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Chapter Twenty-seven
90% of the Work Takes 90% of the Time
The Last 10% Takes Another 90% of the Time

W
E MOVED BACK ON
to the boat on January 5 2007 and, I have to admit, I was surprised by the attitudes of the kids – they were both anxious to get back aboard and settle back into ‘normal' life. There was actually still a fair amount of work to do, but really nothing that couldn't be done at weekends or in the evenings. So, with this in mind, Geoff started to search for a job. My job had changed and with my boss leaving and my previous experience, the main company had offered me management of the Cambridge office, along with a suitable pay rise.

I enjoyed my job. It was a little bit mad, the engineers were great and the office staff were competent and fun to be with. So I never really minded getting up in the morning and, of course, the money was particularly useful. But Geoff was the one with the major money-making skills, he was qualified up to the noggins and was very good at what he did – project management for IT companies. So we didn't really expect it would take that long to find him a job, and we started the New Year with high hopes of getting some decent money in. I could stop work and go back to what I liked doing best: writing, messing around with art and taking useless college courses.

What I really wanted to do was spend some quality time with the kids. I was very aware that as my responsibility at work had grown so, exponentially, my time with the family had diminished, which had been niggling away at me for some months.

By the time spring was in the air, Geoff had been to over 20 interviews and hadn't actually managed to get past the first post. We knew what the issues were but had real problems facing them. One was that, by IT standards, he was just too old. He was competing against graduates and people that really loved what they did – the crème de la crème of geekdom – and that highlighted the other major problem. He just didn't really want to do it any more and I think that was coming over in his interviews.

At the beginning of April, we sat down late one evening and decided to look the problem straight in the eye. Geoff had been becoming increasingly morose over the last month, and from seeing him so happy when he was building the boat, it was horrible to watch him now, battling with the knowledge that he really ought to go back to work, and really trying to get a job but not really putting himself into it. I decided to let him off the hook.

‘If you could do anything for a job, what would you do?' I asked.

‘Sparky,' came the surprising and very prompt reply.

‘Really?' I casually drained my coffee cup and asked, ‘So why don't you re-train then and do something you would actually enjoy?'

That was the moment that plan no. 37 was born. Over the next two weeks we looked into training courses and were horrified at the price of changing a career. Geoff already had most of the expertise and experience to become an electrician so he didn't want to spend two years at college, he just wanted to take the exams and start work as quickly as possible. It was a good idea, especially as he wanted to take his air conditioning qualifications as well, but the bill was still going to come to over £7,000 and that was money that we just didn't have.

We wallowed about for a couple of weeks, coming up with ridiculous plans to get the money, plans that didn't include borrowing it from the bank or my father, but there really seemed no way around it. We were bracing ourselves to make that call to Dad when Charlie tried to knock herself out and the plan changed yet again.

To get into Charlie's room there was a foot-high step that continued inside, which meant that the head room in her bedroom was that much diminished. This step was cleverly hiding the huge water tank that sat at the front of the boat, running under the entire length of Charlie's bedroom.

That evening, as Geoff and I prevaricated about calling Dad, she had been sitting in her room, playing her new guitar, when there was a sudden scream, a thump and then silence. I went to investigate and found her sitting on the floor holding her head, her guitar lying face down on the bed above her.

The cardinal rule is that if you don't like spiders don't live on a boat. How they get in, I will never know. The ones we get aren't very big, but they are persistent, and it doesn't seem to matter how many you put out of the windows, there are always others to take their place.

It has amused the kids on no end of occasions to watch a spider come dangling down from the ceiling to hang revolving slowly in front of one or other of them; they then get together and give it a gentle poke on the bottom which makes it scurry back up its web again. Then they sit and wait for it to come back down at which point the whole process starts again. They call it spider yoyo. As it makes them laugh and certainly doesn't harm the spider, I have never seen a problem with it.

It was one of these spiders that had caused Charlie's ‘egg'. She had been concentrating so hard on her playing that she had failed to notice one of these ‘boat spiders' sitting on the ceiling above her. Consequently, when it had let itself drop and had dangled in front of her nose, she had panicked sufficiently to leap up, scream and brain herself on the roof.

With all the furore, we had, once again, completely failed to phone my father. Later, when all was quiet, Geoff looked up from his book.

‘When did she reach the ceiling?' he leaned back and ran a hand through his hair. He had had it all cut off for interviews and was still finding the lack of length a bit sad. ‘She didn't reach the ceiling when she moved in.'

I looked at him. ‘Yeah, damn those children for growing, maybe we ought to stop feeding them.'

He smiled. ‘Yes, yes, I know, but if she reaches the ceiling now and she's only 13, how long can she stay in that room?

I winced. ‘Not long really. I suppose we could always swap her and Sam about?'

Geoff snorted. ‘The way Sam's growing, he's going to be the taller of the two, so we won't have very long before he hits the ceiling as well.'

I nodded; there wasn't a good answer for this one.

Geoff picked up his mug of tea and stared into the depths. ‘Maybe we ought to be thinking about a bigger boat.'

I groaned, thinking he was just messing about. ‘Oh no, we've only just finished this one, if we go for a larger one we're going to have to buy another complete wreck and start all over again …'

‘Well, we've done it once; I suppose we could do it again.' He looked at me. ‘What do you think?'

Oh poo, he was serious. ‘Well, even if we have to spend some of the profit from Happy on a larger wreck, at least we would have enough left over to get you re-trained.'

Happy Go Lucky
went on the market in April 2007. Due to her odd shape, the fact that she had three static bedrooms and that, compared to most holiday boats, she was bloody huge, ungainly and a royal pain in the arse to moor, we knew that the only people interested in buying something like this would be another family that wanted to live aboard. We had resigned ourselves to a fairly long wait; some boats take years to sell.

Exactly three weeks later we had a firm offer – much to our surprise, horror and more than a little panic. A lovely lady called Jane and her daughter were selling their house in Devon and moving up to Bath. Jane's boyfriend lived on a boat over in that direction and she was used to the vagaries that living aboard entailed. She already had a mooring sorted out and was just waiting for her house sale to complete. We weren't in any major rush, so agreed to take the boat off the market and just wait it out with her. She expected to move in at the beginning of July.

Having resigned myself to a long sale, this sudden movement took me by surprise. I knew we were selling Happy for all the right reasons, but I was going to be really sad to lose her. We had had some great times on
Happy Go Lucky
, and she had, over the last two years, gained a beautiful interior and a fair amount of personality. I always pictured her as a huge and slightly dippy dog, eager to please but not too bright. It was going to be really difficult to find another like her.

Once again the search for a new boat became all-encompassing. I spent so many hours at the Internet cafe in Ely that they gave up asking me if I wanted a drink and just produced a coffee as soon as I walked through the door.

With a little experience under our belts, everybody had ideas of what improvements would be needed on a new boat. High on Charlie and Sam's list was access to the Internet; both felt that only being able to use it at school or at Arwen's was nowhere near satisfying enough.

One Saturday morning, with Geoff and Steve, who within the last two days had become the proud father of a little girl called Ruby, doing something technical with a load of tubes and a water pump on the flood defences in an effort to get water to the boats, I decided to take an early morning trip to the cafe and continue my boat search. The kids were mooching around doing nothing much, so when I asked them if they wanted to come and play on the Internet for a couple of hours I was almost crushed in the rush to find shoes and get out of the boat.

An hour later, we were all settled, each with our own screen, and I blocked the bickering out as I tried to decipher the boat specs on various Dutch sites. I would come back to reality occasionally, just to check that the kids hadn't got bored and escaped, but they were both sitting there, dwarfed by headphones, with big grins, each on their own separate sites; Sam catching up with the world of Pokémon and Charlie immersed in strange talking cat videos on YouTube.

About an hour later, howls of laughter dragged me away from one particularly nice barge, moored just outside Rotterdam, and I turned to find out what had caused this tear-jerking hilarity.

Harry Potter Puppet Pals are an odd little YouTube puppet show that has the ability to reduce children to giggling lumps of yuck.

‘Mum, Mum!' Sam grabbed me and pointed at the screen. ‘Look at this, it's called “Wizard Swears”. It's really funny.'

Charlie nodded, but couldn't speak, as she was still trying to get her breath back from laughing so hard.

I frowned. ‘Wizard Swears?'

Sam sighed. ‘They're not rude, just really funny.' He rolled his eyes, showing that I was obviously not on his wavelength and being very boring.

Luckily for my obviously over-delicate sensibilities, our booked time was up and we headed toward Starbucks for a naughty coffee.

I watched Sam and Charlie walking ahead of me up the hill, and thought how nice it was that they seemed to get on most of the time.

Sam reached over and thumped Charlie on the arm. I was just about to tell him off when I heard him say, ‘Unicorn turd!' He winced and ducked slightly as if he expected Charlie to give him a kick up the rear as she so often did, then relaxed as she turned toward him and yelled, ‘Blast-ended skank!'

They grinned at each other.

‘Dragon bogies!'

‘Floppy-wanded Dementor botherer!'

‘Cauldron bum!'

‘Swish and flicker!'

‘Voldemort's nipple!'

‘Jiggery pokery!'

‘Broom head!'

‘Leprechaun taint!'

‘Dobby's sock!'

I watched them, giggling and pushing each other, getting louder with each ridiculous insult. I had to smile at their antics but decided that no matter what new technology came along, we had managed perfectly well without the Internet for the last two years and we could do without it for the foreseeable future – cauldron bum, indeed!

That evening I was attempting to moan about it to Jude. The family had recently sold their narrow boat and had purchased a wide beam. I was completely envious; there seemed to be so much room – still less than a small, two-bedroom flat but, compared to a narrow boat, it was a veritable mansion. However, with all the new baby stuff cluttered around, I could see why they needed it because babies don't care where you live. When they turn up they seem to bring half of Mothercare with them.

Ruby was absolutely gorgeous. Even after the morning sickness had subsided, the rest of the pregnancy hadn't been particularly easy for Jude and I think the whole family were relieved to see the outcome so healthy and ... loud.

This had been my third attempt to see her but every time she had been asleep. On this occasion, I could see so much more of her, which appeared to be mainly the inside of her mouth as she screamed and screamed, defying all Steve and Jude's attempts to calm her and we felt that visitors, however well-intentioned, were not what the family needed at that moment. So we left the presents and made a swift exit.

Little Charlie gave us a mournful wave as we left; I got the feeling that his little sister wasn't entirely living up to his expectations. I grinned and waved back at him, thinking that he needn't worry. It would only take about a year and then he'd be wishing for the immobile, noisy baby back.

Summer crept toward us and we waited, mainly mooching about enjoying Happy being fully finished. We kept in touch with Jane and things seemed to be moving along fine.

Our exit date was July 3 and we spent the two weeks prior to that packing everything up and squeezing it into storage. By June 29, we were just waiting for the money to transfer and, as we still hadn't found a new boat – although I had become slightly addicted to YouTube and knew all the Potter Puppet Pals sketches off by heart – we had planned to spend the summer with Geoff's mum again and would search for a new boat from there.

Jane had moved out of her house and had called us, laughing, to say that she had just sold her bed and her television; she was now truly homeless and was moving up to a friend's house to await completion.

July 5 and we knew we had a problem. Jane called in a panic and advised that her house sale had fallen through, right at the last moment, on the very day of completion. Evidently the person buying her house had lied to the mortgage lenders and the whole deal was off. I wasn't sure who to feel sorrier for, her or us. At least we still had beds and all the home comforts, she was left with nothing but an empty shell, and she was so upset.