Angel, Islington

Recently, Not A Notting Hill Mum commented that she'd like to see more pictures on my blog. This is a very good idea, as my life is very scenic and there's plenty to take pictures of, and I bet y'all want to see what it's like inside a narrowboat too! Generally, people on the towpath like to sneakily peer in to our windows if they can ;-)
So, this morning I took another leap into overcoming my techno-phobia and worked out how to send a picture directly from my mobile phone to my blog! How 21st century am I?! This is the Islington tunnel where we sometimes moor.
The next stage in me getting to grips with the digital age is going to be (gulp) joining Twitter. Yep, I don't even tweet yet. But British Mummy Bloggers tell me it's the thing to do.

Winter Wonderland

18th December

Coming home I access the towpath from Danbury Street bridge. The concrete ramp is solid with frozen snow. I gingerly edge downwards step by step, one hand on the pushchair, one hand on the railing. Under the Victorian brick arched bridge the sound of water drips through the darkness into the cut. The edge of the arch is protected by black metal, with deep grooves worn into it: the result of years of ropes rubbing the corner, when horse drawn boats were the main traffic here. Like all boaters my key-ring has a spherical cork on it to save it lest it should fall into the Cut. The BW key opens the heavy iron gate, which is all vertical black railings. This magic key fits all waterways locks and opens gates, swing bridges, electric locks and boaters facilities across the whole country. My footsteps crunch on the towpath, which is crisp with pure white snow. Ice is slowly forming like translucent custard skin creeping by moonlight across the surface of the canal water. The steep cutting on the opposite bank is peopled with bare winter trees, their toes tucked snugly under the snowy blanket, their silhouettes back-lit by old fashioned style amber streetlamps. On our mooring boats are double moored from the bridge to the Islington tunnel. In the nineteenth century winters were so much colder that the local Victorians would come ice-skating on the glistening Cut down here and even go skating in the tunnel: A half-mile black bore-hole lurking and dripping secretly below the bustling boutiques of Upper Street. I can hear the distant chugging of engines as a couple of my boating neighbours recharge their domestic batteries. Single Boat Mum’s boat glows with winter merriment as solar-powered blue fairy-lights twinkle on her roof. Johnny Boater, tousled and curly, stops to chat as I lift the two sleepy angels out of their pushchair. Then he winks and grins and heads off down the towpath and disappears into the darkness. A thick icing of snow on the boats’ roofs’ make us all inhabitants of a charity Christmas card’s perfect winter scene. I shut the blue painted back doors against the snowy boughs leaning over the mooring. Soon chestnuts are exploding in the gas oven, there’s neat Jack Daniels in a glass and Frank Sinatra on the stereo, dreaming of a white Christmas, in Angel.

Changes

29th October

Everything changes. The snack van in the meadow near Broxbourne has become a porta-cabin cafe. We went to the park and did some shopping in the village shop. Big sister remembers and recognises the holly bush and the ancient church. The miserable monologue is getting the better of me, so I phoned the Fairytale Princess. My phone is drying out but some of the buttons still don’t work. The Doctor said I shouldn’t use it. She said,
“When you’re in Angel you’re happy. Every spring you say, we’re gonna go travelling for summer and it will be brilliant. But then you’re lonely.”
She’s right. Children have changed my priorities. I think I’m ready for a house.

My true love has been with me
For ten years of my life
And I was a devoted
Narrow-boating wife
My true love gave me freedom
And showed me England’s sights
A flight of locks at Tring
That took me up to dizzy heights
The Pontcysyllte aqueduct
Spanning valleys down below
The coloured bustle Camden
Angel, frozen in the snow
The dripping Blisworth tunnel
Haunts our early courting days
A picnic lake at Ricky
Is where we got engaged
To announce intent to marry
We had to settle down
Two weeks in Uxbridge boat yard
Spent hard-standing on the ground...

To be continued...

Angel, Islington to Uxbridge.

April 2010


Angel, Islington to Uxbridge.


Space: The final frontier. With the arrival of the new baby we are testing the space limitations of a 57 foot narrowboat. These are the voyages of the narrowboat Grassington, a blue box that tardily travels through time and space, at a maximum speed of four miles per hour. Our mission; to travel the waterways we’ve never seen, to live the dream, to be boaters, travellers, writers and parents. For so long we’ve waited for the right time; to have enough money, or to discover the elusive way of earning a living while travelling. But the absolutely right time never comes, sometimes you just have to do it anyway. We might not have the biggest, most comfortable boat we had dreamed of, or the huge stash of savings to make the life easy, or the dream job, that meets all our mental and spiritual needs. You know the one, the job that we can work at from home while earning a decent income, and still spend quality time together as a family. But with one of us on maternity leave and one of us working in London we decided to cast off and let go. The handsome doctor and his winsome assistant.

“In twenty years from now, you’ll be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowline. Sail away from the safe harbour. Explore. Dream. Discover.”(1)

So we handed in our notice to leave the childminder and our six month winter mooring came to an end. A friend told me, “good luck with the move – what do you have to do to prepare?”

“Nothing,” I grinned, “just untie our mooring ropes”.

We left the mooring, in Angel, Islington, on Good Friday. It is overlooked by beautiful Georgian town houses and leafy overhanging trees. Both of my daughters were born at home, on board ‘Grassington’ on this mooring. A climbing rose marks the spot where my eldest was born. We leave behind a lot of emotions and memories here.

The weather is grim boating weather. Grey and raining, blustery and cold. The Doctor often does the driving, while I look after the kids. Big Sister is wailing that she doesn’t want Daddy to drive the boat. She wants him indoors with us. Baby sister is having her lunch-time nap in the baby hammock in the bedroom, but awakens after forty five minutes and will not settle. I promise Big Sister that she can play on dry land when we reach the boat yard at Kings Cross, but I have to break that promise when we arrive and it’s still raining. I amuse her by holding her up to the window and explaining a bit about how a lock works as the boat rises up.

“What’s that?” She asks.

“That’s just slime, on the wall of the lock – no don’t touch it!”

“And we’re going up and up and up?”

“That’s right!”

The benefit of the rain is that there is not the usual huge audience at Camden Lock. This lock is normally surrounded by gongoozlers enjoying a beer with the view, and no matter how many locks you have done in your life you can’t help feeling self conscious about doing it with so many spectators. If there’s a mooring space we said that we would stop in Camden, but there never is. So during a sunny gap in the April showers we wind our way through Regents Park and London Zoo, Lisson Grove and Maida Vale tunnel. At Little Venice a boat is already on the waterpoint so we decide to push on, to Kensal Green Sainsburys. This is our stop for the night.

This stretch of the Regents Canal used to be so familiar to me, but we’ve not travelled this way since before our first daughter was born, so it’s a little like a cruise down memory lane for me. Kensal Green is one of the closest things to the ‘countryside’ you can get on the London canals. The cut runs between the railway and Kensal Green cemetery. This cemetery is a wild and vast collection of angels and mausoleums, tombs and trees; steeped in history, so many memorials to loved ones departed. It has several famous residents and was the first designated burial ground for all, in London. My most interesting boating memory from here is noticing a canal boat with a coffin on the roof moor up at the ancient wrought iron canal-side gate. A group of mourners waited solemnly for the arrival and I concluded this to be some boaters last request, to arrive at his final destination on his own boat. Back in by-gone days, bodies were frequently delivered this way. The graveyard even has catacombs below the chapel and a lift system that would lower the coffin down through the floor of the chapel.

My other boating memory of Kensal Green is finding my eccentric Italian acquaintance moored there one day, confessing to me that he has killed one of the local geese.

“I eat goose for a week!” he grinned triumphantly.

My first boating memory of Kensal Green is ten years ago. I was thinking of buying a boat when I spotted two lads on two boats just casting off to head west towards Harlesden. When you’re fascinated by boating it’s always tempting to try to strike up a conversation with these mysterious boating people. (People often ask me the three same questions; Is that your boat? Do you live on that? And, Is it cold in winter?) As the second boater prepared to leave, I nervously approached him and asked,

“Do you know of any boats for sale?”

What happened next is best described by my poem.



James Hopper Bissett

Now there's a proper name

And he's a proper Hopper Bissett
The day that I met James

He was casting off Kingfisher

Which is his narrow boat

30ft by 6ft 10

A miracle afloat



Green and red with a make shift bed

It's got that lived in feel

Rough around the edges

6 ml of solid steel

I asked one little question

That was it and he was off

Rolling up a cigarette

Took a little puff



Looking just like mischief

He gives one of those grins

With a twinkle in his eye

One of his yarns begins.

I was standing on the towpath

So he offered me a cuppa

Then he offered me a lift

Assuring me he's not a nutter



Now that wasn't quite the truth..

But what about my bike?

He said, We'll put it on the roof

Take it with us if you like.

Cruising down the Cut

He told me all about it

He said when you get a boat

I know you're gonna like it.



And you won't believe the people

And the things that people do

But they're lovely water gypsies

In fact they're just like me and you.

He's got a dodgy tiller

So it's hard to steer the boat

It reminded me of festivals

The smell of woody smoke



In the flow I didn't want to

Interrupt his monologue

But looking down the towpath

I said Hopper where's your dog?

Oh no Polly! wailed Hopper

The Staffie that he loved

She's the sweetest little thing

But she's got a taste for blood.



She could be gone for hours

She's killed ducks and swans and cats

She's even gone for goats

And horses come to that.

It's embarrassing said James

That look that's in her eyes

When she returns I know that I

Have got to apologise



To a farmer or an owner

Of an unsuspecting pet

So I've had to get a muzzle

And I don't know where she gets

Her psycho attitude

It's not that I don't feed her!

Got a disobedience prize

In the dog show at Wendover.



Yes the festival Wendover

In the beer tent I recall

He held our table spellbound

With his stories that are tall

About the times he was arrested

And all those times of hardship

And the trials and tribulations

Of living in a skip



Oh there's nowt as queer as folk

Nothings stranger than the truth

But you would not believe

What he got up to in his youth

And I think I'll leave it there

Because this is not my story

I've already said too much

I think James is gonna kill me



You've gotta see it to believe it

I should have changed the names

But this goes out to you

Miss Polly and Kingfisher James.


(1) Mark Twain did not say that! The quote belongs to H. Jackson Brown's mother. See page 13 in Brown's 1991 book: P.S. I Love You: When Mom Wrote, She Always Saved the Best for Last.
That's What He Said: Quoting Mark Twain (Huffington Post)