Autumn Stroll, Winter Walk
Let’s walk and talk for a minute, if you will. It’s been a month since I started writing this post, or almost a month; and quite a month at that.
As I typed the first line of this post on my phone, I strolled up the towpath to move the little boat that has been home for exactly two years. It was Monday 16th September and just scraping past the end of the working day. Above my head the sky azure blue, and the lightest of breezes kissed my face and bare arms as I went. It was, in short, the perfect Autumn day. It had also been over a month since I last posted; a month in which I had gained a raft of new subscribers (welcome all!).
So why the silence of late? Well, things have a habit of moving on apace in the late summer, for me; although this year they have gone less to plan than, well, planned. Commonly, this kind of comment might foreshadow some ominous development of wretched luck, but not this time.
Well, not entirely.
As some of you may have picked up from past posts or other sources, Solsbury Hill (the live-aboard boat) had begun to show the effects of age as we exited the spring. Taking my eyes and time off the rebuild of this boat in favour of the big journey home on Murphy’s Game had had some rotten consequences (pun intended). It turns out that when *an unnamed boatyard* had salvaged the craft from the bottom of the Thames (before it came to me), they’d actually done far more damage to the roof than had been spotted on the subsequent survey. Whilst the faults were not terminal in themselves, they had been well hidden by a coat of paint that was- it seems- applied with a hosepipe. That they went unnoticed by all meant that the damage had been able to progress, rot setting in unseen. Come midsummer my ‘quick spruce up’ remedial paint job had begun to reveal significant holes in the roof, and just like that any plans of building the forge this summer vanished like mist in the wind.
I worked on the roof, and the engine which stubbornly refused to behave, for most of the summer; a summer spent hopping about on the Oxford Canal near Banbury. I’d got it watertight again, and sorted the motor at last, when I started out for home. Writing the first draft of this post in mid-September, the much awaited long sunny Autumn looked to be in full swing. The Monday I shifted the boat down to Nell Bridge was glorious, so much so that I’d been an bought a trivet-style hanging fire for us to use on long relaxing evenings on the towpath.
Then it started raining, and has kept raining almost constantly for the ensuing weeks. Whilst it isn’t an exact measure of local rainfall, in the last two weeks of September I pumped over a foot of rain out of the open hold of Murphy’s Game- over six inches of it fell in one day. Almost each day I alternated between boats, loosening and tightening mooring lines and pumping bilges out almost as quickly as they filled. The Oxford Canal quickly flooded from Banbury down to the Heyfords, and the stretch of water I call home was lined with flooded properties and nervous boaters. The Grand Union up in Warwickshire fared a little better, so Murphy’s Game itself was less at risk, though it was a grim couple of weeks trudging up and down flooded towpaths. It will come as no surprise to read that my new trivet fire is still in its box, unopened.
Then, something bizarre happened. No, not a break in the weather (though it has now improved a little): I bought a new boat. Okay, so it probably isn’t such a surprise that someone who is more-than-a-little obsessed with boats has bought another boat; but to me it came out of the blue. A call from a friend with the news that a big boat was up for sale, and that they could wait for the money, set wheels in motion. The big surprise was that the money was actually available, and that for once all the tumblers lined up and the lock came open on the door to a new chapter. Before I knew it, I had taken the keys to a 70ft narrowboat called The Windfish (which has apparently been featured on the TV this year on something called Narrow Escapes. Nope, no idea either).
Typically, I took ownership of the boat in the middle of all the flooding, so for a week before the water receded I had all three to worry about; flitting between three separate moorings doing the rope dance. In the middle of it all, I fell ill as well…
So, here we are. It’s not mid-September any more, and after a couple of weeks of supposed rest I am back at work and have almost moved onto the new boat. There isn’t really any progress on the forge to report, but as I’ve had to remind everyone recently- there’s only one of me and only so many hours in the day. Tonight I walked up the towpath through the mud and it was clear that Winter has arrived already. The Autumn was shorter than the time it took to write an update.
As I write, it’s coming up to my birthday, and by the time this hits your inboxes I’ll have turned the grand old age of forty six, and for the first time in two years I have something that resembles a home. It’s a relief, to sit here on what might be the most uncomfortable sofa ever made, and not be able to span the kitchen and living room with my two arms.
The last two years have been tough at times, but they’ve also been immensely enjoyable. There are other changes on the horizon now, too. Not least that I will at last be able to turn my attention to Murphy’s Game. One can only hope that the coming months will extract less of a price from me, and that more progress will be evident.
Thanks for hanging around during this hiatus, and for reading. Take it easy out there wherever you are; some of my US readers in particular are facing the sort of weather that nightmares are made of. Stay safe, and speak again soon.