Released!

At last we are free of the shed and have resumed living in the light! We were finally let out on Friday – so nearly two weeks of incarceration. It’s been worth it though. The roof looks tremendous after having seven coats of paint applied – if you count the primer and undercoats. I should have taken a photo – never mind – one to follow. The engineer has also had another go at solving a persistent coolant leak in my engine. I’m not entirely convinced that he has cracked it but we will see. I have dried the engine bilge and we will see in the coming days whether it stays dry.

A more important releasing is now confirmed. My last working day is 31st May. The shop is due to close some time in July and I would have been willing to stay till the bitter end if my bosses had been reasonable regarding the financial situation, but no, although they have agreed to give me a good reference. So I am deep into planning the next few months. It is so exciting. I am going to take the boat out from June until the end of August. Then home for some boring stuff like car servicing and pet inoculating. Then a shorter cruise before a family wedding in October. Late Autumn will be taken up with visits to friends and relatives before hibernating for the winter. Job hunting will then commence. It will be the first time in my life that I will not be answerable to anybody else and I can’t wait!

Living in a shed

Last Monday I took the boat up to Fradley Services – the boatyard just up from my mooring. We were there for the blacking of my bottom and the painting of my roof – well my boat’s bottom and roof!

They were running a little behind and so only got me in on Tuesday and I had assumed that it would take maybe 5 days in total. I was wrong! We will not be released from the shed until either Tuesday or Wednesday next week. The downside is that Bonny and I are living in the dark and breathing lots of paint fumes. The upside is that we are on shore power which means unlimited electricity and no running of the engine. It’s a real treat as I haven’t been on mains electricity since I left the marina over 2 years ago.

It may be taking a long time but that is because they are very thorough. They have taken my roof back to the metal and have painted several undercoat layers with long gaps in between so they dry properly. Yesterday they painted the first topcoat – a beautiful buttery cream colour and will do another coat next week, together with sand to make it non slip. They finished the blacking of the hull on Friday and since they don’t work on weekends, the paint has a good two and a half day to dry and harden before going back in the water. In some boatyards you would be lucky to get one day at most for the blacking to cure.

So it is all good and Bonny is adjusting to the surroundings although we will both be very happy to be back in the water and breathing fresh air again! Meanwhile she is passing the time by hunting mice and possibly rats around the yard! I am also delighted to discover that my roof was not nearly as rusty as I had thought (more discolouration than rust) and that my hull has lasted very happily with a gap of two years between blackings. In fact for 15 years old, she is in very good condition all round.

That’s more than can be said for me as I am finding life quite exhausting at present, what with the shed causing me disturbed sleep, a bit of a domestic with a friend, and work issues as well. Still I wouldn’t swap my life for anyone’s and I have my long cruise to look forward to – almost certainly beginning in June now.

Heroes and a naughty little dog

Heroes come in many shapes and sizes and yesterday my caped crusader came with a powerful torch and an exceptionally well trained Collie dog!

I had been relaxing with Bonny recently. She hadn’t run away since October last year and was becoming increasingly obedient both on and off the lead. Yesterday my complacence was blown out of the water. We had been quite busy with this and that on our day off and after her third and final walk of the day, Bonny and I returned to our boat. I took her lead off so she could jump into the cratch unhindered.

Suddenly she was off and running. She slipped between my legs, belted down the path and straight through the hedge into the field behind the mooring. I immediately followed and using my most commanding training voice, ordered her to ‘Come’! She paused, looked at me and then, if dogs had fingers, she would have raised two of them! And off she went.

Five hours later…It was pitch black and increasingly cold. I had heard her every so often barking in the various fields around the mooring but every time I went out, she hid. I was cold and exhausted and had returned to the boat. I was terrified she would either run out onto the road where she would be all but invisible to traffic or that she would fall into the sluice for the canal as that is where she had been last seen. But I was powerless to do anything about it. I knew by now she would be cold, footsore and hungry but once she has disobeyed me, a switch seems to flip in her brain and she appears unable to return to me even when she is desperate to come home.

Enter my hero… Chris is his name and I had seen him on the mooring much earlier, while it was still light and had said that Bonny was on the run again. I assume he must have seen me and my lonely torch in the field and guessed that I had had no joy. Out he came with a torch that could double as a lighthouse lamp  and a totally wonderful dog called Beth. He sent Beth to track down my wild pup and then somehow he managed to catch her and brought her back filthy and panting (Bonny not Chris!) to my boat. I heard Beth at the door and my heart leapt as I thought it was Bon, but then sank again when I saw Beth. Then a figure like the Good Shepherd loomed out of the darkness and there was my very own errant sheep cuddled in his arms.

I cannot express how relieved I was and how incredibly grateful I was to Chris, who should have been tucked up safe and warm on his boat and not tramping the fields in the middle of the night. He didn’t tell me he was going to help, or talk about helping, he just went and did it. I was still trying to stutter my thanks when he strode off with his faithful hound back into the darkness. What a hero!

When I am tempted to lose faith in people and their humanity, someone comes along and restores my faith in the human race. This time it was Chris – and Beth, restoring my faith in dog nature – severely damaged by Bonny!

Clouds and Silver Linings

I was talking in my last blog about the expenses looming for my boat. Well since then we have been iced and snowed in. Even when the weather improves, it always takes longer for the canal to thaw so at present I am stuck. That means I won’t be able to move the boat up to the yard for its painting and blacking.

The downsides to this is that I will have to rearrange the blacking for another date. The upside is that the money stays in my account for just a little longer. The other issue at present is water. While we are frozen in, we have to find a tap that isn’t frozen and then collect water in plastic barrels which then need to be decanted into the boat’s tank. It is heavy work. The upside is that we draw together closer as a community and tend to help each other more than when life is easy. Well, most do – there is always the odd one who decides that their needs are so much more important than anyone else’s – but that attitude is thankfully rare – at least in our part of the world.

Here are some pictures to give a flavour of our winter world…

(cheating with this one as it was taken last year – but it is very pretty!)

Loads of Money

There is no doubt that it is generally less expensive to live a floating life style than a land based one; on the other hand if anyone tells you it’s free of big expenses, don’t believe them. You have heard what BOAT stands for? Bring Out Another Thousand!

In these coming months I have particularly big outgoings to keep ‘Don’t Panic’ happy and legal. Firstly there is my annual mooring fee – just shy of £1,300. Then there is my licence to allow me to cruise the waterways – nearly £700.

On 13th February, if we are not iced in, I am taking the boat for her two yearly bottom blacking. This involves blasting all the grime and weed that has accumulated using high pressure water hoses and then painting the hull with several coats of a bitumen based paint to retard rust and so keep her afloat. My roof has needed repainting for some time and so both these painting jobs together will cost around £1,000. I have learnt that the best way of keeping the dreaded rust at bay is to keep her clean and polished and to keep the paint in as good a condition as possible. Rust is very sneaky – you may only see one little spot showing through the paint, but often if you investigate further you can find that it has crept all over the place, under cover of the paint.

Lastly my Boat Safety Certificate is due for renewal this year. This is an inspection that happens every four years to make sure the boat is safe and you have to pay an examiner to do it. I’m not sure how much that will cost yet and of course the expense will rise if there is anything I need to put right. It’s very like your car MOT in that you hope very much that you only have to pay the fee for the exam and nothing nasty is found!

Because all these expenses are due within a couple of months of each other, it requires me to be financially disciplined throughout the year so that I save enough to cover it all. I find this quite difficult – particularly as I only earn around £750 a month. It is so tempting to spend what I have each month and worry about these big expenses when they arise. However that way lies ruin so I do my best and am very grateful to the relatives who have helped me out on more than one occasion!

Poor Sick Bonny

I have been nursing a sickly little dog for the last 9 days. She managed to eat something containing poison – goodness knows where from - and it made her extremely ill. I will spare you the grotty details but we are now on day 10 and I had my first uninterrupted night’s sleep last night! I’m fairly certain we are over the worst now as she has stopped leaking from both ends and is managing to eat a little. The vet dosed her up (and charged me £70) and that has definitely helped.
I know she is ‘only’ a dog but she is my only company and having had her from a wee pup, I treat her more like a child than a dog. So when she is ill, I go through the torments of the damned! It’s amazing how the petty things I usually worry about all fade away as all my attention is focused on Bonny’s health. It will be good to remember how insignificant those worries became when something really important was going on. Then, perhaps, I can keep those worries in proportion and not let them outgrow themselves.
Here is Bonny when she is feeling more like herself…

This is her at 11 weeks, just before she came to live with me.












And this is her all grown up. She is a little star!

What to do when the world goes mad?

As I see it there are three options. One is to join in with the madness, the second is to try to change the world and introduce some sanity and the third option is to ignore the world, laugh at the madness and go your own way.

In my teens and twenties I chose the first option – or perhaps the first option chose me. I bought stuff I didn’t need with money I didn’t have. I constantly compared myself with my peers – especially in relation to the way I looked and what relationships I was in and so didn’t like myself very much and was generally discontented. Work increasingly became a matter of lonely competition rather than communal cooperation and although I had plenty of money, foreign holidays and excitement in my work, I became increasingly unhappy. To combat the madness I drank and smoked to excess and to stave off the loneliness I indulged in a series of unhealthy relationships.

In my 30’s and 40’s I changed my life and embarked on a quest to change the world – or at least my corner of it. I chose religion as a vehicle for this; in particular the brand of religion that promoted feeding the hungry, visiting the prisoner and spreading love and justice abroad. I worked really hard at this, giving up the quest for money and possessions as well as the unhealthy relationships. But I discovered that however hard I pushed this brand of sanity it made no difference as the world wasn’t listening. The more I pushed, the more the world treated me as if I were the mad one! I eventually replaced my cigarettes with anti depressants as the sense of failure and futility took hold. By late on in my forties, I realised that option 2 wasn’t working.

And so I am now trying the third option – ignoring the world and going my own way. In my opinion the world is now even madder than it was when I was growing up. People are more afraid – of just about everything, That fear translates into aggression on the roads, ignoring each other in queues or as we pass on the street or share public transport, even in seeing our children as threats to be avoided! The rich are getting so much richer while the poor get credit cards. Children as young as 6 are so concerned about body image they are making themselves ill. Work is now almost entirely divorced from the good of the community and is all about money and self promotion. Being alone and anonymous is the new big sin. It doesn’t matter how good or bad your relationship is, you just have to be in one and if you can find any way at all of becoming a ‘celebrity’ then so much the better.

Living on a boat certainly helps with image obsession. No wardrobe space, oil under fingernails and a limited water supply means casual dress is the way to go! The community spirit on the cut means I am no longer afraid to smile at strangers or greet people passing by. When I do though, you can tell those who still live in the mad world as they avoid my eyes and hurry by as if I am about to mug them.

I have given up smoking and am experimenting with a bit of alcohol free living at present, not that there is anything wrong in my world with smoking or drinking.Having a Whisky Mac while watching the sun set is a rare joy, but I want to see how many crutches I can do without – just as an experiment. Soon I will no longer be a wage slave and so will need to live on very little. That will solve the problem of buying stuff I don’t need. When I do work again, it will be to earn just enough to get by, so no need for competition or too much ugly pushing and shoving.

Lastly in a world full of noise, I will be exploring the gift of silence. No social networks – I prefer flesh and blood friends. I have a mobile phone but sometimes I turn it off! More and more I am also turning the TV off in the evening and instead doing some reading or practising my new ukulele. Increasingly though I want to practice just sitting in the quiet without anything to distract me from my own inner workings.

This way might well lie madness, but I think it is preferable to the current madness of the world. I’ll let you know how it goes!