Practically Speaking (Listeners' questions - 7)

JOURNAL ENTRY

11^th December, Wednesday

“All week, a north-easterly
Has raked across the bevelled 

Waters, aching and raw,
Rattling the stern hatch doors.

The reeds whisper cold
Lullabies to the moorhen.
A kingfisher darts dimly
Through the dusk.”

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

It's a lovely night of soft light and gentle breezes. But dew is falling heavily, pearling the mooring lines and glistening in the cabin lights. A hazy moon, veiled by high cloud, casts a pale light across the fields and water. It is almost full. It washes long strands of cirrus clouds that stretch across the night sky, milky white. The grass blades stand out, black and pointed, at my feet. A passing cloud plays with the moon.  

This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into the darkness to you wherever you are. 

 You have managed to make it. I am so pleased. I was hoping you'd come and stop by for a while. I've put the kettle on, restocked the biscuit barrel, and the stove is warm. So, why don't you come inside and welcome aboard.

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS  

It’s funny how you forget things. Or it might be that, even though something may be very familiar to you, it somehow strikes you more meaningfully to you for the first time. That you have never really noticed it before – I mean noticed with more than your eye, a simple surface observation and acknowledgment, but noticed with some deep intuitive part of you that makes the noticing significant and somehow nourishing.

One year it was how perfectly round dandelion heads were. The year before that, it was how almost impossibly yellow buttercups were. Those are the years I look back on as the year of the dandelion, or the year of blue skies, or the year of the bees. Over the last few weeks, it has only just begun to strike me that I had never really fully appreciated the warmth of colour in winter trees; the deep burgundies and mahoganies, the russets and coppers, umbers and bronzes, chestnuts and cinnamons. Oh, but it is hopeless. There are no names to convey these warm living tones. It’s like trying to pin love onto a butterfly board, or capture God in a creed, or the essence of living in a dictionary. As soon as you find a name, all richness and depth leak out at the sides and all you are left with is the dry husk you were trying to avoid in the first place.

But, this year, I am mesmerised by those ineffably warm tones and hues that glow so subtly along hedgerow, copse, and lane. At this time of year (in the northern hemisphere, at least), stand on the slope of the gentle folds of a field and look down at the criss-cross, straggle hedges below you – or better still, stand at twilight under a sky heavy with cloud and the edges of night and look up into the tangled canopy of storm-wrack branches and wind-scolded snarls of twigs. If you are like me, you’d expect to see them as ink-black silhouettes, etched against the dusk. But they are not. Look again, and you will see that there is no black there, but the smouldering warmth and deep winter-browns and even earthy maroons. They’re still there, even when it is quite dark. It is only in the depths of night, that the inky silhouettes begin to show. This year, lately, so characterised by the tooth-achingly rawness of a persistent north easterly wind, I have been enjoying savouring these subtle washes of colour that clothe the trees in a misty garment of warmth. Of all the trees, locally, I am so falling in love with alders. A tree of which I was aware, but not really spent much time watching and meeting. There is a small stand of four or five quite close to the boat here. At first glance you might mistakenly think that they were still retaining a lot of their leaves, but, in fact, what you are seeing are their catkins, particularly their cone-like female catkins, that look like little Christmas tree candleholders, clipped along the thin threading maze of their branchlets and ramuli. At dusk, they cast this faint miasma type hue that is a deep bronzy maroon, the colour of dried blood. On the other hand, the tops of the oaks seem to glow with a haze of olives and light caramels

Of course, I am sure, if you are an artist, this is old news. It’s something about which that you have long been aware. I am also not at all surprised that this was also recognised long ago by one of England’s earliest literary naturalists, John Clare.

Part of his ‘Shepherd’s Calendar’ for December, he writes:

[READING]

But then, we see eye to eye about so much relating to this month:

[READING]

Although my taste in literature at these times, is not quite so high-brow or literary as Clare’s! preferring, instead, as my fire-side companions, the strangely pastoral contours of Golden Age Detection fiction (from the 1930s to 50s) and the equally strange Edwardian weird tales. 

It’s a good time for reading, these long nights. Curling up beside the fire with a good book that you have read just enough of to have become immersed into its universe, to have become familiar with the rhythms and vocabulary of the author for it to feel comfortable, and yet not enough through that you are aware of its finish and the inevitable feeling of loss that goes with it. Yes, I know you can read it again, but you will never read it in exactly the same way again. It might be better; Wind in the Willows, Little Grey Men, Down the Bright Stream, Winnie the Pooh, all I have enjoyed more as an adult than I did as a child. And I have a growing rota of titles that I read again and again, but it's also true that it’s never the same as the first time.

And outside the moon is full. According to Royal Museums Greenwich website, one of its names is the ‘long night moon’, although it is more commonly known as the ‘cold moon.’ Apparently, another name is ‘oak moon’ which, for some reason, I rather like. There is something rather apt about it for this time of the year. I am not sure why I should associate a wintery landscape so firmly with the oak tree. Perhaps there is just something majestically powerful about the leafless shape of it. Maybe, the association between them and ivy and mistletoe that become even more noticeable in their leafless state (two plants more deeply connected with the season). Although, I remember reading somewhere that mistletoe is not that commonly found in oak – which is possibly why, according to the Roman author Pliny the elder, druids in Roman and pre-Roman Britain, made such a big thing about finding it growing there, attached such significance to its collection: That is, if Pliny is in fact correct. Whatever the case, I like Oak Moon as a name.

No one locally has seen anything of the female swan for well over a month – it’s actually nearer two now. It’s sad news, and we can only strongly suspect that something has happened to her. The male and the cygnet also began to raise some concerns recently as, for a while, there wasn’t any sign of them either. I had spotted the cob (the male) a few weeks back, but he was on his own. However, the night before last, just as I was taking Maggie out for her last walk, I opened the doors at the stern, and there they both were, in the darkness, snortling and cheeping in their own inimitable ways.   

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]

PRACTICALLY SPEAKNG (LISTENERS’ QUESTIONS - 7)

Time passes quickly. A few weeks ago, in mid-November, it was the fifth anniversary of buying the Erica. And I was reminded of that time by one of the questions Lee asked.

She asked, “You've talked about why and how you decided to move onto a narrowboat, and why you need a long-term mooring. It's my impression, though, that such moorings are hard to find and most likely expensive, and you would be further limited by your need to be within commuting distance of your jobs and to have secure parking for your car or cars. Did you find and secure such a mooring before buying the boat, like your parents did?”

It's a very good question and as I know that a couple of listeners are also seriously considering buying a boat, I thought I would include it here.

Yes, one of the things that we were advised to do by boaters we had talked to was exactly that. Long-term moorings can be very hard to find and long-term moorings in nice spots even harder. Residential moorings are almost impossible – unless you are really lucky – and usually entail being on a waiting list. At the time, and I must stress this, at the time, buying a boat was a lot easier (if you weren’t too fussy or were willing to make compromises) than finding a good, secure, mooring. Therefore, once we had decided that we were actually serious about buying a boat and living on it, then our first priority was to find a convenient mooring for it that suited both our jobs.

I stressed that this was the situation at the time. However, after the pandemic, things were very different. For several reasons, the market for boats sky-rocketed, this pushed the price up considerably, but it also meant that suddenly there were very few boats left on the market – some brokers reporting that they were running out of boats to sell and I heard from some people who were wanting to purchase a boat, finding that by the time the boat became listed on the internet it had already been sold.

I am not sure what the situation is right now. I think the prices and market has stabilised a little. However, I would still advise those looking to buy to consider finding a mooring spot at the same time. 

Lee’s other question is also a really good one. “I'm also wondering just how handy you really have to be at DIY things to live on a narrowboat. I watch a few of the vlogs regularly, and some seem to be handier in this regard than others. Of course, my friends and I learned to do the daily engine checks when we rent hire boats, but must a boater be able to fix more of the engine/electronics/plumbing on a boat? I'm pretty hopeless at that in my little house, but I am more accessible to people I can hire to make repairs than I imagine narrowboaters often are.”

If you have listened to the podcast for a while, you probably know that Lee lives off-grid in a cabin in the Colorado Mountains and in writing about her life there, there are a number of parallels with the daily and weekly routines associated with boating life. As you might also have surmised from her question, Lee also does have experience of narrowboats and British waterways.

I think an honest answer would be, ‘No, not really, but it really does help!’ I sort of feel a little uncomfortable with this whole area. Partly, I think, because Dad was such a consummate practical man and therefore set a really high bar. Therefore, I would never claim to be practical and certainly am not confident in this area. However, I can do things and can generally (at least eventually) find a way to fix things when they go wrong.

I have noticed that, for some reason, and I don’t know why, I will tackle things on a boat that I wouldn’t dream of doing in a house. I think partly, apart from working with gas, you can still actually have a go. And, actually even with gas, it is more an advisory to get a qualified engineer in, than compulsory. I can remember being so furious and frustrated when we lived in a house to be told that I couldn’t wire our new electric oven into the mains, but had to get a certified electrician in to do it. We are not so hampered with that sort of thing on a boat. As most boat electrics are 6 (or perhaps 12 volt) it is also much more manageable and safer.     

The nice thing about boats is that although usually in the most inaccessible place, things are often pretty simple. You can see what has gone wrong and you can usually see how to put it right. If you can’t, generally, there is usually someone around who can help you. The main problem I find personally though, is not being able to fix things because I don’t know how to or lack the ability to do it, but it’s having the tools. Things on boats tend to be – let’s put it, a little more agricultural than houses, involving great heavy lumps of steel or lots of wood. My tool box has expanded considerably – even including things like angle grinders (something I would never in a million years have thought I would be using when living in a house). However, it’s finding a place to store everything. There are some fairly basic pieces of kit that I could really do with, but we simply do not have the room for them. For example, a wet and dry vacuum. What would be really lovely would be little depots and equipped workshops up and down the canal system that we can hire out on a hourly or daily basis. 

Again, though, the boating community can really come into its own here. Tools and expertise are often generously offered and gratefully received. So, to answer your question, Lee. If you are not particularly practical, don’t let it put you off living on a boat. However, you will probably find that in a short time you are becoming much more practical than you ever thought possible – plus you will actually find yourself wanting to do it. And there is a wealth of experience and expertise all around you.

Talking of the canal community. A couple of episodes back, I was talking about the different groups that form the long village of the boating world, and Mind Shambles contacted me with a poem that he wrote as a response to that episode. It so beautifully captures what I was trying to express in that podcast about the different human and more than human lives interwoven together along those long stretches of still water.  

The Long Village (Oct 2024)

Meandering,
slowly drifting between long fields,
old bridges wilting into reed beds,
as time softens old hard edges,
and the current wends its way.
Hiding,
twisting through cities,
chased by rattle can poets
amid greying old industry,
casting long shadows from
lost former glories.
Flitting,
like leaves dancing in the wind,
between iron rails
and concrete highways,
under, over, back again,
but happy dawdling onwards.
Resting,
as seasons float by,
carrying time ever onwards,
patrolled by ducks and cygnets,
matching the world’s turn
with a nod and a wry smile.

SIGNING OFF

This is the narrowboat Erica signing off for the night and wishing you a very restful and peaceful night. Good night.

WEATHER LOG