The story so far: a freelance writer and editor for 20+ years, I jumped ship in April 2015 from bricks and mortar to live on a historic narrowboat – currently permanently moored in a busy marina in greenest Staffordshire.
Thursday 30 April 2015, 8 degrees and overcast
We have new neighbours. Their boat has been moored next to ours for some months but they’ve decided to become ‘live aboards’ like me (though I’m not yet ready to take narrowboat lingo on – ahem – board; I’m still a newbie, a foreigner here). We don’t know if they’ve formally moved in yet but they tipped up last night, a Wednesday night. Normally they’re just here on the occasional weekend.
The space between narrowboats moored in marinas is very slim, medieval-street slim – spiders attach their webs from one boat to the next like washing lines. We’re a pontoon’s width apart, so about a metre, although I’ve not got out the tape measure. I don’t think we could lean out and shake hands, but we could certainly lean out and hold a conversation, especially since one of our neighbour’s windows is opposite one of our kitchen windows. In time, they might put their blinds down to avoid catching sight of us night and day. We have very few windows and no blinds, so can’t do that. There’s not much privacy. Privacy has to be created and respected.
If we’d had a conversation with our new neighbours last night it wouldn’t have been so nice. Nestling into our tiny bedroom – we call it ‘the nest’ – at the stern of the boat around 11.00pm, we could hear a loud hum coming from the newly inhabited boat. It sounded like a factory had started up. Either that, or a plane coming in to land. Foghorn-like, it drilled into the ears. Even wearing ear plugs, it bored into my hypnagogic state. I was reading some Ian Rankin so hoped that John Rebus would knock on their door and tell them what for.
The noise lasted for several minutes then went quiet, we breathed with relief, then it started up again. It was still going at 11.30pm. ‘It sounds like he’s playing with the engine,’ said my chap. I got up and wandered to our kitchen window to see if they were up, to see if I could work it out. It was a shock to see a woman staring back – actually, it turned out to be a man. Then my chap got up, went to the window, threw invisible arrows at the ‘woman’, who looked back.
‘If we can hear it, they can and they can too,’ my chap said pointing to nearby boats. ‘That’s going to **** a lot of people off.’ He’s decided it must be coming from their generator which, for some reason, they need to keep on. The noise continued. We think it went off later in the night but it was on again in the morning.
My chap had a word with them and it turns out it’s their central heating system – they have a fancy schmancy boat (our ‘central heating system’ is a fan heater). The next day they’d put up a Bagpuss to the window, one of those toys with plastic suction paws. And the day after that they had the blinds down.
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