What a way to spend Sunday ..............

I thought maybe I’d stay on my Camden mooring for a few days or maybe I’d move.  It all depended on weather, visitors, appointments and whether I could get around to making a decision.  Then a family crisis meant the moorings proximity to Kings Cross Station was very useful so I’d stay a few more days.  That was until my Saturday lunch guest, leaving at 9.00pm reported that I had a problem with my toilet.  This was surprising as I’d only pumped it out on Monday. The decision was made for me I had to move.

Boaters always say that when they get together the talk reverts to toilets, I’ve lived on my boat for five years and never had a toilet conversation maybe because I have never had a problem with the toilet. It seems I’ve got one now.

The water point and sanitary station at Little Venice is squeezed around the corner

After the torrential rain stopped on Sunday morning we set off for Little Venice and the pump-out facility. As usual it was busy, this must be the busiest sanitary facility and water point in the country on the busiest stretch of canal and it’s a small space at the narrowest point.  You get to know fellow boaters by having complex discussions about the jig-sawing of boats and who wants which of the utilities and how long each was going to stay.  Eventually moored up at the pump-out, I started the machine, the suction started and nothing happened, the gunge in the toilet stayed where it was.  Was it the machine or me?  I poked sticks in various orifices of my system and got about two inches of nasty stuff removed then the machine timed out.  We let a wide beam onto the pump-out and they used two cards and reported that they didn’t think the machine was working properly.  I tried again with a fresh card, there was some movement but very little. Rang C&RT and reported a problem. I didn’t expect an immediate response on a Sunday but they said an engineer would come out and apologised that he would take about two hours to get there.

I tried clearing any blockage on my boat by pushing the toilet brush down the brim and the end dropped off and disappeared into the murk.  Now the system would definitely be blocked.  Without going into too much yucky detail the only way forward was on with the marigolds and getting on down and dirty. Lets just say I found the problem with my toilet, I blame my guests. The engineer arrived in less than two hours and found the problem with the pump out machine, a faulty seal. Problems solved: sewage tank emptied.

The first thing I needed after mooring up was a shower.  I got into the shower soaped up, loaded my hair with shampoo and the water stopped. I’d run out of water this was despite spending four hours next to a water point and waving people onto the water point saying ‘It’s OK, I don’t need any water’. Four bloody hours we were there moving backwards and forwards, annoying the neighbours and just sitting waiting. Four bloody hours when I could have filled the tank three times over. So do I blame guests for my lack of water as well as my blocked toilet, did I have a boat load of flamboyant flushers and extravagant showers or was it just my usual level of vagueness about the state of the utilities of my boat.

The new crew member had decided after all the chatting and button pushing he had been doing on the machine he was in need of a shower as well.  So it was off back to the water point, we cast off, went down the canal, and did an interesting turn against a gale force wind. Somewhere in the midst of this my tablecloth (£3.50 from a charity shop in Hertford) blew away, the way the day had been going I thoroughly expected to get it wrapped around my prop on the way back.  I didn’t.  If another boat picks it up around the prop I sincerely apologise and if it isn’t too shredded can I please have it back because it matched my paintwork.  So then we were back in Little Venice spending an hour and a half in the gathering dusk filling the water tank (slow tap: thin hose: large tank).

In the last week I had spent more money on my sewage system than I had on wine so in an attempt to redress the balance I went to Sainsbury while the water tank was filling.  Sainsbury was closed.  I went on to M & S in Paddington on the way I spotted a free space in Paddington Basin. When the water tank was filled the darkness had descended and in a howling gale we went round to Paddington Basin and did a wind assisted mooring on the one available slot.