Author: Mary

I decided to write some letters today, just because I liked writing the date: 21.1.21. Mind you, I thought 2020 was going to be a great year just because of the dates you could write like 02022020. How wrong I was! 2020 will definitely be a year to remember but not for necessarily good reasons! It’s rather sad that letter writing has gone out of fashion. Receiving an email isn’t quite the same as a hand written letter plopping through your letterbox. R and I are receiving our mail in a very 21st century fashion, only possible because our son is so media savvy. He’s opening our post and then scanning it into a Google drive folder which we have access to. We just have to remember to check the folder, if we can remember where to find it! There is only a certain number of times I can get G to explain the system to me without him thinking I am a total numpty!

Our walk today was the muddiest yet even though the day itself was dry and relatively warm and sunny, although at times there was a keen wind. We went to find the address of one of our  friends from home who lived here many years ago and had told us that he had built the garden wall of his house. We took a picture so he could see it was still in good nick, infact it was very decorative and I was most impressed! Walking on from there we found ourselves in an extensive wood which although was lovely to see, proved incredibly tricky to walk through. There was an area marked out as a bluebell wood so we headed in that direction. The bluebells obviously were not out but it was encouraging to see lots of green shoots peeping through the ground. The downside to all this was the mudbath situated throughout the pathways on the top of a hill.  I kid you not, at one stage we were over our ankles in mud and puddles of water.  A very unpleasant sensation! Good for the thigh muscles as we had to really keep a grip on how we were walking so as not to slip on our behinds. I didn’t fancy a pile of muddy clothes in the boat and the challenge of cleaning them.

Eventually we found our way out of the woods, fairly near to the canal. It was a pleasant couple of miles walk back to our boat but I was shocked by the extent of flooding on our left as we walked along the towpath.  No doubt it will disappear quickly enough once the rains stop. But it was rather sad to see a children’s play area totally awash.

Started watching The Queens Gambit on Netflix which has been well recommended and was gripping enough for us to watch two episodes. That followed a physics lecture given by a friend from church who is also a scientist. I was never any good at physics at school. The only concept I ever understood was conduction and I think that’s because I have an Aga so am interested! However APs lecture was well received tonight by those attending. I love his enthusiasm for the subject but I don’t think I’ll ever be a physicist!

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The promised rain held off in the morning enough for us to have a fairly dry walk around town and for R to collect some chunky bits of wood he had seen abandoned the day before but had had no means of carrying them back to the boat. They look thicker than his usual logs so I think sawing them up will take quite a bit of effort. That’s his keep fit. Mine has gone out of the window recently.  When we can do long walks and  have locks to operate I feel like I am getting some exercise. However it’s easy to let it slip, especially the prevention of bingo flaps! Part of the problem is the lack of space to move around much. During lockdown 1 I got hooked on an online walking program and ‘Jo Wicks 10mins for seniors’ which I adapted to make harder as I didn’t think I was quite senior enough! I have been making excuses every day not to do them and it’s just enertia. Timing is an issue. If I  do them first thing, before getting dressed, I have to brave the cold. But if I leave them until later I have so many layers of clothing on I can’t be bothered to take enough off to exercise! However today I felt motivated.  I moved a chair and table to create space, R retired to the other end of the boat, I set a timer and found some inspirational music and really quite enjoyed myself. Enough to think I must do the same tomorrow and the day after.  I always feel so much better when I have expended some energy and feeing less like a couch potato I then usually feel ready to tackle some other tasks that need doing. Being self disciplined is quite an issue without deadlines and although I don’t want to be unnecessarily stressed, neither do I want to become lazy. There’s the Martha and Mary issue too – how much is it OK just ‘to be’ like Mary, balanced against what needs ‘doing’ like Martha. I am conscious that I am missing being creative, such as with a sewing or knitting project, and realise I have only recently started to feel this way. It may partly be due to the fact we are not moving much at the moment so there is comparitively little to do, but I think it is also that I have had little inclination to do anything other than that on my ‘to do’ list. I am happy to know my motivation is rising as it might inspire me. Every Friday when I zoom with my isolated friend in Ireland I am inspired (and a little envious truth be told!) by all the wonderful knitting she is producing.  Some of it may be frivolous (I seem to remember knitted hats for Ferraro Rocher chocolates at Christmas!) but at the end of lockdown she will have something tangible to see for what she did with her time. At this rate, I  will just have thoughts!

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Walking out from the boat we discovered a lovely park on the opposite side of the canal, reachable now the flooding is reduced and we can walk across the nearest bridge. The paths were still a mudbath but my tactic of lining my wellies with plastic bags is working well and even though I waded through a few puddles, my feet remained reasonably dry! Occasionally the sun came out which reflected beautifully on the sizeable lakep and there were lots of ducks and swans meandering around. Plenty of toddlers enjoying the puddles and people taking their daily exercise.

Returning to the boat, each of us with a large foraged tree branch, we decided to move further into town. Fortified by coffee and after a great chat on my mobile with a longstanding friend, I took to the helm with instructions from R as to how to steer with a strong wind coming across your path. Of course it went in one ear and out the other, so I just prayed all would be well as R wasn’t on the boat with me. He decided to walk the path and spy out the mooring. The rain started and we passed a few boaters who suggested we hadn’t exactly chosen a good time to move but I wanted hot water to wash my hair so that was generated by the engine – killing two birds with one stone! An interesting mooring, just before a bend (our nice new neighbour W, said sometimes boats moored where we are get a bit of a banging if a widebeam or 70ft boat comes hairing around the bend!) but the upside is we are close to both the waterpoint and the Elsan, situated on our side of the towpath. And as there are no moorings available between us and the facilities we should be able to pull our boat back to our mooring rather than relying on our reversing skills.

The rain persisted throughout the afternoon and evening so we stayed on the boat, enjoying a catch up with friends for an hour and then R got the stove going and chopped some wood, one bit rather thick, so quite an effort. A couple of people stopped to chat at length to him so he got some respite. I honestly don’t know where my afternoon went as I don’t feel I achieved much excepting a WhatsApp call with a friend who moved to Chichester just before Christmas. It was lovely to have a virtual tour of the downstairs of her house as obviously it is likely be a while before any of us are actually allowed inside someone else’s house! I try not to dwell on thoughts like that because I find it is in the thinking of the banal things that we used to do without a second thought that it hits home what strange times we are living in and then I feel sad.

Obviously R and I by not being at home would be missing the popping in to see our friends anyway. I had hoped though that we would have been able to have friends visit us on the boat and experience a bit of canal life together. It is just so different and I can see why so many boaters once they experience living aboard decide to do it full time. It’s not for everyone though – take my water saving exploits today (and now I’ve remembered what I did with some of my afternoon!). Having washed my hair in a bowl leaning over the bath, I decided rather than throw the last couple of bowlfuls of rinsing water, I would use them to hand-wash some dirty clothes and before the remaining hot water in the tank had cooled down. So much easier to have a washing machine!

As I write this, with R gently snoring beside me, the rain is pattering down on the cabin roof and the boat is beautifully warm from the heat of the stove. There is something incredibly cosy about it all, perhaps because I’m in a 4ft 6″ bed!! Its likely to be raining for most of tomorrow and instead of that depressing me I look forward to having a day when I haven’t got to achieve anything. I can just be. I realise that’s a luxury – there are many people, whatever the weather, have got to be out and about with plenty to do, but for those of us who have no agenda, if we can stop and appreciate the space, then that’s something to be thankful for.

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You may wonder at the snowdrops? We spied them when walking through the churchyard of All Saints,  Leighton Buzzard and they brought to mind a previous rector of our church who had a love of snowdrops. Every year he would have a whip round so more could be planted in the churchyard and come January pockets of snowdrops would be dotted around. These were the first I had seen in 2021 and somehow they gave a spark of the hope that often accompanies new birth. As the church was locked we explored the fairly extensive churchyard, well maintained by one of the gardeners we stopped to chat to. He told us that in one corner they have beehives and in the summer they sell the honey in the church cafe. I thought that a lovely enterprise. He told us there were a couple of resident pheasant who have taken refuge from a nearby shooting estate and that a muntjac has also made himself at home in the graveyard, rather usefully eating the ivy!

R saw an oak tree with a plaque beneath it. Planted nearly 20 years ago it commemorated a local man who had died on 9/11, in the Twin towers terrorist attack in New York. There was something very poignant about the simplicity of the plaque and the oak tree steadily growing.

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Moving on into the town centre it appears to have a mixture of independent shops and four of the big supermarket chains, a Morrisons competing in size with a Tesco, two Aldi’s and a Waitrose. So plenty of choice. I was surprised to see Iceland, Peacocks, Wilko and Millets, high street names that are rapidly disappearing closer to home.

I had seen a challenge on my Premier Radio email today – pledge to phone five people, with whom you are not in regular contact, to find out how they are and help combat loneliness. I decided to do just that and was so glad that I did. Those I rang genuinely seemed pleased to have a call out of the blue just asking how they were doing and I had some lovely conversations, reconnecting with friends I hadn’t spoken to in a few months. It reminded me that often it is in the simple things of life that we get the most satisfaction and a phone call may help make someone’s day that bit brighter. It just takes our time and for some of us we have more than enough to spare at the moment.