Charlie's Story

 

One day I returned to our mooring to find that ‘Charlie’s Chugger’ was moored nearby. ‘Charlie’s Chugger, and Alfie’s Also’ is a  42ft blue narrowboat that used to belong to my mate The Marine Engineer: It was his workshop.

“I know Charlie!” exclaimed Big Sister.
A ripple of sadness crossed the surface of the glittering sunny water.
“I don’t think you do darling,” I said. “You've never met him. You must know a different Charlie.”

I am deeply honoured that The Marine Engineer and The Original Boat-Wife wished to share Charlie’s story on my blog.

Charlie's Story

A guest post by Nigel Rickards.

May 22^nd 2004   

A lovely warm sunny spring day, it was Saturday and the Rickmansworth festival was on, it was also Cup Final day.   

We were moored just above Denham Deep Lock and had been for a week as we had broken down (the coupling on the prop shaft had broken and we were awaiting a new one). We had been making our way up to Ricky to get a good spot for the festival weekend, as the boys, Charlie in particular, had enjoyed it so much the previous year. This was the first time we had taken the boat up for a few years, the first since the arrival of both Charlie and Alfie. 

On Friday afternoon Rob on ‘Cornwall’ had breasted up and taken us up to the Horse and Barge at Harefield  so that we could get water and do the loo etc.

Charlie sat up top with Janet and Rob as we made our way up there; Charlie was never one to be stuck inside when the boat was moving. The following morning Rob brought us back to Denham Deep as it was a lovely spot and there is a great woods for the boys to play in and trees to climb. I had been off work the previous few days as Janet had been working and had spent some fantastic days with my two boys Charlie, four years old, and Alfie two years old. We spent our time rampaging through the woods having boys adventures and walking across buttercup filled meadows on the other side of the lock, discovering abandoned little bridges that have been lost to the modern world but obviously had a purpose and use once upon a time. We spent ages throwing sticks in the River Colne for our dog Jess to go in and retrieve.

The weather had been great and I had been telling Janet what fun we were having. She was very jealous and quite rightly wanted some of the same for herself on her next few days off work, so that is why we decided to get Rob to take us back to Denham Deep. I had passed up the opportunity of getting a tow back to our mooring earlier in the week; I had declined politely and told Vince if we have to be broken down, then I can’t think of a lovelier spot to be stuck.  So many small decisions made and if any of them had been made differently, I wouldn’t be sitting here painfully remembering the events that were to change not only that weekend but the rest of our lives.

When we got back to Denham Charlie and I went over the old white bridge and helped to push the front of Rob’s boat round as he slowly turned ‘Cornwall’ around. While we were over there Stan who was also moored at Denham came out on deck and took a picture of Charlie and me. After Rob had said farewell, we readied ourselves for the day ahead. Janet was going to take the boys over to Denham Country Park taking the path through the woods and over the wooden bridge which crosses the Colne, then up past the golf course and the fields where the horses live. I had to go to work for a couple of hours and then I would be back and we could all head off to the festival in the afternoon. Before I left I had promised Alan and Trish of Candlebridge Carrying Co: that I would pull their boats up to the bollards once they were free. They had taken a few days off for themselves after a busy winter delivering coal, gas and diesel to all the boats.  It wouldn’t take me long so I went while Janet finished getting the boys stuff ready. Charlie asked me to get his bike off the roof as he wanted to take it with him on the walk with mum. I don’t know why Charlie didn’t come with me to help move the boats that day as he always wanted to be involved, and I would always ask him if he wanted to come, maybe it was because I was rushing or maybe it was because I thought he needed to be helping mum get his stuff ready. Just after I left though he asked Janet if he could go with me and she said yes, she watched him from the hatch as he rode down the towpath to the bend where Stan was moored  I had only just left a few seconds before so he would be on top of me now, no need to worry.  I didn’t look and I didn’t hear a thing, and when I got back 15 minutes later panic broke out. I cannot go into anymore details of what happened that day, except to say that it was all of our friends from along the canal that came and gave us support and helped us through the ordeal that long Saturday. They came from south of the lock in Uxbridge and Cowley. They came from the north at Harefield, Springwell and from the festival at Rickmansworth. We all stayed at Fran’s Tea Rooms by the lock at Denham and Fran kept everybody in tea, coffee and food all day long. The phone seemed to ring continuously as word spread on the towpath telegraph. The lock at Denham and Harefield had the paddles padlocked so that the Pound was closed and no water was moving while the divers did their job. Lines of boats waited below the lock, they had been making their way to the festival as well, but nobody complained about waiting. It was about 5pm when the Police Officer who had been liaising with us finally broke the news which we knew was coming all day. We were finally allowed back on to the towpath and we walked in the dread of what we knew we were both going to have to confront. Our beautiful boy was gone, he just vanished, in a split second of being out of direct contact with either of us he disappeared and yet now here I was carrying my wonderful son in my arms for the last time in my life, back to the ambulance that had been waiting all day. We couldn’t come to terms with it and still 7 years later we still haven’t and probably never will. All of his short life people who didn’t live on boats always asked,
 “Aren’t you worried about living on the water with kids?” Of course we were and we knew the dangers as well as anyone, and so did Charlie, we had made sure of that. It goes hand in hand with all of the other very important things you teach your kids to do from a very early age like, crossing the road safely, potty training, careful the fire is very hot, saying please and thank you, etcetera.  I would always reply to that question along the lines of,
“Don’t you worry about your kids getting out of the garden and into the road?” Wherever you live there are dangers for children everywhere. I failed as a dad that day because I wasn’t there for Charlie when he needed me most, and for that I will carry the guilt and pain in my heart forever, until one day I hope to hold him again in a better place than this and tell him how sorry I truly am. I am not religious but I now have a wish that there is something more. 

At Charlie’s funeral there weren’t enough seats in the church, so people stood at the back, the majority of those people were boaters, and afterwards we had a celebration of Charlie’s life. He had filled us with joy from his first day, he was a boys boy, living life at full speed, he was never scared to try anything and always made friends wherever he went. Apart from the last 6 or so months when we got a long term mooring in Cowley for school, we cruised continuously between West London and the Tring summit, we moved every couple of weeks or so and Charlie would generally be up top with me.  As he got older he helped with things like opening the lock gates and winding up and down the paddles (with a little help from his dad of course). He would help me empty the rubbish and fill the water tank. Living on the water he watched me fish and he was a keen angler, he would sit there quietly with his rod and just wait patiently. One of the funniest things that he was prone to do was to lean out of the side hatch and yell at passing boats to slow down when they were rushing by too fast. Obviously the sight of a two year old doing that was too much to handle because most of those boats did slow down, and Janet and I would just fall about laughing.

Some weeks later Paul from the Lock cottage at Uxbridge approached his boss at British Waterways and they organised for a lovely bench to be placed at Denham where Charlie had his accident, there’s a small brass plaque engraved with his full name and a few words fitted on the bench and if you ever venture that way, take a seat and enjoy the surroundings, for this was part of Charlie's back garden, and he loved it. There is also a rose tree planted there in his favourite colour and some friends on boats helped to clear the vegetation, trees and shrubs surrounding it so it all stood out a bit more and got the sun. He has his picture hanging in his old school surrounded by drawings from all of his little friends. At his first school where he went to prep in the mornings they planted a tree in his memory with a plaque beneath. 

Of course Janet and I have regrets, but I don’t regret the life he did have. It was full of boys adventure and fun. He may have been with us only a short while but he lived a hundred childhoods in that time and left such warm memories for any who knew him.  I am glad that he was born to a boating life and I am proud of my boy for the life he lived in that boating world and the mark he left on all of the wonderful boaters he met. When I think of all my years living aboard, those 4 years 15 weeks and 6 days when I had the honour to share my experience with Charlie, was the best time of it all.

I could go on and on with wonderful stories of Charlie, but I will stop. Thank you “Boat Wife” for the opportunity to write this. It has taken me a while and I have cried so much that I just wanted to stop, but I am glad that I didn’t and glad that I have now finished and got back to all my happy memories. People lose children every day across the world in so many different ways, we never think it will happen to us and I wish it never has to happen to anyone again, but unfortunately it will. Charlie could have lived on the 15^th floor of a council block in South London and been hit by a car. Nobody much would have noticed just another car accident and not much of a life before that. But he didn’t he lived on a boat, in the south of England in some of the most beautiful places and had a ball every day of his life, and when he had his accident everyone noticed as it was such a rare accident, because kids on the cut know, they're all brought up to know, all boaters know. When all is said and done, I think it is a wonderful way of life for kids to grow up nowadays. Such a rare opportunity to experience life and people and to get to know and experience the world you live in, at an age when all the materialistic things in life don’t matter.

Thank you again Boat Wife and to all of the boaters I have mentioned by name or not, you know who you are and so do I.  We have now moved from the canal and live in Australia, we have Alfie, now almost 9, and little Jake who was a bit of a surprise, and he’s 2 in August.

In Memory of Charlie.

Missed so much by all who knew his smile.

You Don’t Look Like a Boatwoman

Photo Credit: Charles Lamb Pub website

After the funeral , sitting on a crowded tube train into town, and standing still like a plastic mannequin on a grimy London escalator I was thankful to be alive. The Mellow Mum can no longer experience this existence. I am thankful for the daily grind. I feel each breath of winter air as I emerge to ground level at Angel station, I am alive. I am re-evaluating my life. I am lucky, lucky, lucky. There is no time to be wasted; now is the time to live.

Or maybe the future will start when I wake up in the morning. Right now I really want to go to my room and be on my own, with some maudlin music and a bottle of wine. But I don’t have a room. I am in my late thirties now and I don’t have my own bedroom. Suddenly that seems peculiar, absurd. So, to be alone, I went to the Charles Lamb pub. It is full of people. I try to cry secretly. Oh me! I wearily and dramatically feel like serenading the many leaded-rectangle paned windows, gently flickering candles and green-painted wooden panels. All of the wobbly rustic tables are taken. I sit on a stool at the bar and order a large red wine.
“We only do wine in one size,” she says. It ain’t large. But it’s large prices; Islington prices.
The melancholy fellow on the bar stool next to me tries to get her attention to order a drink. She looks right through him. I offer him half a smile, apologetically. He is drunk, and considers my smile to be an invitation to initiate conversation.
“What are you thinking about?” He demands of my pensive face. I pay the lady for my wine and take a sip.
“I’m thinking about my friend,” I reply. He nods, sagely.
“Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have that nonsense respected...”*
I can’t help smiling just a little.
“Friends are like table legs; they keep you stable,” I reply. “If one falls off, you wobble.”
He smiles, holds out his hand and introduces himself.
“Charles Lamb, essayist and poet.”
“I thought so,” I replied, shaking his ghostly hand. I could tell by his nineteenth century fashion sense that he was different somehow. “Associated with the romantics, Shelley , Hazlitt, Coleridge and Wordsworth and considered by admirers as “a pre-Victorian sugar daddy distributing kisses and kindliness”.
“Ah, you have heard of me! Yes, Samuel Coleridge is a good friend of mine.” He sits up straight on his bar stool and glows with satisfaction and pride.
“No, it says all that on the chalk board behind you.” I remind him. His pen name was Elia when he lived in Colebooke Row. “I live in Colebrooke Row too.”
“I’m at Colebrooke Cottage!” he exclaims.
“I’m on the canal,” I tell him. “On a boat, near the Islington tunnel.” He eyes me up and down and looks confused.
“You don’t look like a boatwoman.” He expects to see a frilly black sun bonnet and ankle length skirts.
“Well things have changed a bit on the Cut lately,” I explain. He shakes his head and the very old clock behind the bar strikes seven. My kids will be in bed soon. I’m too miserable to handle the chaos of the bedtime routine but I think about making a move.
“Do you know there was a competition to design the Islington tunnel?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “But old James Morgan ended up designing it himself.”
“ I know that it took three years to build,” I offered. He nods.
“All those navvies with their wheelbarrows, horses and explosives; they finished it in 1818. I’ve seen you boat people walking your horses over the top.”
“Yep, there’s no towpath in the tunnel,” I reply. I didn’t tell him that we haven’t got a horse.

I finish my drink in silence as I survey the fairy lights, the ornate mirror and the deliberately scruffy wooden floorboards. It’s intentionally homely like a Hoxton trendy bar, not like a spit and sawdust back street boozer. The people drinking here are young and probably work in media, but it escapes by a hairs-breadth from being swanky (with a silent ‘s’), to being simply cosy for the younger drinker. I feel a little bit old among the other patrons here, but my new friend looks positively ancient.
He decides not to order another drink, stands up to leave and puts on his rather charming hat.
“I always arrive late at the office but I make up for it by leaving early,” he grins.
Maybe it was the fairy lights, maybe it was the wine, but as I follow him out of the door I feel a little bit warmer inside. A chalk board suggests ‘Mulled Cider – the cure for winter blues’. I turn around to look down Elia Street and Charles has silently gone towards home; nowhere to be seen.

*Charles Lamb 1775 – 1834

http://www.thecharleslambpub.com

Are You Waiting There?

I wrote this exactly eleven years ago, the first time I lost a friend. Here it is for you, if you have ever lost someone. 

Photo credit: Epping Forest Burial Park

 Website

Are you waiting there?

Are you waiting there?

Under the grass

For one of your friends

To come strolling past

And burst into tears

And lay down some flowers

And lament over ancient

Forgotten hours

When you were alive

Having it large

Living so deep

That you would carve

Your memory in

To all of our hearts

Are you still there

Under the grass?

Or did you kick off

Your earth boots at last

And leaving your body

Feeding the grass

Soar into the ether

The everything space

And begin to exist

In all time and space

In between atoms

And out of existence

Returned to the source

And into the distance

A little bit here

A little bit there

A little bit me

And a little bit yeah

Giving it some

And having it large

All over the place

And up in the stars

You can try as you might

To just disappear

But I've a sneaking suspicion

That you're still kinda here!

28/03/00

Photo Credit: Epping Forest Burial Park Website

The Gallery: Trees

This post is for Week 50 of The Gallery: Trees

I'm quite new to The Gallery, so I hope I haven't bent the rules by combining my pic with something I was about to post that is loosely based in Epping Forest. My tree picture is a blossomy hopeful one, but the post is pretty sad.

If you're new too and want to know what The Gallery is, check out Sticky Fingers blog, and then come and join in!

Epping Forest

Before I left the boat I kissed my husband and my baby goodbye. As I cuddled her warm rounded body I thought of another mother who will never hold her soft round baby again. In the tube station tunnels the cheery tunes of buskers creep around corners and offend my ears; they are inappropriate on this day. I would request that all tube passengers maintain a respectful silence while I make my last journey to Epping. STAND BACK TRAIN APPROACHING is displayed in yellow digital lights as I stand on the platform.
“Ring me when you get to Leytonstone,” she would say. “I’ll come and meet you at the station.” Today I’ll be getting a taxi.

Outside the Gathering Room in the bleak drizzle of the forest I paused. I waited. I am going to walk into this room. What will I find? Her husband? Her parents? Eyes of anguish, souls of loss, faces of devastation. Gaps in lives; disbelief; a vacuum; grief. Motherless daughters?
Bereavement grabbed a sob from my stomach and sickeningly urged it up through my throat to choke me in a gut wrenching horror. The bare winter tree branches stretch hauntingly above me into a grey winter sky. Hot tears run down my sad solitary face. I wish for the comfort of the Doctor’s arms but I am alone. And my friend does not exist. I prepare to enter a room full of strangers.

I am talking to her relatives. We are shocked about how quickly this happened.
“Her daughter doesn’t understand,” said her brother, a tear in his eye. “She doesn’t know where Mummy has gone.”
“The worst part for me,” said my friend from work, “was when we saw the hearse in Epping high street. We were on the way here, it must have been going to the house. We knew that it was her because we saw her name spelled out in flowers.”
The mingling buzz of the Gathering Room settled in to an eerie silence. The hearse had arrived. Outside the big windows I see it pull up the gravel driveway. Immaculately arranged white flowers spell out the word MUMMY in the window of the black car. My friend is inside a smart, varnished wooden box. She is a mummy lost. My heart breaks. I cry again, silently holding in the sounds of my grief as the room maintains a quietly English stiff upper lip. The horror of suddenly losing someone so vibrant and young strikes us all like a solemn grandfather clock chiming midnight. This is the end. My friend is gone. A wife is gone. The crowds shuffle into a seven sided wood panelled room with a hopeful skylight in the centre of the wood panelled ceiling. Behind the white-robed woman who will hold the service, huge windows display the friendly trees of Epping Forest, gathered respectfully to listen leafily to the Bible reading from her mother in law, the brave and poignant address from her husband, the prayers and commendation from the vicar, and the crowd’s moments of quiet reflection accompanied by classical music, “Nessun Dorma” by Puccini.

We quietly gather and follow the coffin which is transported by hearse to the burial spot. Many, many mourning-clad, black-coated people crunch boots against gravel and stifle sobs as we trudge a weary procession towards her forested resting place.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” My friend believed in God, and so I am glad that she thought she might be going to a better place.
It’s so cold, so cold. The rain drizzles on to the misery of a solitary husband standing strong at the foot of the grave as the crowd back away quietly. We shuffle politely down a woodland pathway, tearing ourselves from the final sight of our loved one, repressing the painful sounds of our aching grief. I am so angry with cancer! That silent killer that crept unnoticed into my friend’s body and stole from the world what was vibrant and fun, loved and needed, vital and real; a mother, a daughter, a sister, a wife and a friend.

Please consider donating to The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, in memory of my friend The Mellow Mum, who never smoked, died seven weeks after diagnosis, and left behind a husband and two tiny daughters.

Stage Four

10th December

I didn’t expect to be in Harlow again so soon. It takes nearly two hours to get here from Angel. I wander through the concrete wasteland in the darkness, avoiding solitary baseball caps and suspicious strangers with beady eyes. Blue hospital signposts direct me to welcoming strip lights, the yellow-lit entrance of the modern Princess Alexandra Hospital. I’m pacing down corridors, a sterile labyrinth quietly peopled by pale blue scrubs. I glimpse fading elderly people breathing noisily in hospital gowns, I find the ward and in contrast to the grey faded paper-souls my friend seems to beam like sunshine at me: The Mellow Mum. Thank goodness she is still real, still here! We have spoken only in text messages since two weeks ago, when she was told that she has lung cancer that has spread to her brain. Before I have a chance to ask how she is, she is animated, chattering, and wants to hear my news. How are my girls? Will I really move in to a house? How do I get the pushchair up the steep sloping towpath in Angel when it is so icy? After a while, I encourage her to tell me her story. She asks me to draw the curtains around her bed for privacy. I trip over her drip stand twice and draw my chair closer to her. She tells me of her sore throat, feeling tired, then vision disturbance, numbness in left leg, dizziness, A&E, chest x-ray, the CT scans the MRI scan and how there doesn’t seem to be one moment when it all became fact. But it crept up on her and her husband and the professionals were saying, “We don’t give a prognosis, it could be nine months, eighteen months or five years”. She leans forward and confides in a whisper,
“It’s Stage Four lung cancer.”
“How many stages are there?”
“Four!” she laughs.
“So four is the worst?” I assume.
“Yes,” she smiles.
She has never really smoked.
“When I was younger, with a few drinks when you go out, you know.”
“Well I read a bit on line. It can be caused by passive smoking, asbestos, or Radon gas...”
“Really, I hadn’t heard that.” She is quite mellow.

The Mellow Mum is thinking about Christmas and writing cards, and taking her girls to see Santa somewhere. She’s heard there’s a good hospice near to where she lives. She is thoughtful; pragmatic. We chat about normal things, real things like our children. She asks me to give her some hypnosis tips and breathing exercises.
“But how is your husband finding it?” I ask.
“Oh you know. He’s so busy. He’s very tired. Looking after the girls and everything.” She pauses. “But then, he said, ‘One day I’m going to wake up and you aren’t going to be there’,” she sobs through her words and before she’s finished the sentence I am clutching her warm hand and I’m crying too.

24th December

Text from The Mellow Mum

Hi. Had last treatment (radiotherapy) today so feelin tired but really pleased. Looking forward to 2 moro with kids. Have been so wiped out I have done nothing with kids so that is why haven’t spoken to any one as well. So good to be at this stage. Happy xmas. M. x x

31st December

To The Mellow Mum:

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas. Happy New Year, see you soon xxxx
31 December 2010 at 08:58

The Mellow Mum:
Happy new yr Boat Wife hope to see you soon.....
31 December 2010 at 16:46

Saturday 8th January

It is a strange quirk of the modern world that sometimes the most efficient way to communicate bad news is on a social networking site. My friend’s husband announced that The Mellow Mum died at 5.30am on Friday 7 January 2011, seven weeks and two days after her initial hospital admission and subsequent cancer diagnosis. He posted a link to Charles Aznavour's composition, ‘She’ interpreted by Jack Jones.

"She may be the love that cannot hope to last,
May come to me from shadows of the past,
That I'll remember till the day I die."

The Mellow Mum was very kind and she was a very positive person. She was my main friend this summer when we were travelling around on the boat, because she was the only person I knew who lived nearby in Essex. She liked visiting our boat and she liked to go on narrowboat holidays with her family. Tears run down my face when I think about how her tiny girls may not even remember their mum. I feel shock, anger and immense waves of sadness. Every moment of life is precious. Love is precious. Friendships are precious.

This weekend I am staying with Tank Girl, a precious friend. On her kitchen wall is a framed poem that I had forgotten I’d written for her, more than ten years ago.

Being Alive

Being alive is electric and tingly
Feeling alive is jiving and jingly
Staying alive is thinking positively
Loving your life is livingly lovely

Uppity people are out of control
They bring down your day taking bits of your soul
Because they don’t understand it and cannot get with it
Don’t complicate lives, just get on and live it.




This post is in loving memory of Michele Evans 1967 -2011.