Autumnal Boat Thoughts

We have spent the morning organising the boat, getting it ready for a winter in the water. Jason fetched diesel for the heating system and together we sealed nearly all the windows with temporary double glazing. It stops the condensation dripping in as the metal body of the boat heats and cools. The windows are flimsy affairs. They only slot into their apertures, so a mere tug can pull them out completely. This is great in the summer. Not so much fun now the temperature is dropping. Thanks to modern technology involving some kind of weird plastic film and a hair dryer, we can resolve our glazing problems for the price of £20 and a couple of hours work. It would have been less time consuming except that Derek insisted on helping and had to be restrained from eating the plastic and fighting several of the plastic anchoring strips to the death.

Derek has never been overly bothered with real life, so this kind of domestic help is new for us. She did go through a brief phase as a kitten where she would steal any and all pens and pencils, stashing them under a bookcase in the kitchen. I had a theory that she was opening a stationery shop. Business was rather slow and it soon folded. Apart from the children, who always knew to retrieve their compasses from there, she only ever managed to persuade a frog to pop in and that was because she caught it and forced it under there to browse. When I fished it out, squeaking and covered in fluff, it was clear it didn’t want anything to do with a dozen, half chewed biros, and even if it had, it didn’t have any money. I’d say a weasel would have been a better bet. I imagine they’d really go for a fiercely sharpened pencil. Although, being of the criminal persuasion they’d be more likely to nick your stock than buy anything. Anyway, Derek lost interest in a late blooming career as a double glazing sales cat mercifully quickly and went off to sulk in the bedroom, whereupon things went much more smoothly.

The two, air conditioning units we use in the summer have been put in the boot of the car to go back to the storage unit and we have blown the dust off the log burner. We have liberated the pile of blankets from their summer storage and festooned the sofa for the purposes of cocooning ourselves from the outside world. I untangled the Christmas lights and strung them along the book cases and I bought a ‘ghost’ pumpkin for £3, which is sitting in the fruit bowl waiting for me to do something autumnal with it. I am minded to draw a ghostly face on it although it does give me flashbacks to the year Tilly anthropomorphised a butternut squash by making him a top hat, a handlebar moustache and a pair of extremely mournful eyes. Every time I thought about turning him into a delicious laksa, he looked at me and I couldn’t do it. After six weeks he was still going strong. By that point I was convinced he was either irradiated, a mutant, or both. I threw him away but the kids fished him out of the bin and he lasted another month until I took him far from the house and buried him with a stake through his heart in an unconsecrated part of the church yard. I may just be tempting fate with my ghost pumpkin.

Outside the snug, confines of our boat, life at the marina ebbs and flows. A man who lives in a boat opposite has taken to ordering five kilogram bags of swan and duck food and feeding the birds in the manner of St. Francis. This would be admirable if he would contain himself to feeding them from his boat, but he has begun leaving clumps of bird food on the pontoons, like a snack bar for ducks. Jason is furious about this because in return, the birds leave clumps of shit behind as a thank you. I worry about rats. Jason worries about skidding off the pontoon in the dark, having slipped on a large pile of goose poo. Also, all the birds now feel that it is their right to be fed by anyone who looks like a human who lives in a boat. I got door-stepped by two mallards last week and they were not taking no for an answer. It’s a duck eat duck world.

Susan, the Queen of the marina has moved in with an Australian lady who lives in a boat the size of a thimble by the marina gates. Her actual owner doesn’t seem in the slightest bit bothered by this, clearly as cowed by Susan as the rest of us. I was blanked by Susan one day last week and her new mistress said I wasn’t to mind about it as Susan was probably just thinking about the roast chicken they were having for dinner and it was nothing personal. Since moving in to her new quarters, the sparkly diamanté collar with her name on has gone, replaced by a utilitarian one in black and neon green, which will be much more visible in the water when Susan falls off the pontoon again. Her new home seems to be suiting her nicely though, and with the extra layer of fat from all the roast chicken, she will bob to the surface more efficiently next time she falls in.

I love these cold, dark nights on the marina, where the three blocks of flats they’re building at the end of the moorings blink awake into their job as sentinels, keeping watch in the dark reaches of the night. I love the black ink of the water sliding silently on its path, flicking reflections and smirrs of light back at me as I wander back to the boat across the wooden ripples of the pontoon. The dark, stone smell of water mixes with the ripe, fruity smell of wet leaves sticking and printing on the slick paths and the Hunter’s moon rises fat above it all, rolling in its hazy corona.

I gathered all my best beloveds this evening for feasting and celebration. Having a warm boat full to bursting with warmer hearts was magical. Walking back to my beautiful, pea green boat (turquoise, I know, but not so poetic) after waving them all off on their travels, I felt so connected to everything around me. The darkness was lit by thousands of printed squares of light in which lives like and unlike mine are being lived and stories begin and end in the time it takes to flick a switch. On retreat I learned the magic of being alone together with people. I felt it again tonight at a much bigger scale.