It turned a bit wet (Afloat in Hiroshige's rain storm)

JOURNAL ENTRY

 3^rd September, Tuesday

“Cruising through a Hiroshige 
Woodblock print;
Sudden Shower over Shin-Ohashi Bridge.
Even the reeds look like bamboo.

A heron pilots us home.”

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

The nights are drawing in at a gathering pace. Earlier, just before darkness fell, straggling skeins of geese threaded their way under leaden skies. And now, rain speckles the cabin windows with the promise of heavier bursts to come. The playful wind has eased and the night holds its breath. 

This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into the darkness of a damp night to you wherever you are. 

You made it! I was hoping that you would be able to make your way here tonight. Quickly come inside before the rain gets heavier. We're snug and dry, the kettle is singing on the hob, the biscuit barrel is on the side. Make yourself comfortable and welcome aboard.  

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS  

It’s been quite a varied time of grey and warmth, chasing sunshine, cloistering low cloud thick with wet, and rain. It doesn’t feel like summer, but it also doesn’t really feel like autumn either – not weather-wise anyway.  

The last couple of weeks we’ve had some exciting encounters. I saw my first otter (outside a zoo or conservation park). It was not too far from where we are tonight. I was taking Maggie on her evening walk and suddenly there was a lot of rustling among the vegetation on the off-side bank and then a startled moorhen clattered across the canal, all wings and flailing legs. Apart from the shock of its suddenness, I didn’t think too much of it. It is a fairly common occurrence on our walks, other than the fact that it was a little strange that it should come over to the side of the canal where Maggie and I were. Usually, they cluck and cackle their way away from us. However, the moorhen was quickly followed by a serpentine object that cut its way across the canal in pursuit. My initial thoughts were, wow that’s a really large snake. Grass snakes are quite common (we’ve seen quite a few) – and they can swim surprisingly quickly. However, my next thoughts were, no grass snake is THAT big; its head was about the size of a tennis ball - well possibly a little larger. And while the body was long and sinuous, a grass snake with that sized head (apart from being almost impossible) would have a body a lot longer. As I watched, I could see a little more of the body, seal-like and plump, in a lithe way, and could just make out a brown tail.    

There’s been quite a few sightings of otter recently in this area. I have to say, I have been a little sceptical. They’re easy to misidentify with mink. However, a few weeks back I saw a video posted by a boater who was passing through this area of what are uncontrovertibly a couple of otters. I waited a coupe of minutes and then watched it push back across the canal. It was clearly an otter. When we got back to the boat, a neighbour said how he had been watching an otter for the best part of the afternoon sunning itself on the bankside.

One of the less nice things about being on the canal is that it is not unusual to come across birds and animals that have fallen in. A couple of years ago, I found a young roe deer that had fallen into a lock. It must have been there all night and was exhausted. The water was just too low for hm to get out. It was also too low for me to be able to reach down and grab his antlers to lift him out. Eventually, I managed to lower the water level enough so that he wasn’t too terrified and open the bottom gates and could then coax him out into the canal. After quite a bit of scrabbling, he managed to drag himself out onto the bank on the other side. 

Well, last Sunday evening, Donna could hear some odd splashing sounds that didn’t sound like ducks or swans. It was a young pigeon that had fallen in and was floating midstream. Coincidently enough, a few days earlier, I had seen a flock of six or seven pigeons who were swooping low over the canal and then dropping down into it. I couldn’t work out what they were trying to do. They didn’t seem to be trying to drink – and besides, there are plenty of places along the canal where they can safely drink without getting their feet wet. The last pigeon dropped down into the water so low that its tail was right underwater and it only just managed to get airborne again. I haven’t come across this behaviour before, but whatever it was, they were playing a high-risk strategy. I don't know about them, but I was pretty relieved when they decided to go off and do something else instead! I am not sure if something like that happened here. However, we later found that it had lost most of its tail feathers and so this could well have been the result of a predatory attack. It was too far over for us to be able to do anything and as the light was failing, we watched it climb onto a clump of reeds and roots. We decided that it was probably the best if we left it, as it was safe, out of the water, and away from predators. Hopefully, during the night, it could recuperate and regain its strength.     

At first light the next morning, Donna looked out to check if it was still okay, only for her to find that it was once more in the canal. We both rushed out. It had clearly been in the water some time as it was exhausted and its plumage was getting waterlogged. The wings were now having difficultly to stay on the surface and it was struggling to keep its head clear of the water. As is always the case, it was just out of reach of bargepole and our gangplank (which I was hoping to use as a sort of pontoon onto which it could scrabble - although with hindsight, I don’t think that it had enough energy to have done that). Although, it was clearly much weaker, it was still terrified and any movement from us, sent it further away from our bank. However, it was obvious that it couldn’t keep buoyant for much longer, and, although it was still early, I was worried about what would happen if a boat passed. So, I quickly stripped down to just my boxers and had a 7.00am dip in the canal! Thank goodness, the air and water temperatures were mild. Luckily, also that nobody came along the towpath!

It remained just out of my reach and when I tried to walk towards it, because the canal bottom is so thick with sludge and silt it was almost impossible not to slip or make jerky arm movements in an effort to remain balanced. Donna, extended the gangplank, which I could hold on to and then with my other, I could angle the extreme end of the barge pole under its body. The little thing just clung to it as we slowly brought it to the side and Donna could reach down and grab it.

We towelled it dry as much as we dared. It was a juvenile, with only a couple of tail feathers left. Donna found the safest spot that she could find and built a nest of the towel for it. She also sprinkled lots of food (which we fortunately had). The best thing was to then leave it – and let nature and life take its course.    

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]

TURNED A BIT WET (AFLOAT IN HIROSHIGE’S RAIN STORM)

The rain has now started to fall in earnest. I can no longer pretend that it is just a light shower, any more than five minutes ago, I could airily claim, as we loosed our mooring lines and pushed off, that there’s a few spots of rain in the wind. I don’t mind. I don’t mind this at all. Below my feet, the comforting thrum and rumble of the Erica’s engine. I look back, passed the tiller arm, and stern button fenders and watch the gathering rings fleck the waters troubled by our passing. I look forward along the long line of cabin roof with its familiar clutter of our living; ropes, buoyancy ring, brushes, mop, gang plank (still waiting to be cleaned of the mud from its latest use, wooden sack barrow that dad made, the anchor and chain. Water is collecting in the runnels, the little gulleys on each side of the curve of cabin roof. It runs astern, towards me, before finding the drainage gap, and slips in a single tear down the cabin’s sides. Donna is zipping up the canopy that covers the cratch. The first trickle lazily meanders down the side of my face.

No, I really don’t mind this at all. I am happy. And it is not as if it is cold or miserable. The reverse in fact – it’s quite warm! The sort of warmth you get when summer slowly begins to relax into autumn. Yesterday, after another storm warning proved false, the afternoon and evening felt thick and stodgy. Last night, I leant out of the duck hatch trying to catch into a darkness as still as crystal a breath of night chill. It has been a good night for bats; noctule and pipistrelle. But their first hunting period of dusk was now over and the skies were largely quiet. Heavy cloud hid starshine and the waters only glittered with our lights. The night before, we had talked about getting out the winter duvet. We were glad we hadn’t.

We awoke to that same mildness and this morning with its thick grey wadding of cloud and listless wind. We had decided to move last night, though, in all honesty neither of us really wanted to. But we do need, at some point to move, and today seemed as good a day as any.

We pass under an ash whose branches spread out over the canal – almost to the other side. Shivers of rain drops fall from its candelabras of leaf and twigs, mingling with the rain that washes straight down from the sky. A heron, unfolds itself into long wings and legs. For a while, we have an escort as it unhurriedly beats along the centre of the canal – graceful and full of patience. It then lifts and swings over to the off-bank, hurdling the tangle of bramble and elder, and across into the nearby fields. The banksides flow past me, rich with purple rocket trails of loosestrife and lion-maned ragwort.

It’s all rather hurried and hastily planned and I can’t shake the feeling that this is all wrong. It’s not the rain, it’s just that, I have a sense that niggles deeper than any overt feeling that I can put a name to, that this is not really how it should be done. I am aware that I have miscalculated badly – and worse still, that I had some dim sense even at the time, I was making a miscalculation.

I am not sure when the miscalculation actually took place. Bad decisions are often made long before the actual decision making takes place. Little events, feelings, concerns, obsessions, creating currents and counter-currents in thought processes.

I knew it would rain. In fact, I factored it into the cruise. I’d even looked at the radar on one of my weather app. and could see a heavy storm moving across west to east. So why am I standing here, one hand on the tiller one on the Morse lever, feeling so utterly unprepared for it. Why, when I knew it was coming? In fact, it seems that the whole of Great Britain knew that it was coming – and yet, somehow, deep down inside me, I am not sure that I did. Or at least, didn’t take it seriously.

The last two days wrong-footed me. For the last two days, weather warnings of thunderstorms have been flashing up on my phone. We hunkered down on the first. Nothing came. The warning lifted and then was rescheduled for the next day. A couple of spots of rain, fizzled through the clammy warm air, but no sign of torrential rain and thunder – not even in the distance. I remembered the summer two years ago during the long dry hot spell – waiting, wishing, dreaming for rain. Seeing it build on the weather app radar for it to either dissipate before it reached us, or simply split and move either side of us. Such is the geography of this part of the country. It can be maddening for lovers of rain. Might that – or some of it – be the reason for my complacency. I threw on my light-weight cagoule on the off chance a few spots would come. It had crossed my mind to pull on my full wet weather gear, to prepare the stern deck for a soaking, but that naggingly arrogant voice kept whispering, ‘You’re going to be stuck in your bulky, heavy rain wear in this muggy jungle air for the next hour or so. That band of rain you saw on the radar earlier is either going to peter out or jink north and miss you. Why ruin a nice trip for the fear of getting a bit of a wetting?’ I needed to wind the boat – to turn it round – and the winding hole is good, but it can get a bit overgrown and silted at its apex (when looked at from above, winding holes usually look like triangular indentations cut into the off-side bank) and the last thing I wanted was to be ham-fistedly hampered in cumbersome clothing. And so, I cast off and opt for my cagoule. I like cagoules. It’s a Peter Storm one, just like the one I had when I was a lad and we were going camping – proper camping mind – as a family. We all went to an outdoors shop in Amersham. They weren’t as common as they are today. I remember trying on one – bright blue, it smelt of strange plastic (which I grew to associate with the smell of damp grass and cowpats, leather and wet canvas). I also remember that it was expensive and Mum or Dad saying that it was important to buy something that was reliable and worked. Peter Storm, they said, was a ‘good make.’ Wendy and I both got one, I can’t remember what colour hers was. And so we trooped out of the shop, with me being the proud owner of a sky blue Peter Storm cagoule. I was equipped to conquer the high hills of Teesdale and Everest. Although, what pleased me most (and had me racked with anxiety lest Mum and Dad opted for a different make) was that it came with a little metal enamelled lapel pin badge of a cut out smiling figure wearing oilskins and sou’wester and who appeared to be giving the thumbs-up sign.

I seem to remember we got very good service from that cagoule. This one, sort of works in very light showers, if you don’t mind slightly damp shoulders (which I don’t). But it is very light and packs into a tiny bag that you can put in a pocket. However, heavy rain goes straight through it.            

The snub prow of the Erica nuzzles around a bend, just before the canal enters a wooded section. The trees lean over on each side, dark, brooding, menacing in this light. A squall of rain hits us, sluicing down the boat sides, it drums on the cabin roof and I can see it ricochetting and rebounding off it, lashing the canal in front and behind us into white water. Rain beads in my eyebrows and gutters down into my eyes, making it hard to see ahead. Slowly we edge towards the trees. However, there seems to be little shelter there. The leaves whips and spray, rain already fallen, giving it new life in a baptismal charism of arboreal aspersion.

It is at this point that I begin to consider my miscalculation. In the space of a few minutes, I am drenched and feeling that prickly discomfort of someone who (despite appeals from his friends) thought he could outwit the ‘Find the Lady’ hustler. The stern deck glistens with a gloss burgundy sheen and my cagoule sticks to my tee-shirt. Definitely, the wrong choice.

However, in some ways it makes things a little easier. It’s too late to pull in (even if there was a spot to pull in to) and put on some more effective heavy-duty rain wear. As if to taunt me, the rain appears to ease a little. Is the sky a little brighter? Maybe.

Eight jackdaws wheel above us. They’re probably the ones who carolled us for the last four dusks with their clamour and twilit, gossip conducted in expressive monosyllables. 15 yards or so ahead, the heron, once again breaks out from the bank from between a tall clump of iris and reed leaves. Once again, strong, patient wings beat for a few yards down the canal and then cut away into a field. Is it the same heron as before? I cannot tell. There is something elusive and mythic about this day, this morning of silver light. I like to think that, ‘Yes, it is the same one.’ Heralding us onwards to wherever it might be we are going.

Donna appears with a welcome cup of tea and little plastic tray on which some biscuits have been placed. Maggie, weasels her way up the steps to join me at the stern. She peers around the side and sniffs the air. Across the fields a train whistles. The Erica purrs onwards through a spindrift of drizzle.  

One of the advantages of travelling in the rain is that, unless it is at the height of the season, you can pretty much get the canal to yourselves. The other advantage is…  well, you’re travelling in the rain. You get to see colours you don’t see at other times, smell scents and hear sounds and rhythms that only those who share these pluvial moments ever get to experience. I know why ducks push themselves to centre steam in rain storms – rain makes you feel different; feel more alive. In Rain: A natural and cultural history, Cynthia Barnett argues that rain is one of the last encounters that people who live in modern, post-industrial cultures have with the unmediated wildness of nature. An opportunity to experience something that, so far, eludes the effects of human tampering and modification (although that is perhaps moot).

But she’s right, there is something pure and elemental about standing unprotected in the rain. The rain picks up. It slants in from our left -on a westerly wind. A large low-pressure system centred over the continent is feeding anticyclonic winds far out over the Atlantic and then back round sweeping ocean dense rainclouds in-land. This time, there’s a hard edge to the rain, as if someone is throwing handfuls of grit and gravel that rattle against the cabin sides and scour my face. The canal ahead, softens into a palette of greyscale tones. I am reminded of the 19^th century Japanese artist Hiroshige’s wood blocks, where rain is depicted as pencil-lead thin lines that stretch across the landscape. The rain here too, sweeps down in parallel pin-thin lines across my horizon. I am beginning to notice that, despite the mildness and softness of the wind, that my legs are trembling with cold. In such ways, the first whispered threat of exposure comes. I take another gulp of tea, still scorching hot, in spite of the splashes of rain drops that make rings within the mug and wolf the last digestive biscuit.

It's too late to save the wicker basket of dog towels that I should have brought in before we started. Maggie, cowers as if she is about to be beaten and closes her eyes into thin slits. It’s a face that Penny used to pull when she was out in the teeth of a rain storm. Perhaps it’s a collie thing – or maybe just a dog thing. I open the hatch door and she drops down inside into the dark dry shelter of the boat. But I am glad to be here. How many others get to share these feelings of being so totally alive? It’s as if someone has turned up the volume on my senses. Of all our encounters with the unmediated elements, rain is the most sensual. It makes you so aware of your body. The drips that dribble and snake down your chest and back, the pool and flick of water off the ends of your fingers. The kiss and taste of rain as it trickles and drizzles down the side of your face and pools off the end of your nose. My hair feels heavy and seeps water down my face. My trousers now stick to my legs and I can feel water pool under the soles of my feet. My trainers begin to squelch whenever I move. The little tray that one held biscuits is now beginning to overflow with rain water. When you already fairly wet, psychologically, the worst thing you can do in a heavy rainstorm is to try to keep dry. It makes your body hunch and your spirit wither. If you are wet, relax, loosen your shoulders, embrace it. There is nothing you can do, but treasure the sensation (often quite strange to us now). You will be dry again, so enjoy the experience. See how your senses come alive? How you become aware of even the tiniest of things; sounds, sensations, light. Rain can make us superhuman.     

I ease the throttle back a little. Relax. Shake the tenseness from my shoulders. The involuntary shiver stops. There’s no point in hurrying. We are not holding anyone up – and, besides, why hurry on a day like today? Donna and Maggie are warm and dry below, and I will be too soon. That’s the joy of travelling on a boat. You take your home and all its comforts and conveniences with you. No matter how wet and cold you get, a hot shower and clean dry clothes await.

It reminds me of a poem from the late 18^th century, by Issa.       

“What, travelling
In the rain? …
But where can he be wending snailward?’

“Wending snailward’ - How wonderfully apt. That is exactly what we on the Erica are doing right now in ways that, possibly, Issa would fail to comprehend.
The Erica, our shell-like home, snug and protective, wending at a slow walking pace through the hiss and rattle of a wet Warwickshire countryside. Behind us, on the ring patterned water surface we too leave a silvery-white trail of our passing.

Rain now gushes and gutters along the roof runnels. It pours down the gang-plank, forming large black droplets, before draining off. It has the look of an executive’s desk toy from the 1980s. I can feel rivulets seeping down my chest and I blow water away from around my mouth and lips, as if I were swimming. A large clump of reeds has broken free from the side of the canal and is floating out into the centre. I steer the Erica around it, knocking the throttle into neutral as I do it. Quite often moorhens (and sometimes ducks) use these as little floating islands to build nests upon. Although, this time, there were none. We coast passed. The canal in front and behind is pebbled by the lash of rain. Ahead, again, the patient broad, grey wings of the heron. This is getting slightly surreal. In all probability it is a different heron. By now, we must have travelled through, at least, a couple of distinct territories. But I am beginning to feel a certain attachment to it. That, in some way, we know each other; that we are journeying through this rainy world together on some planned venture that I am only partially aware of.    

As I said at the beginning, I really don’t mind in the least being up here, on the tiller in the wash of early September rain. In fact, I relish these times. 

The words of Finnegan Tui, run through my blood and soul.

[READING]

We’re actually not far from our intended destination now. The wind eases and then the heavens open. It’s like standing under a shower tap. The rain drops, vertically, free-falling from a thousand feet. The sound is deafening as it hammers and drums against the cabin roof. The canal surface leaps and boils as if stung by the sluicing lash of rain. I have to keep blinking and wiping my soaked face to be able to see where I am going. I know this part well.

The reeds along the side, bend like willows to the incessant pounding of rain. At times, it feels as if I am breathing in water. That I have swapped from land-based to an aquatic realm. The rain cascades in a curtain in a drenching white-water torrent. I feel as if we are parting beaded curtains that swish passed, either side of us. The swans are out, swimming as if nothing unusual was happening – which, for them, it wasn’t. The cob slips passed the first. Then a little later, the three cygnets and mum. Water forms tiny spheres on their scruffy neck and face feathers, but it glistens and pearls off their wings. They’re growing. For a few moments, they cluster and cheep around the stern, and then they push off; gliding serenely off into the grey distance.

Water pours along the roof, and gushes in spouts from the drainage points. The runnels are almost too small to cope with this deluge. The stern-deck scuppers are now clogged, and puddles form. I shift my squelching feet and look back to see if I can see the swans. A heavy grey liquid curtain hangs behind us. I can just make out one of the adults who is working along the offside bank. Then she too melts into the murk.

There is one more bridge to go, but the rain shows no sign of stopping or even easing. It rattles through the thick crowns of oak and ash and patters fat-fingered tattoos on the towpath. Everywhere is alive with sound. The complicated chaos of rain song. A shamanic chant that drums and trances on earth and water, on leaves and field and makes my head ring with the sheer wonder and aliveness of it all. Thomas Merton wrote, that it is “the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself.” I try to locate the rhythms – the music, the words. I can tell that it is there, but I can’t quite get it. Just the chaos of a language, the sweeping shifts in tempo and cadence that are just beyond me. But I listen nonetheless.    

I begin to line the boat up for the bridge-hole, and drop the revs into tick over. From the right, there is a clatter of wing beats and reeds and the heron emerges. It’s surprisingly close. A few measured wing strokes lifts him up above the bow of the boat – level with the bridge. I wait to see him glide back down the other side or veer off into one of the fields on either side of us, but he doesn’t. He stalls above the bridge, hanging in the sodden air on his great silver-blue outstretched wings. Legs hanging down, and then with the utmost grace and delicacy, he gently lands and folds his wings.

He looks down at us as we crawl closer. I wait for him to rise once more, into the air, airborne and alive. But he doesn’t. He waits – statue still. Two magpies join him. Apart from the aquatic fowl, they are the only birds around. A glint of an eye, a heron’s knowing eye, as we glide beneath the bridge.

It is difficult to convince my more romantic side that this is not the same heron as the one we first saw as we started off. That we haven’t been escorted back through a watery world of such somatic wonder and beauty, by a heron.

I look back to the bridge parapet after we pass. The heron and magpie are gone.

But I do know the answer to Finnegan Tui’s question: “Are there others who hear thunder rolling in

And run out in the rain?” Yes, there are, for we have just met three of them.      

SIGNING OFF

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

WEATHER LOG