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.
Tuesday 21 April 2015 8.30pm, 13℃ sunny and still
Today was another long day in London, this time for my monthly poetry class (I’m a student, not tutor). The class runs until 4.30pm but I get home – or ‘hom’ as I’m calling it for the timebeing – around 8.00pm, so it’s a lot of travelling. This evening it was worse, as my eyes and throat were prickly with a newly hatched cold.
My chap picked me up at the station and he took a detour to check out a local marina he’d just heard about which is closer to town. He’d been told it was cheaper too, and pleasanter. He said he wasn’t interested in moving but that “it’s always good to have a plan B”. I couldn’t agree with the idea more and I’ve never had a plan B.
We arrived at this marina at an eye popping moment. The sun, a gorgeous boiled sweet (barley sugar orange), was setting right behind the boats and over the canal. No film director or colourist could have shown the place off to greater advantage. The sunset made the grass advertising green and the water pristine.
Indeed, there was much to recommend this marina. It had beautiful facilities – you can even rent your own private bathroom with a swanky shower (though most people use these to store bikes and canoes and useful stuff like clothes). You didn’t have to navigate a dangerous A road to get to the nearest towpath for walks. A splendid pub beckoned just round the corner. On the downside, traffic noise still hemmed it in on two sides.
But, as I waved away April flies and tried not to stare into the barley sugar sun, I couldn’t see myself going for plan B just yet. Moving to the existing marina was a big and recent decision based on knowing it well – my chap’s lived here for a few years. It’s a lovely place for a writer to wander around. It was scary enough for me to move to this size of community (250 boats); the other marina has space only for 90 – i.e. it’s a hamlet for boats rather than a village. The idea of being in so small a community (plus, there’s even less space between boats, so it’s reach out and shake hands) made me feel coffin’d, confined. Living in a boat (I’m now a “live aboard”, a term I learnt tonight) doesn’t make me feel cribbed. Like a tent, you get the boat plus the big blue yonder.
No, I’m still very much settling in. The possibility of moving so soon made me nervous. I’m still disoriented, at sixes and sevens. Most of my belongings are in storage. I’m living out of boxes and no longer have an office at hom.
And at night sometimes, the stretch of water between the end of the boat where we sleep (stern) and a little hillock before the main road, which rises higher than we, feels desolate. While we’re wrapped and nested at night, I feel the water as an empty, blank stretch. On nights when I’m finding it harder to drop to sleep, I want the marina itself to be wrapped and coddled and safe. Instead, distant lorries rumbling by keep me awake.
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