Marina, Aqua Marina

We will start with the self pity and then move on to more useful things.

Man, this Covid is an absolute fucker. I am getting better. It just doesn’t feel like it a lot of the time. I’m as giddy as a kipper, so only useful in prone situations, much like the Victorian invalid I used to be. It’s a good job I’ve been trained for a life of languishing pointlessly on the sofa making acerbic observations.

Jason, tired of ready meals in the microwave and eager to exploit my weakness, has succumbed to an Air Fryer and is now Top Parent. He sent footage of himself cheffing to the family group chat and short of filling the Air Fryer baskets with bundles of cute kittens he had adopted, could not be more popular. I’m pleased that he is at least cooking things with real ingredients instead of mumbling into his Tesco cottage pie about the memory of school dinners past, but I cannot muster enthusiasm.

My appetite is slowly returning but my digestive system is in absolute uproar. For a woman who lives to eat, I am singularly depressed about this. I can still taste things, which is good, but my body has violent opinions about everything, which only emerge after I have already eaten. This means I now approach every meal with the caution of a bomb disposal squad trainee. Yesterday, I was so depressed at the sheer blandness of my diet, I went on the Halen Mon website to order some garlic salt and ended up ordering a hamper’s worth of treats to cheer myself up. I know I am spending money to pour literal salt into the Covid wound. I know.

Let’s catch up on life at the marina where the daily dramas unfold, big and small and keep me entertained while I am all aboard the plague ship.

The mad lady who owns the giant tug boat where all the cats like to shit just to spite her is finally leaving. The company that owns the marina wants to polish up its clientele in the hope of attracting more five star boat owners and a crazy woman shovelling armfuls of cat shit into carrier bags at the entrance of the marina is just not the vibe they were going for. No Poplar ‘Best in Bloom,’ for us this year.

This particular argument between cat shit lady and the marina has been going on for about three years now. She has proven particularly difficult to shift due to her absolute refusal to engage with them on any rational or logical level, which, it transpires, does help in the face of unimaginative, pen pushing bureaucrats who simply don’t know how to handle a five foot, demented termagant who has no issue with losing her mind in public. I admire this quality in her hugely and aspire to be this bloody minded going forwards. It’s absolutely joyous, watching her living her life in such a baffling, unpredictable and unapologetic manner. Having said all that, I am also quite relieved that we are moored a fair distance away from her boat and get to opt out of some or all of her crazier schemes by simply keeping quiet.

A few months ago, she attempted to solicit the help of the other boaters with a plea on our email chain (someone requested we switch to a WhatsApp Group this week, but it was voted down (again) on the grounds that WhatsApp is too quick and only to be used for social get togethers. God help us). She sent a message to say that she believed that the company would board and move her boat while she was out of the country, so would we form a committee to man her boat round the clock while she was away to ensure they couldn’t come aboard? It all feels a bit Swallows and Amazons joining forces to steal Captain Flint’s houseboat, but without the fun and cannons. Sadly, nobody stepped up and she was forced to trust that they wouldn’t be able to sneak off with several tonnes of gigantic tug boat in the night.

One of the things in her favour is that the swing bridge between us and the outside world is knackered. It’s the responsibility of the Canals and River Trust to maintain it and funding has run dry. This means that traffic between the basins and the river is limited to when the Trust can get enough people on board to work the bridge manually. Every few months there is a traffic jam of boats waiting to go in and out, so where she thought they were going to take her beloved boat, I’m not sure. And it’s worked in her favour because now they have actually found a way to kick her out, she still can’t go anywhere until the next time the bridge opens. In the meantime she broods and plots and sends impenetrably strange, piratical emails to the chat. I shall miss her when she goes. So will the cats.

The thing that’s getting everyone aerated at the moment is the question of mooring fees. These are calculated in a very complicated manner and have to do with the length and general size of your boat. It also matters when you arrived at the marina. Long term residents have had fixed mooring agreements, some of which are beginning to run out now, and the shift up from what they pay to what us newcomers pay is making boat life tenuous for a lot of people. This is made more complex by the fact that we pay VAT on our boats, but Tower Hamlets’ Council also make us pay council tax.

One of the long term residents sent an ‘it’s not fair that my mooring fees are going up’ message to the chat last week. She has decided that she is going to the press, the pope and the king to demand justice for boat kind. It was an unfortunate email for many reasons, because once you unpicked all the disparate strands of grievance it basically became a small depth charge that then exploded across the entire boating community. In her attempts to plead for all of us boaters to unite against the ravening greed of the council and the company that owns the marina (facts which none of us disagree with), she also attempted to throw some of the differently classed boat owners to the wolves to save herself, which sort of belies the ‘let’s all come together to fight the MAN,’ message she was sending out.

This has united the marina, just not in the way she was hoping, because now, everyone is really pissed off with her. Even Susan’s dad, who as we know, does not like to use the email chain because ‘you never know who’s reading it,’ messaged in to say: ‘OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE.’ Listen lady. Susan’s actual dad has spoken, and he’s not messing about. The lady who was attacked by the ‘viscous goose’, and who would, as my mother says, ‘be in if she fell in,’ started off in broad agreement with her, but has managed to become so annoyed with her that passive aggression has been employed. A lot of passive aggression and a fair bit of, ‘I know you are, you said you are, but what am I?’ We are aquiver with rampant disapproval, humanly speaking.

Moving on from the disappointing but always entertaining human news, let’s see what the animals of the marina have been up to recently.

The swans are now parents to eight, gorgeously leggy cygnets who look like tiny, grey ballet dancers, gracefully swooping about the marina, hoovering up snacks. Lots of people feed them from the back of their boats, so they’re always hovering around in case you might have something delicious. Unlike the angry, attack swans of yore, who would certainly break your arm as soon as look at you, these are much more patient creatures who merely look very disappointed in you if you don’t pony up the goods. There has been no hissing and no viscosity, which puts the sticky geese to shame.

The people who owned the pug dog which I surmised had no legs, due to the fact that I never actually saw it walk anywhere because it was always bundled under an arm like a greying Swiss Roll, have left the marina. They are victims of the purge to make way for the glamorous party people who will love a life situated between the drug rehab centre, the A12 roundabout and the aromas of Billingsgate fish market. I, for one, welcome our nose blind Russian oligarchs etc. Anyway, I shall miss the apathetic Swiss Roll, but his absence has meant that the shy Corgi who lived next door to the Roll has finally come into his own.

Last week, he spent an entire morning running up and down the pontoon with a look of absolute glee on his face, finally free of pug wrath. His owner was trying to brush him, but had all but given up in the face of his delight in running up and down. Occasionally, as he whizzed past with his skirts up round his knees, she would hold out the brush and run it against his fleeing body, clouds of Corgi fur floating up into the morning sun. He was the very picture of someone living his best life.

Another dog neighbour is Goose, who is, what Tallulah calls, a Hammerhead dog. I don’t know what the real breed is, but the descriptor suits perfectly. Goose looks fierce. He is not fierce at all. He is a gentle boy whose greatest wish in life is to be invited to go anywhere with you as long as it’s in a car. He is a dog meant for a life with Jack Kerouac, rolling through vast plains of the American mid west, wearing a smart bandana and writing his first novel about a life on the open road. In the absence of this dream, he attempts on the daily to sneak up on anyone who looks like they might be going anywhere in a car and looks wistfully at their keys in the hope of being allowed to call shotgun.

Susan, as ever, is just the queen of the marina, the cats and all of us. She reigns supreme and must be obeyed in all things. We are but her humble and obedient servants.

Finally, and in less charming animal news, we have a rat issue. I say we. Luckily for us, it is at the other end of the marina. Apparently, the bushes at the back of the marina are now, as Andy Dwyer would say: ‘a frickin’ rat parade.’ The viscous goose woman was the first to call it in. She has the worst luck with animals. I’d say it’s probably a curse and she might need to get some energy work on that. Anyway, the council’s rat squad has been called in to deal with it. We will see how effective that is. I’d feel sorry for the people at the rat end of the marina, except that I live at the wanker in the bushes end of the marina and we have our own problems to deal with.