Doing things.....

Yesterday I went for a ride on Santa's sleigh, pulled by Rudolph of course. But I didn't get a chance to sit on Santa's knee and tell him what I want for Christmas only the little ones did that.

On Tuesday I booked my flights to Ecuador and made plans for a five day trek in the Amazon.

Ooooohhh isn't it all exciting.

Gone fishing - Part Two

The Mechanical Magician arrives with a device that would make Heath Robinson envious (or there again maybe not).  It is the new patent device for fishing doors out of rivers.  A pole with a piece of wood fixed on the bottom and the three magnets attached.  The theory is that because it is rigid it will make it easy to manoeuvre and find the door.  It doesn’t make it any easier to find the door, the door seems to have disappeared into The Nene equivalent of The Mariana Trench and is refusing to be located.  The contraption is heavy and awkward and when lobbing it into the river my paintwork and windows are under threat. We keep catching something heavy which may be the door or may be that sunken narrowboat again.  In the end we do thing I always recommend when cunning plans aren’t working.  We pack it in and go and have a cup of tea.

I have a piece of Perspex which fits the side hatch but which I have never used because I have to remove the side hatch doors to fit it in.  Well now I’m half way there, I remove the second door without dropping it in the river and fit the Perspex.  I like it better than the steel doors, it’s light and bright (and draughty but never mind that), the only downside is it illuminates the kitchen floor which is in serious need of a good clean.

We now need a new plan to retrieve my door.  The Mechanical Magician talks to a man in the chandlers who has a friend who knows a man who has the full scuba diving kit.  A decides if somebody is going diving he needs a chimney retrieving and if he’s down there he might as well bring up that butlers sink that is behind my boat because it will be useful for planting flowers in.

Later that day The Man Who Knows Everything comes over for coffee and tells me we have been going about this in the wrong way.  He will come over on Saturday and show us how it should be done.  Problem solved then.

Gone fishing

I needed more light to see where to put the screws for the thermal curtains I was putting up across the side hatch.  I opened one side door.  I opened it carefully because I knew the hinges were dodgy.  I didn’t open it carefully enough and it escaped my grasp and jumped into the river.

I could see it in the shallow water near the bank and I thought I’d be able to get it out with my sea searcher magnet.  I couldn’t find the magnet.  Went to T to borrow his.  Caught the door but was at the wrong angle to pull it in.  B came along to help, we decided we needed two magnets. Asked B if he had one he said ‘no, I borrow T’s if I need one’ asked everybody else but it seemed that everybody borrowed T’s magnet  if they needed one.  We tried again with one magnet : caught the door: pulled it just within reach: tried to grab it: it avoided capture and slid away under the boat.

Untied the bow and let the current take the boat out far enough to locate the door.  B did a balancing act along the gunwale with the magnet finds the door again starts to gently haul it out of the water and then watches it fall away and move further into the middle of the river. Citing cold hands and pressure of work B leaves me to it.

I suddenly remembered I’d tidied the back cabin when the washing machine was removed.  Looked in tidied compartments and found the sea searcher magnet.  That just proves tidying up is a bad idea, I’m not going to do it again.

Now I have two magnets and two new helpers.  The Mechanical Magician and the Landlord arrive, the boat is moved back and they perch on it’s outside edge and go fishing.  They catch the door.  They start to walk it gently towards the bow.  Almost there it suddenly drops away.  It disappears from view.

The fishing starts again. The rope on one of the magnet breaks, they search for it with the other one and catch the missing magnet.   The Mechanical Magician appears with a third magnet, a heavy beast that looks as if it will do the job. He slings it into the river. The rope breaks.  They go fishing for the third magnet. Retrieve the third magnet and then have difficulty separating them all.

They start all over again with three magnets on long ropes. The Landlord says they can feel something heavy down there, but it won’t be hauled up, he wonders if it’s a sunken narrowboat.  Over the next half hour they catch my boat, each others magnets, an awful lot of bottle tops (who would have thought that boaters drank that much) various screws and coins and eventually they catch the door.  Then they lose it again.

The fog rolls up the river, it is cold and getting dark and they go home to get warm. I cover the hole in the side hatch with cardboard.  We’ll have another try tomorrow.

Good News

It is a month after the typhoon hit The Philippines and I have just learned that all of my ex colleagues in Tacloban have survived.  I have only had direct communication with Emelyn because she had moved away from the city and the area of West Samar was less badly affected.  In the case of my other friends I have found out they are safe by trawling through Facebook to look at postings from their friends and relatives.  I won’t make bad remarks again about Facebook (well not for a while anyway) for it has been a very useful forum for information about the survivors. 

We had a fund raising evening at the club.  We ate Filipino food and danced the Tinikling, the dance which entails stepping in and out of bamboo canes.  There weren’t many broken ankles. It all made me realise how there is much about the country and people that I miss. When the communications are up and running, which isn’t likely to be until after Christmas, I will send the money raised directly to the people to help rebuild their homes.

Watching and Waiting

The Man that Knows Everything knocked on my roof this morning at 7am demanding coffee. He’s a happy bunny because he had just heard from his new love in The Philippines that she and her family are safe.  She’d queued for four hours to make a three minute telephone call.  She said there was no sign of any food being distributed within the city and was surprised that throughout the world money was being donated to help them.  Four days must seem an eternity to be without food or fresh water and to live amongst the death and destruction of this typhoon. It is easy to criticise the government and aid agencies for doing too little too slowly but the logistics of moving help to disaster zone must be incredibly difficult.

I am doing what he has spent the last few days doing. Watching video after video to see if there is a face I can recognise:  looking at the scenes of devastation to see if I can identify places of safety that friends could have gone to: the office I worked from is no longer standing:  the area of Sagakahan where my friend and god-daughter live is flattened and under water.

Going to school

 

As my son said we often see images of disasters of displaced and grieving people but when you know the place and many of the inhabitants those images are so much more emotive. 

Barugo Church

I keep wondering if the lovely children in the schools I visited have survived, what about the chatty man who sold me roast chicken and the miserable old cow at the supermarket check-out.  What about MacMac who strapped half coconut husks on his feet to polish my floor. I can’t get any information about what has happened in Barugo where the biscuit makers co-operative I worked with live or in Barangay Bukid where the chicken rearing project was started.  All we can do at the moment is to watch and wait and give money to the aid agencies.  When the communications are up and running then I can send money directly.  I think Western Union will get the money transfer system working as soon as possible, after all they aren’t going to miss a business opportunity like this, then I can send money directly to the people to help them try and rebuild their lives. It is all I can do.

 

The eye of the storm

Here on The Nene we battened down the hatches for a storm that never arrived.  It seems trivial that we even worried about it when you compare it to the truly devastating storm that has hit The Philippines.

Tacloban Harbour in calmer times

I’m finding the news from there particularly poignant because the centre of the storm was in Tacloban a city I lived in for two years.  I can look at the pictures of the devastation and recognise the places that have been damaged.  I know how vulnerable are the shanty towns that have grown up around the edge of the Tacloban Bay.  Many of the people that I worked with lived in bamboo dwellings roofed with grass which offer little protection from falling coconut and banana trees or telegraph poles.

 

Tacloban Shanty Town

I lived through one typhoon that’s epicentre passed through the city.  It was nowhere near as strong as this typhoon and I lived in a concrete house above the areas liable to flooding yet it was still frightening.  I can only imagine how terrifying it was to have the wind howling around a house amongst trees, with roofs that are about to take off and watching torrential rain fall and see the water rising or to live on a hillside where the drenching could trigger landslips.

 The people of The Philippines are resilient.  They have to because disasters strike regularly. They will pick themselves up, clear up the mess and get on with their lives.  They will do it with humour and humanity. One thing my two years in Tacloban did teach me was to love and respect the Filipinos, especially the very poor. At the moment I can’t reach any of the people I know out there but my thoughts are with them and I hope they have come through the storm unscathed.



Bohol hit by the typhoon and a recent earthquake

Ear Worms

My current ear-worm is Perfect Day, not surprising as it’s being played a lot on the radio following the death of Lou Read, and it’s embedded itself in my head.

As I was walking yesterday afternoon with Perfect Day on a continuous loop I thought that it actually was a perfect day.  The wind had dropped and the sun was out casting a strong yellow light across the changing colours of the autumn leaves.  Overhead the Kites were calling. The river was glistening away into the distance.  Then at 5.00pm it started to get dark.  A day that ends that early is far from being perfect.  I hate the short days of winter.




5pm and it's almost dark!

We might not have got the high winds of the storm but somewhere around here it’s been raining heavily.  The river which only a few days ago was still and clear is now a fast flowing khaki.  I left on Monday morning and it had risen a few inches I came back late and in the dark on Monday night and banged my knee on the side of the boat as I tried to step in.  The river had risen a couple of feet.  The EA have slapped strong stream notices on, so there won’t be any boats passing although yesterday the rowers were out. 

There’s not a lot of rain forecast for the rest of the week so hopefully the river will go down as we’re all hoping that we don’t get the flooding we had last year.

 

An imperfect storm

Laying in bed watching a grey dawn break and reading boaters blogs.  Sensible people have been preparing for the predicted storm.  Solar panels have been strapped down, items have been removed from roofs, boats have been moored away from trees, ropes have been checked, hatches have been battened.

I did look at the wind direction and decided the tree next to my boat would land on my car and not the boat so maybe it would be a good idea to move my car. I didn’t get around to moving the car.  Until I read some blogs this morning I didn’t even think of removing planks and poles from the roof. I didn’t think to check the ropes. I haven’t got a hatch to batten.

This morning the wind doesn’t seem very powerful, the ropes are giving occasional creaks and groans.  The rain is sporadically hammering on the roof but here on The Nene the weather doesn’t seem much different from the last few days, if anything the wind seems quieter.

I’ve just looked out and the chimney, planks and poles and brooms are still on the roof. My car is tree free.   So it was just as well that I didn’t take time out from reading a crappy novel to prepare for a storm that seems to have passed us by.  I was right in having a good nights sleep and not laying awake worrying about the consequences of extreme weather.  I just wish I’d remembered to bring my full coal scuttle and box of kindling in out of the rain.

 

Being stupid

Moving downriver last week:

I prepared to leave. I pushed the bow out and let the flow and the wind take it round while I stood at the tiller relaxing and  admiring the scenery. When it was facing downstream I put it into gear ready to move off.

I didn’t move. Damn.

I put it back into neutral, into gear again this time with more revs: still no movement.  The bow had now come right round and I was almost resting on the boat behind. I roared the engine and still there was no movement.

Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.  Just what I needed more expense! Bloody boats are always costing money!

Then I looked down and noticed I hadn’t untied my stern rope from the mooring.

In Memoriam

Now the grief has subsided and time has started to heal the pain I have permission to tell the sad story of the demise of Badger, a quiet and dignified dog.

 On getting off the boat on a Sunday morning after a heavy night in the pub…………..

‘AM, why are you carrying a spade?’

‘The dog died last night’

'Oh’

‘I’m waiting for J to bury her.  I don't want to go back on the boat with my dead dog on it’

‘But you spent all night lying next to a dead dog’ says J

 ‘Yes, but I didn’t know she was dead then’

 ‘Wasn’t the fact that she’d stopped wheezing and gone stiff and cold a bit of a give-away’

 ‘Look can’t you just take this spade and bury the dog’

 ‘Shall I put it over by those trees, that’s a nice place for her to be buried’

‘No, it’s on a flood plain if the river floods again she might get washed away and I don’t want to look out of my window in six months time and see the dog sailing passed’

J does a very good impression of a dead dog zooming downstream: stiff legs: head at an awkward angle: inane grin on its face.

 ‘OK, AM we’ll set off and find a suitable place to bury her on the way back.’  So they take the spade back on board, start up the boat and go.

The rest of us stand around drinking coffee and swapping dead animal stories:  the dog which was wrapped tightly in a black bin bag and when the garden was dug over five years later it was preserved in its original state seriously disturbing the children who thought it had been re-incarnated:  the goat that wasn’t buried deep enough and the first heavy rain rearranged its burial site making four legs stick heavenwards like tent poles. The man Who Knows Everything tells of a neighbour who had their pet cat stuffed, he can do a good impression of a dead cat, it’s looking upwards with its tongue lolling out, gazing lovingly at it’s owner. R tells of sweating away burying a dead dog deeply, sticking  a cross over it and then going in and being told he had to move it because it was in direct view of the kitchen window and it would be upsetting to look out on it every day. He went out, dug it up and re-buried it.  ‘Why didn’t you just rough the new ground up a bit and move the cross?’  asks B

‘Oh, I never thought of that.’

‘We shouldn’t be making jokes’ says B ‘AM was really upset, you know she’s had that dog for years and to make matters worse it died on her birthday' 

We mumble and nod in sympathy and drink more coffee.

 'Maybe we should send her a ‘With Sympathy’ card.’

 'She’d think we were taking the piss’

‘How about we make up a poem about the dog and add that to the card, sort of personalise it. What was the dogs name?’

 ‘Badger’

 ‘Ok what rhymes with Badger?’

 ‘Tadger’ says The Man Who Knows Everything

 ‘I think the dog was female, she wouldn’t have a tadger’

 ‘Right, there’s the start of the rhyme

Poor little Badger

Never had a tadger………………………….’

We heard later that further downriver the dog burying saga continued.  They stopped at Lilford Lock, one of the prettiest and most peaceful locks on The Nene and found the ideal spot for Badger to be laid to rest but the spade was too weak to cope with the tree roots.  They moved on down to Oundle and found a quiet place on the riverbank but the poxy spade wouldn’t go through the hard ground so they put her in the back of the car to take her home.  Then they arranged a family meal so didn’t have time to bury the dog so she stayed in the garden until the birthday celebrations were over. 

Poor old Badger, more trouble in death than she ever had been in life.

 

 

Fishy

I took the skin from some fillets of fish.

I opened the kitchen window to throw the skins into the river to feed cannbalistic fishes.

I flicked them out to prevent them landing on the gunwales.

As they fell riverwards the pointy bit of a canoe appeared from the right. 

The skins landed on the boat.

The canoeist paddled passed giving me a terse nod and proceded upriver with a lump of slimy fish skin sitting on the prow of his canoe.

Serves him right for canoeing so close to moored boats.

One foggy morning.....

With a little help from its friends the engineless boat is on the move again. It was returned to Fotheringhay were it reclined on the riverbank for a few weeks and then it was sold.

The new owner looked over the boat, sat on the riverbank beside it and absorbed its aura, gazed towards the heavens and received signs that this was the boat for her and arrived the next day accompanied by her mother and a bag full of twenty pound notes and bought it. ‘It was meant to be’ ‘God had sent them to this boat’.  I thought that I’d rather trust a good boat surveyor than the word of God but I’m just an old cynic so what do I know. And at least the word of God is free, boat surveys can be expensive.

The Haulage Contractor was away on the canals so the first reserve took over and brought the boat from Fotheringhay to Oundle.  Breasted up he managed it single-handed to Oundle (what a clever chap)and then I was volunteered to help from Oundle to Ringstead. The new owner and her mother, a couple of fruitcakes from Dundee, were traveling with us.  The early start on a foggy morning was delayed while tobacco was sprinkled on the bows of the two boats to ensure a trouble free journey.  The new owner felt that the she had a connection with the previous owner, she loved everything he had done to the boat, there was synchronicity, the vibes from him permeated the boat, she loved it.  She wasn’t so keen on the smell from his bodily fluids that also permeated the boat so we were delayed further while it had a pump-out.

The fog was still thick as we headed towards Lilford although the faint yellow ball of sun was appearing in the sky.  Cobwebs hung thickly on the branches of the trees. We didn’t expect to meet anybody that early on a foggy morning but there was a cruiser in Lilford lock, with two boats breasted up we couldn’t wait on the lock landing because it would have blocked his exit so we hovered mid-stream, the flow from the weir pushing us gently towards the right bank.  The cruiser came out of the lock, there was plenty of room to pass on the left-hand side but as a law abiding boater he wanted to pass on the right, squeezing through reeds and bushes he shouted at us ‘You haven’t left me much room’.  The new owner gave him a beautific smile spread her arms wide and said ‘I hope you have a lovely day’.  She should have sprinkled a bit of tobacco on his bows to improve his chances of a good journey.

The sun glimmered through the mist and it was breakfast time.  The ladies had said they would do the food for the journey.  Our driver was looking forward to that boating essential, a bacon butty.  He got crisps, peas in the pod and a cup of tea.  Breasted up we squeezed through the narrow bridge before Titchmarsh with an inch to spare on either side and after Islip lock we put the second boat behind to get through the awkward bridge at Thrapston.  I was on the engineless boat and surprised to find that I had some steerage.  We went through Thrapston Bridge without any difficulty, the sun came out, the beer came out, the ladies lit their cigarettes. It was getting hot I borrowed a sun hat a large floppy red and white hat to which I could have got attached.  

The new owners were delighted with their boat, delighted with the meandering river and delightful to be with.  Lunch was served: egg and cheese salad (sorry forgot the mayonnaise) by now our driver was having hallucinations about bacon so they left a pack of cakes with him. A lock further on the females on the following boat decided we wanted cake so the cakes were retrieved and he had to make do with a bit of salad and some more peas in the pod.  He drowned the thoughts of bacon with another can of beer. We were having a lovely time the sprinkled tobacco was obviously working, I’ll have to try it although I think I’ll have get hold of special tobacco.

We left them at Ringstead, waving fond farewells, promising to keep in touch.  Mother was grinning madly, the remnants of peas still stuck between her teeth. Going back downriver without the drag of another boat it felt as if we were white water rafting.

Two days later at a party in the clubhouse there was a lot of mutterings about people passing old twenty pound notes and much speculation about where they had come from. Those of us who knew exactly where they had come from kept quiet

 

BSC

 

It’s our fourth anniversary: four mostly happy years together. Well she won’t have been happy about the number of times I have thumped her into brick walls and I wasn’t happy when she deposited a lot of water on the carpet and I have to admit that on cold dark winter days I have wanted to leave her for a centrally heated semi-detached house.  Yet on balance they have been four relatively harmonious years.

Four years together means that the BSC is due and the realisation that I haven’t looked after her as well as she deserves to be looked after.  She isn’t going to fail because the gunwales need painting or I haven’t moped that puddle in the engine bay or the brasswork doesn’t gleam but she will fail because I’ve broken the glass on the stove (yet again) and a couple of the gas taps are sticking. 

I buy a new piece of glass for the stove.  I buy the wrong size. I can’t get the screws on the gas hob undone.  She’s not going to pass. I have a cunning plan. I will make a large pot off paella over my brazier and I will get some beer in and ask a couple of guests to join me, the sort of guests who will do anything for food and beer and are likely to have glass cutters and tool-kits.

The plan worked, gas fitments cleaned, glass in fire door fitted, so the next morning when the Inspector called I thought I was sorted.  I wasn’t of course, it appeared I needed straps on my batteries (why?) a clip on my fuel pipe, rope around the lower fire door (forgot to look at that one) and I had a small gas leak (somewhere).  The Mechanical Magician sprang into action and fixed straps and clips and I went along the mooring to blag some fire-proof rope and glue and by the time we’d done that the small gas leak had cured itself.

So we’ve got the certificate and now are ready to spend the next four years together. I’m looking forward to it but although she doesn’t say so I think Rea is looking into the future with some trepidation.

Anchored

A friend says 'It's OK for you when you get fed-up with your neighbours you can just drop your anchor and leave.' 

She's not a boating person

Home on The Nene

The weather forecast on the BBC says that at 9.00am it will be a mixture of cloud and sunshine. At 9.00am the rain hammers on the roof and all the sky is black and grey. Have all the forecasters gone away on holiday and left the cleaners to make a guess at the weather?

We set off when the rain stops.  My new crew member gets the hang of it all pretty quickly.  By Alwalton lock she can get off the boat, lower the guillotine gate and open the pointy gate without spilling a drop of wine from the glass she is carrying.



Water Newton

All goes well apart from a few minutes of not managing the 90degree turn onto the lock landing at Yarwell Mill. I explain to the watchers that it is the fault of the wind but they don’t look convinced.

We stop amongst the cows at Elton and look forward to eating at The Crown Inn.  When we get there the pub is sparsely populated and the restaurant is half full but they tell us that they can’t feed us because they are two fryers down and not accepting any more diners.  That is a bit puzzling because The Crown is not a pub that appears to rely on it’s fryers. We try for the sympathy vote and say that we are on a boat on the river so don’t have transport and the crew member has a bad knee.  The young barman looks puzzled and says ‘what river?’

Failing to persuade The Crown to feed us we set off for the Loch Fynne restaurant up the hill. I assure my limping companion that it is only a few minutes walk.  She wants to take a taxi. As I’m explaining that this isn’t London and taxi’s aren’t a common feature around here a black cab draws alongside and asks if we want to go anywhere.

So we take the taxi and she discovers that the walk would have been a lot longer than a few minutes. We ask the driver about a ride back to the river when we have eaten. ‘Is there a river here?’ he says.

We have a lovely meal and the restaurant ring for a taxi.  The driver is Chinese and didn’t know there was a river near Elton.  He is very amused that we want dropping off at a farm gate and will walk across a field to spend the night on a boat.  As we hobble off by the light of the torch we can hear him laughing delightedly.

To Peterborough

I leave March quite early in the morning.  The forecast is for a hot and humid day and it is already warm and clammy.

Fight my way through the overhanging willow trees and then out of March and passed The Middle Level Commissioners offices where three weed-cutters wait for me to pass and then turn and follow.  Looking behind me all I can see are their metal jaws, no sight of drivers or propulsion just three sets of jaws following me upriver.  They look threatening, I wonder if they heard I nearly squashed one of their tribe a few weeks ago and they are out to get me.  I wonder if they are following me onto an isolated stretch of river where they will attack me, metal jaws chomping through the steel of Rea. I round a bend check to see if they have gained any ground and find they have disappeared.

Progress is good the weed cutters must already have been this way.  The water is clear, weed and reeds and fishes are clearly visible. Chunks of blanket weed float passed, green topped with algae their skirts billowing gracefully beneath the water.  They look like large, benign jelly fish as they pass the stern.

Stop at Whittlesey lock and remove blanket weed from prop.  The lock has been left set against me (the downstream paddles should be left open) and not only that the paddles (or penstocks as The Middle Levels call them) are also open.  It takes a long tiring wind to close both  upstream paddles (or penstocks) and open the bottom ones, put the boat in, close the gates start all over again then moor up and come back and re-set the lock. I started to count how many tough turns it takes to open each penstock, I got to thirty three turns lost the will to live and stopped counting.  Two fat women lean on the fence and solemnly watch my every move.  I’m beginning to feel the effects of heat exhaustion but it’s only another couple of hours to Peterborough.

Manage Briggate Bend with a full audience, a lot of revs but without hitting anything. The wind gets up and I lose my hat. Meet the first boat under the only bridge on the system which has tight turn and we narrowly avoid collision. Into Peterborough and discover that when I dashed down for water in Whittlesey I had left the tap running so the water tank is empty.  Fill with water: shop: meet up with friend at the café at The Key Theatre. Look round Peterborough, actually just look for a pub in Peterborough.  We sit outside a bar in a quiet Cathedral Square drinking chill lager watching the fading sun glow on the mellow stone of the Cathedral Gate and the old Guildhall. 

I love balmy summer evenings.
 

Oh dear

The BBC weather forecasters lied to me.  Tuesday afternoon was warm and sunny with only a few splatters of rain.  Wednesday, which they had previously forecast dry and cloudy, turned out to be wet and wet.

Setting off from Salters Lode in a grey drizzle my progress down Well Creek was better than the outward journey, the weed-cutters have been out. Almost stopped at Glady Dacks Staithe, didn’t need to stop but what a wonderful name, Glady Dacks sounds like a character from a Thomas Hardy novel. It wasn’t until Upwell that I picked up my own clumps of weed so I stopped to remove it.  Laying flat on my not very flat stomach, sawing away with the bread knife I heard a clunk and saw my mobile phone sitting in the amongst the soggy gunk in the depths of the bilge, it had fallen out of the pouch in the waterproofs. Oh dear I said.

Onwards towards March: the wind turbines loom out of low cloud, their blades turning tiredly. The drizzle is turning into proper rain.  It seems my waterproof isn’t. I have plenty of time to formulate a plan for the retrieval of the phone.  I’ll get a small fishing net and scoop it out of the bilges, remove the sim card and put it in an old phone. I have to keep smiling and waving at all the fishermen lining the bank so there must be a fishing tackle shop in March. I can find lots of fish and chip shops (the inhabitants of March must live on fish and chips) but no fishing tackle shops. I do find a launderette and spend an entertaining time watching two young men try to work out the mechanics of washing clothes.  ‘We should never have left home’ says one starring a large pile of wet and tangled garments.

In the end I buy a cheapo long handled brush and pan from Thing Me Bobs, saw the end off the pan so it fits into the bilge and hey presto I have retrieved the phone. The old Nokia, me and the sim card are reunited and it feels like old times.  I never did like the other phone, it was a replacement for an HTC that I dropped in a puddle and it was horrible.  Keypad too small, switched off for no apparent reason froze when it felt like it and the battery had the life-span of a fruit fly.  If it starts to show any signs of recovery I’ll just sling it into the bilges again.

The attack geese of March

 

They squawk and hiss at dogs and passersby (unless carrying food) and when the town hall clock clanks the hour they join in with a cacophony of honking.

The clocks clanks (March's clock cannot be described as having chimes) are turned off during the night but nobody turns off the bloody geese.  In the early hours of the morning they still find things to make a lot of noise about.

Denver

 

So it’s onwards to Denver but before crossing onto the Middle Levels I have to do a bit of car shuffling.  I’d had to bring the car over to get to a job and to go to my daughters pop-up and I’d left it in Little Thetford. I thought it would take about 45 minutes to walk to Downham Market station and thought I was moored on the nearest side of the river.  I was wrong.  I hadn’t taken into account the hike around the Denver complex. Still we arrived, breathless, within sight of Downham Market  Station with nine minutes to spare.  Then there was de dah de dah and the railway gates closed for the upcoming train and then remained closed until our train had arrived and left and we were trapped on the wrong side of the crossing watching it come in and go out.  That left an hours wait until the next train so we did the only thing we could do in the circumstances.  We went to the pub. The Crown Inn in Downham Market is an old coaching inn, panelled in light oak and with a magnificent staircase.  We settled in and almost missed the next train. We got to Ely, had a long walk to Little Thetford, felt a great sense of relief that the car was still there, drove back to the ‘chips with everything’ Jenyns Arms, had a couple of drinks and then got a good dousing with rain on the walk back to the boat.

 

On Sunday friends came for lunch.  We set out to do a circular walk, completed two thirds of the circle came across a herd of cows (with calves) and turned round and came back the way we had come. Large black clouds were heading towards us, streaks of rain trailing from them.  We thought we would get back to the boat before the rain reached us.  We didn’t.

 

On Monday it was return the car to my mooring at Barnwell.  Drove to Barnwell and cadged a lift to a station. Took the train back to Downham Market, set off walking towards Denver and large black clouds.  This time they veered off to the left and I stayed dry.



On Tuesday it was through the tidal stretch of The Great Ouse.  I was sent through the lock and told to wait on the landing on the tidal side of the lock for further instructions.  There was some hold-up at Salters Lode because a boat was too long for the lock.  I seemed to be waiting there a long time.  I kept an eye on the tide, I didn’t want it to change suddenly and leave me stranded.  As it happened I went down to Salters Lode on slack water and the wind dropped which made the tight turn relatively easy.  Rain was forecast for the afternoon so as I didn’t want to get wet again I tied up and decided to head March the following day when it was forecast to be dry.



 

...and back

 

I set off early from Brandon in case the odd woman comes along asking if I have read the pamphlets from the Jehovahs Witness (I haven’t).  The morning is sultry and insects dance along the surface of the water.  My travelling companion takes over the steering and I get a rare chance to sit in the bow of my boat when it is moving.  It is very quiet, the engine bumbles away discretely in the background, the water laps against the hull, the foliage floats passed.
 

Highlanders in the lowlands

I have my new camera ready to record the wild life.  The helmsman diligently slows down when passing moored boats but speeds up when there is a photo opportunity. There are countless kingfishers, more in a few miles of river than I have seen all year, a pair of egrets fly ahead, there is a marsh harrier and there are herons galore but none of them stand still long enough for me to be able to photograph them.  The only living thing I manage to photograph is a sedentary cow. I’ll never make a wild life photographer I have neither the speed of reaction nor the patience to wait in the right place. In future I’m just going to take pictures of buildings, they might not be as interesting but at least they don’t go flying off just when you’re about to click the camera.

 

 

Down The Little Ouse

 

 

With feet wet from the dew soaked grass and with three peacock butterflies hitching a ride on the roof we set off from The Ship Inn on a sunny morning to travel along the Little Ouse to Brandon.

‘What do we do when we get to Brandon?’ asks my travelling companion

‘We turn around and come back again’

We pass the everlasting line of boats on The Little Ouse Moorings. Then we meander onto a quieter stretch of river where yellow waterlillies float and stacks of rosebay willowherb, bindweed, reeds and grasses grow densely along the banks. Then we pass more boats on The Piggery Moorings (spaces available).  The river widens then narrows again. Masses of indigo and turquoise dragonflies dart over the surface interspersed with needles of turquoise damsel flies. The water is so clear that I can see the fish the grebe is diving for and the weed the swan is stretching it’s a long neck underwater for. Herons flap, swallows swoop and a pair of kingfishers scurry past.  In the fourteen miles of the tranquil Little Ouse only two moving boats pass by. 

Good moorings are hard to find on The Little Ouse

Then we arrive in Brandon.  It’s the school holidays.  Kids are fishing, shouting and jumping into the river from the EA mooring.  We think it might be quieter if we go through the lock where my map says there more moorings. The map also says the lock is only forty foot long but I don’t notice that bit of information.  I put the boat in the lock, find it doesn’t fit and have to reverse out again.  I turn and moor back on the EA moorings pulling as far forward as possible to give the boys room to enjoy being boys on a hot summers day at the start of the school holidays.

Coming back from town we talk to a woman who comes regularly to swim in the river.  Ten minutes later she taps on the boat and gives me a bag of walnuts and leaflets from The Jehovahs Witness. I thank her for the walnuts and assure her I will read the pamphlets.

The ‘jump in the river contingent’ ask if they can jump off the back of my boat.  I say ‘Yes’ but tell them if they injure themselves I’m not going to administer first aid.  Then they ask if they can jump off the roof.  I say ‘No’ because the river is too shallow so they say can they use that ‘big stickie thing’ on my roof to measure the depth of the river.  They troop into the water with my boat pole on their shoulders and pronounce that the river is very deep. I still don’t let them jump off the roof.

It’s nearly 10pm when there is a shout of ‘Aaron your mum is looking for you’. They all pick up bikes and fishing rods and wet clothing and disappear in the direction of Brandon.  Peace reigns.

 

Dragonflies? Damsel Flies? Insecty things?

I've got a new camera

Grandson Dominic taking a picture of me taking a picture of him.  On balance I think the pictures taken with my new camera come out better than the one he takes with the lens cap.

Later I set off down the Queen Adelaide Straight, the most boring stretch of river in the country but I had my new camera with me so I took photographs:


Going towards Littleport

 

Looking Back

 

Looking left







Looking right

I told you it was boring!





Getting wet

On Monday night I put the herbs in the cratch because they were getting hot and dry on the roof.

I put the washing out to dry.

I opened all the windows, doors the side hatch and its cover because it was stuffy on the boat.

I left the cushions and my book outside and then I went to bed

I think I should have looked at the weather forecast before I went to bed or even taken a bit more notice of those big black clouds sitting on the horizon.

Trying to be helpful

My time was up on the Little Thetford mooring and I had to be in London for a couple of days so I decided to leave the boat at Ely.  I needed water and there was a boat just leaving the water point in Ely as I approached and another boat waiting for me to pass before he moved out.  So I thought I’d head straight onto the water point instead of turning first, as I’d intended, then I wouldn’t get in the way of the boat that was letting me through.  It turned out that he wasn’t leaving he was waiting for the water point and I’d just stolen his place. Fortunately they were a friendly couple who accepted my grovelling apology and we tied up together making a cats cradle of hoses and ropes and managed to chat, fill up and empty and leave simultaneously.

The only space available in Ely was outside The Cutter pub it looked big enough but it wasn’t.  With an audience of pub customers I tried to put a 60ft boat into a 58ft space.  The narrow boat in front rapidly undid ropes and pulled up a couple of feet and I squeezed in. They were another friendly couple who tied up my bow ropes and gave me a cup of coffee.  A wide-beam moored alongside for a while to wait for some visitors to arrive and I chatted to the mother of the owner and was invited to stay with her if I ever went to Arizona (well you never know).  So one morning:  three lots of lovely people.  That is a good hit rate because as we all know you can get some surly buggers out on the water (me included).

Ely was packed, boats came back and forth looking for mooring spaces and I felt a bit guilty as I was going to leave the boat and go away so made the decision it might not be EA legal but it would be more considerate of me to go back to Little Thetford and leave the boat there.  So I did, when I left for London my boat was at the end of the mooring in splendid isolation.

I was in London to help my daughter do a pop-up restaurant newcrossdining.co. They were two very hectic but enjoyable (mostly) days.  The food looked good but us staff didn’t get to try any because the bloody paying customers scoffed the lot. At 1.30am on a Sunday morning the tired and hungry staff left the management (daughter and boyfriend)to finish clearing up and went to a crowded MacDonalds in the East End for much needed burgers and fries.

When I arrived back at Little Thetford the boat was no longer in splendid isolation. There were boats fender to fender along the mooring, boats double moored, one moored on the metal bit before the mooring, one moored in the reeds further down.  Ely was probably empty maybe it would have been more considerate of me to stay there. In contrast to the night before, in Central London, all was quiet and rural and I sat in the bow and watched the sun go down, too tired to even open a bottle of wine.

Finding the boat

I had friends coming over to lunch and a group coming in the evening this week. So I said I would be somewhere south of Ely.  They wanted me to be more precise. OK I said I’ll be at Little Thetford.  That should be simple to find and an easy place to park a car.

'I might come on my bike which side of the river are you on?’

‘Do you have a post-code for my satnav?’

‘If I put The Fish and Duck Inn into my tomtom I think I can cross the railway line (looking both ways) walk a short way along the track and you will be there?’

‘No. Your tomtom is lying to you.  The Fish and Duck Inn fell into the river about six years ago, the road is a private road to the marina, it is on the wrong side of another river, and when you have crossed the nearest footbridge it is over a mile walk along a very rough track.  Although the good news is that you wouldn’t need to cross the rail way line.’

It might be a good idea to issue better instructions.  ‘Take the A10 towards Ely.  Take the right turn marked Little Thetford. Go through the village until you can go no further. Cross the railway tracks (looking both ways). Walk along the track until you see steps ahead of you.  Climb steps.  Go down other side and I will be there.

‘Oh Little Thetford I thought you said Thetford, I wondered how you’d got a boat into Thetford Forest’

‘If I look on Google Earth I can see The Whytces which runs into Main Street and then becomes Holt Fen is that the right or does Google Earth need updating?'

‘That’s probably right but I don’t know the street names’ 

‘I know where she is I’ll meet you at the railway crossing.  Bring flat shoes and a torch’ 

Clever girl.  I forgot about the practical things like sensible shoes and torches.

So they arrived and I managed to arrange glorious summer weather and we had a good evening. 

It seems that Google Earth thinks there is a Fish and Duck Inn in Little Thetford.  I did a bit of research and there was a Fish and Duck Inn listed until 1909 in Little Thetford but an old photo shows it sitting on the riverbank in what looks like the position of the more recently deceased Fish and Duck Inn not in the village centre where Google Earth thinks it is.  So the mystery of the missing pub remains.  There are plans to rebuild the Fish and Duck Inn at Popes Corner in the newly refurbished marina. Early this year residents at Popes Corner, many of whom had lived there for years, where turfed out with a months notice so the marina could be updated and given over to non-residential and higher priced boats.  I’m happy to say the riverbanks along the marina are still mainly empty and the marina is sparsely populated.

Geese and swans

I got a call from friends in London saying, because of the hot weather they would like to get out of town and come on the boat for the weekend.  That’s what I call fair weather friends. So I went back to Ely to empty and fill.  As I ambled through there were plenty of mooring spaces, I thought the one under the willow tree looked cool and shady.  Half an hour later when I left the pump-out station all the good spaces had been taken and I was left with a concrete mooring amongst the geese and tourists.  This morning I’m glad to be leaving I’m looking forward to a good nights sleep after the last two disturbed ones.  It wasn’t traffic, or drunken revellers or even the convention of Morris Dancers jingling their way around Ely that kept me awake.  It was the bloody geese.  Every night hundreds Canada Geese leave the fields and do a sail past through Ely, then in the early hours of the morning they start a noisy squabble with the very vocal pack of resident white geese. 

This morning I could hear bumping and splashing along the outside of the boat.  I looked out the side hatch and a swan was flapping about trying to drown something.  The only weapon I could find to throw at him was half a loaf of bread.  It hit him on the head and he let go of his victim and pursued the bread instead. The young Canada Goose that he’d been trying to kill scuttled off and the potential murderer ignored him and tucked into what should have been my breakfast.

Not lost

I took a long cut to the railway station in Ely to avoid walking through a herd of cows.  I didn’t get lost because

a)      I knew where I was

b)      I could see where I wanted to be, it was only a few hundred yards back to the main route along the flood bank

The only problem was I couldn’t see how to join a) to b).

Peering over the floodbanks

From Denver to Ely the river is wide, the flood banks high and the surrounding area flat yet I like this stretch of water.  I like the way the upper windows of isolated houses peer over the flood banks like nosy neighbours. I like the wild life. There are always grebes on the water, at this time of the year they are stuffing fish down the throats of their scrawny, grey off-spring.  I like the fact that each time I have come down here the weather has been good. I don’t like the stretch from Littleport to Ely, that is even more boring than the Middle Levels, although it is deep water so it is possible to put on the acceleration.  I must have almost reached 4mph at one point.

Early on Sunday morning the sun was hazy and a mist had formed on the field opposite. The bronze, barrel-chested bull stood looking across the river at me his legs and ‘bloody hell … look at that’ appendages submerged in the mist. Even though it was early the sun had warmth, I leant out of the open hatch to look at the fishes swimming in the clear water and got a face full of sticky cobwebs.  I don’t mind sharing my boat with spiders but I do wish they would be more considerate about where they weave their webs.

Monday in Ely I decide the boat needs its spring clean, it’s probably the 2012 spring clean its in need of.  The news I was polishing the boat must have reached Ely parks department because as soon as I’d done one side they sent along a man with a strimmer to flick grass and goo all over it.