Where am I?

I awake to the mewing of herring gulls, look out of my window to see a life-size sculpture of a cow, nearby I can hear a peacock calling.  In my early morning daze I’m not sure if I’m in Brixham, Milton Keynes or the garden of a stately home.  Then a police siren blasts out and a train passes by and by the time the children are noisily amassing in the school behind the high wall next to me I remember that I am in Camden.

Probably the most photographed cow in the country

I had visitors yesterday, the plan, if there was anything that resembled  a plan, was to set off and go along a bit and stop for lunch and turn round and come back to Little Venice.  Silly idea really, I should have remembered I’m not on a river where turning is simple or a countryside canal where mooring is easy or somewhere quiet where it is possible to get the same mooring space you’d left a few hours ago.  Firstly it took me an age to find somewhere to turn (I wimped out at reversing a quarter of a mile down the canal), then a lovely cruise along Maida Vale and Regents Park followed, but it was impossible to find somewhere to stop for lunch.  My friend seemed to be under the impression that narrowboats either bent or concertinaed up or that it didn’t matter about mooring against ‘No Mooring’ signs or peoples back gardens.

’Look stop there ’  How do I tie up against concrete?

‘Look there’s a ring on that wall there ’ It’s ten foot higher than me how do I get a rope in there?

‘Look can’t you pull up where that waterbus has just left’   No.

‘Can’t you tie up to that tree, we could put the table out on the grass’  I think it’s the American Ambassadors residence, they’d probably shoot us

 

They bought themselves an ice-cream but didn't offer me one

 

Eventually arriving at Camden Lock I decided to turn instead of going through the locks and chance my luck at an odd space amongst the visitor moorings.  I could just about get in but because it was across an inset I let the visitors off with the ropes and asked them to pull me in.  A man from the boat in front came along and took over, shouting instructions to them.  As they were taking more notice of him than me I left him to it.  Tied up, switched the engine off and it wouldn’t switch off.  Tried again and again to switch the engine off but it was determined to keep going.  Called to helpful man to help and he came over.  He was helpful but didn’t know much more about engines than me, but kept going back to his friend ‘the mechanic ‘ for tips, eventually ‘the mechanic’ left his cold beer and came over fiddled a bit and stopped the engine.  At this point I decided this was a lovely mooring and I was going to stay, chances of finding gaps in Little Venice were unlikely anyway and I needed a drink.

 

 

View to the right of me            

    View to the left of me

Later that evening when the riff raff had left I went into the back to lock up and saw my battery warning lights were flashing red.  I realised that although the engine was switched off the ignition key was still turned on, I switched it off, switched it back on and zilch happened.  I called somebody who knows more about these things than me (I could probably have dialled a number at random and still got somebody who knew more than me).   He suggested fiddling with the knob the man had fiddled with when he stopped the boat and then trying to re-start the engine.  I said it was too dark down there and I might disturb the neighbours and it was better if I did that in the morning. In all honesty it was more to do with wanting to get back to my good book than for any of the other reasons.  This morning everything works OK.  My battery indicators are showing green, the engine starts and the engine stops.

So there we are, in times of dire mechanical failure, don’t do anything just go to bed with a good book and by the following morning everything will have sorted itself out.