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| Narrowboat Christmas |
Despite living on a boat for more than twelve years this was
our first Christmas aboard; and very relaxed it was too. Father Christmas made
it down the flue pipe of the diesel stove somehow, ate his mince pie and took the
reindeer food we left for Rudolph. Top requests on the letters to Santa had
been a balaclava for Big Sister and a chocolate cake for Little Sister. Santa
delivered these and many more gifts besides. What lovely simple requests from
ones so young, before they are old enough to request computer game consuls or
whatever the kids are into these days. I know I sound old but I did turn 40 on
Boxing Day! (Gasp!)
I got everything I wished for on my birthday and after the
kids were in bed we chilled out and watched some Christmas TV with The Doctor’s
parents. My mother-in-law kindly did the dishes for us but then later on went to
use the bathroom. She claimed there was now no running water. No doubt another
case of ‘house people’ not understanding how our boat works, I thought to myself,
judgementally.
It turns out that she was right, there was indeed no running
water. The next day The Doctor dismantled the access hatch and tested various
bits and bobs to try to isolate the problem. Do we need a new water pump? Where
in the circuit has it all gone wrong? Could this be expensive? We don’t want to
disturb our marine engineer’s Christmas holiday so we leave it a few days before
texting him, and survive on bottled water and washing dishes with a supply from
the aquaroll. It’s a pain but we’re used to this sort of thing by now.
However, after a week of no running water we’re kind of
desperate for a bath! So on New Years Day we treated ourselves to a night in
the local Travelodge, (£15 for a family room!) I absolutely love sinking into a
deep hot bath; we only have a shower on the boat.
The next day, we took the girls to the zoo and the marine engineer
let himself into our boat with a set of spare keys. It did not take long to
isolate the problem and he phoned straight away to let us know.
“There is a switch above the kitchen sink that was turned
off. It turns off the water. I’ve turned it on again now.”
A little embarrassed, The Doctor asks how much we owe him
for his time, and the engineer laughs and says not to worry about it.
A week without running water because a switch that we never
use had been flicked off! Could my mother-in-law have done it accidentally when
washing the dishes? Or was it one of the children? There are plenty of
redundant light switches in our boat, as when the previous owner installed new
systems he left the old ones in place. There are always a few switches and
things about that we don’t know what they do: we just ignore them.
But how the friends and family of the marine engineer will
laugh when he tells them the story of the family who didn’t know about their
own ‘water off’ switch.
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| Christmas morning. |
