So the last two weekends have been spent afloat and Rusty B is gradually becoming less like a mock Tudor bar ( though the dark brown gloss beams remain) and more like a friendly boat, though there is still a way to go in that department. However, we now have running water, and even more exciting, very hot running water. Finally T’s efforts at painting the inside of the tank and waiting hours for it to dry have paid off,  and we are able to put it to use.  The water tank is huge and took over half an hour to fill at one of the standpipes that are situated along the various canals for boaters to use. There is an array of facilities along the way, diesel pumps, portable loo emptying tanks, hot showers, launderettes and nearer big towns, mobile libraries, veg delivery boats, coal and log suppliers, bakers and even a floating florist. On Saturday we passed a fabulous and intricately decorated Dutch barge offering signwriting and tattoos. I have to say I was a little tempted.

On Monday evening we moored the boat in a village called Cosgrove, the other side of Milton Keynes and drove back to Camberwell. There is a stately home somewhere in the vicinity and all the cottages have matching  Farrow and Ball window frames and tidy front gardens built from beautiful mellow golden stone with wonderfully carved and ornate bridges at each end of the village. We moored up on one bank and realised that the pub was on the other. However there was a long thin horse tunnel that ran underneath the canal so within minutes we were on the other side and ordering our pints. It was hard to imagine how a large cart horse would fit in such a narrow tunnel but  then again it’s hard to imagine the time when narrowbaots were pulled by horses,  though on the corners of each bridge you can still see the marks left by years and years of ropes rubbing  into the brickwork as they hauled their heavy loads through. To avoid having to get on and off each time they went through a lock gate they used to lassoo the gates as they went past in order to close them, a trick we discuss on a regular basis but have yet to perfect ( plus it would probably be most frowned upon by Capt and Mrs rules and regulations in their matching nautical leisurewear). Though in our youth we would have thought nothing of jumping on to the roof of the boat and over the other side while it was sitting in the lock, or scampering up and down the ladders,  unfortunately neither of us are quite the nimble spring chickens we once were,  and our escapades would fit nicely in the next  edition of Saga narrow boat holidays. In the space of half an hour the other day  T managed to fall off a ladder, narrowly avoiding falling into the water between  the wall and the boat, smashing his wrist and already dodgy knee against the railing, and at the next lock I managed to forget to put the safety catch on as I was rotating  the large turning key so that it flew up into the air  and smacked down on my hand resulting in a lump the size of an anthill. It’s just as well we are in the early stages of renovating as it won’t be long before we have to accommodate mobility scooters and ramps into the plans.

Because it was Bank holiday, and a sunny one at that, there was lots of traffic motoring up and down the Grand Union.  It was a bit of a taster as to what it must be like in the height of summer,  and made us all the more determined to stick to the smaller canals where the only sounds you hear are the birds and the peeping of the ducklings, tall grasses shining  golden against the dusky ploughed fields and the hiccup and sway of the boat as it chugs along

Everyone was bustling about , scrubbing, hanging out washing and gossiping over cold bottles of beer. There were the hire boats, full of jack the lads and students, the slightly harassed families  (of the “Joe,  do NOT throw your sisters doll into the canal” variety), the smart Primrose hill set with their gleaming brass portholes and manicured box hedges, and then the live aboard boaters with their knitted jumpers and hats, dreadlocks and lived in faces, the roofs crammed full with bikes, canoes, logs and bags of coal, barbecues and boxes of fresh  herbs and flowers. As we walked down the bank in search of the horse tunnel there was a pair of elderly women in gaudy house coats, fingerless gloves and scarves sitting at a picnic table alongside their narrowboat ( which had garden gnomes and plastic fairies aboard) . They were playing scrabble , each with their own dog eared well thumbed notebooks in which they kept note of the score with  a flask of tea in between them. A fat jack russell snored beneath their wobbly plastic chairs as they bickered and laughed, and there was something truly fabulous about them and their weather beaten cheeks. I will be keeping my eye out for a suitable housecoat for myself.

There is a lot about the boating life that is to be recommended. Being out in the fresh air, exposed to the elements, to the rain and the wind and the golden sunshine is so good for the soul, and it’s easy to see  why people find this way of life so appealing. 

So, as some of you know, the inevitable happened last weekend.The chickens are no more. I got up to feed them on Saturday  morning ,  to be greeted by an ominous silence and an even more ominous pile of feathers. It seems a wily fox had managed to tunnel into their run and mercilessly dragged them out one by one under it while munching on them. Butit didn’t   even eat them properly, preferring to disembowel  each of them them and leave the bits lying around. While I know this is just what happens,  and the fact that one of them Mrs Barrington Black was one of my originals I got for my 50th birthday, which is in itself a triumph, I am surprised at how very much I miss them. I keep thinking I can still see them pecking about in their run as I look out of the kitchen window. 

To accommodate both the mourning process and nasty hangovers,   we took  to the sofa, treating ourselves to a Saturday afternoon of telly,  finding ourselves watching ‘The return of the pink panther’. The perfect choice,  given that neither of us was capable of anything too taxing and any plot too demanding. And my goodness, it delivered, starter, main course and a large pudding. It must be at least thirty years since I last had the pleasure of any of these films,  and did we think they were comedy genius then?  Well we certainly did last Saturday,  but for all the worst possible reasons, though  after two  hours of full on hilarity we had almost lost the will to live. We didn’t last  to the bitter end, but by then we couldn’t have cared less who had actually stolen the sparkling pink panther and were praying for curtains on the beige fashion wear and terrible acting. It was as if the director decided on some  gags and then did them again and again,  and then once more,  just in case you didn’t get it the first time round.  And to be honest they were  pretty lame just the once, so you have to admire his tenacity. To give you an example, Dreyfus, Clouseaus’  arch enemy keeps getting what looks like a gun out of his drawer, but no!  ho ho itis actually   a cigarette lighter, so he lights his cigarette ( can you guess where this is going?) and puts  it back in the drawer. Five minutes later out it comes again, except this time he has the wrong one and it’s  a real gun, which goes off, resulting in him appearing  from beneath his desk looking like a chimney sweep crossed with Catweazle, and so it goes for at least twenty minutes. Followed by jolly jape after jolly jape in a bar with belly dancers and false beards, cunning disguises, hotels with every conceivable twist and comedy turn involving revolving doors, overflowing baths,  bedrooms with a parrot, a hoover and the hapless Inspector C. Can you possibly imagine  where the parrot ended up? It was a challenge to our sore heads.

Perhaps we have just become jaded in our middle age,  and our sense of humour is now too  sophisticated for such obvious unsubtle high jinks,  though Fawlty Towers still makes me roar with laughter and it is every bit as predictable,  so that can’t be strictly true. Perhaps it is because we have watched it so many countless times that it is part of our growing up , feels comfortably  familiar,  and reminds us of times when this sort of thing was pretty much all we had on television. And in comparison to others of the time like Steptoe and Son and Rising Damp,  Fawlty Towers  is surely worthy of an Oscar. Then again, we had never had the pleasure of programmes like TOWIE or that hideous programme where people choose their dates by looking at their naked bodies so I guess it’s all relative. 

And returning to the poultry theme, the good news is that I have found a place that sells point of lay chickens barely twenty minutes away from where the narrowboat is moored up. And the even better news is that we will be going to the boat for the bank holiday weekend. 

Watch this space. 

This morning I decided I was going to start my day with an early morning swim at the lido. And then I went outside and realised that despite sunshine streaming through my window giving out the illusion of warmth it was in fact rather chilly, so instead I put on some socks and a jumper.

In my view, a trip to the lido before breakfast is pretty much perfect, armed with a flask of coffee for afterwards, stopping off on the way home to buy a croissant. It sets me up for the day, feeds my soul and leaves me feeling energised in a way that an indoor pool doesn’t. When we were in Kerala, my early morning swims had the added delight of being in  warm sea, followed by a cup of chai from the local stall, and then up the dusty path for a massage, emerging clean and scrubbed and slightly oily before T had even stirred from his bed and before the sizzling heat had made too much activity impossible. At dawn,  bereaved families came down to the beach to be blessed by priests who sat perched on mounds of sand under gaudy umberellas dispensing prayers and incantations. The grieving  would then wade out into the waves carrying garlands of red and saffron marigolds which they would release to be carried away by the current. 

For one of my birthdays ( probably my 25th) T,  M and I went to one of the islands off Japan for the weekend. An island called,  if I remember rightly Nijima, a hot spot for Japanese surfers with beaches of black volcanic sand, which was always a little disconcerting to the eye. It was pretty hardcore, not  like swimming, more like being thrown inside a washing machine. I have never seen such big waves and I still can’t quite believe that we actually took large surfboards out into it with absolutely no idea what we were doing. Within about ten minutes  T had whacked his side with the board managing  to break a rib and both M and I took so many tumbles that I am surprised we made it out again. The only other thing I remember about the weekend was that for some reason T was annoyed with us ( a regular occurrence) so in order to get back in his good books we bought a sumptuous picnic lunch that we laid out on the sand for him. About two minutes later, the tide swept it away.

Mediterranean sea is always fabulous because not only is it beautifully clear but it is also the temperature of a bath. I prefer the option of being able to see the shark or sea monster coming in order to be able to get out of the way,  rather than it just pop up unannounced in a heart attack inducing manner. This  happened one summer in Devon, when we were swimming round the rock and suddenly a seal stuck its head out of the water, so near that you could almost smell its fishy breath. A friend of mine once swam in Dingle bay where if you were lucky a wild dolphin called Fungle would appear and cavort alongside you. She recounted the feeling of being in a wet suit, in freezing  murky water with zero visibility, knowing there was something big and alive lurking beneath, and then suddenly without warning this immense creature leapt out of the water right in front of her. 

But my most favourite place in the world for swimming has to be Hartland. The quay at high tide, jade green water, shimmering like a mill pond. The mornings when the sea is churning and wild, adrenaline rushing through us  as we scamper across the rocks to dive in before the tide crashes over the top and sends us spinning into the froth. And golden evenings as we sit with pints in hand, sunburnt cheeks , damp towels and bags of crisps, familiar faces and loved ones, some no longer here, yet always with us. Although we will continue to come and go as the years go by, the cliffs and the jade green sea will always remain the same.

This weekend we had fun cruising up the Grand Union Canal in Rusty B, who is gradually getting less rusty thanks to T who is busily re sealing and re wiring, and hopefully soon we will have running water and a shower. We even managed a full roast Easter Sunday lunch with all the trimmings cooked in the small but perfectly formed gas oven which works a treat unless you shut the door too quickly in which case the gas goes out, and as  I am not usually one for shutting  things slowly there were a few hiccups,  but we got there in the end. We also went up  (and down) the Aylesbury Arm , an off shoot of the Grand Union, smaller and quieter with herons and swans, banks of reed beds, fields full of sheep and horses and little brick humpback bridges that once must have gone somewhere but now mostly start and end with barbed wire fences and brambles. When you get to the final stretch before turning round,  you find yourself in the centre of Aylesbury with a new theatre and swanky looking canalside apartments and it felt very weird to be moored right outside a large bustling Waitrose. 

On the way back  up we decided to moor up and cook some supper as it was getting dark. However when T tried to steer the boat into the side of the bank,  we hit the bottom. Peering over the side, we realised that the water level of the canal had dropped several feet. Apparantly this happens quite often on canals, due to faulty lock gates, or somebody leaving the wrong end open or closed, but it was rather disconcerting, not least because at one point T thought we were sinking. Assuming that at some point during the night the level would rise,  we tethered a long rope to the bank (narrowly avoiding falling in while attempting this) and settled down for the night. In the morning, sure enough, things were back to normal and we continued towards the Grand Union and then up towards Leighton Buzzard. 

We passed an old boatyard , a graveyard for huge old exquisitely crafted long wooden boats, relics of an age when horses worked the boats, before the railways took over. Built to last a lifetime, still just about  floating, though rotten and unloved, their signs faded and blistered , once homes to families and generations of boaters with names like ‘Violet’and ‘Journeys home’. Hard to imagine that somebody somewhere would have the time or  the money to restore them , to repaint and rebuild the broken hulls, breathing new life back into their fragile splintered decks. Instead it seems inevitable that they would, one by one, gradually slip beneath the calm still water with barely a sound. 

Being Easter weekend and the fact that it was sunny meant that there were more fellow boaters than previously, though it wasn’t  exactly a rush hour situation,  if you see what I mean.  However if the number of benches and tables packed together on every inch of grass in every canal side pub garden are anything to go by, it must be mayhem in the summer months with all sorts of argy bargy if you’ll excuse the pun.

It soon became apparant that there are many more boating accessories and fashion items to be purchased, in order that we can keep up with the ( Davey) Jones’s. Personalised door mats of the  ‘ahoy me hearties’ variety, metal plaques ( Hippies only parking etc), endless painted wooden buckets, miniature wheelbarrows  and jugs in the  traditional style of barge painting, intricate and once beautiful, now a little contrived. And who could resist a bird box cunningly disguised as a narrowboat? Or a handmade pen made lovingly whittled from the wood of an old disused boat? . Brass is in evidence every where, brass portholes, brass railings, brass ends and ornaments fixed to the steering handle, brass fire tools, brass shovels and buckets all polished within an inch of their lives. Matching outfits are all the rage and I shall be going online after finishing this in order to be ready for our next outing. His and hers navy fleeces are popular with amusing slogans such as ‘Captain’ ( his) and ‘Crew ‘or ships cook /mate ( her) printed on the back in large letters. T found this very amusing. I suggested getting his very own version printed up featuring a four letter word beginning with the letter ‘C’. Even the on board pets were sporting jaunty nautical themed outfits as they sailed past,  and we caught glimpses of spick and span functional kitchens with neat foldaway tables, plastic flowers, those comedy kitchen aprons,everything in its place, and polished cupboards. As the only way to keep our  table from collapsing is to lodge a log under the leg, and that we managed to leave our plastic dustpan and brush on top of the woodburner yesterday so that it melted completely flat I feel we have some way to go.

I am lucky enough to have an allotment right at the end of our garden, so near that we have put in a gate there for easy access meaning  that I have absolutely no excuse  not to tend to it in every spare moment. Well, yes indeed.

When we first moved here about 23 years ago,  the allotments were inhabited by a gaggle of old men, known collectively as the postman, the Spanish man, the Irishman and so on. However the whole site (and allotment life in general)  was kept in order by Viola, the Queen of everything fruit and veg, who had a large plot at the far end of the site. She lived at the end of our  street and spent every single waking hour in the allotment. Every morning she would walk up the road, wig at a slightly jaunty angle ( sometimes on completely backwards) carrying buckets of compost,  and every evening she would return, the buckets overflowing with spinach, rhubarb, potatos and cauliflowers the size of footballs.

Originally from the island of Grenada, Viola , like many of her generation had come over to the UK in search of a better life in the early 50’s. Her first port of call was a boarding house somewhere in South London where she ended up meeting her husband Ernest, known by one and all as Nessa.They went to have three children.  Their early life here was a struggle,  encountering  hostility and such blatant racism that I could barely believe the stories she told me of their every day life in London. People would regularly spit on her in the street,  and it was not uncommon for dog mess to be posted through the letterbox of their flat. But being possessed with an indomitable spirit, Viola just seemed to shrug and get on with it. She was quite extraordinary, a real character, very difficult if you got on the wrong side of her, stubborn and strong as an ox,  had no time for people she didnt trust or viewed as time wasters,  but if  she liked you she was yours for life. She once chased a young and terrified council official out of the allotment waving her fork at him,  after he had dared to come in and ask her questions about the proposed development on the site ( which in the end never happened) and she was certainly unafraid to voice her opinion on matters

We became firm friends. She would regularly knock on my door and come in for a cup of tea,  or we would sit in the allotment while  she regaled me with stories of her childhood and tips on how to grow fruit and vegetables, chuckling as she imparted snippets of local gossip. Indeed, I have never seen such a plot as hers. Huge showy peonies and dahlias, beds crammed with oversize onions and garlic, asparagus beds, spinach, chard, rows  and rows of brightly coloured beans and peas, everything she touched blossomed and sprouted.

She made her own clothes out of fabulously un co ordinated colours and patterns, with all sorts of convenient pockets and belts so that she could keep bits of string and scissors, seed packets and hankies  close at hand, with large floppy flowery hats tied tightly round her head in summer, tied like an oversized Easter bonnet with blowsy ribbons. Imagine an over the top  Chelsea flower show exhibit and you will get the idea. In the early days before we became members  she treated her fellow plot holders  ( Spanish man, postman,  Irishman etc ) with kindly but barely concealed impatience as if they were naughty schoolboys  ( though they were mostly in their 70’s) and indeed they were pretty hopeless, preferring to sit in the sun chatting rather than actually doing much gardening although on seeing Viola approaching they would scarper back to their untidy plots, terrified they were in for a telling off from matron.

I kept asking if I could have a bit of land  but my requests were always met with ” sorry, we’re full” which was a little untrue,  seeing as at least half of the site was overgrown and full of shopping trolleys rather than potatos. In the end the council gave everyone notice to quit which finally they did.  Apart from Viola who shrugged, muttered that the only way the council were going to get rid of her was if she was carried out feet first and went back to her digging.

At this point Tessa and I got involved. While Viola dug her heels in and carried on as if nothing had changed, we decided to approach the council in order to persuade them that these allotments should be preserved. It wasn’t  easy , the organisation that originally had dealt with the site seemed to have vanished and it was almost impossible to find anyone who could help. Eventually we managed, with a lot of canvassing to find somebody at the council who agreed to talk to us. A decision he almost immediately regretted because we badgered him to the point that once he saw me in Sainsburys and hid behind the bread section hoping I wouldn’t recognise him. However this onslaught finally paid off,  and we eventually persuaded Southwark council to grant us a temporary license to be renewed on a yearly basis.

And so we started to renovate the site, applying for funding to get a new steel fence with gates and padlocks, filled skips, cleared and dug, made paths and beds,  watched at all times by Viola who was never short of an opinion,  or advice on how to do things properly , and found our rather amateur approach very amusing.

And the allotments flourished and blossomed. We managed to extend our license to a fifteen year one. More people and local groups got involved, we became a community, people came, people left, we planted fruit trees and made ponds, built sheds and a pergola. Viola continued to be a permanent and well loved fixture,  though as the years went by she became more and more frail. Nessa succumbed to dementia, letting  himself out of the house while she was in the allotment, and we would find him wandering around Burgess Park in his pyjamas with no idea of who or where he was. I would go and check on them in the evenings and it soon became apparant that things could not continue as they were, but Viola refused to let Social services take him into a home, so a team of carers were put in place. The pair of them struggled on, but because she was reluctant to leave him alone, she  was less and less able to come, and after Nessa finally died, she went rapidly downhill. Her visits gradually came to a halt and for the last couple of years of her life she didnt come at all.

I still think of her and miss her when I wander over to her old plot.  Where she used to garden,  there are now beehives. Her old shed has been re built, the apple tree that she loved is well tended and still bears fruit every year. None of us would still be here if it hadn’t been for her. Although it is some years now since she was with us, her old plot is still and always will be called “Violas”.

The very first job I did as an event organiser /entertainment manager was at a Kwiksave conference which was held out of season in a holiday camp in North Wales. This was exactly as glamorous as it sounds. It was so in the middle of nowhere that the winter train timetable meant that you had to ring a bell to let the driver know  that you wanted to get off as the train wouldn’t normally stop there. Had I know what lay in store I may not have been quite so enthusiastic in my bell ringing.

When I got there it became apparant that I was to share a room  with someone else from the production team who was running the event. This someone else had thoughtfully placed a Bible on my bed. Luckily I managed to avert the inevitable upset that would have ensued  and was given a chalet on my own ( think Heidi meets garden shed) For some reason I seemed to have arrived a day early,  so set about exploring the delights of the holiday camp. This took less than ten minutes of very slow walking because everything was closed. In the end I went and sat in the bar, the sort of bar where bars go to die, with a faint smell  of damp dogs, dettol  and tired saggy chairs.

Gradually people started wandering into the bar and much to my excitement the barman announced that the music quiz was about to start..not enough people to actually make up more than about two teams so he suggested we play as individuals. An hour or so later and I was the triumphant winner. Of a Haven holidays tea set. I never did get round to picking it up.

So my job on the night was to look after a couple of magicians , some dancers and Roger de Courcey. There may be some readers too young or indeed too classy never to have had the pleasure,  and indeed until that point I had remained blissfully unaware of his contribution to showbusiness, but he was  a rather tired puffed up comedian,  who performed with a stuffed bear called Nookie. He was, as he kept reminding me,  rather famous in his prime,  but sadly ( and apologies to any members of his family in the unlikely event that they might be reading this )  to put it politely he was “well past his sell by date”. Quite who decided he was to be the star  turn was a mystery to me, and it was one of those  bad decisions that you only realise just how bad it is when its far too late to do anything about it. He had been briefed that on no account must he tell any rude jokes, a fact that he complained about while I sat watching him re arrange his hairpiece in the dressing room in a ‘Don’t they know who I am ?” kind of a way ( well, no to be brutally honest)

Meanwhile dinner was underway and things started to get a little out of hand with the delegates who were very excited to be on an away day, enjoying their free alcohol and were beginning to get a bit frisky. There was a glorious moment when one of the slightly elderly waitresses was gamely trying to make a discreet entrance with what can only be described as a bucket full of gravy. One table of likely lads started wolf whistling her and as she turned to give them a piece of her mind she tripped, throwing the entire contents over the dance floor.

By the time it was Rogers cue to go on, the atmosphere was beginning to get more than a little volatile, to the point that guests were hurling left over bread rolls at each others amid a lot of loud cheering and shouting. ” I am the ultimate professional” he muttered adjusting his bow tie and smoothing down his purple velvet jacket,  before marching on stage, Nookie bear in hand. The next ten minutes were I have to say, probably the worst I have ever seen ( and believe me, I have seen some). After the first couple of jokes ( I use this term loosely) the jeering started, then the booing and hissing,  and then the excruciating icing on the cake when  I was sent on stage to whisper in his ear ” I think some of your rude ones would work “. All I can say is that they didn’t. They were even more truly awful. By now it was as if the entire cast of Gladiator had arrived by coach and had  joined the audience in voicing their disapproval, and fearing a full on riot, we bundled Roger and Nookie off stage and back into the safety of his changing room. All he had to say while stuffing Nookie bear into a plastic bag and before storming off was ” What would Bob Monkhouse have to say about this”.

The rest of the evening was the kind of car crash scenario you would expect in one of those reality programmes about nightlife in Ibiza,  with people vomiting and fighting until the organisers finally saw sense shut the bar. Then everyone went outside  and vomited and fought all over the roses. I barricaded myself in my chalet and the next morning was up and at the station at crack of dawn,  almost throwing myself on the railway tracks, frantic with worry that the train might not stop for me and take me home.

 

So, Rusty B is back in the water, and as we discovered was actually  full of water. Three months in the boatyard when  they had forgotten to replace the tarpaulin over the front deck  meant that rain  had seeped through the deck and once she was back on the canal we realised she  was sitting very low in the water. This was rectified by T cutting a hole in the floor and spending the day sucking the excess out with his trusty Vax hoover, accompanied by rather a lot of swearing. However this seems to have worked and he has now moved on to  re-wiring,checking  gas pipes, installing the loo and getting the cooker and fridge up and running, alongside his notebook full of sketches, measurements and calculations. Whoever had the boat before had obviously never lived on it, because there are way too many annoying little features that you could not possibly put  up with for more than a week of boat dwelling. No storage space whatsoever, the door latch the wrong way round, endless useful brass hooks positioned in totally useless  places,  window ledges too narrow to put anything  on, yet just wide enough to catch the back of your neck as you sit on the attractive brown shiny seats ( the furniture is a bit like sitting in a doctors waiting room), and light switches that require you to get out of bed and walk the entire length of the boat in order to turn them on and off. The decor is reminiscent of a Tudor style bar with painted dark brown beams and a weird kind of lime wash effect on the walls ( we were told that the original plan had been to turn the boat into some kind of nightclub, one would imagine to be used by extremely small people)  but all this this can be easily sorted with  a jolly good lick of paint and some tender loving care. And we do indeed love her. 

My brief experience of boating life has so far shown it to be a world away from my normal life as a London landlubber. For a start, everyone is incredibly friendly and actually say hello and good morning, unlike the furtive scuttling and avoiding eye contact nature of most city dwellers. This goes hand in hand with the slightly challenging aspect of nosey parker activity  (all meant with the absolute best of intentions) ,  yet hard to escape when you are on a stationary boat, and when the option of a speedy escape is impossible seeing as a narrowboat averages about 3mph. Last week I was trapped for at least 45 minutes by a neighbour telling me all about the best railway lines in the UK , the best local pubs ( this was mildly interesting) a roll call of all the names of his fellow pupils while at primary school ( again mildly interesting as one of them was Wild Willy Barrett of John Otway fame) . However things went downhill from there as I was treated to an extensive in depth virtual tour around the inner workings of a combustion engine and the virtues of having an oil and filter change in your Volvo on a regular basis. Seeing as I barely  know how a car works and only take an active interest when it doesn’t,  thus preventing me from getting from A to B,  he must have mistaken the fact that I was slipping into a coma as enthusiasm. But it is all in good spirits and you get the feeling that it is one big floating community where everyone  actively looks out for each other,  and I very much look forward to being part of it.

It is also incredibly quiet, early mornings hazily tranquil with birdsong, the occasional’plop’of a fish, the hiccup of the boat against the bank  and the gentle harmonic clamour of the ducks,  mingling with the comforting smell of brewing coffee and woodsmoke. We have yet to sample  the delights of a lazy  summers evening on the canal, glasses of chilled wine in hand,  sitting on the roof watching the world go by, but now that Spring has sprung and the evenings have lengthened it is can only be a matter of a month or so

Our maiden voyage was in late November when we collected the boat  from Sunbury and took  her up the Thames, through various locks to the turning off for the Grand Union canal ( basically turn left by Kew Gardens). The Thames felt very big and wide and the Rusty B rather small, and indeed the engine really struggled and spluttered against the current as we battled our way  into the canal, as the tide was on the turn. It was the first indication that when estimating any trip in a narrow boat you should at least double or treble the time it says it will take on the map,  as this is simply never ever correct. It reminded me of my birth dad Les’s conviction that while meandering the highways and byways in charge of a van/boat/gypsy wagon/ horsebox you should make a point of never being in a hurry to get anywhere and it is a mindset we are fast adapting to. Once on the Grand Union and over the ten days or so it took us to get to the boatyard in Leighton Buzzard we got into a routine whereby each morning we would decide  where we wanted to end up at the end of each day (a decision usually dictated by the whereabouts of canal side pubs). I would then drive the car to the designated place , park up  and then  cycle back along the tow path until I found T and Rusty B, whereupon we would put the bike on the roof and continue. It never fails  to amaze me that a drive of around 10 minutes can often equal  half a day in boat time,  and indeed that we were only ever at most two hours by car from Camberwell, though that was hard to imagine as you do feel as if you are in a different universe. There is something rather exciting about going straight through a  town centre by boat and the canal side supermarkets  even have their own mooring  points so that you can tie up and go in for your pint of milk and morning paper. 

More of our canal adventures to follow. For now I must attend to the pile of washing that awaits in the hallway, slightly greasy and damp,  infused with the ever present whiff of woodsmoke and engines. And if anyone knows the best way to remove black smears of oil from my jacket please get in touch. 

Does anyone remember the TV series in the 70’s called Belle and Sebastien? It was about a boy with a page boy fringe who lived in the mountains with his grandfather and his large white Pyrenean mountain dog called ( unsurprisingly) Belle. Though I can’t remember much about it now except that it was appallingly dubbed from French into English   I loved every minute,  from the theme tune ( which I am humming now) to the feeble storyline where absolutely nothing happened but somehow this didn’t seem to matter and for weeks I imagined that I too was living in a log hut, passing away the evenings in front of the fire whittling wooden spoons and listening to my grandfather playing the penny whistle. 

For a while Belle and Sebastien coincided with the time after school when  I was forced to go to Brownies,  making the whole experience even more of a torture. Instead of being losing myself in the mountains,  I found myself in the local church hall which smelt of bleach and stale cigarettes, having to swear allegiance to the Queen and hopping up a path of skipping ropes lined  with fake  flowers each week to  place a sixpence under the large plastic mushroom. While doing so we had to state whether we had been to church or not. I am not quite sure why this had any relevance to Brownie life whatsoever,  and as we hardly ever went to church I found the whole experience mortifying. There were, I concede,  some things about Brownies that were quite fun. For some bizarre reason I quite enjoyed learning semaphore, a skill which has obviously been invaluable throughout  the years, and dodge ball was always quite a laugh. I loved the cooking sessions when we made currant buns and fudge and I will never forget the smell of my first (and last)  mug of steaming hot bovril that the nurse gave after I hit my head on the bottom of the pool at Forest Hill Baths during the Brownie swimming gala. But to be honest I preferred hanging out in the woods making rope swings and dens and playing knock and run than being regimented into a uniform and could never quite get the enforced jollity of it all, and the songs and terrible rhymes that we used to have to chant every five minutes seemed a bit pointless. We never got as far as doing anything properly outdoorsy which I would have really enjoyed,  but perhaps Dulwich was a little too urban. Somehow singing  round a camp fire made of tissue paper with a torch underneath it in the middle of a hall felt a little tame,  but perhaps this sowed  the seed of my love for real proper camping so I suppose I have them to thank for that

The other programme,  and one I know for a fact I am not alone in my undying love for was ” White horses”. Again, appallingly dubbed and appalling storyline, but we didn’t care. The theme tune would send us into raptures,  and for a while I decided that the only thing I wanted out of life was to be a horse. Yes, dear readers this is true. Me and my friend Sarah would spend hours weaving  macrame reins of different colours which we would then tie to each other, with one of us being the horse and the other having been bullied and coerced enough, having to be the rider. Which was very dull. But as the horse, oh my..you got to whinny and prance and trot about . For about a week I refused to speak and would reply to everything in horse talk, with a loud whinny. I found this highly amusing in the way that you do when you are young, and then when you grow up and your own children start doing such things you realise that it is in fact very very annoying, especially when you are trying to do something that requires speed and precision like getting everyone out of the house in time for school.So conversations would go something like this.”Theresa, where is your homework book?” At which point I would whinny and shake my glorious mane ( for this think yellow cardigan tied round my head ) You can imagine. 

When we were about 15 at boarding school we used to have hair washing on a Saturday. After this we were allowed to go and dry our hair in our house mistresses sitting room where we would watch episodes of ‘Planet of the Apes’ and ‘Fawlty  Towers’ , ‘Tales of the unexpected’ as well as some terrifying horror series on ITV  that usually involved knife wielding madmen escaping from the local asylum  and cavorting  across the moors towards the local hamlet just as the nice couple who lived by the duck pond were settling down for the night, while leaving their bedroom window open. You know the sort of thing, made even more hysterical by a horde of screaming girls. For some reason our house mistress used to cover every inch of her sitting room in thick clear plastic before allowing us to sit anywhere so it wasn’t  exactly welcoming and each movement was accompanied by a lot of squeaking, but as I have said  before we made do with very little in the way of home comforts and this all felt strangely normal. Which probably explains why I have always been quite good at dealing with the cold. Most of our dormitories had creaking ineffective radiators and draughty windows and it wasnt unusual  to wake up to find ice on the inside of the windows. I’m not saying this for a sympathy vote, its just how it was,  and you just put  on another jumper and got on with it. 

While we are on the subject of just getting on with things I was reminded of when I was invited to  lunch with a friends very eccentric godmother. As we struggled with a luke warm slightly congealed chicken pie  , there was the most hideous crunching sound coming from under the table.  When we enquired what it was she snapped ” It’s just the cat eating her kittens, now just get on with eating your lunch”. You really couldn’t make it up. 

The other night I came home from what had started off as a quick drink. You know how these things inevitably go wrong. On my return, being a considerate soul I removed my boots on T’s doorstep and left them on the doormat. Lo and behold the next morning not only did I have a bit of a headache but  I also had no boots. I can only hope that whoever took them really needed some and wasn’t just some low life who would chuck them away somewhere. This is the second time that my shoes have gone missing recently. The last was one of my silver birkenstocks, which disappeared off the planet when I  left the pair of them on the back step after having fed my chickens. We hunted high and low and deduced that it must have been a fox ( who are keen on chewing leather) , but it was beyond annoying as I have no use for one solitary sandal. It reminded me of the old Turkish woman on the  allotment. Who remembers the grandma in the Giles cartoons? She was the sort of person who complained endlessly about everything. The fact that people had stolen her ladder/her vine leaves/her tools/ her watering cans /her bulbs and her shoes. Bizarrely she kept a collection of jaunty high heeled slip ons scattered around her plot. I never saw her actually wearing them and they certainly weren’t typical allotment footwear but  they were obviously the answer to the local foot fetish burglars dreams who must have gone to a lot of trouble to climb over the high fence at night in order to add them to his collection.

Where we go every summer,  there was an old man who spent every day on one of the wild and windswept beaches, scrambling down the cliff path in the morning and heaving himself back up at night carrying plastic crates and old floats that he would pull up on the end of an old rope. He would sit perched on the rocks all day , or meander along the shoreline collecting stuff that had been washed up during the night. It wasn’t unusual for him to wear items that he had found,  and my particular favourite fashion statement was when he wore one bright yellow wellington on one foot and a trainer on the other , setting the whole ensemble off with a necklace of bright blue plastic string and the hood that had once belonged to an anorak long since separated and frayed at the edges. He and his brother lived on a farm tucked into the folds of the fields on the cliffs above,  and apparently lived with no electricity or running water. From a distance the house looked idyllic, and always reminded me of the farm in” On the black hill” by Bruce Chatwin, but I have it on authority that it was in reality anything but, and that even the postman refused to go there after having been shot in the arm with an air rifle when he turned up unannounced one day. 

One of the many tricky things about living in Japan is the shoe etiquette,  and trying to remember what to wear and when to wear it without causing toe curling embarrassment to your host. Obviously and very sensibly, no shoes are ever worn inside and you quite quickly get used to ensuring your socks are up to standard and have no holes before venturing out of a morning. However there are then a selection of slippers on offer at the front door, most of which tall foreigners can just about fit their big toes into . These slippers often have writing on them ( or Japlish as we call it) saying things like ” My happy puberty”, “panda says cute fox is my heart”, that kind of thing. Japlish is stupendously fabulous and we became avid collectors of it. The favourites were a shirt ( that one of my kids still has) which has on the front in bold capital letters ” Happies made to keep assholes off Caramel club boys”, a little blue tin that I used to keep my money in with the logo “Shit. I like to drop my load wherever I go”, a T shirt we saw on the train which said ” My puberty has just plopped” but the prize must go to the genius brand of loo roll called ” My Fanny”.

Talking of loo roll, we then get into the loo slippers. These are slippers that on no occasion should EVER be worn out of the loo. To forget to take them off  and to come into the room still wearing them is akin to appearing stark naked at a dinner party and then performing a dance on the table.It sounds so simple , yet we seemed incapable of remembering, like when you are trying desperately not to mention something,  yet every time you open your mouth you come out with exactly the thing you werent meant to. I remember Tim doing exactly this  when we had been invited to dinner by one of his English students, who had insisted we went to meet his elderly parents. He ( and they) had as much character as postage stamps and conversation was excruciating.Thankfully  it came to an end as we were about to leave and Tim appeared from the loo still wearing the fluffy loo slippers. He bolted back in, though the damage was done and we made our apologies and left. As we walked round the corner of the house we saw the mother hurriedly stuffing the offending and now untouchable slippers in the dustbin. 

I have just seen the neighbours cat scampering across the garden with a large rat in his  mouth looking extremely pleased,  if you can imagine such an expression. This reminded me of an incident in a bar in India where we were passing away the hours before catching the sleeper train down to Kerala after our journey through Tamil Nadu. The bar in question was a bit like a strip club with a lot of plastic sticky  tables and stools bolted to the floor, facing the bar that was covered in grimy astro turf. To say it had seen better days would be rather an understatement. But it served beer,  and after the three hour wait we had already endured at the railway station trying to get tickets,  we were not being picky. Which was just as well. We duly ordered beers and were given some complimentary bowls of nibbles. The term nibbles is in fact literally what they were,  because on closer inspection it became clear that each of the slices of cucumber had large bite marks in them and that something had nibbled the edges. At this point there was a loud snapping sound coming from the bar, a terrible shrieking and squealing  and one of the waiters manoeuvred around all the customers on the way to the exit,  carrying a very large and very alive rat struggling in a trap. A little like when Misty the dog unearthed a live rat inside one of the sofas in our holiday house which she then proceeded to rip to shreds ( both the sofa and the rat) surrounded by a circle of silent horrified small children.

Tim once had a pet rat. She was called Wilma and he got her from a pair of bikers  who lived  in the high rise flats in Kennington and had a child called Harley Davidson. Tim  loved her, much more than we did,  but she was actually quite sweet in a ratty kind of way and very tame,  though she did manage to eat a whole tube of my apricot facial scrub which turned her fur orange,  along with copious amounts of my contraceptive pills. Tim used to walk around with her snuggled in his breast pocket, an activity that either repulsed or amused in equal proportions,  but I have to say we all grew quite fond of her. She  became so adept at escaping from her cage that we more or less gave her the run of the spare room. It was in the days before central heating when we all had gas fires in each room and she took up residence behind the fire place where she made herself a little nest of cotton buds and socks and assorted pilfered items. This arrangement worked perfectly well until the gas man came to do his regular annual gas check. Though we thought it was perfectly normal,  he was completely horrified and immediately condemned the gas fire, so  poor old Wilma was again confined to quarters. 

The only other pet we had of this nature was Amy the hamster, who came along when M was about six. Amy was much loved and very tame and amazingly survived living in the same house as cats. One Christmas we had arranged to look after another friends hamster while they were away. I tried to explain in no uncertain terms that no, the hamsters would not love each other and that they must never be allowed in the same cage. This obviously fell on deaf six year old ears and M duly put Amy into the other hamsters cage as she was convinced that they were lonely. Lo and behold, they went for each other,  resulting in a lot of blood, M getting bitten and fainting on the floor, and Amy being left with a large hole in her neck. And a mad dash to the vets before they shut for Christmas. And just as Tim was on the phone to the vet suggesting that he put her out of her misery,  all three children appeared and delivered a lecture so heartbreaking and convincing, stating that Christmas may as well be cancelled if it was to be without her,  that we immediately told him to get the drip going and operate. And so he did. By New Year she was back intact and lived at least another two years. Which was just as well seeing as the total cost for her including a cage came to £20.00. Cost of operation £150.00. Though this is better than my  dear friend who spent £800 on an operation for her cat. And the following week it got run over. Or my neighbour who spent an absolute eye watering fortune on a cockatoo and then one summer it flew out of the window never to be seen again. 

But then again its not about the money is it?