Night Boat

During the day boat living is a much more communal experience than living in a house. If the weather is good we have our windows open and sometimes slide them out entirely. The stern of the boat is only covered by fancy canvas (pleasingly, this is known as a Bimini, Drag Race fans). It is sectional and can all be unzipped and/or removed, which we do. People pass by on the pontoons, going to and from their boats and everyone chats or at least says hello. A lot of life is lived outside.

Space is at a premium in a boat so everyone makes the space they have work hard and if more can be utilised, it is. Each boat has a little tin locker on the pontoon for extra storage and as well as filling it with stuff, people tend to use it like a window box and grow things up and on it. The woman on the boat next to us has a small salad garden growing on the stern of her boat and over onto her locker. She is always cutting lettuce or watering things. The chap who lives opposite us has pots and pots of flowers tumbling from every surface. He also does yoga on the roof of his boat, which is impressive, simply for not tumbling into the water during an enthusiastic downward dog.

There are animals everywhere. Lots of boat owners have dogs. Oscar and I made friends with a French bulldog (and its owner) yesterday on the way back from emptying the bin. He took such a shine to Oscar he tried to go to sleep on his shoe. There are loads of cats. A shy black one that slinks around the edge of his boat, eyeing up the coots, a magnificently trousered marmalade boy who looks permanently startled by how big his trousers are, a ginger king with a questioning tail and a fat, black boy called Louis who tried to get into our boat last week, which is how come I know his name. No doubt there are others that will emerge in the weeks to come.

As far as wildlife goes there are bands of coots who have gigantic, stupid feet and a plaintive honk. There are a few, discreet moorhens who like to sit on the steps of the quay, thinking about pond weed and life. There is either one, very busy grebe or several very antisocial grebes. I have yet to decide. Ducks pass by and a pair of balletic swans and their six, clown-like cygnets grace us with their presence from time to time. There are fathoms and fathoms of fish of all sizes, threading about in the depths. Occasionally there are illicit fishermen who come at night and cast their rods into the water when they think nobody is looking.

I’m looking, because it’s at night when I like this place best of all.

The marina is surrounded by blocks of flats on three sides. As night draws in and the boats shut themselves up for the night, the flats blink into life. First one light and then another. They shimmer and break across the darkness of the water like golden ink, spilling its secrets. Sometimes you see people. Mostly it’s just the suggestion of movement in hanging boxes of light. One, faraway block has a flat with balcony lights that flash in sequence like Morse code, beaming its coded messages across a sleeping city.

In my boat, I’m low down, tucked into the surface of the water, snug and warm. Up there, they dance like fireflies, flitting impossibly high amongst the cranes that pulse with a different, warning light of their own. It has a romance that the daylight doesn’t deliver on, but that only makes the night more special.