Meet The Boaters: Rosie and Tony

Rosie and Tony lived on a narrowboat for four years and a Dutch barge for two years. Rosie is an artist and Tony is a careworker. They have two dogs and a one year old baby.

Rosie says, “Tony used to walk Mabel, our dog, down by Kensal Green canal when we were renting a flat up that way and he got into the idea of the boat, I was nervous about coming back at night but there was a woman with a baby moored there and I thought, ‘If she can do it we can’.

We got a shell from the Liverpool boat company and fitted the whole thing out at Kensal Green. We had a camp stove and no toilet or running water. We had to go to Sainsburys for the toilet and a pound shower at the leisure center. The roof was totally piled up with crap but we were really excited about it and enjoyed roughing it up! We did Bobby Dazzler out lovely in the end, and it’s now well loved and looked after by its new owners.
Our next boat was bought off a bloke who was doing it out with his wife, but she died and he wanted shot of it. I was ready for land but Tony talked me into looking and we decided to buy it. It was cold when we moved onto it and the heating was a diesel stove that didn’t work; it was pretty grim. We had a beautiful lake to ourselves in Shepperton but it was full of Canadian geese which never shut up! It had a lot more space and it was a lot easier to do out as you could put normal furniture in it, but because it was old it wasn’t well insulated and needed all the rust taking off and painted and greased again.

The best thing about living on a boat is summer evenings when you’re moored with a nice bunch of boaters and there’s a barbeque on the go and we had some good New Years party cruises on the Bobby Dazzler. But the best thing is long summer trips down the Thames. You get a good set of people on boats from all walks of life but you all have the boats in common and I like that.

The worst thing is long winters; having British Waterways on your back, and toilets are nicer on land - but you just get used to that. It felt a bit damp on Jantina ( the Dutch barge) towards the end of winter but that was a long winter.

The best thing with our baby was that it was a nice towpath community, including some of the dog walkers. There were low overheads in that lifestyle. I would have loved to have taken our daughter on the Thames round Cookham way when she was a bit older. She used to like sitting in the wheel house when we were on the move.

The worst thing about boating with a baby is doing the locks, keeping the heat consistent (especially when she was really tiny) not having a doctors, having to move when you have made mum friends in an area, getting on and off the boat with a buggy, you couldn’t get a babysitter, and smoke coming in the boat! I could go on …ha ha!

We lived on the boat for four years before we had a baby and nine months with her.

I think it’s a nice way for kids to live as it’s a big adventure, although when they get a bit older they might make friends that they don’t want to move from. It would be ideal if you had a group of boaters with kids that moved around together. I don’t know how it would have been now that she’s walking; that wouldn’t be too relaxing.

I found it hard being so reliant on Tony for so much.. i.e wood for the fire, petrol for the generator, filling up, emptying out. It’s nice for him now that he can come home from work and settle instead of having a million things to do (athough he probably doesn’t know what to do with himself). The little things that are a bit harder on a boat really add up. Laundry, changing gas, topping up the fire, all become a lot more intense when there is a new baby. When she was really sick the other day we did about ten washes in one day, and I kept thinking, I’m so glad I’m not on the boat!

When you live on a boat people always say … “Oh how lovely, I’d love to do that!” …and I think, 'You wouldn’t last two minutes love!'

Rosie and Tony now rent a house with a garden.

“I left boating because of all of the worst things that I’ve just said, but in spring and summer I will miss it because of all the good things... “



Rosie Short creates quirky hand-made dolls at http://www.theworldofbobbydazzler.co.uk/

Silent Sunday: One small step for baby

One giant leap for baby-kind.

Managing Expectations

In 2009 I wrote an article about hypnosis for childbirth, reiterating the importance of managing realistic expectations (‘Great Expectations’, The Hypnotherapist, Volume 11, No. 3, September 2009). In my personal pregnant quest for knowledge I was seduced by Grantly Dick Reade, Marie Mongan and Ina May Gaskin1 into expecting a pain free, orgasmic and empowering childbirth experience. When my 7lb first-born burst onto the scene morphing my progressive, hypnotic affirmations into one long drawn out agonising primal scream, my beliefs about hypnosis for childbirth had to be re-examined and re-evaluated. Some women can feel that they have ‘failed’ if they take the time to learn self-hypnosis and subsequently do not achieve the ideal birth that they had planned. My own labour was thankfully relatively short, efficient, uncomplicated and un-medicated. After a candle-lit homebirth on our narrowboat you couldn’t have got much closer to my idealistic birth plan, yet I was disappointed in what I had expected of hypnotherapy, and made it my business to investigate further.

Research indicates that the use of hypnosis in childbirth promotes shorter labour, reduced use of pain relief, medical and surgical intervention. Studies conclude that hypnosis can encourage a reduced time in hospital, reduced instances of post natal depression and higher Apgar scores in infants (a measure of newborn health). Hypnosis can reduce fear, increase mental calmness and confidence and help the client to manage pain. It is misleading to suggest that by using a particular technique pain free childbirth is achievable for all, but positive suggestions can encourage a more calm and comfortable pregnancy and childbirth.

For my own journey into motherhood, I recorded myself some self-hypnosis CDs and listened to them throughout pregnancy. In addition to my basic training as a hypnotherapist I did two further courses in the use of hypnosis for childbirth, and read around the subject on both the physical and emotional elements of the childbirth process. Because of the pain and exhaustion I experienced in my first labour, I wanted to improve my preparations during my second pregnancy. I now had a more realistic expectation that birth was indeed likely to be painful, but that preparing myself with hypnosis could indeed offer many benefits. I wrote and recorded a new script for the birth of my second child, putting more emphasis onto pain management and accepting the sensations. I recorded a separate program purely for practicing glove anaesthesia.

Three weeks before my due date I felt some uncomfortable cramps during the night, and relished the opportunity to practice my glove anaesthesia. It went really well and I managed to doze through the night, controlling the sensations with self-hypnosis. I thought that it was too early to actually be in labour, because the midwives were not even intending to deliver the homebirth equipment until the following week. However, by 5 am I could no longer sleep and was too uncomfortable to continue lying down. I changed position to all fours and my husband continued to snooze, assuming that I was experiencing ‘Braxton Hicks’ practice contractions. By 6 am my husband was awake and although I was now claiming to be in labour he thought that we had better wait and see, as these things can take a long time. By 6.30am I was shouting,
“Get the babysitter! Phone the midwives! Get the TENS machine!”
“I’m a man – I can’t multi-task!” he quipped, and I think I might even have smiled. Although the contractions were painful I felt I was very much in control using some breathing techniques and self-hypnosis. A phone call to the babysitter revealed that he was on tour with a band in Sweden, the TENS machine was nowhere to be found and the midwives said,
“Hang up, and call an ambulance.” My two year old daughter woke up just before seven, and my husband began dividing his time between reassuring her in her bedroom, and comforting me in what was now the noisiest throes of labour.
“My wife is having a baby, right now,” he told the emergency services telephone operator. She began to ask questions and issue instructions. I experienced a huge involuntary push and the head was on its way. One more intense contraction later and the baby was delivered into my husband’s hands, directed and coached by the lady on the end of the phone. The ambulance arrived but the paramedics could not get through the locked gate to access our narrowboat’s mooring. My husband fetched our bewildered daughter from her bedroom and introduced her to her newborn sister. The paramedics called my husband’s mobile and he walked up the towpath to find them wandering in the patch of woodland above the canal tunnel, trying to find a way in over the fence or the gate.

Another ambulance crew arrived and then two midwives. Professionals loitered awkward and redundant in our small living space, after doing some basic health checks on the baby and I. The midwives said they call this a BBA: Born Before Arrival (of the midwives).
The baby was born at about 7.15am, after just two hours of ‘active labour’. The experience was intense, efficient and empowering. There was no TENS machine, gas and air or pharmaceuticals. The Apgar score was high; the baby was quiet, calm and feeding well. I felt that my labour was calm and confident, only panicking briefly at the moment of transition; (“I can’t do this!”) a common sign that the birth is imminent.
After conducting this experiment on myself, I can conclude that a combination of realistic expectations, knowledge of the physical process, self-hypnosis and pain management techniques can result in a wonderfully positive childbirth experience, and an interesting anecdote to share at dinner parties.


1) Authors: Grantly Dick Reade ‘Childbirth Without Fear’, Marie Mongan ‘Hypnobirthing’, Ina May Gaskin’s ‘Guide to Childbirth’.

The Gallery: Change

Big changes are happening in my real life right now. Today we bought a new home. It is beautiful. I will write a proper post about that soon. Today I found out someone close to me is pretty ill. I will not blog about that today. But I am thinking about that.

This post is for Week 48 of Tara Cain's Gallery: One word.


If you're new and want to know what The Gallery is, go and read here, and then come right back and join in!

I did try to use this post for the recent Silent Sunday linky but was too late to enter.

British Waterways Angers London’s Boating Community

Photo Credit: LondonBoaters.org

The London narrowboating community, who are largely based on the River Lea & Regents Canal, could become history in the near future as a result of draconian new mooring policies proposed by British Waterways for the whole East London region, which would make it very difficult to live on a boat whilst cruising in London.

Some narrowboaters feel that it is an exercise in cleansing the river of boaters in order to make way for profiteering on the Olympics; and that it effectively treats boaters as second class citizens.

British Waterways is currently consulting local people and waterways users on the Rivers Lea and Stort, Hertford Union and Regent's Canals to discuss new proposals for managing short-term moorings. The suggested changes are due to the increased number of boats mooring in the area (an increase of nearly 40% in four years), and BW states that they are also a response to concerns raised by other canal users.

BW’s intended changes are as follows:

• designating mooring 'neighbourhoods' between which the boats should cruise, and where they can moor subject to time limits, encouraging boats to move along the waterways in a way that is fair to all;

• introducing daily charges when boats remain beyond the maximum time limit;

• talking to local authorities about the broad range of issues in the plan and how they might make provision for suitably located long-term moorings in the future.

British Waterways reasons for developing the new policy include overcrowding, licence evasion, property spilling onto the tow path and overstaying on visitor moorings.

If a boat is licensed on a ‘continuous cruising’ basis it must move on a regular basis complying with three key legal requirements.

1) The boat must genuinely be used for navigation throughout the period of the licence.
2) Unless a shorter time is specified by notice, the boat must not stay in the same place for more than 14 days.
3) It is the responsibility of the boater to satisfy BW that the above requirements are met.

Before 1995 all narrowboats on the canal system were required to have a home mooring (permanent base). Some liveaboard boaters cruised the system 'continuously', rarely visiting their own mooring. In 1995 BW allowed these boaters to cruise the waterways continuously without meeting the home mooring requirement.

Some boaters do use the same short stretch of waterway to move back and forth and hence causes congestion on many of the most popular visitor moorings. Some waterways users are under the impression that these type of “selfish minority boaters” often do not possess a valid British Waterways licence and mooring licence when appropriate.

However, a few years ago NABO asked BW about the number of patrol notices issued and then asked them to look at the proportion of those notices that were issued against boats that had home moorings versus those that were Continuous Cruisers. The results showed that boats that had registered with BW as having home moorings we more likely per capita to attract overstay notices than Continuous Cruisers.

The Kennett and Avon Boating Community website asserts that the new British Waterways proposals for the River Lea Navigation break a number of laws.

“BW appears to be going ahead with local mooring strategies in other areas which it defines as ‘hotspots’ before the pilot local mooring strategy on the Kennet and Avon Canal has even been drawn up and implemented. As far as we know, these areas are the Lee and Stort, Birmingham, the Macclesfield Canal and the Southern Grand Union.

As we have discovered from the consultations and the subsequent local mooring strategy steering group meetings on the Kennet and Avon, local mooring strategies are likely to be targeted at boats without moorings and especially at liveaboard boaters without moorings.”

A London Boaters Group has been formed in response to the proposals, and a similar one has been formed for the River Lea and Stort. Members hope to research the practicality of the proposal, asking is it actually feasible to cruise by the guidelines? What is the social impact of the proposals? How would it impact on life, school, and work for continuous cruisers? How would other waterways users view the increase in boat traffic? There could be environmental issues related to the resulting extra journeys. How would increased boating affect water movement and wildlife? The proposal suggests dividing the whole of the River Lea into four ‘neighbourhoods’. BW has proposed their own boundaries to define ‘neighbourhood’, as opposed to any existing borough boundaries, for example a ward or parish boundary.

Boaters may be forced to leave jobs, friends and communities by the requirement to relocate beyond the designated neighbourhoods. Some boaters suspect that BW is under pressure remove boaters from the Olympic zone.

The London boaters group are keen for London residents to let their opinions known to BW by replying to the consultation. If you enjoy seeing boats on the canal in London please do support the boating community by making your views heard.

BW Consultations

http://www.britishwaterways.co.uk/listening-to-you/consultations-and-reviews/current-consultations

London Boaters Community Website

Consultation Paper


References

Wikipedia

Liveaboard Forum (blog)

BW Consultations

K & A Boating Community

Silent Sunday

A change is coming.

What I Did On My Half Term Holidays

By Boat-Wife, aged 38

Actually, half term is like any other week for a (part-time) working mum/hypnotherapist/blogger with two pre-school daughters. My eldest just went to the childminder for three days a week instead of the pre-school nursery.

On Monday I played ‘air drums’ to The Beatles while the girls screamed and clapped with excitement at my performance. I felt like Ringo Starr.

On Tuesday at the dinner table Big Sister asked The Doctor,
“Why did you hug mummy?”
“Because she hugged me first. It was self-defence,” explained The Doctor.
“Self-defence?” I asked. “A retaliation hug. (As opposed to a pre-emptive hug.)” I smiled.
“A hug for a hug. Yeah, as Gandhi said, ‘A hug for a hug makes everyone kind’.”

On Wednesday the Coal Boat came to deliver gas and diesel. I asked Coal Dad for a job: Admin, bookkeeping, anything really. Our living costs are just about to go up and up and I need to work more.
“I could do with some help with the bookkeeping,” he grinned. “My receipts are all over the place at the moment. In the boat, in the van, at my mums....”
His business is expanding. They’re buying another 70ft working boat.
He agreed to regularly deliver receipts, by boat, to my boat and I agreed to put them all in a spreadsheet and do his tax returns! A perfect working-from-home job for a liveaboard Boat-Wife!

I also saw my first hypnotherapy client after returning from maternity leave; I helped a lovely lady to become a non-smoker in only one session, and remembered just how rewarding this work can be!

On Thursday we played ‘Justify’, where you have to justify why some object is on the boat, and if you’re not using it, it has to go. A bag of clothes went to the Cancer Research shop, in memory of The Mellow Mum. But why oh why have the girls got so many clothes? I blame the generosity of Tank Girl: That beautiful, tattooed, body piercing, entrepreneur-super-mum, that always looks amazing, sounds interesting and cares deeply, texting and phoning and keeping me sane on the 3mph rollercoaster that is my (so called) canal life. (She gives us clothes that Tank babe has outgrown.)

Friday was laundry day. I can take two loads of laundry to the launderette in the double pushchair.
“You won’t be seeing much of me soon,” I gleefully told the launderette man. “We’re getting a new home with a washing machine and a drier!”