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Chapter Seventeen
Twenty-three Tonnes of Steel,
One Man and a Rope

W
HILE ALL THIS HAD
been going on, Charlie's first and second visit to the boat had arrived and passed. It would be fair to say that on her first visit she had expected the boat to be bad. I think that by her second visit she half expected it to be completely finished. She loved the new bathroom but felt that, really, if that was as far as we had got, we ought to be putting a lot more effort in. She was willing to be slightly mollified with promises of graceful elegance in the future but we had sorely disappointed her with our present level of activity.

It's amazing really: you can completely ignore your living conditions until somebody points them out to you. I think her exact words were, ‘Oh yuck.' I have to admit she was right. With one bathroom dismantled, tools everywhere, boxes heaped haphazardly in odd cabins, Happy was looking a slightly sorry sight. However, even with all the disappointment, we had a fun weekend and at least Charlie agreed to come back. But she did expect it to be a lot better by then. (We had our orders.)

Hardly anything on Happy changed over the next couple of weeks (hoo boy, were we going to be in trouble) and one morning, with Sam safe at school, we decided to head into Ely for a pump out and a full refill with fresh water. It had been irritating to discover that the river had no turning spaces for a boat of Happy's length. To travel into Ely, we had to spend three quarters of an hour heading in the opposite direction and turn her at the ‘Lazy Otter', so every time we made the journey Geoff desperately searched for likely spots that might have just enough space for us to squeeze our way around and allow us to knock some time off the journey.

He had spotted one such place where the bank had been eroded over time, forming a nice semi-circle shaped ‘bite' out of the bank, where, he hoped, we might be able to jam her nose into the apex and use it like a winding hole. So bundled up in jumpers, woolly socks, hats and gloves, we decided to give it a try.

I have always found it difficult to envisage 70 foot. You look at ‘normal' narrow boats – most of which are around 55 foot – and then you take a look at our monstrosity. Well, that day we found out exactly how long 70 foot is ... About three foot longer than the width of the bloody river.

Under normal circumstances being across the river wouldn't have caused us any real problems. There would have been grumping and sighing, but we should have been able to kick off from the bank or use a pole to push her backwards, swing her straight and off we'd go. That day the circumstances were anything other than ‘normal'. We slowed right down as we approached Geoff's possible turning place and turned Happy's nose into the bank. All was going to plan, and as she was turning in, I increased the power just to get her turning a little faster and, in a foul and horrible moment of déjà vu, her nose lifted, and came to a complete stop. Oh damn. Well, at least, unlike the other times we had grounded, it was only Happy's nose that was stuck; it should have been easy to get her afloat again.

The river had eroded the bank, but it was actually
only
the bank that had eroded. Two inches below the surface, the original line of the Old West River was still there, lurking under the water, a huge soft mud bank. Happy, like a pig hunting for truffles, stuck her nose in deep and there she contentedly stopped.

For the next hour and a half we did every single thing we could think of to get ourselves free: we rocked her; we got off and pushed from the bank; we stayed on and pushed against the bank with bars. Happy just lived up to her name and with every action made a deeper nest for herself in the mud (oink!). Finally out of options, we sat on her roof, each clasping a cup of tea and thought about our predicament.

Looking back on the incident I have decided that while ‘necessity' may be the mother of invention, she also had three other children: Stupidity, Danger and Futility (those three obviously left home early and didn't go to university). Deciding that we needed better leverage it was decided that I would push with a pole from the front and Geoff would take a rope into the river and swim with it to the far bank in an attempt to provide extra ‘oomph' by pulling her back end toward him. (It seemed like a good idea at the time.)

Geoff prepared to clamber into the freezing cold, fast-running river. Looking at the speed of the water that day, and knowing that Geoff wasn't the strongest swimmer in the world – he's like a shark, if he stops moving he sinks – I insisted that we attach another rope to his waist, which I would hold, ready to pull him back if anything horrible happened.

Taking a deep breath, he slipped into the river and headed for the far bank. Holding his safety rope, I held my breath until he was safely out of the water, then shouted over to him to untie the rope around his waist, as I didn't want any chance of it getting tangled when, and if, we came free and I had to start the engine.

‘Untie the rope,' I shouted across the water.

Geoff was busy shivering. ‘What?'

‘Untie the rope,' I bellowed again. Not sure that he had heard me, I demonstrated which rope by giving it a little tug.

Completely unnoticed by either of us, as Geoff had been swimming, the poorly tied rope had loosened and, as he had pulled himself out onto the bank and had stood up, it had slipped down around his ankles. My ‘little tug' pulled him straight off his feet, onto his backside. He then slid, down the muddy slope and straight back into the river. I winced at the splash; at least he was far enough away that all his screaming and cursing were muffled by distance.

With Geoff out of the water for the second time, I took myself and the barge pole to the front of the boat. With a big shout of ‘go!' Geoff pulled, I pushed and Happy grudgingly left her pig wallow and headed backward, swinging her back end toward Geoff heaving from the other bank.

No one can think of everything in a situation like this and we found ourselves with a little problem. With Geoff on the far bank and me desperately trying to pull the barge pole back from where it had sunk into the mud at the front, there was no one at the tiller and before I had time to race down the roof, Happy had run backwards into the far bank, the current sweeping her nose sideways and ploughing it hard back into the mud wallow – again.

As all movement ceased and Happy made happy squelching noises in the mud at the bow, we found ourselves diagonally across the river, and, rather than being a little stuck at the front as we had been, we were now stuck at both ends.

At least Geoff didn't have to get back into the water – he just stepped aboard the back plate and stood there, studying our latest predicament, dripping and shivering.

‘Go and get changed,' I said to him, ‘we're not going anywhere. Surely if we just wait a little while, another boat will come along and they can push us off.'

Unable to speak through his chattering teeth, Geoff just nodded and went below to find some warm, dry clothes. I put the kettle on.

Waiting for him to return, I sat scanning the river. Surely a disaster of such epic proportions as this should have provided entertainment for a hundred onlookers – an unrivalled opportunity for pointing and laughing; and then it struck me, this was the exception to the rule. We needed help, therefore, there wasn't likely to be a boat down the river for another six hours.

A well-wrapped husband, still slightly blue, appeared at the engine room door and reached, with a shaking hand, for his tea. I gave him a hug. ‘Sorry about pulling you into the river, I didn't notice that the rope had slipped.'

Geoff grinned. ‘Ah well, I was already wet, so you're one up on last time.'

Studying the back end, it was far worse than we feared. Happy had hit the bank rudder first, this had then sunk deep into the mud, and was acting like an anchor; there was no way we could just swing her off at the back end. We wandered down to the front and found the force of the current had lifted Happy so far up onto the mud bank that she was at least four inches higher than normal; completely and utterly stuck.

So there we stayed, blocking the entire river. We had already been there for an hour and there were only another two before one of us had to go and pick up Sam from school. With the complete lack of onlookers, I was beginning to wonder if a bomb had dropped or aliens had attacked and we were the only ones left in the world; no joggers, no dog walkers and no other boats – it really was very unfair.

Over yet another cup of tea, I stood at the back leaning on the immobile tiller and watched Geoff now trying to dig us out with a spade. Finally losing my temper with the whole situation, I grasped the tiller in both hands and gave it a good wrench backwards and forwards.

What's this? What's this? The wretched thing actually moved, only about an inch but it
had
really, truly moved. I rolled my sleeves up and shouted at Geoff that I had got the tiller to move a bit and that I was going to try and just keep moving it backward and forward in the hope that it would dig its way out of the mud.

It took me about ten minutes, and to this day I hate to think what damage I caused to the already dodgy shims, but eventually the rudder began to move more freely in wider and wider arcs. Eventually, I managed to get it facing in the other direction. Geoff had come to give me a hand about halfway through the exercise and, seeing that we now had a possibility of movement, he rushed off to the front of the boat and leapt off on to the bank to give her another push. I turned the engine on and with the rudder no longer attaching us to the bank, Happy moved her bum elegantly round into mid-stream and we were finally back in free water.

Happy and I were now in the middle of the river, Geoff was on the bank – not the best place for him really. He motioned me to keep going and trotted alongside, both of us looking for a good launch point from which he could jump on. Approaching on the left was a flattened muddy area where cows came down to drink, which Geoff pointed to, giving me the thumbs-up sign. I slowed right down and watched him sprint ahead, readying himself for a big jump.

He jumped. He slipped. Grabbing the gunwales, he only ended up waist deep in the river; he struggled onto the boat and sloshed toward me.

‘Oh well,' he said, ‘we're all where we are supposed to be and at least I'm only half wet this time.'

With him still dripping on to my feet, we rounded a corner and both watched in silence as a perfectly good, man-made mooring slid past. We looked down at his trainers and jeans gently trickling over the back deck, we both looked back at the mooring, we did
not
look at each other and neither of us said a word.

Chapter Eighteen
Breaking in a Boyfriend

B
Y THE BEGINNING OF
November, we had pretty much become accustomed to our new life. I found myself spending a fair amount of time in the bathroom as that was the only clean, well-decorated area in the boat, but apart from that one small sign of neurosis the rest of life just pottered slowly by.

Geoff had sorted out a lot of the electrics and other minor irritations, such as gaps around the windows, through which the wind whistled, and he had taken our rather fragile central heating system apart in an attempt to toughen it up; even with his intervention, the heating was still temperamental and I had actually become quite handy with a ten-millimetre spanner.

All of these little jobs took a vast amount of time but didn't really make a lot of visible difference to the decorative surroundings. So, by the time Charlie visited again, we had to endure a few quiet comments about laziness and how nothing much had changed. She was charitable enough to inform us that, even though her living environment was no better than a kennel, she did enjoy her visits and would continue to grace us with her presence for a little longer, but really we ought to be putting a lot more effort in.

As the weather grew colder, we had to move a couple of jobs to the top of the ‘urgent' list. Inside the boat, the temperature plummeted at night and we desperately needed to install a wood-burning stove. The ridiculous central heating system was even more at the mercy of cold weather than we were and although Geoff dealt with the cold in his normal stoic way, I was completely fed up with going to bed fully dressed.

The dropping temperature had also highlighted several extra external problems. Since arriving at the mooring we had been clambering down the steep flood defences, trusting that, if we fell, the late summer grass was soft and lush and the most we could suffer was a slightly bruised bottom and maybe a bag of spilt shopping. As the weather turned, the bank become muddy or icy – in either state, it was hideously slippery. With the dark nights drawing in, it became imperative to construct a set of steps before one of us ended up in the river. A wide, strong and safe gangplank was also needed for pretty much the same reason.

Huw and Amelia were due to visit and it was decided that, with their help, we could actually moor the boat near the builders' yard and just pick up all the wood required for steps and gangplank in one trip. There was far too much to fit in the car and, with our savings dwindling rapidly, delivery charges were a luxury we weren't about to indulge in.

Like Charlie, Amelia and Huw had some comments to make about the state of the boat when they arrived, and were understandably not too ecstatic when they realised this was not going to be a weekend's holiday and they were expected to actually do something to help us out. We all set off toward the builders' merchants. It's not as if you can park a boat right outside a shop, well not in Ely anyway, so there was an approximate ten-minute walk to get the wood, which Geoff said would be an ‘easy saunter', even with Huw and himself carrying five lengths of 12-foot by 2-inch by 8-inch pine between them.

It didn't sound easy to me, so Amelia and I left them to it and took Sam shopping; a good excuse to drink coffee and have a chat. Arriving back about an hour later, we were a little concerned to find that Geoff and Huw were still out. Amelia tried to ring Huw but there was no answer and we hung about in the boat waiting to find out what had happened. Another half an hour and there was a thump, a groan and the sound of voices. I stuck my head out of the door and was relieved to see Geoff loading the wood onto the top of the boat.

‘Where's Huw?' I asked.

Geoff nodded toward the ground and grinned. Poor Huw was flat on his back on the grass and breathing hard.

‘Tough trip?' I asked.

‘No, not really,' Geoff laughed. ‘These teenagers have no stamina.'

I'm not sure whether or not teenagers have stamina, but what I am sure of is that Geoff and I have toughened up considerably since starting this trip. I can now carry a 25kg bag of coal on my shoulder, from the car, up the flood defences and down a flight of steps. In my previous life, I would have been lucky to get it off the ground.

Geoff definitely has more lumpy bits (more bruises and bits missing as well), but the accumulation of muscle and good health is most noticeable; it's amazing what you take for granted living in a house, a simple thing such as bringing in a week's shopping is now an exercise in weight-lifting over distance. Gone are the days when you leave your car boot open and just scuttle backwards and forwards with one small bag in each hand.

With the wind blowing rain into your face, you only want to make one trip, four bags in each hand, out of the car park, up the road, a three-minute walk over the flood defences (usually in the dark) then down the other side, and a logistics exercise trying to get all the bags of shopping off the bank and into the boat without dropping anything in the water. Every single simple job takes far more effort. The silver lining to this cloud? More exercise, better health, actual muscle, greater stamina and weight loss. There are also: wet feet, mud covering everything and a whole new range of swear words from which to choose – ah, the good life!

Little things mean so much more. The wood that Huw had sweated and griped over made the most fantastic set of steps I had ever seen – they weren't particularly pretty to look at, being plain, functional and over-engineered like most of Geoff's creations, but having those steps meant that we could just walk down to the boat without the death defying slide, fall and drop that was rapidly becoming the bane of our lives. In the dark, the whole exercise had been doubly dangerous.

The day the steps were completed, we treated ourselves to four small, solar-powered, garden lights which we positioned, two at the top and two at the bottom, one at each corner of the steps. Standing in the gathering darkness, we watched them come alive and light our path – it was magical; no fancy light display ever received a better reception.

Herbert particularly liked them, as they warmed in any small amount of sun, and he would sit for hours soaking up that warmth and guarding ‘his steps' from the hated dog next door. New neighbours had pulled up about a week previously, and Dion and Charlie brought with them a spaniel puppy called Jake who, quite frankly, was a ball of over-friendly energy. He just never stopped – how they put up with him in a confined space I'll never know – but for all his energy he certainly didn't have a mean bone in his body.

Herbert took one look at Jake's obvious, frivolous youth and abundant energy and loathed him on sight. He would guard the steps, lifting his head as Jake approached, attempting to fix him with a gimlet stare and snarling the dog equivalent of ‘come and have a go if you think you're hard enough'. With one wall-eye and only three teeth, he didn't look nearly as menacing as he thought he did. As Jake passed by, Herbert would wait until he was level, then would leap up, hair afluff, and scream at him, so it was slightly ironic that his much loved and guarded steps caused his next major dunking.

It was a beautiful morning, cold, with a weak sun that caused the frosted banks to glitter. Sam and I had decided to take Herbert out for a drag, thinking it might be one of the last sunny days that we would see. So, muffled up in coats, wellies, hats and gloves, we had been walking for about ten minutes when Herbert did his usual trick of flopping over on to his side and playing dead, which means ‘I've had enough; I want to go back to my nice warm bed.'

Sam was complaining about cold feet and I really couldn't be bothered to argue with either of them, so we turned and headed for home. I gave the lead to Sam to hold, as neither of them moved very fast. However, as soon as Herbert realised where we were headed he leapt up and shot off ahead, his extendable lead whirring as he bounced through the long grass with Sam crashing along in his wake, giggling furiously.

He stopped and kindly waited at the top of the steps for us to catch up, then took off again. The steps being comparatively new, Sam and I were still negotiating them with care and probably didn't move as fast as Herbert was hoping we would. So when he jumped for the back of the boat, Sam was still at the top of the steps.

The lead reached the end of its roll and Herbert reached the end of his tether ... literally. He was jerked, cartoon-like, back in mid air; Sam was pulled forward down the steps and I grabbed his hand in an effort to prevent a headlong fall. I held my breath and lurched us both toward the boat, in the vain hope that Herbert would still be capable of some forward momentum. No such luck. Straight down and into the river; again. Making sure that Sam was on flat ground, I rushed down the steps and hauled Herbert out by the lead. It was at that moment that a man walking his own dog along the flood defences stopped and studied poor, dripping, freezing Herbert dangling from his lead.

‘I didn't realise there were dogfish in this river,' he calmly stated. ‘What are you using for bait?' Oh ha ha bloody ha.

With the steps and the new gangplank in place, the next job was to install our wonderful and hideously expensive new wood-burner. We had purchased a Morso Squirrel, having heard good things about them. This wonderful contraption had been sitting (cold) in the boat for about a month, and I was beginning to get tetchy about the whole thing.

Geoff had been putting off the installation, knowing that he would have to cut a circular hole in the top of the boat for chimney access. So, as usual, we had faffed about, putting down the tiled stand for it and arguing about where to locate it and so on. But we had got to the point where there was no logical reason to put it off any longer. With our building problems in the bathroom and the issues we were experiencing with the central heating, we were honestly expecting something horrible to happen and were quite amazed when the whole thing went off without a hitch.

Geoff measured where the flue was to go, drilled a pilot hole, and then cut a circle out with a jigsaw (he actually went through about six blades, the metal on the roof of a narrow boat is pretty thick), attached chimney to flue, flue to stove, sealed around it and that was that, completely painless.

With winter breathing down your neck, a roaring fire is great on so many levels. Obviously it is warm, but it is also living and moving and creates a homely glow and a great noise. It added a whole new level of luxury to a boat that, apart from a wonderful bathroom, had nowhere near enough.

A good wood-burner can really kick out some heat and, within days, we had worked out how to bank it overnight, ensuring that even when we woke up early, the lounge area was warm and inviting. We had actually managed to get it all installed and working two days before Charlie's next visit was due – aha changes that could be seen and felt; a weekend of approval, how nice.