Chapter Thirty-two
This is Not the Time for Things to Go Wrong!

THAT EVENING, COVERED IN Germolene and with a swollen nose, I settled down to watch a DVD. It was only nine o’clock and I really fancied watching something pointless. We had been staring gormlessly at the telly for about an hour, when, getting up to make a cup of tea, I noticed that the lights were very dim.

‘What’s up with the lights?’ I asked Geoff.

He looked up from the book he was reading. ‘Oh, I thought it was getting hard to see.’ He wandered down to the engine room and came back to report that our batteries had run out of charge. I shrugged. Ah well, it happened sometimes; without a full day’s run to charge the batteries, we often got only half an evening out of them. There was really no point sitting around in the dark, so we had an early night. The next day was again only a short run, which brought us to the outskirts of Banbury. We moored in time to go down to the big shopping centre which is just off the canal and treated ourselves to dinner in a restaurant, then staggered back to the boat about eight o’clock. The main thing on our minds was a new car; our little Daewoo Matiz wasn’t big enough to swing a cat (although I could think of one that I would really, really like to have tested that cliché with), let alone big enough to pack all our worldly goods into when we finally handed over Happy to Gerald in a couple of days’ time.

As we headed back to Happy, we were all in a slightly pensive mood. Nearing the end of our ‘road’ trip, we were actually going to have to move off her and find something else to do. We hadn’t found another boat, we hadn’t made any firm plans, the future was a blank and at some point we were actually going to have to sit down and make a plan to fill it with something.

Ah well, push those worries aside, tomorrow is another day as they say. We opened the hatch and, reaching into the boat, I flicked the light switch; nothing except a vague glow. Damn, no electricity again. Ah well, another early night.

The next morning brought two major problems. We still had no electricity so couldn’t have a cup of tea, and the smell from the bathroom had become pungent again. We really needed to get to a pump-out today. Avoiding looking down the toilet, I left Geoff in charge of the sleeping kids and, with his head in the electrics, I walked back down the tow path, intent on using Starbucks’ loo and collecting the takeaway beverages so necessary to get us functioning in the early morning.

On my return, I opened the front door, carefully juggling a tea and a double mocha with peppermint shot and whipped cream (a girl could get used to that first thing in the morning) and was confronted by Geoff, waving a bit of wire at me.

‘Look at that,’ he grinned. ‘I found it.’

‘It’s a bit of wire,’ I tried to edge round him. Come on, matey, my coffee’s getting cold.

‘Yes, but it’s an important bit of wire, this is the wire from the alternator – no wonder we haven’t been getting any electricity.’

I finally managed to sit down and grab a sip of my lukewarm calorie fest. ‘That’s lovely, can you fix it?’

Geoff pondered for a moment, and, grabbing a greasy bag, unearthed a chocolate croissant. ‘Oh yeth,’ he spluttered around a mouthful, ‘it might take a couple of hours though.’

Great, ah well, nothing for it. I waited until the children were awake and then dragged them out for a cooked breakfast. On the way back, we spent an hour on an extremely entertaining kids’ playground. It had some horrific adult torture implements disguised as educational play equipment and by the time they had finished whizzing me about and bumping me up and down, I vowed never to have mocha for breakfast ever again. Luckily Geoff rang me to say that everything was fixed and the kettle was on, and, with that good news, we headed back to the boat.

The smell from the bathroom and, strangely enough, also from our bedroom, was now utterly disgusting, and the first job of the morning was to pump out. Being used to pumping out being free in Cambridgeshire, I was horrified at the £15 we were required to pay – well, we would have been required to pay, if the guy’s pump-out machine hadn’t broken only five minutes into the exercise. It was a pain, but at least we figured it would have reduced the mass in the tank, which would give us another couple of days in which to find another one.

On the other side of Banbury we discovered the delights of lift bridges, all of them down. There is a knack to lift bridges: you have to pull the boat over to the side of the canal, let the bridge opener off the boat, wait until the bridge is up, and go carefully underneath between very narrow walls. Glancing upwards at the inland waterways equivalent of the sword of Damocles hanging over your head, you hold your breath and, when it doesn’t fall, you breathe a huge sigh of relief and then pull in again to let your partner get back on; how people do it single-handed I’ll never know.

After seven of these wretched things, we had had enough and decided to moor up for the night. It was quite early and, as we were fairly close to one of the garages listed in the local paper, we decided to go and see if we could find a new car.

The address of the garage was a little vague to say the least. It was listed as Adderbury, but after taking the hour and a half walk to that village, we couldn’t find it anywhere. The walk from the canal to Adderbury is horrendous; there is absolutely no provision made for walkers along that stretch, the cars come past at 60 or 70 miles an hour as you stagger, tripping over lumps and ditches, the three miles into the village. By the time we got there, we were tired, hot and fed up, and knowing that we would have to face the same walk back just made it worse. When we worked out that the garage that we were looking for wasn’t in the village, well, I can’t remember being that irritated for a long time.

Finally making it back to the canal, the kids and I made a grateful break for the boat. Geoff hesitated.

‘What’s up,’ I called back to him.

‘You carry on,’ he said, ‘I’m just going to walk a bit in the other direction and see if the garage is that way instead.’

‘OK,’ I called, thinking ‘weirdo’. ‘I’ll have the kettle on for when you get back.’

Geoff was back within 20 minutes. ‘We went the wrong way,’ he laughed. ‘It’s just over the bridge.’

The kids did not find him funny.

I was quite happy to be out of the boat the next morning – the smell from the bathroom had become almost intolerable. You had two choices: either sleep with the windows closed and suffocate due to the smell, or sleep with the windows open and freeze to death. The smell drove all of us out of the boat by nine and we straggled down the road to the garage.

After much discussion, we had decided that we were looking for a big car with four doors and a large boot. There was still a huge amount of stuff that we would have to unload from the boat. This garage was advertising a Toyota people carrier which would be ideal.

What we ended up with that day was a two-door, sporty Ford 4x4, with a less than ideally sized boot but very pretty. I blame Geoff for giving in too easily. The Toyota was horrible, faded to an almost pink colour and sported chintz curtains. Charlie and I, even bleating together, shouldn’t really have been able to break one of his plans that easily. But the Ford was nice and the garage was very helpful. When we explained our circumstances (and gave them a cheque for the full amount) they were more than happy to come and pick us up from wherever we had made it to and bring us back to pick up Mab, as she was christened by the kids, after her MOT.

We were on our way again and, at Aynho Wharf, we paid for a full pump out and bought some supplies. As we pulled away, it started to rain – the first rain for two weeks – and I went to drag out the waterproofs to find that, once again, against all reason and experience, we had put them into storage.

We had arranged to meet Gerald at Lower Heyford the next day. I have to admit I wasn’t exactly pleased to see him, not that there was anything wrong with him, he was a nice guy, but he was buying our boat and, quite frankly, I was entirely unsure as to whether I wanted to sell her. Not that we had a lot of choice – it was his money that had just bought our new car, and we were planning to get a new one, so I kept telling myself it would be OK, but that didn’t stop me feeling a little sad.

I was surprised at the intensity of my feelings. I have lived in many houses during my working career, usually moving every two years, and have never worried about leaving a house, never having found one that really felt like home.

After all the work and the various traumas over the past two years, Happy felt like ‘home’. We had been through a lot with her, had completely changed her and modernised her and I loved everything about her. Not only about her, per se, but also about the lifestyle that she embodied and the changes that living aboard had wrought. Geoff, knowing how I felt, kept up a continual chatter about the prospective new boat, what we were hoping to get, what we were hoping to do and, little by little, it became another adventure to look forward to.

I didn’t mention it, but I still harboured secret regrets about the loss of Happy and day-dreamed about winning the lottery and having our own fleet. But sitting on the roof, feeling the rain running down the back of my neck, it did occur to me that maybe it would be nice if the next boat had a wheelhouse.

The next day, Gerald turned up on his push-bike, which we loaded on to the roof. Trying to absent myself from all the technical explanations that were sure to be going on, the kids and I settled into a pile of DVDs and swore to keep as far away from the back of the boat as possible. I did stick my head out once or twice while delivering mugs of tea, but didn’t get involved. Seeing someone that wasn’t Geoff handling my boat was just too much and I felt sick and sad every time I saw it.

I had to admit Gerald handled her length very well and, by the end of the afternoon, he was sure that he could complete the final leg of her journey to her new moorings by himself, or at least with the aid of his family.

As we pulled into our mooring for the evening at Gibraltar, we watched him cycle away into the gloom and the headache that had been lurking at the edges of my consciousness finally evolved into a full-blown migraine, complete with disco lights and sound effects. I don’t have them very often but when I do, oh boy do I know it. The kids rushed around putting out lights and helping me toward the bedroom. Charlie, knowing which drugs to look for, rushed into the bathroom and then emerged white-faced, saying that all she could find was an empty packet.

This was very bad. Without some serious painkillers, I was liable to be laid up for three full days and that was three full days that we really couldn’t afford to lose. Geoff gave strict instructions to Charlie to watch her brother – and her mother – and then shot out of the door.

He was gone for about half an hour, but when he returned he had a supermarket bag holding lots of much-needed drugs.

Later, when the drugs had kicked in and the lights in my head had switched off, I asked him where he had got them from. He shrugged.

‘I went a couple of boats down and spoke to one of the owners, told them what the problem was and he immediately grabbed his keys and drove me to the local supermarket, waited around for me to get what you needed and then drove me back here.’

‘Oh, what a sweetie.’ I stood up and, ferreting around under the sink, found the rather good bottle of wine that I knew was under there. I wandered down the line of boats until I found the one Geoff had described, gave him the wine and thanked him profusely.

He blushed and muttered, ‘We look after each other.’ I nodded and thanked him again. I was going to miss this so much it brought my headache back.

Waking up the next morning, I was completely confused; we had completed a full pump out the previous day – how on earth could the boat still smell so bad? Maybe it wasn’t the pump-out tank at all, maybe that duck-eating cat had actually snuck in and sprayed all over the bedroom. I sighed, hmm, not really likely.

Hunting for a lost slipper, I got down on hands and knees to look under the bed, aha, there it was. I reached under and grabbed it, overbalanced and put my hand down on the carpet. It was completely soaked.

What the hell? I got up and, grabbing a torch, peered beneath the bed. It was horribly apparent what had happened. The pump-out tank had actually overflowed, but because Happy was lower at the back than the front, all the liquid had slid under the wall and along the top of the tank, running down the sides to soak the carpet in urine and other ‘stuff’. Oh yuck.

After washing my hands for a full five minutes, I finally got my OCD tendencies under control and went to tell Geoff.

‘What are we going to do?’ I addressed his bottom, which was all that was sticking out from under the bed. ‘We can’t sell her smelling like this.’

Geoff climbed back to his feet. ‘Let’s clean the carpet and see how she smells after that,’ he instructed.

For three hours, I squashed myself, a bucket and a scrubbing brush under that stupid bed; the carpet was still wet when we went to sleep that night, but at least it smelt more of lemons than pee.

Leaving the carpet to dry, we carried on toward Thrupp, our ultimate destination. We took far longer than normal at our final lock, Shipston Weir, spending time studying the walls and watching the water that was leaking through the badly fitted lock gates hitting the sill and exploding back upwards in a beautiful, diamond-effect light show, courtesy of the low sun. We finally left the lock and I spent some time staring back at it as it very slowly disappeared into the distance. I wondered if I would ever go through a lock again or whether I was destined to become a ‘Gongoozler’. I shook my head; if I couldn’t see the lock from a boat, I vowed never to go near a lock again.

Just past Thrupp, we moored up outside ‘The Jolly Boatman’. We had four days in which to move out, and it wasn’t really enough time. One day to pick up the car, one day to move as much stuff as possible into storage, one day to do the final packing, one day to clean and do the final, final packing, and there was a horrible possibility that, in amongst all the moving and cleaning, we would have to lay a new carpet in the bedroom, which now smelt like a cat had died in a vat of lemons.

Amelia and Huw, two days away from moving into their own pad, came down to help and, surprisingly enough, they really did help. They took it upon themselves to keep the kids occupied while we ran around inventing new swear words and stuffing items into boxes; it was the best thing they could have done. They also went out for takeaway food and delivered all our rubbish to the tip – the thanks they got were heartfelt and genuine.

The new car arrived the next morning and, after packing it to the roof with belongings that we felt wouldn’t be needed for the next month, Geoff and Huw took off for the day to dump it at storage, leaving Amelia and I to pack some more boxes.

Watching me pack up my kitchen, Amelia suddenly remembered all the items that she was short of in her own flat, and we ended up packing half of the boxes in her car. Saucepans, cutlery, cooking utensils, mugs ... it wasn’t as though I didn’t need those items, it was just that she needed them more, and for once I could do the proper ‘mum’ thing and help out a little.

That evening, we went out for a meal and although the food was very good, the mood was quite sombre. Amelia was having problems dealing with our complete lack of anything resembling a plan and became quite vocal about the remote possibility of having ‘normal’ parents; I assured her it wasn’t likely to happen and asked her, ‘If we were to move back into a house now, and become “normal” as you so call it, what difference would that make to you?’

She looked at me over a cup of tea. ‘None, really, but at least my parents would be the same as everyone else’s.’

‘And that is important because ...?’ I prompted.

She sighed. ‘Actually,’ she looked down, ‘I quite like telling people about how mad you are, and if I do anything that seems a little insane I can blame it on family influence.’

‘Gee thanks – do you do insane things a lot?’

Huw butted in, ‘Only when she’s bored.’

I laughed. ‘Being bored and doing insane things is a family trait,’ I informed him. ‘You’d better watch out, it will only get worse as she gets older.’

The evening finished with everybody in a much happier frame of mind. We had become resigned to not knowing exactly what we were going to do next and Amelia had decided that she was quite happy to be the boring one for the next couple of years, although, after that, anything might happen. I had informed her that any time she felt like breaking away from normality, not only would I finance it if I could, I would physically cheer her on.

The next morning started very early, a little hung over, and spitefully bright, as if pointing out exactly what we were going to be missing with the loss of Happy.

A smaller narrow boat pulled in front of us and, after a quick chat, graciously agreed to take all my beloved plants, including Charlie’s odd collection of strange and bizarre cacti. Although lovely people, they didn’t make me feel any better by expressing shock and horror that Happy was being sold.

Sitting down to dinner that evening, I took one mouthful and suddenly couldn’t eat any more; Geoff raised his eyebrows at me.

‘I’m sorry,’ I sniffed. ‘It’s just really hit me – in two days’ time, we are going to be rolling in money and will once again be completely homeless.’

Geoff took a mouthful of his own tea. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘but we’ll buy a new boat, and it will all be all right.’

‘The kids think they want a house, you know.’

‘I know,’ he sighed. ‘I just don’t think I want to go back to “normality”. It would be so boring.’

‘We can’t just keep travelling around looking for a new boat. The whole home schooling thing isn’t working out well and I’m really aware that we aren’t working very hard at it.’ I took a deep breath and continued, ‘We don’t even know where we are going when we leave the boat. I mean, what direction are we even going to be heading in?’

Geoff put his cup down on the shelf. ‘Tell you what,’ he shuffled over until he was sitting next to me. ‘Let’s head over to Suffolk. We can land ourselves on my sister for a little while, at least we’ll be able to use the Internet, and it will give us a base to work from.’

‘Well, any plan is better than none at all.’ I took another deep, shuddering breath. ‘I don’t want to sell her; I can’t remember now why we felt we needed to.’

Geoff assumed a superior expression. ‘It’s because those wretched kids keep growing, especially that Charlie and ...’ he shook his head, ‘I really need to retrain so that I can get a job.’

‘Oh yeah, that little thing. Tell you what, I can sort out one of those problems, we’ll just stop feeding Charlie.’

With at least a sort of mini plan in mind, I felt somewhat better; at least I knew where we were going when we finally got into our car and drove away.

Our final day of boat ownership arrived and we woke in the morning, aiming to be sad all day, but as the lemon scent had now worn off the carpet, the smell of cat was now overriding every sense, even the emotional ones. Geoff had bought a new piece of carpet and underlay the previous day and his first job of the morning was to get rid of the smell. He dragged the old carpet and underlay out of the boat and almost immediately the smell began to clear. It was such a relief, I was sorry we hadn’t done it three days previously.

By four o’clock, everything was done. Gerald had called by and picked up the keys, and Amelia and Huw, with lots of kisses and goodbyes, had wedged themselves into their car, overflowing with household items that either they wanted or we didn’t have space for in our car, and had convinced them that they needed.

Happy was depersonalised, empty and echoing. We did a final walk-through, checking under beds and in cupboards. The new carpet looked great and smelled of, well, new carpet; we had cleaned and polished and scrubbed and the whole boat looked crisp, clean and professional.

Under Sam’s bed, I found his ready-packed rucksack containing his beloved beddybear, one hand-held games console, some games and a handful of Beano comics. I showed the contents to Geoff.

‘There would have been ructions if he had left this behind,’ I laughed shakily. He smiled and, taking the rucksack from me, continued walking up the boat.

Charlie and Sam were sitting quietly (for once) together on the sofa. Charlie had her rucksack and Geoff gave the one he was holding to Sam with a shake of his head.

‘Come on,’ Geoff indicated the door. ‘Time to go.’

The kids nodded and climbed out through the doors and on to the tow path.

‘Have you got everything?’ he looked enquiringly at me as I leaned against the kitchen unit.

I sighed. ‘I think so. Come on, let’s get out of here.’

Out on the bank, he stood for a moment in the twilight. ‘Are you sure, you lot, that everything is out, because once I lock this padlock we can’t get back in.’ After a moment’s silence, we all nodded. Geoff hesitated for a few moments just waiting for the normal ‘Argh, I forgot ...’ and then turned and decisively locked the padlock into place.

Without a word, we all hoisted our backpacks and headed down the tow path toward the car. Just before the bridge, Geoff and I turned to look back at Happy, floating in the darkness.

I looked up at him. ‘We had fun?’

He nodded. ‘Yes, we did. Are you upset?’

‘No, not really.’

He nodded again. ‘Come on then, onward and upward. Let’s get this monkey show on the road.’

As he left, I stood for a moment and thought about what I had just said. It had been the truth, I wasn’t really upset, and I was looking forward to doing something else. I peered through the deepening dark for a final glimpse of Happy. Without her cheerful, yellow lights throwing squares and circles of reflected illumination on to the tow path and into the water, she looked dead and cold.

I turned decisively away. Geoff was right, onward and upward, a new boat would be great. I thought about it for a moment, then shouted up the tow path to Geoff who was standing under the bridge watching me.

‘Geoff?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve made a decision.’

He stepped out from under the bridge with a quizzical and wary look. ‘What would that be then?’

‘Do you know where the passports are and how fast we can arrange tickets to Holland?’

He frowned. ‘Yes, and pretty fast. Why?’

I squared my shoulders and took a deep breath; a new challenge, new things to learn, new things to run into. I grinned at him and, heaving my rucksack out of the dirt, threw it over my shoulder.

‘Let’s go to sea.’