Chapter Twenty-one
Why is the Rum, Ahem, Money Always Gone?

BY THE BEGINNING OF March, we were still making slow but steady headway on the refurbishment. We had purchased that last large item, which was a much-needed set of kitchen units, but, in doing so, had spent the last of our money. The new kitchen was proving more than a little challenging to fit, due to the curved walls, the diesel lines and many other little problems that wouldn’t have occurred if we had been attempting to fit it into a nice square room.

We had argued about the kitchen for weeks, changing the design, even at one point changing the location, until, finally, we decided on a plan that neither of us was entirely happy with but that was as good a compromise as we were likely to get.

This purchase put us firmly in the red and, knowing what the outcome would be, I had been trying to avoid any sort of ‘money’ discussion for weeks, until one evening Geoff physically sat me down and said, ‘We’re out of money. We can exist for about another two months but after that we are totally stuffed.’

Great, ‘stuffed’ again. Obviously this was one problem that wasn’t going to go away by ignoring it. I knew it was going to have to be me that went back to work, but I was completely adamant that I was, under no circumstances, going to resume my former position as a contract Helpdesk Manager; the whole prospect, with its huge amount of paperwork and long hours was just too horrible to contemplate. I did, however, have everyday skills such as typing and office admin that would get me a nondescript position that would just keep our heads above water until the boat was finished, and Geoff could go back to work.

The other reason it had to be me was that Geoff didn’t damage himself when using power tools, which was something I did with alarming regularity, much to Geoff’s horror whenever he saw me pick up a drill or a sander. The idea of me using a circular saw was just anathema to us both.

On one memorable occasion I had been using the drill with a sanding brush wire thingy on the end to clean pipes and had somehow missed, and the sanding brush had entwined itself into my sock and most of the way into my shin before Geoff rushed up and hit the off button. (I have been handed manual sandpaper ever since and I don’t think he was convinced I was actually safe with that.)

One week later, I had a job. Manpower, one of the employment agencies in Cambridge, had found me the perfect position; they had taken one look at me and sent me for an interview just outside Ely. It was a great job, well actually it was a really rubbish job, but it suited me down to the ground: a small maintenance company had opened a satellite office and there was only me and one other woman, Bev, working there – she was as acidic as they come – but we got on well. After such a long time of really doing ‘not a lot’, it was very odd to be back at work again, odd but rather nice. All I had to do was chase gas engineers about and dish out jobs to them, making sure that all the details were entered into the company’s antiquated computer system.

Bev didn’t really care what time I got in or if I came in early and went home early, as long as the work was done, so we were both happy. With a regular source of money finally arriving in our bank account every month, we could relax a little and spend the last of our savings on things that the boat needed and not on the tedious business of actually staying alive.

By the end of April, the kitchen was definitely taking up space – I would like to say it was completed but we were still missing the worktops, which made cooking a meal rather difficult. The worktops had, in fact, been installed once but Geoff had made a slight miscalculation and had cut the hole for the sink in the wrong place, so new worktops were required. These, of course, were out of stock so we had to wait. Yet again, we lived on takeaways for a couple of weeks.

When the kitchen was finally complete, the last item to be installed was the water purifier, which dispensed water via a third tap at the kitchen sink – real, clean drinking water; after months of living on bottled water – it was the luxury I was most looking forward to. When it was finally flushed through and ready to be used, we all lined up with glasses. I was reminded of a bunch of excited youngsters and their first taste of alcohol. It was an amazing feeling to just press a button and have real drinkable water flow into a glass – fantastic.

I now know why boat people are so different to your average Joe living in a house; it’s because the things that are so normal to Joe are a source of wonder and amazement to us.

‘Water! Water from a tap!’

‘Yeah, how cool is that!’

Good grief, we’re back in the Stone Age, next we’d be saying what a wonderful invention the wheel was.

It had been so long since we tried to cook on the horrible hob that we had completely forgotten how noisy and awful the stupid thing was, and it came as a crashing disappointment to be reminded in such an audible way. We turned it on and a whole minute might have actually elapsed before we had to turn it off and vacate the kitchen until it had whimpered itself into silence again. Geoff sighed, grabbed his tool kit, dug the wretched contraption out of the worktop and, with the look of a man on a mission, disconnected it from both electrical connection and diesel feed before proceeding to strip the despised thing down to its component nuts and bolts. He figured that, as we couldn’t use it in its current state, there was nothing to lose and we would probably have to buy another one anyway.

There is something quite endearing about a very, very smug husband. A couple of hours later, he had worked out that one particular widget, component thingy had been put in back to front. He had taken it out, turned it around, cleaned everything up and re-installed the hob back into the work surface. He turned it on and we stood and watched it light and heat up, all in blessed silence.

I had to remember to be extra nice to hubby for the next 24 hours and make sure that I kept telling him what a clever lad he was, especially as a new hob and installation would have cost us well over £500. What with all the savings and Geoff in a great mood, probably due to being able to wrap himself round one of my speciality triple-decker, fully fried egg and bacon sarnies, something he hadn’t been able to indulge in for over six months. I felt entirely justified in buying a celebratory pair of boots the next day (they were in the sale and too good a bargain to miss out on – honestly), so everybody was happy.