2nd August
Two of the plastic people have gone overboard. I was on the back deck shaking crumbs off the play mat – I didn’t realise that Iggle Piggle and Upsy Daisy were in there! So not just any plastic people but the leaders of the plastic people. My daughter’s favourite toy is her bag full of miniature plastic characters and her most prized and favourite two are those two Night Garden(TM) friends. We have not yet broken the news to the Tombliboos and MaccaPacca, but my daughter took it really well. It has however, provided us with an opportunity to explain that when a person – plastic or otherwise, falls into the river, they are irretrievable. We try to explain that children must keep back from the edge because if she falls in, she won’t be able to breathe and this will hurt very much.
“Worse than the time you burnt your fingers on the diesel stove. And me and Daddy may not be able to get you out again.”
“But then I could see Upsy Daisy and Iggle Piggle again?” she pipes up, optimistically.
There’s always a silver lining.
We turned the boat at the next lock, and went back to Roydon lock to fill the water tank at the lock cottage. Then we turned again, (there’s just about enough room to wind the boat above the lock) and returned to moor in a different part of Hunsdon Mead. Geese fly in formation overhead. Buttercups and dandelions pepper the field.
Friday, 15 October 2010
Roydon, Domesday 1086
31st July
It is raining in heaven today. Diamante beads glisten on the tangled pink flowers bravely wavering in the breeze outside the bathroom window. This morning I ask myself, is tea making an art or a science? I am thinking about the precision of making The Doctor’s tea, because I don’t drink tea myself. My efficiency as a wife has improved due to recent uninterrupted sleep. I am no longer functioning on emergency power back-up. As an experiment I use a spirit measure to measure two jiggers of milk (that’s two doubles) and use a timer to brew the pot for exactly five minutes.
When Dr Swan was here to visit I told him that we’ve started using jiggers to measure spirits and we’ve even got a wine jigger, to measure a small glass of wine. The idea is to perhaps just have two 125ml glasses a night and to each keep to our respective recommended weekly units limit.
“So, has it reduced your drinking?” asked Dr Swan.
“No,” I replied. “But we’re measuring what we drink now.” I imagine the definition of a hangover incurred in such a measured way would be a “jigger-bug”.
Later, I was trying to describe to Dr Swan your typical bachelor, sketcher boater.
“You know the type, single bloke, lives on board, drinks a lot...”
“Careful!” he smiles, displaying mock affront. It sounds like I’m describing him! “Ah, Dr Swan,” I am quick to clarify. “But these people don’t use jiggers!”
We’re probably running low on water by now, but we are delaying the cruise to the next marina to fill the water tank because we want to stay a little longer in boater’s heaven. To preserve water we have bucket baths. One stands in the bath with half a bucket of warm water and a jug. A person can wash in a surprisingly small amount of water, and it reminds us of when we travelled rural India.
Today I took the children into ‘town’. Roydon has a population of 2,771 (according to Wikipedia). Behind Roydon lock is an extremely informal level crossing providing vehicle access to the lock cottage and pedestrian access to the towpath. There is no electric barrier to be raised, siren sound, or flashing red lights to warn of danger. The railway is accessible to everyone via a white wooden picket kissing gate. The only words of caution are on a simple sign which states the instructions,
‘Stop. Look. Listen. Beware of trains.’ At the risk of overly gilding him with metaphors I will say that The Husband of The Lady of the Lock is a rough diamond with a heart of gold. He has previously offered to open the gate on the far side of the railway for us. I knock on the lock cottage door and he accompanies us across the railway to unlock the vehicle access gate. I cannot fit through the second kissing gate with the double pushchair, and his kindness saves us from going round the long way, via the station. I push the buggy uphill along an un-tarmaced gravelly country lane through fields to the village green, where the shield shaped sign swinging in the breeze reads ‘Roydon, Domesday 1086’. It was first recorded in the Domesday book as Ruindune, later Reidona, c1130, then Reindon in 1204 and Roindon in 1208. (Thanks again, to Wikipedia). Roydon is a bit like the end of the rainbow for us – the epitome of rural beauty and charming village life, because it’s probably the smallest, prettiest place we’ve ever moored. Here, the vicarage is pink and proud, and bravely undefended by holly.
We took the recycling to the top of the hill. There is a black and white photo of The Beatles in the photo library display window at the top of the high street. There is also a charismatic picture of Jimi Hendrix, a print from the original negative.
“Is that Ringo playing drums?” my daughter asked me.
“Yes,” I said with pride that she can recognise and name each Beatle.
“And, have all the Beatles got willies?”
“Yes, darling.”
The cosy pub with the child-friendly beer garden has a wooden swing set that looks as if it’s been handmade by hobbits with no concern for Elf and Safety.
The water level dropped dramatically in twenty minutes today. Our boat was no longer level with the towpath, our ropes were pulled tight, and our mooring pins leaned and strained towards the cut. The Doctor and I wondered what could have happened. Later at Roydon lock I suspected the kind of thing that could cause this. I saw a hire boat waiting to enter the lock from below. (This means people on a narrow boating holiday). The eager lock-wheelers had walked ahead of their boat and were winding up the paddles on the bottom gates, to empty the lock in readiness for their boat.
“You need to shut the other gates!” I pointed out in alarm. The top gates were still open so the whole of the lock pound above could theoretically escape through the open paddles of the bottom gate! They’ll never empty the lock with the top gates still open.
Boaters are divided over whether it is polite to leave lock gates open or shut. If you happen to arrive at a lock and the gates are already open then it saves you time, as you don’t have to moor up and go ashore and open the lock. But shutting the gates saves water, as most locks leak a little, and equally it depends which way you are travelling, whether the open gates speed up or slow down your journey. The Boater’s Handbook (published by BW and The Environment Agency) says,
“Close the gates and lower the paddles before you move on, unless a boat coming from the opposite direction wants to use the lock.”
It is raining in heaven today. Diamante beads glisten on the tangled pink flowers bravely wavering in the breeze outside the bathroom window. This morning I ask myself, is tea making an art or a science? I am thinking about the precision of making The Doctor’s tea, because I don’t drink tea myself. My efficiency as a wife has improved due to recent uninterrupted sleep. I am no longer functioning on emergency power back-up. As an experiment I use a spirit measure to measure two jiggers of milk (that’s two doubles) and use a timer to brew the pot for exactly five minutes.
When Dr Swan was here to visit I told him that we’ve started using jiggers to measure spirits and we’ve even got a wine jigger, to measure a small glass of wine. The idea is to perhaps just have two 125ml glasses a night and to each keep to our respective recommended weekly units limit.
“So, has it reduced your drinking?” asked Dr Swan.
“No,” I replied. “But we’re measuring what we drink now.” I imagine the definition of a hangover incurred in such a measured way would be a “jigger-bug”.
Later, I was trying to describe to Dr Swan your typical bachelor, sketcher boater.
“You know the type, single bloke, lives on board, drinks a lot...”
“Careful!” he smiles, displaying mock affront. It sounds like I’m describing him! “Ah, Dr Swan,” I am quick to clarify. “But these people don’t use jiggers!”
We’re probably running low on water by now, but we are delaying the cruise to the next marina to fill the water tank because we want to stay a little longer in boater’s heaven. To preserve water we have bucket baths. One stands in the bath with half a bucket of warm water and a jug. A person can wash in a surprisingly small amount of water, and it reminds us of when we travelled rural India.
Today I took the children into ‘town’. Roydon has a population of 2,771 (according to Wikipedia). Behind Roydon lock is an extremely informal level crossing providing vehicle access to the lock cottage and pedestrian access to the towpath. There is no electric barrier to be raised, siren sound, or flashing red lights to warn of danger. The railway is accessible to everyone via a white wooden picket kissing gate. The only words of caution are on a simple sign which states the instructions,
‘Stop. Look. Listen. Beware of trains.’ At the risk of overly gilding him with metaphors I will say that The Husband of The Lady of the Lock is a rough diamond with a heart of gold. He has previously offered to open the gate on the far side of the railway for us. I knock on the lock cottage door and he accompanies us across the railway to unlock the vehicle access gate. I cannot fit through the second kissing gate with the double pushchair, and his kindness saves us from going round the long way, via the station. I push the buggy uphill along an un-tarmaced gravelly country lane through fields to the village green, where the shield shaped sign swinging in the breeze reads ‘Roydon, Domesday 1086’. It was first recorded in the Domesday book as Ruindune, later Reidona, c1130, then Reindon in 1204 and Roindon in 1208. (Thanks again, to Wikipedia). Roydon is a bit like the end of the rainbow for us – the epitome of rural beauty and charming village life, because it’s probably the smallest, prettiest place we’ve ever moored. Here, the vicarage is pink and proud, and bravely undefended by holly.
We took the recycling to the top of the hill. There is a black and white photo of The Beatles in the photo library display window at the top of the high street. There is also a charismatic picture of Jimi Hendrix, a print from the original negative.
“Is that Ringo playing drums?” my daughter asked me.
“Yes,” I said with pride that she can recognise and name each Beatle.
“And, have all the Beatles got willies?”
“Yes, darling.”
The cosy pub with the child-friendly beer garden has a wooden swing set that looks as if it’s been handmade by hobbits with no concern for Elf and Safety.
The water level dropped dramatically in twenty minutes today. Our boat was no longer level with the towpath, our ropes were pulled tight, and our mooring pins leaned and strained towards the cut. The Doctor and I wondered what could have happened. Later at Roydon lock I suspected the kind of thing that could cause this. I saw a hire boat waiting to enter the lock from below. (This means people on a narrow boating holiday). The eager lock-wheelers had walked ahead of their boat and were winding up the paddles on the bottom gates, to empty the lock in readiness for their boat.
“You need to shut the other gates!” I pointed out in alarm. The top gates were still open so the whole of the lock pound above could theoretically escape through the open paddles of the bottom gate! They’ll never empty the lock with the top gates still open.
Boaters are divided over whether it is polite to leave lock gates open or shut. If you happen to arrive at a lock and the gates are already open then it saves you time, as you don’t have to moor up and go ashore and open the lock. But shutting the gates saves water, as most locks leak a little, and equally it depends which way you are travelling, whether the open gates speed up or slow down your journey. The Boater’s Handbook (published by BW and The Environment Agency) says,
“Close the gates and lower the paddles before you move on, unless a boat coming from the opposite direction wants to use the lock.”
Friday, 8 October 2010
Single Boat Mum
3rd August
I went to visit Single Boat Mum for the evening. Her boating neighbours made us dinner and we all sat out on deck chairs on the towpath to eat from the little wooden coffee table. Their dining view is the golden wheat field, and we discussed field envy. When Single Mum first saw my mead she was suitably impressed, but the wheat field is not bad either. We talked about boaty things, like boaty books, and boating mothers. They explained to me that a “Rodney boater” is waterways slang from Oxford, meaning one who’s boat is more than a bit scruffy. Single Mum has nicknamed her boating neighbour ‘Uncle Rodney’, although his boat is not of the extreme scruffiness they describe. Her other two neighbour’s (and travelling companions) are Rodney’s girlfriend, and BG which stands for ‘Boat Girl’. We discuss parenting on board, and how it might differ from parenting in a house. How on earth did they manage in the old days? I don’t know much about Victorian childcare philosophies, except that ‘children should be seen and not heard’. This must be how the Victorian boat-wife managed to prioritise boat work over entertaining the children. I’ve also read that in the days of working boats, the boats always came first. The faster they could deliver, the faster they got paid.
I said that I wanted to find out more about women and mothers on boats in the past, and they told me to read ‘Ramlin Rose: The Boatwoman's Story’ by Sheila Stewart. She draws on recorded interviews with boatwomen who were born and bred on horse-drawn boats and recounts their experiences as seen through the eyes of an illiterate boatwoman. She describes how school children would jeer at the boater’s children and call them dirty.
“There was dirty boat families, we called ‘em ‘Rodneys’ after them railroad rodneys, vagrans, wot rode rough on rail wagons. Like every other tribe in life we was some and some. Most of us was kept scrubbed regler with Wright’s Coal Tar (soap) and Condey’s Fluid (disinfectant).”
Single Boat Mum and I talked and drank wine until late. Then we had a paranoid discussion about whether it was safe for me to walk home alone late at night. It’s a half an hour walk up the towpath through the fields to my mooring. Our minds are still in London. Realistically the chances of meeting a murderer or rapist on the deserted towpath at 1am in rural Essex are very slim. We laughed about it on her boat, but I took the route home via the high street instead of the fields.
I went to visit Single Boat Mum for the evening. Her boating neighbours made us dinner and we all sat out on deck chairs on the towpath to eat from the little wooden coffee table. Their dining view is the golden wheat field, and we discussed field envy. When Single Mum first saw my mead she was suitably impressed, but the wheat field is not bad either. We talked about boaty things, like boaty books, and boating mothers. They explained to me that a “Rodney boater” is waterways slang from Oxford, meaning one who’s boat is more than a bit scruffy. Single Mum has nicknamed her boating neighbour ‘Uncle Rodney’, although his boat is not of the extreme scruffiness they describe. Her other two neighbour’s (and travelling companions) are Rodney’s girlfriend, and BG which stands for ‘Boat Girl’. We discuss parenting on board, and how it might differ from parenting in a house. How on earth did they manage in the old days? I don’t know much about Victorian childcare philosophies, except that ‘children should be seen and not heard’. This must be how the Victorian boat-wife managed to prioritise boat work over entertaining the children. I’ve also read that in the days of working boats, the boats always came first. The faster they could deliver, the faster they got paid.
I said that I wanted to find out more about women and mothers on boats in the past, and they told me to read ‘Ramlin Rose: The Boatwoman's Story’ by Sheila Stewart. She draws on recorded interviews with boatwomen who were born and bred on horse-drawn boats and recounts their experiences as seen through the eyes of an illiterate boatwoman. She describes how school children would jeer at the boater’s children and call them dirty.
“There was dirty boat families, we called ‘em ‘Rodneys’ after them railroad rodneys, vagrans, wot rode rough on rail wagons. Like every other tribe in life we was some and some. Most of us was kept scrubbed regler with Wright’s Coal Tar (soap) and Condey’s Fluid (disinfectant).”
Single Boat Mum and I talked and drank wine until late. Then we had a paranoid discussion about whether it was safe for me to walk home alone late at night. It’s a half an hour walk up the towpath through the fields to my mooring. Our minds are still in London. Realistically the chances of meeting a murderer or rapist on the deserted towpath at 1am in rural Essex are very slim. We laughed about it on her boat, but I took the route home via the high street instead of the fields.
Monday, 27 September 2010
You Are My Sunshine
Tuesday 3rd August
Got up, got everybody breakfast, got baby sister dressed, got big sister dressed in pants, dress and cardigan. I return to the living room. A moment later, big sister comes out of the bedroom completely naked. Sunshine is streaming in through the window and reflecting sunny river ripples on to the tongue and groove ceiling. She dances naked around the living room to the tune of “You Are My Sunshine” playing on the stereo. Golden sunshine ripples around the boat and through my heart.
The Doctor has just gone to ‘work’ in his new ‘job’ as a writer. I use inverted comma’s not to devalue his work but to indicate that as yet, the job is unpaid! He left our heavenly field on a bicycle and cycled up the towpath towards his new ‘office’ (Harlow Library). Today I am a ‘homemaker’, but I also imagine myself like the legendary single mum, J.K Rowling, who allegedly snatched moments to write in cafes, while her toddler slept. There are occasionally, magical, miraculous in-betweeny moments when both my children are napping at the same time for half an hour. Then, if I’m not cleaning the bathroom or washing the dishes I satisfy my relentless urge to tumble words out of my head and describe the chaotic beauty of the world I see around me.
A Poet Finds Delight
A poet finds delight
In the empty sky at night
The stars don't shine they glitter
The birds don't sing they twitter
The sun don't beam it radiates
The rain don't rain it contemplates
The worms that wriggle
When bluebells giggle
And rinses out our yesterdays
To make room for tomorrow
The city’s a hive of activity
Of multicultural intensity
And humans contain astounding extremes
Of venomous lies and heavenly dreams
These are fractions of fiction and things still unwritten
And writings a bug that has to be bitten
If you can never completely describe it, you know it
You know you are thinking a bit like a poet!
Got up, got everybody breakfast, got baby sister dressed, got big sister dressed in pants, dress and cardigan. I return to the living room. A moment later, big sister comes out of the bedroom completely naked. Sunshine is streaming in through the window and reflecting sunny river ripples on to the tongue and groove ceiling. She dances naked around the living room to the tune of “You Are My Sunshine” playing on the stereo. Golden sunshine ripples around the boat and through my heart.
The Doctor has just gone to ‘work’ in his new ‘job’ as a writer. I use inverted comma’s not to devalue his work but to indicate that as yet, the job is unpaid! He left our heavenly field on a bicycle and cycled up the towpath towards his new ‘office’ (Harlow Library). Today I am a ‘homemaker’, but I also imagine myself like the legendary single mum, J.K Rowling, who allegedly snatched moments to write in cafes, while her toddler slept. There are occasionally, magical, miraculous in-betweeny moments when both my children are napping at the same time for half an hour. Then, if I’m not cleaning the bathroom or washing the dishes I satisfy my relentless urge to tumble words out of my head and describe the chaotic beauty of the world I see around me.
A Poet Finds Delight
A poet finds delight
In the empty sky at night
The stars don't shine they glitter
The birds don't sing they twitter
The sun don't beam it radiates
The rain don't rain it contemplates
The worms that wriggle
When bluebells giggle
And rinses out our yesterdays
To make room for tomorrow
The city’s a hive of activity
Of multicultural intensity
And humans contain astounding extremes
Of venomous lies and heavenly dreams
These are fractions of fiction and things still unwritten
And writings a bug that has to be bitten
If you can never completely describe it, you know it
You know you are thinking a bit like a poet!
Contact From The Multiversity
Monday 2nd August.
The water tank ran out of water, so we cast off the ropes and headed up the cut towards Harlow. There is a tap at Moorhen Marina. But below the next lock we found it is wide enough to turn the boat. Shall we carry on or turn around? We have a brief debate and quickly agree that we’d like to stay in this beautiful place for as long as possible. So we wind the boat and head back down to Roydon Lock, where The Lady of the Lock allows boaters to fill up with water at her tap. Moored in the lock with hosepipe in position we let Big Sister pull the bell string to summon The Husband of The Lady of The Lock. Friendly and down to earth, I can read “Love and Hate” tattooed across his knuckles as I declare that I would like to buy a dozen free range eggs and a loaf of bread.
We then return to the field, but moor a little further up in an even better place with an even better view. We have effectively moved to an even better part of heaven.
But today is the last day of our holiday. The Doctor is supposed to return to work at The University tomorrow, and I wonder how I will feel, once more being starved of adult conversation and trying to multi-task my ass off for most of the day.
Then, The Doctor takes a telephone call. He wanders up the towpath to talk without being disturbed by the children, but I can ascertain that it is news from The Multiversity. The complicated and convoluted route that the research funding takes, is taking another detour and to cut a long story short The Doctor cannot return to work until at least September.
We sit on deckchairs in the field with a glass of whisky each, and absorb the news. Our girls play beside our feet on the play mat. We decide that this is it. If only for a month, we live the dream. We live in a beautiful place and begin to write. We will alternate writing days and childcare days. We will write books and look after our children. We will live beside a beautiful meadow on a narrowboat.
The water tank ran out of water, so we cast off the ropes and headed up the cut towards Harlow. There is a tap at Moorhen Marina. But below the next lock we found it is wide enough to turn the boat. Shall we carry on or turn around? We have a brief debate and quickly agree that we’d like to stay in this beautiful place for as long as possible. So we wind the boat and head back down to Roydon Lock, where The Lady of the Lock allows boaters to fill up with water at her tap. Moored in the lock with hosepipe in position we let Big Sister pull the bell string to summon The Husband of The Lady of The Lock. Friendly and down to earth, I can read “Love and Hate” tattooed across his knuckles as I declare that I would like to buy a dozen free range eggs and a loaf of bread.
We then return to the field, but moor a little further up in an even better place with an even better view. We have effectively moved to an even better part of heaven.
But today is the last day of our holiday. The Doctor is supposed to return to work at The University tomorrow, and I wonder how I will feel, once more being starved of adult conversation and trying to multi-task my ass off for most of the day.
Then, The Doctor takes a telephone call. He wanders up the towpath to talk without being disturbed by the children, but I can ascertain that it is news from The Multiversity. The complicated and convoluted route that the research funding takes, is taking another detour and to cut a long story short The Doctor cannot return to work until at least September.
We sit on deckchairs in the field with a glass of whisky each, and absorb the news. Our girls play beside our feet on the play mat. We decide that this is it. If only for a month, we live the dream. We live in a beautiful place and begin to write. We will alternate writing days and childcare days. We will write books and look after our children. We will live beside a beautiful meadow on a narrowboat.
The Blog Begins
Wednesday 28th July.
The Doctor is not on board. The girls are in bed. I have a rare moment to myself, completely alone (except for those two girls in bed). My miserable monologue is even taking a break, so I have a bit of peace and quiet to just stare at the sun setting over the field. I think sometimes perhaps, in my mind, I am too hard on The Doctor. I expect too much of him. Our lifestyle geographically isolates us from our friends and so I depend on him for most of my emotional needs. While I’m on maternity leave I don’t even socialise with other humans at work, so it’s just me, my monologue, the girls and The Doctor. Perhaps by blogging I can deflect some of the monologue’s misery away from The Doctor and out into the cosmos to join up with other miseries and dissipate into the misery sea. At the moment I am typing up my hand written diaries with the idea to post them as a blog – when we’re moored in a place that I can get mobile internet access. At the moment I am just over a month behind myself, that is I’m currently typing up what I wrote a month ago. This has the effect of a kind of time travel. As I type, I relive the thoughts that I had a month or two ago and see what has changed, how I feel and what I was thinking of.
The Doctor is not on board. The girls are in bed. I have a rare moment to myself, completely alone (except for those two girls in bed). My miserable monologue is even taking a break, so I have a bit of peace and quiet to just stare at the sun setting over the field. I think sometimes perhaps, in my mind, I am too hard on The Doctor. I expect too much of him. Our lifestyle geographically isolates us from our friends and so I depend on him for most of my emotional needs. While I’m on maternity leave I don’t even socialise with other humans at work, so it’s just me, my monologue, the girls and The Doctor. Perhaps by blogging I can deflect some of the monologue’s misery away from The Doctor and out into the cosmos to join up with other miseries and dissipate into the misery sea. At the moment I am typing up my hand written diaries with the idea to post them as a blog – when we’re moored in a place that I can get mobile internet access. At the moment I am just over a month behind myself, that is I’m currently typing up what I wrote a month ago. This has the effect of a kind of time travel. As I type, I relive the thoughts that I had a month or two ago and see what has changed, how I feel and what I was thinking of.
Hunsdon Mead
Tuesday 27th July
I dreamed of a big red wide-beam (which is shaped like a narrowboat but wider). The girl who lives on board showed me around. I can see where my girls would have their own separate bedroom if it were mine. There are two bed-cabins on board and a big living room, with a window view at the bow end from which you can relax and look down the cut: space. The girl says that she will sell it for about forty grand and I start to wonder how I can get the money. In this dream, anything is possible. The cost of freedom is a lack of space.
We moved the boat a couple of wiggly river bends up, so that we are moored in the middle of Hunsdon Mead, it’s like it is our front garden. Sixty-seven acres of flat ancient hay meadow, with an assortment of river-loving trees at the far side, stretches before us. The seasons allow it to display cowslips, green-winged orchids, ragged robin and meadowsweet, while butterflies, dragonflies and damsel flies hover above. Between the towpath and our boat is a strip of grass big enough to put the play mat on, so that our baby can sit and giggle at me doing the dishes as I watch her from the kitchen window. The navigation is deep enough here that we can moor without using a gangplank. My daughter runs wild and free in the meadow so long as we safely watch her from outside the boat. Wild flowers grow in the long grassy golden meadow until July when The Wildlife Trust chop it all and make it into hay. This common land has been farmed by local people using the Lammas system for 600 years. From July onwards it is used as grazing land for livestock and it is currently sprinkled with buttercup dots. So now it’s green and cut short for summer and a huge committee of self-important geese meet for a late afternoon business conference right in the middle. Big Sister said,
“There are miles and miles of geese!”
There’s something very beautifully dramatic about pegging out a load of laundry on the line, while stormy clouds gather across the summer sky above the vast flat field before me. Even behind me is nothing but grazing land and a railway, I cannot even see another boat. I feel connected to women throughout the ages who have hung out their family laundry in a desolate natural place, solitary, watching the elements gather ominous stormy power. Of course those ancestral mothers did not have their laundry machine-washed for them by the good Lady of the Lock. (She is not to be confused with The Lady of Shalott; the maiden in Arthurian Romances, who died because her love for Sir Lancelot of the Lake was unrequited.)
Later, the girls are in bed and The Lady of the Lock delivered my clean and dried laundry around to the boat.
“It’s no trouble, I’m just walking the dogs.”
I could really get used to living here.
When I’m doing the dishes I can look out across the meadow and I think that I have died and gone to boater’s heaven. All I need is a beautiful view and The Lady of the Lock to do my laundry.
“But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, ‘She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,”
The Lady of the Lock.
(Adapted from Tennyson’s poem, 1832)
We sat in deckchairs beside the towpath for dinner, our boat behind us and the flat expanse of green before us and watched the sunset paint pink and orange clouds shining across the sky in stretchy puffs and wafts. Spectacular. The willows and other trees at the far edge of the field frame the sky line and guard the real River Stort. The Stort Navigation has stolen most of the little Stort’s water and so she shambles along like a stream around the edges of the water meadows.
When people in films dream that they’ve died and gone to heaven, this is the kind of summer meadow they tend to find themselves running across in slow-motion. The Doctor and I note how rare it is for us to be able to see for a long distance to the horizon: like looking out to sea. Obviously in London we have no vision space. Although the rivers and canals have been beautiful here, we are usually hemmed safely in by trees or hedges of some sort. To be able to see some distance around, in all directions gives us a great sense of peace. We discuss our theory that this feeling is an evolutionary imprint from our ancestors, that a human might feel safe from attack, or able to see danger from afar, by being on an exposed plane like this.
Space. The final frontier. We had to come a long way to find it. We feel like we have arrived. We have come home.
I dreamed of a big red wide-beam (which is shaped like a narrowboat but wider). The girl who lives on board showed me around. I can see where my girls would have their own separate bedroom if it were mine. There are two bed-cabins on board and a big living room, with a window view at the bow end from which you can relax and look down the cut: space. The girl says that she will sell it for about forty grand and I start to wonder how I can get the money. In this dream, anything is possible. The cost of freedom is a lack of space.
We moved the boat a couple of wiggly river bends up, so that we are moored in the middle of Hunsdon Mead, it’s like it is our front garden. Sixty-seven acres of flat ancient hay meadow, with an assortment of river-loving trees at the far side, stretches before us. The seasons allow it to display cowslips, green-winged orchids, ragged robin and meadowsweet, while butterflies, dragonflies and damsel flies hover above. Between the towpath and our boat is a strip of grass big enough to put the play mat on, so that our baby can sit and giggle at me doing the dishes as I watch her from the kitchen window. The navigation is deep enough here that we can moor without using a gangplank. My daughter runs wild and free in the meadow so long as we safely watch her from outside the boat. Wild flowers grow in the long grassy golden meadow until July when The Wildlife Trust chop it all and make it into hay. This common land has been farmed by local people using the Lammas system for 600 years. From July onwards it is used as grazing land for livestock and it is currently sprinkled with buttercup dots. So now it’s green and cut short for summer and a huge committee of self-important geese meet for a late afternoon business conference right in the middle. Big Sister said,
“There are miles and miles of geese!”
There’s something very beautifully dramatic about pegging out a load of laundry on the line, while stormy clouds gather across the summer sky above the vast flat field before me. Even behind me is nothing but grazing land and a railway, I cannot even see another boat. I feel connected to women throughout the ages who have hung out their family laundry in a desolate natural place, solitary, watching the elements gather ominous stormy power. Of course those ancestral mothers did not have their laundry machine-washed for them by the good Lady of the Lock. (She is not to be confused with The Lady of Shalott; the maiden in Arthurian Romances, who died because her love for Sir Lancelot of the Lake was unrequited.)
Later, the girls are in bed and The Lady of the Lock delivered my clean and dried laundry around to the boat.
“It’s no trouble, I’m just walking the dogs.”
I could really get used to living here.
When I’m doing the dishes I can look out across the meadow and I think that I have died and gone to boater’s heaven. All I need is a beautiful view and The Lady of the Lock to do my laundry.
“But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, ‘She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,”
The Lady of the Lock.
(Adapted from Tennyson’s poem, 1832)
We sat in deckchairs beside the towpath for dinner, our boat behind us and the flat expanse of green before us and watched the sunset paint pink and orange clouds shining across the sky in stretchy puffs and wafts. Spectacular. The willows and other trees at the far edge of the field frame the sky line and guard the real River Stort. The Stort Navigation has stolen most of the little Stort’s water and so she shambles along like a stream around the edges of the water meadows.
When people in films dream that they’ve died and gone to heaven, this is the kind of summer meadow they tend to find themselves running across in slow-motion. The Doctor and I note how rare it is for us to be able to see for a long distance to the horizon: like looking out to sea. Obviously in London we have no vision space. Although the rivers and canals have been beautiful here, we are usually hemmed safely in by trees or hedges of some sort. To be able to see some distance around, in all directions gives us a great sense of peace. We discuss our theory that this feeling is an evolutionary imprint from our ancestors, that a human might feel safe from attack, or able to see danger from afar, by being on an exposed plane like this.
Space. The final frontier. We had to come a long way to find it. We feel like we have arrived. We have come home.
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