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