More Than Just a Mum Meme

Kate blogs at Kate Takes 5 and she had a great idea to share a picture about the sort of stuff you did before you were a mum.
"I want you to post one picture on your blog of you being 'More that just Mum'. Then come back here and link it up for all to see."
I was the vocalist in a band called 'Stoked'. I was a performance poet - I sold my poetry and got paid to perform! I was a founder member of Dangerchix International. I travelled India, I rode an elephant. I had orange and blue fluorescent dreadlocks down to my waist that glowed under UV light. I was a techno-fairy. I went to illegal free parties and lounged around on the bonnet of a New York yellow cab in a field in Oxfordshire. When I was twenty-something life was very interesting and impulsive; but I don't miss it. I am also enjoying drifting quietly on the waterways with a handsome doctor and two tiny boat girls.

And Kate? She actually did aerobatics - flying a plane, loop the loops in Australia!

Dangerhix International

New! The Narrowboat Wife Weekly

If you subscribe to my monthly newsletter you may already know about the launch of my new online paper this week. I'm excited to have appointed myself editor, writer and publisher of The Narrowboat Wife Weekly! It compiles everything I've written this week into an easy-to-browse-quick-to-read format. It takes articles from all of the blogs  I write around the web, covering themes of boating, canals, business start-up advice, and true stories from my real life of living and parenting on a narrowboat.  See what you think. 

I’d love it if you would subscribe to The Narrowboat Wife Weekly. You get the headlines by email and you will only get the weekly e-paper, no other emails from anyone but me. Have a look at my newest project and please welcome into your life:  The Narrowboat Wife Weekly.

PS. If you'd prefer to just receive the monthly round-up of news you may like to sign up for my monthly newsletter and help yourself to the free eBook Narrowboat Families.

#SilentSunday

Jenny From the Lock

Cowroast Lock, near Berkhamstead

A couple of weeks ago my friend texted me and said that she was headed for Bulbourne – in her boat! What this means is that after about 12 years of friendship we would finally get to moor up together.

Where r u moored? (I text).

Loose pin alley – she replies (meaning south of the bridge). It’s quieter down there. ..

I laugh at the thought that my chilled-out friend considers ‘central Bulbourne’ too busy. With a population of 126 and the occasional dog walker I suppose my side of the bridge is busier than hers.

I first met Jenny not long after I bought my first boat and we’ve been friends ever since. My earliest memories are of her soft laughter, lots of wiggly red hair and chunky silver rings. But while I worked, lived and cruised in London she gave up her London job and edged out to the countryside; first the Cowley and Uxbridge area and then up the Grand Union into the real countryside to Boxmoor, Berkhamsted, Tring, Marsworth and Cheddington. Oh how I envied the quiet and natural surroundings when I visited her. I admired her independence, and marvelled that she thought nothing of doing a lock (or five) on her own. (This was years before I would grow into this boat-wife that now does locks with two kids tied to the roof.) Jenny was gentle and hippy, witty and funny, and her boats (there’ve been a few) are always full of candlelight and cats, the smell of wood-smoke and the sound of relaxing music. To be with her is like living in my favourite part of my brain. To share a bottle of wine in a country pub is to laugh relentlessly, listen intently and glow internally. I always come away feeling like a much bigger and better version of myself; and to me she says,

“You’re good food for the soul chuck.” Jenny is from Hebdon Bridge, the hippy capital of Yorkshire, a quaint waterways town.

It was years ago, one of the first times that I told her I admired her, that J-Lo must have been in the charts because my friend’s reply was to grin and sing,

“Don’t be fooled by the boat that I got

I’m just Jenny from the Lock.”

Of course her name isn’t Jenny, because I use pseudonyms on this blog, but Jenny you know who you are and after a recent night of chats and cats, candlelight and wine I wanted to capture the wonder of our friendship into words somehow.

At the weekend we go our separate ways; me down the Marsworth flight and her back towards Berko. But for two lovely weeks we were neighbours. How lucky we are to move our homes and to find a kindred spirit on the waterways.

“Your friend is your needs answered.”

Kahlil Gibran

All Hallows Eve on the Cut

Once upon a time, I can imagine that working boatmen may have gathered their families around the cabin stove on All Hallow’s Eve, and told ghostly stories by lamp light. 

Today my boat is moored beside this haunted bridge in Bulbourne, near Tring, in Hertfordshire. I thought I had read about some ghostly Roman soldiers being sighted somewhere near this bridge. I went to the library to borrow Ghosts of Tring again and yet when I searched the book the story was mysteriously nowhere to be found. (The book also puzzlingly has no accredited author, editor or publisher, having been bound by a short-run printer.)  I did however find a few other canal related ghost stories.

By the canal at Marsworth, the book reports a child was walking along with her grandmother “off the barges”.

“The child was tugging her hand; the grandmother turned to look. At the little girl’s other hand was a character half-man, half-goat.”

In the blackout during the Second World War children often saw lights on the dry canal bank above Wilstone reservoir. “Spies!” they called them.  Also near Wilstone reservoir a young man was approached by two grey shapes near the cemetery, eerily waving their arms. It turned out to be two swans.

On the Aylesbury canal arm one night a niece and her uncle were travelling in their carriage over the Dixon’s gap bridge. The horses shied and the niece saw four men carrying a coffin over the bridge. The uncle however saw nothing…

A perhaps more famous ghost story on the canals is that of the Blisworth Tunnel. This tunnel, on the Grand Union at Stoke Bruerne, is a mile and three quarters long. During its construction the tunnel caved in and fourteen men died. People claim to have seen the shadowy ghosts of these poor navvies and even some say, that when travelling through by boat you may see an alternative tunnel (the one that collapsed) leading off at a tangent; invitingly lit by candlelight.

However Standedge Tunnel in Yorkshire is the longest, highest and deepest canal tunnel on the network. Considered to be one of the seven wonders of the waterways, boating passages must be booked in advance. Next week you can enjoy a spooky boat ride or a witches brew in the café as the Standedge Visitor Centre takes on a Halloween theme.

Apparently The Montgomery Canal in Wales is haunted by a Welsh Princess who was buried alive as punishment for running away with her lover. At Rugeley on the Trent and Mersey Canal a blood stain sometimes reappears from a murder in 1839.

With so many poor souls killed in the building and working of the canals I expect there are many tales to be told. Do you know a canal ghost story?

Disclosure: I wrote this article for Canal Voyagers Hotel Boats. They'll be haunting most of these places next year on their 2013 cruises.

A Day in the Life of a Narrowboat Wife

I recently had the chance to browse through Susannah Conway’s inspiring book, This I Know. Susannah’s blog, business and book were forged out of grief, and yet her words and Polaroid pictures are uplifting and beautiful. One exercise in the book suggests documenting one day in photographs. I took this as a way to appreciate the little things in life, the insignificant moments that pass you by. Had I not been documenting that day would I have chosen to walk a different way after the school run, and discover a farm with ponies? Would I have appreciated the pleasure of coffee in my favourite mug or the prettiness of bubbles when I washed the dishes? Probably not. (I hate washing the dishes!) Susannah says, don’t worry about being an amazing photographer, so I didn’t. I just snapped all these with my iPhone.

 

Visit Susannah Conway’s blog.

Please watch my slideshow and share a moment with me appreciating the little details of a narrowboat wife’s life. I would love to add music to this and future videos so any musicians out there who'd like to collaborate in return for links, get in touch :-)

#OneMums Against Poverty

On our boat it seems there’s
Never enough water for the laundry or
Electric or diesel for a family of four but
My daughters fill the boat
Up with love and laughter and
Messy fingerprints and
Still we stay afloat.

Clare blogs at Seasider in the City and has started a meme based on the theme of One Mums (One Moms). To join in the meme you just have to take the letters of ONEMUMS and describe what being a mum means to you. Michelle and Jen from BritMums are travelling to Ethiopia with ONE. They don’t want money, just your voice. ONE is a non-partisan advocacy organization dedicated to the fight against extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa. All parents share a connection, the idea is to join together to share the progress already being made by ONE. Follow the journey of Michelle and the team with the #ONEMums and #ONEMoms tags and sign up to ONE.