Thursday 11th February

Ice on the canal has us frozen! What a relief we moved the boat yesterday for water. We turned on the engine early to get some heat in the boat as I had a Zoom at 10am for an hour. Wrapped in a blanket with a hot water bottle, I attended a Zoom all about the prophetic. Christian prophets have attracted much publicity this past year, especially in America, prophesying about political outcomes and also in respect of Covid. My own interest is far more localised – how we can hear from God and share positive words or pictures with others to offer God’s encouragement and hope in a dark, lonely world. Still amazes me that we can meet each other from any corner of the globe to share thoughts and ideas without having to leave the comfort of our armchair! We do actually have an armchair as well as a long three seater sofa on the boat. I tend to use the armchair as a depository for my excess clothing depending on temperature and coolness of extremeties, much to R’s frustration. He likes everything hung up or put away whereas I think I might need it again later in the day so what’s the point?!

Timing our walk by the weather app, we walked along the towpath after lunch and were surprised to see the ice was still intact. It certainly confused the moorhens and swans who were gingerly trying to move around. One Swan looked to be asleep just beside our boat. There was also a log sitting on the ice in the middle of the canal which looked rather strange! Detouring away from the towpath in search of a postbox we found ourselves in a delightful village, I think called Wroughton. A beautiful church and many thatched cottages in among the usual plethora of modern houses which we associate with MK. Returning back along the towpath we found a lot of wood which we carried for a good half mile – good for the bingo flaps!

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Back on the boat I kept warm, until the stove kicked in, with some Joe Wicks exercises. If I am going to regularly help carry the foraged wood I need to keep my strength up! It’s a new take on ‘taking the dog for a walk’ – how much wood we can find and carry adds immense pleasure to a walk that might otherwise just be a walk!

My afternoon Zoom (busy Zoom day!) was very applicable as I joined a group of people discussing where we get our identity from – is it linked to how much we do and achieve or can it come from our just being? And in that being, can we draw closer to God and recognise we are his children? Applicable for R and me as we age and slow down and take ourselves off on a narrowboat for 6 months! I was watching a new chick flick film just out on Netflix tonight and was taken by one line basically saying ‘if you live at so fast a pace how can you see what’s in front of you’. For years I lived on a run, forever thinking about the next thing to do and not really appreciating the moment I was in. It’s a challenge for me to stay in the moment accepting boredom as a choice. Appreciating silence and sitting with one’s inner thoughts is not always easy. We are so used to a cacophony of sound all the time, if we so desire. It reminds me of long stretches of boredom growing up in a village with few children around and certainly no after school activities! I spent hours swinging on the swing in our garden. Once I could read I got lost in the world of books which is a pleasure I still enjoy and sometimes wonder what life would be like without them.

R joined the physics lecture on Zoom he has been enjoying over the past few weeks whilst I wrote my blog. I have come to realise that there are some things I just do not understand, Einstein’s theory of special relativity being one of them and that’s OK!

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