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By about eight o’clock that evening, we returned to the boat, slightly wide-eyed from the big screen and the surfeit of chocolate, popcorn and other less nourishing, but vibrantly coloured, sweets. We were just about to start bringing Sam down from whatever sugar-induced cloud he was currently inhabiting and try to blackmail him into bed, when my mobile rang; it was Helen. Well, as far as I was concerned she was far more important than any wifely or motherly duty, so leaving the lads to fend for themselves, I settled down for a good gossip. After the usual hellos and stuff, she asked, ‘Where are you at the moment?’
‘In the boat,’ I answered, knowing full well I was going to get shouted at.
‘No, you silly moo,’ she laughed. ‘Where are you in the country?’
‘Oh right ... March,’ I answered and told her why we were stuck there.
‘Brilliant,’ she said, ‘I know March; when are you moving on?’
‘Saturday,’ I replied, hopefully, ‘If we manage to get through the lock.’
‘Great, we’re coming down – can you cope with visitors?’
‘Yes, yes, of course we can,’ I almost bellowed at her. ‘Are you staying over at all?’
‘Yeah, we thought we would meet up with you, deliver Herbert back to you, see you into your new mooring and stay till Sunday if you think you can cope with us that long?’
‘Not a problem.’ Oh this was excellent, real people, people we knew. I was suddenly really very, very happy.
‘OK then,’ she said, ‘I gotta go, Paddy has just been sick on the floor. I’ll give you a ring on Friday and you can tell us if you will be moving or not – byeee.’
And with that, she had dashed off to clean up yet another of her ageing greyhound’s misdemeanours.
Smiling at the normality of it all, I wandered over to where Geoff and Sam were having their usual nightly argument about ‘why you have to clean your teeth’, but before I could tell Geoff the content of my conversation with Helen, my phone rang again. This time it was my mother, who advised me that she had bullied my father into coming to visit us again, they were bringing Amelia and Huw with them and they would be arriving tomorrow.
Wow. A little shell-shocked by the sudden possible invasion of people, I realised that the only person we wouldn’t be seeing was Charlie and although we had made sure to call her nearly every night, it wasn’t the same as actually seeing her, but for that we had to wait another two weeks which would see us at the mooring and well settled.
‘Who was that?’ Geoff asked as I sat down.
‘Everybody.’
‘What did they want?’ He got up to put the kettle on.
‘They’re coming to visit.’
‘Who is?’
‘Everybody.’
He frowned at me. ‘Don’t be irritating. Who’s everybody?’
‘Mum, Dad, Amelia, Huw, Helen and Dave.’
‘Oh! Right. When?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Oh dear!’
I did finally get around to explaining that they weren’t all actually turning up at once and that the ‘Mum and Dad’ crowd were only visiting for the day, that it was only Helen and Dave that were staying with us overnight, and they actually wouldn’t be turning up until the weekend. So it wasn’t as bad as it had first appeared.
My mother never does anything half-heartedly and rang me at 6.30 the next morning to get our ‘address’ as she put it. They must have been halfway down the A14 when she called because an hour later they were hammering on the roof. It was a very noisy and crowded boat for the next two hours, with everyone trying to talk at once. Geoff and I spent the first hour trying to explain why we hadn’t finished fixing Happy up yet and why we were stuck in March, then we had to go into why we had only got this far, and why Sam wasn’t in school yet (Sam, by this point, had decided that if they couldn’t see him, they couldn’t ‘organise’ him and bolted for his bedroom).
In the end we just gave up, made copious amounts of tea and just listened to the advice, nodding in the appropriate places. It was definitely a coward’s way out to treat them all to lunch, but we felt they might just hold back on their questions and advice if we were in a public place.
The day was a complete whirl of loud people and cramped conditions on Happy, but it was nice to see friendly faces. I hugged Amelia extra hard as they left, both of us in tears. But we had arranged for her and Huw to come down again in two weeks’ time so we both had something to look forward to.
After we had waved them off from the car park, we wandered back to the boat. Happy seemed very large and very quiet. I missed them, I missed being able to see them, especially Amelia, on a daily basis. I certainly missed Charlie, a telephone call with family is never the same as actually being able to sit and argue with them in person. We were all quiet and a little glum as we made our way to bed that evening.
Thursday was Sam’s first day at school. He wasn’t happy about it and neither was I. Strangely, I had got used to having him around at all hours of the day. I was puzzled by this, back at the house I couldn’t wait to get rid of the kids and have some time to myself, but I knew that I would really miss his high-pitched voice giving me long, involved and completely incoherent explanations of whatever complicated game he was currently involved with. I didn’t want to think about the day ahead, quiet and devoid of mass stickiness.
Even though the school run was 120 miles a day, we had elected not to keep him out any longer. If we could have guaranteed that we would get through Salters Lode this coming weekend we might have put it off for another week, but common sense reared its ugly head and we realised that we might not get through till next week, so we elected to drive the 60 miles there and back in the morning and again in the afternoon.
Sam was quite happy to wait another week, and explained his position to us, at length, and became morose when he finally accepted that he did actually have to go to school and couldn’t spend the rest of his life in a nest with his computer, or sitting on the top of the boat surrounded by small plastic figures, re-enacting fantasy battles between massed ranks of Pokémon and a couple of Amelia’s old Barbies (the Barbies always lost, there had originally been five of them, but he was now down to three, two having plummeted to a watery grave as punishment for losing yet another fight). No doubt we will have the same argument with him in ten years’ time (possibly minus the Barbies – or maybe not), but we won this one – for now – next time we may find ourselves in a weaker position.
I listened to Sam’s piping voice receding down the road toward the car, and for the first time ever, I had the boat to myself. I managed to cope with the silence for about the length of time it takes to drink a cup of coffee and then, unable to take it any more, I went shopping.
March does not have good shoe shops, so that was a bit disappointing. Their book shop was also less than inspiring and as I was beginning to wonder if anybody in East Anglia read anything other than crime or romance novels, or wore boots – come on, people, winter’s coming, surely some of you wear boots? I realised that Geoff, at least, would be happy that I wasn’t replacing my hard lost shoe collection, or altering the trim of the boat with another three pounds of paper. So with that reassuring thought in mind, I decided to buy Sam a new DVD for when he got home. By the time I left Woolies, I had five, four of them for me.
When Geoff got back to the boat, I was sitting at our wobbly table reading a canal boat magazine and doing an excellent job of ignoring all the useful things I could be doing. Sam, Geoff reported, had not gone into school well, he was clingy and upset, and I felt guilty all over again that we had uprooted him from a really good school that he loved and palmed him off on one that was obviously going to make him extremely unhappy.
Geoff went off to pick Sam up at two o’clock and I spent the next two hours worrying about the horrible things that had surely happened to him during the day. I became so creative with the terrible possibilities that the only course of action was to spring clean the bathroom.
&n
bsp; While the thought of Sam’s possible terrors during his first day upset me, they paled into insignificance when I worked out that I had been cleaning the bathroom for over an hour and had completely failed to make a noticeable difference. That really upset me.
Father and son arrived back around four-thirty. I could hear Sam’s voice long before they actually came through the door. Rushing over to him I gave him a hug and asked him how his day had gone. He looked at me as though I was mad, shrugged, said it was OK and went to turn on the telly, demanding snacks over his shoulder as he went.
Geoff explained that he had had a chat with his teacher and she had assured him that after the first five minutes Sam had found a friend, and settled down. They had had some ups and downs with him during the day, but mostly it had been either frustration at not knowing the routine or moments of insecurity. They firmly expected that he would be just one of the gang by the end of the next week.
Chapter Fourteen
Moving On
WALKING ON FRIDAY MORNING, I was quite surprised to realise that we had been moored for five days and hadn’t expired from terminal boredom – far from it – and it was once again time to phone Salters Lode and see if Mother Nature was going to allow us to continue with our journey.
No authority in March seemed to mind that we had overstayed our 48 hours. All week, other boats had been coming and going and had given us the same worrying news, those that had come from Salters Lode warned that the tidal stretch of the Ouse was running fast, and, without exception, they all cast a worried eye over Happy and had said that we were going to have problems.
One weathered, bearded and be-hatted gent wandered up and remarked, ‘You lot going through Salters in that?’
‘Erm ... Yes.’
‘Got a good engine, has she?’
‘No, not really, more like two matchsticks and a rubber band.’
‘Phew...’ He took his hat off and ran his hand through his thatch of white hair. ‘Hope you got some life jackets, you’re going to be thrown about like a cat in a washing machine – good luck.’ And leaving us with that stunning mental image he turned and climbed back aboard his 40-foot, high-powered boat and puttered away up the river.
Geoff and I looked at each other.
‘Did you know there was likely to be a problem at Salters Lode?’ I frowned at him.
He, at least, had the grace to look a little sheepish. ‘There’s only a problem if the section is running fast, you have to make a sharp right-hand turn out of the lock and if the tide is going out, it’s a real bugger to turn into with an underpowered boat, and if the tide is coming in then you just get picked up and taken, very quickly, down toward Denver Sluice, and with a boat this size and the engine ...’ he paused.
‘So the answer is bloody well “yes” then, isn’t it!’ I snapped at him. ‘We’re all going to die, aren’t we? We are either swept inland or swept out to sea – I’m not sure I want to do this.’
‘Look,’ Geoff soothed, ‘hundreds of boats go through these locks every season; they wouldn’t let us through if there was a problem.’
‘Geoff,’ I assumed the ‘I told you so’ position. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, we have been here for the best part of a week, and they didn’t let us through.’
Geoff grinned. ‘Think of it as going over the falls in a barrel,’ he laughed, ‘if nothing else, it will be exciting and if we survive we will have something to tell our grandchildren.’ He took one look at my panicked expression and legged it before I could pour what was left of my coffee over his head.
I leaned my forehead against the wall and listened to him phoning the lock. Damn. They were going to let us through, first boat through on Saturday. I even gave considerable thought to just staying put and living in March; it seemed like a nice place.
The run to Salters Lode Lock takes about a day and we had been assured it was very pretty. Helen had phoned me that morning and, as she and Dave had found themselves without much to do that day, they had decided to take a leisurely run down a day early and would actually be with us that evening. Good, someone to give my last will and testament to.
Well Creek wanders gently through open countryside interspersed with little groups of nicely kept houses, the sun shone and lots of people waved. With the summer holidays well and truly over, we found that we had the creek pretty much to ourselves. There was only one lock between March and Salters Lode, which, after hearing what we were going to have to face, held no terrors at all.
We were a little nervous that Marmont Priory Lock was possibly closed, having tried to call the lock-keeper on several occasions but getting only a ringing tone. Luckily the lock-keeper, like all the others we had met, was helpful and not in the least perturbed that an odd boat had just turned up unannounced. After a short investigation it worked out that the phone number listed in our old Imray Fenland Waterways map was wrong. He was a nice guy, letting the incompetent nutters through anyway, which was good of him.
There are a series of bridges as you approach the Mullicourt Aqueduct. These seem to take spiteful delight in getting lower and lower, until at one point Geoff was crouched right down on the stern, peering over the roof and reaching up to hold the tiller. I had been getting a little edgy as we closed on the Aqueduct; I’m incredibly terrified of heights and had been having horrible visions of a steel monstrosity along the lines of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct on the Llangollen Canal, which I had vowed never to cross. The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct stands 150 feet high and your narrow boat has merely inches between you and certain death (a 23 tonne lump of steel, falling that far, is NOT going to bounce... or fly).
The guide book states that the Mullicourt Aqueduct is merely 22 metres high (75 feet). I was breaking out in a cold sweat just thinking about it and had vowed to just stay in the cabin and stick my head between my legs or breathe into a brown paper bag or something.
Geoff was a little confused and kept muttering about the land being so flaming flat, how on earth could they have a rise of 75 feet, it just wasn’t possible.
As we emerged from a very low bridge, I made a break for the bedroom knowing that the monstrous aqueduct was just on the other side. After a couple of minutes, Geoff called me out to have a look; he could hardly speak for laughing.
‘Come and have a look at this,’ he shouted down.
‘What do you mean “come and have a look at this”?’ I shouted back. ‘You know I hate heights, don’t be so mean.’
He laughed some more. ‘I think the book got it wrong, come and have a look.’
Wondering what was going on, I emerged into the sunlight and looked around, frowning.
‘Where is it?’
I had been expecting an extended, slim, water-filled channel heading off over some huge expanse of nothing. What was actually there was a bridge with rails. Happy was going to have trouble fitting entirely on it without having one of her ends hanging off onto normal waterway and the wretched thing was only about six foot off the ground.
‘I think they missed a decimal point in the book,’ Geoff snickered. It was difficult to categorise the emotion, but I think I will label it ‘cheated out of an opportunity to be really terrified’. I looked ahead to where Happy’s nose was gently ploughing its way over the bridge.
‘I’ll go and put the kettle on,’ I sighed and wandered off.
We moored up outside Salters Lode at three forty-five. Helen and Dave arrived at ten past four, fantastic timing. Helen leapt out of the car and bounced into the boat, leaving Dave to sort out all the bags. She wandered through the boat making appreciative noises and putting the kettle on as she went. Dave on the other hand peered through the doorway, gave me a wave and then backed out again to talk to Geoff.
After the hugs, I asked, ‘Is he all right?’ indicating Dave who was still chatting away to Geoff and casting anxious glances at the boat.
‘What?’ Helen glanced up at her other half and frowned. ‘Oh they’re probably talking engines and things, he’s OK.’
Dave is the sort that you definitely want to scrape you off the road after ploughing your car into a tree. Solid, calm, huge grin, about six foot tall with a reassuring girth; a truly lovely guy. However, this is not a man that fits easily into a narrow boat. He finally joined us and stood awkwardly in the gangway, head tilted and body wedged sideways between inconvenient bits of furniture. He looked uncomfortable and worried. Helen, giving his tense body and worried look the once-over, pursed her lips in thought for a moment, then stated with her usual tact and empathy: ‘I didn’t know you were claustrophobic.’ Poor Dave, two days of hell coming up for him (well he married her!)
As it was a lovely evening, we headed outside with a large amount of meat, alcohol and cushions stolen from the boat. Sam didn’t actually get to eat much, poor boy, as Helen made him laugh so hard, he kept choking on his dinner. I finally had to call a stop to it all after one particularly vigorous tickling and screaming moment had left him laughing so hard he had actually wet himself slightly for the first time in two years and had to go and have a shower. Helen did have the grace to stop after that.