring at Ramsey at dusk

We opted for The Bengal in the High Street and were treated to excellent service and a delicious meal. By the time we got back to the boat it was time to retire to bed. At least tonight we would not be trying to sleep against the sounds of goods trains rolling and clanking overhead. After a batch of  youthful stop-outs left the scene, it was indeed a very peaceful night.

Looking back the way we had come down Ramsey High Lode

Next morning we walked back towards the town to have a better look. I have driven through Ramsey many times, but have never had the time to pull over in the van and explore. It is a place to which I shall return. We didn't get to see the stained glass in the parish church, which was made by the The William Morris Company, nor explore the rural life museum, which also sounds interesting, but we did get to see in daylight, the buildings we passed the previous evening! Before setting off in the boat again there was something I had to do. The public mooring was looking very much the worse for neglect and there was a lot of litter. I cannot bear the idea of leaving the place looking as badly as I found it so I spent an hour filling rubbish bags. Why people have to shove their litter into the hearts of bushes is a complete mystery specially when, twenty yards away, there is a perfectly serviceable litter bin. Extracting bottles, cans, crisp packets and abandoned bait boxes from their prickly resting places made it more awkward to collect and, at the end I'm not sure it actually looked very much better. So much litter had ended up in the water and was stuck in far places I couldn't reach. Unfortunately I could still see it.

The bus and truck cemetery

Finally, around mid-day, we were ready to depart. Naturally, by this time the wind had edged up a few knots and was being funnelled down the Lode and on to the mooring. Where it had once been timber-clad the mooring was now more threatening with exposed steel bolts sticking out from the quayside by several inches. As I attempted to turn the boat I made an error of judgement that had my lovely new paintwork being dragged along two particularly vicious-looking bolts. I had visions of long score marks running much of the length of the boat. I leapt out of the boat to fend it off, but I was too late. It is a tribute to the quality of the work done during the summer's repaint that there are only two fairly minor chips in the paint and not the tram-lines I feared.

Back out of Ramsey, passing under the bus cemetery, past fire damaged warehouses, the floating boat shed and the entrance to Bill Fen Marina we turned back on to the Old Nene shortly to turn again to pass, this time, under Wells Bridge and on to one of my favourite stretches of Fenland waterway, the Old Nene towards Benwick. I guess what makes this stretch a more interesting journey is that, being a river and not a drain, dyke or lode, it meanders and it changes width. What made it slightly more stressful was that all the anglers in the east of England seemed to be lining one bank for miles in competition. Fortunately, by the time we arrived at the scene, participants were beginning to pack up, so there was not quite the gauntlet of rods and lines to run that there would have been an hour earlier. Fortunately, again, no one was moored at Benwick public mooring, so we pulled in very gently and easily and P. prepared a delicious meal onboard as we settled in for the night.

Moored up at Benwick

Looking back the way we'd come

I love mooring at Benwick. The public mooring is adjacent to the graveyard which surrounded St Mary's Church which itself was demolished in 1985. The church had been there for just a century, but the Fenland ground structure had worked its familiar magic and after a hundred years of use it had become unstable and unsafe. All that remains of the old church are a few of the stones marking an outline where the church used to be. This in itself is all fascinating stuff, but what I really like about Benwick is that, in this fairly remote place, there is a stream of dog walkers and locals passing to and fro. A jolly good mardle is always on the cards and the passing locals I have met are generally intrigued by the life of boat people and more than willing to talk about their own lives. It is really quite amazing the secrets that complete strangers will divulge if one stands still for long enough.

The dead centre of Benwick with the demolished church behind the trees on the right

Of Strength, Anger And Beaming Smiles

Today, one day in the middle of December, is the last day of paid work that I have in the diary until the middle of next month. What a funny old day it has been too. I've known seven year old T since he entered the school three years ago. Throughout our music workshops he has had his moments, but today, between sessions, he kicked off in a way that I've never seen before. He was amazingly strong as I peeled him off the classmate he was attempting to claw lumps out of, but it was the screaming, swearing, lashing out and total loss of control as I became the object of his attention. As I would have done with any of my own children in their moments of frustration and rage, I wanted to hug him close to minimise the danger to himself, to me and to anyone else careless enough to enter his flailing orbit, until he calmed down a little, and we could talk it out, but being a visitor to the school (and wearing the recently-instituted lanyard to confirm it - "Why are you wearing a visitor's badge?" asked one of the older children today, "You teach here!") I was struggling with any number of potential outcomes of getting too close to someone else's child with prospective witnesses having fled the scene back to their classroom. There was also the unarticulated burden of the next class on the conveyor belt. I tried to catch his hand, but he was flailing too much, and ended up holding his wrist, which felt very risky and so very fragile. Having now got into that position I didn't dare let him go because he would have gone tumbling on to the playground and probably hurt himself quite badly. I had no way of knowing that he wouldn't do a runner either. I was only there to lead three music workshops. The rest of the morning was rather marred by this event and I was not looking forward to filling out yet another incident form. These have become a bit of a feature over the past few weeks.    

As I went by the office to sign out at lunchtime there was an envelope with my name on it. It was addressed in an adult hand and actually spelled correctly so I assumed it was from one of the members of staff. I loaded the van and sat in the cab feeling rather sad and useless as I opened it. T had now been excluded for, apparently, the third instance of similar behaviour in a week. This poor, angry young man has something going on in his life which is making him very unhappy. I turned my attention back to the card which, when I looked at it, turned out to be from a reception child, his name scrawled in huge letters, some reversed, most in the wrong order across the double width of the card. This particular only-just-turned-five-years-old boy has had some difficulty settling into the school's routines and I have had several indications that my music lessons have interfered with his priorities, which have mostly involved acts of violence against anyone sitting nearby. I got out of the van and walked to the dining room to find him and thank him. I squatted down beside him as he was setting about his "hot dinner" and thanked him for his card. His face lit up with the biggest beaming smile I had seen from him in the few weeks I have known him. "Did my mum give you my card?" he asked. "Yes," I lied, assuming it was she who must have left it at the office. "Wow!" he said, "Did she really?" I wanted to hug him too, but I didn't. "Have a lovely Christmas," I said.  

"Merry Christmas, Mister," he beamed back.