I find it heart warming the way our children, now all adult in years, have developed their own traditions from the small regular things we did in their lives when growing up and I am only now beginning to realise what was impactful to them. So to give an example, yesterday I shared the happy birthday song sung down the phone to son G (originally it was my mum who would ring up her children/grandchildren and sing the traditional happy birthday song – infact one time she rung up her friend Jeannie and having sung Happy Birthday was amused to find she was singing to a total stranger, also called Jean! It may even have been her birthday, but that seems too much of a coincidence so I may be misremembering!) Today, awaking late because of a poor night’s sleep, when I looked at the family WhatsApp, son P, whose birthday is today, had sent a message: “who’s going to give me the present I really want?”. Following that, the two alternative renditions of Happy Birthday sung by his two sisters, the Jesus one being his top favourite! And just what he wanted for his birthday, similar to bro G. Who’d have guessed it?!
So, we then sung Happy Birthday, so as not to be outdone, but videod it, which was the funniest thing because replaying it both R and I were swaying from side to side as we sang, R standing and me almost horizontal in bed! Perhaps it was the boat rocking.
We moved the boat about 40 minutes northwards to where we can easily walk to the car hire and where we can park the car close to the boat for loading up tomorrow. We were surprised at how many boats were on the move and one slightly disgruntled lady coming towards us who had gone to the watertap only to find four boats waiting, including a widebeam with a very large tank. She had given up waiting and will try again tomorrow.
The ex-army bloke in the boat next door, is very chatty so R and he have had a couple of lengthy chats, ‘bow to bow’! He bought his boat 25 years ago when it was 30ft long and in need of a lot of tlc. Since then he has extended it by about 15ft and done all sorts of refits. He had many a tale to tell about the waterways, not all of it good! The CRT apparently does not invest enough to keep the canals in good working order. In the summer months there are so many boats on the water that it is impossible to move freely along the canal and novice boaters are often crashing into other boats. They probably don’t do too much damage as they are going relatively slowly but there’s alot of weight in the boat! He put me off cruising in the summer months as the idea of queuing for use of all the facilities and being logged jammed holds no attraction. The good news was that there’s a new Lidl (so not mentioned in my Pearson canal ‘bible’) fifteen minute walk from here, near to the car hire. If we have time to shop there before returning the car it could be very useful.
In our usual fashion we decided to walk the towpath to find our next mooring which we want to be between here and Wolverton. First we walked to the carhire, then Lidl and then back to the canal where we met a man on his boat doing lovely wood carvings, which he was happy to sell. He and his wife have rented out their house and bought a narrowboat which they have lived on for 5 years since he took early retirement, just to get out of the rat race. They decided not to sell their house as the rent pays for most of the boat costs and gives them the option to return home should their health deteriorate. He told us they knew of a few boaters who having sold their houses in favour of a boat then found they could not get back on the property ladder if the boat didn’t work out. R isn’t keen ever to buy, partly because boats always need maintenance and he would no longer be relaxed on the boat if he was forever second guessing the next problem that needed fixing. One of the joys of renting is knowing we have help at the end of a phone.
Before returning to the boat, even though we walked right past it, we went to view a beautiful stretch of bright yellow crocuses that I had spied in a park as we travelled along the canal earlier in the day. They were so lovely and colourful in the sunlight, a ray of sunshine on grass!
A quiet evening once I had gone through the boat collecting together all the things we want to take home in the hire car. I just hope I don’t find too many things to bring back! We finished Series 3 of ‘Unforgotten’ which gave us quite a chill. So we counterbalanced it with another episode of ‘Keeping up Appearances’. Quite apt – all about impressing the new vicar!
NarrowboatTLC 