This is the fifth of the eight boat stories.
People get funny ideas when it comes to naming boats. After all, our boat is called Monstronauticus and it’s virtually the only name that my wife and I could agree on. Our son happily avoided a similar fate.
The phenomenon can be explained by good old British bureaucracy. Like cars, every boat must be registered and licensed. On the canals they chose a numbering system. On the Thames, where numbers are impersonal and insufficiently poetic, the name is the numberplate. I was allowed to keep my first boat’s name when I brought her onto the river, but was warned that I might have to change if a pre-existent ‘Dawn’ came to light.
This is the fourth of the eight boat stories.
Experts agree: the best way to learn something in depth is immersion. Whether you’re trying to pick up a new language or learn a new skill like boating: in at the deep end, you’ll be the wiser for it.
Many boaters will say that you’re not a real boater unless you’ve fallen in ’the cut’. ‘The cut’ refers to the canal, which is usually only a couple of feet deep, rendering the point about depth moot. Rivers are another beast altogether.
This is the third of the eight boat stories.
I spent the first week aboard my floating home-to-be surrounded by the sounds of nature trampled underfoot by the chugging of the diesel engine, the wail of tungsten carbide disc on steel, underscored by a whirring petrol generator. Though nature is famously noisy, that week definitely represented the triumph of industry over environment.
That is not to say that the soundscape was entirely unsubtle. We spent happy hours gliding through canals, the gentle rippling of the water as it bubbled and folded round the stern. Even in these quiet moments we were not entirely alone with nature. The occasional scrape as we glid over submerged shopping trolleys reminded us that we were cruising man-made waters excavated, then filled, by hand.
This is the second of the eight boat stories.
Whatever happened to that Lister LR2 engine that valiantly got us from Staffordshire to Oxford on only one cylinder? That was hoisted out and replaced with a model with only marginally higher horsepower?
It sat in my father’s shed for years. That is, until I met someone that I knew I wanted to spend my life with. And not all that long after we got to know each other I started to hatch a plan.
November, fast unfolding as I speak, marks eight years since I stepped onto a boat and called it home. Boat-buying typically starts in summer, when all is bright, exciting and verdant (if you’re lucky). Like house-buying, it can take ages. There’s an array of things to fix: Surveys, licenses, insurance and, in my case, an engine. I’m not the first to move in just as a brutal winter descends.
Writing it down, eight years doesn’t seem like all that much. But in that time I’ve had three jobs, three engines, two boats, one wife and a child. I haven’t counted precisely how many days it’s been so far, but I have convinced myself to sleep in a steel box floating in oft perilous water thousands of times. In years to come I will look back on this time and there will be stories to tell. And what stories!
This is the first of the eight boat stories. There will be more to come, including more engine excitement.
After much searching, I found the boat that I wished to call home. Dawn, for it was she, was moored in Staffordshire. My father and I both booked precious time off work and, after testing the suspension and kicking the tyres, we set off for the week-long journey. Destination: Oxford.
We planned a journey that took us along the Shropshire Union Canal, Grand Union and Oxford canals. There were probably others (it gets a bit complicated round Birmingham). On our journey we passed through tunnels, diversions, and lots of locks.
Barbara Helen Newman was my grandmother. She died aged 99. I would like to write a few things down to celebrate her life, keep her stories going and tell you a bit about her. Of course her personality and presence is what really counts, but I’m not sure I have the ability to adequately distill a description of her character out of the day-to-day interactions I had with her. Her quips and word-play were quick off the tongue but just as ephemeral. She was a linguist and a musician. She played the piano and was particularly fond of Schumann. She had a fierce intelligence and quick wit, a playful relationship with words and bags of character. But rather than attempt to describe her character I shall relate character-forming stories that I remember her telling me.
They say the skies are bigger Up North. I’ve recently witnessed this natural phenomenon first-hand. It’s true. The best theory I have so far is that the sky expands, inching out and pressing down toward the horizon. Meeting abrupt and solid bedrock, it flexes and springs up, vault-like, forming a dome. As any structural engineer will tell you, this paraboloid is capable of supporting and holding back crushing weights. The arch transfers the load deep into its footing, pushing downward and outward. The earth supports it, gentle and sufficient. As long as the horizon remains firm, anchored, the cosmos remains supported and the world still turns.
This piece was originally published in the Crossref Staff Newsletter. I’m reasonably confident that you won’t have read it.
People ask me “how’s the boat?”. There are two easy answers to that, neither of them particularly satisfactory. The long answer, which involves sacrificial anodes and hinges, topcoats and oil changes, weeds and invasive species, though it answers the question, leaves the listener considerably dislocated from its starting point. The short answer, that it’s fine thank you, seems churlish and falls short of the spirit of the question. The trick is to find the middle ground: a short anecdote which illustrates the idiosyncrasies of living aboard, but which doesn’t descend into the weeds, or worse yet the bilges.