My weekend, or at least my Saturday, was a bit like that episode of Sex and the City when the unlikely quartet of friends hoofs off to the suburbs to see a friend who's had a baby. And are surrounded by Other Women With Babies. And there's a bit where someone puts a baby on a sofa next to Samantha, who merrily lets it slide off the sofa and clunk onto the floor. I spent years feeling like Samantha in this respect (certainly not in any other respect - imagine having that much sex, it'd be exhausting). I was totally phobic about babies - and they felt the same way about me. People would always be thrusting babies at me, assuming that because I'm female, and don't have any of my own, I'm desperate to 'have a cuddle'. The option was to take hold of the baby or let it drop on the floor (I found the latter didn't go down very well), so I'd grab it under the armpits, at which point the baby would scream its head off and I'd hand it back.
People refused to believe me when I said I was phobic about them (what if their neck snaps and their head falls off?), didn't like children and didn't want any. I don't know why people find this so hard to believe. Babies are boring. They are noise machines who also dispense noxious fluids. I'm sure it's lovely if you've had one, and congrats on that (current newspaper articles would seem to suggest that it's a miracle if you're over 35 and you've managed to successfully procreate), but it'd be great if I didn't have to interact with them till they can speak. I make an honorable exception for Sonny, the baby from the barge trip, who was a delight. A smiley little fellow, he was easily amused by A/ rocking about in his baby chair and kicking his legs like a footballer with epilepsy - I found I could rock the chair with my foot, whilst also reading the paper, which was a good start; B/ having faces made at him, or waving; C/ burbling any old nonsense at him in a googly voice. I monitored his mood by keeping a careful eye on the angle of his eyebrows: up or level was fine, but if they started to dip down in the middle, urgent action had to be taken - really intense faces and some manic burbling, or an appeal to his mum to come and fix him.
Saturday's selection of babies held no such joys - after a morning of unsuccessful burbling with one friend's baby, I moved onto a barbecue at which there was a selection of ankle biters. One baby bore an alarming resemblance to the baby in Trainspotting, that crawls across the ceiling when Renton is hallucinating. It had a disconcertingly massive head. It wasn't a good look. I tried to rescue it as it crawled through a selection of nuts, bolts, screws and washers that were lying around on the floor as various guests tried to actually assemble the barbecue in the sitting room. 'Don't want you swallowing any of those!' I thought (babies bring out my inner Disaster Monitor) and picked him up. He screamed like a malfunctioning car alarm. I hastily put him down. Luckily his mother appeared, and reassured me that he was 'a complete mummy's boy' and would scream if anyone went near him other than her, which, for the next two hours, proved to be irritatingly and ear-shatteringly true. I left suburbia later that night thanking God I could rush back to the city and my lovely, silent flat.
Sunday's children were much better. A few of us convened in a pub garden to belatedly celebrate my sister's birthday, as she's back from France for the weekend. Sonny was there - someone else was holding him, so I just had to tickle his feet. I was then ambushed by a pair of twins, who must've been about two and a half and appeared from nowhere. They were blonde and cherubic little boys, who offered me a shard of plastic that looked like part of a disposable fork, and an empty raisin box. I'll confess, I'm shameful when it comes to children: if they're pretty, cute and chatty, I like them. (Repeated exposure to children now most of my friends have them has mellowed me). Despite, or maybe because of, the fact that as a child I was chronically shy and looked like a bag of potatoes, I can't get along with the unchatty, lumpy ones. This is mainly because I've discovered that with small children, the key to engaging with them is just to ask them loads of questions. You start off with the easy stuff, like what's your name, and how old are you, and then you just ask them what they're doing, or how their toy works, or if their teddy has a name, and what their teddy likes doing. And then you carry on till one of you gets bored (it's generally them - they come to the conclusion that you're an idiot who doesn't know anything).
The boys decided the buttons on my cardigan needed sewing on with the plastic shard. Good start! I tried sewing on the buttons on one of their T-shirts (one was sporting a T-shirt with a campervan on it, the other some sort of skull with writing; at two and a half, they were more fashionable than I've ever been). The other one got a bit upset that he didn't have any buttons to sew on. 'Life's not all about buttons, kid', I told him. He looked bemused, and offered me a cigarette butt from the ground. I declined his kind gift, at which point his brother offered me one as well. I distracted them by giving them packets of sugar. Not a great gift, but then they had only given me a broken piece of plastic, a very small empty cardboard box, and two fag butts. I then caught sight of a drain with a perforated cast iron cover over it, ideal for posting leaves and other detritus down. Their father came by just as I was suggesting that they find things to offer to 'the drain god'. 'The drain god?!' he asked. 'Yes, the drain god', I replied, not to be deterred, making a scary face and going 'RAAAAR' at one of the boys. 'RAAAR' the boy replied, hitting me in the face. I realised I didn't really have anywhere else to go with that. It was starting to get a bit complex. Luckily at that point they decided they had urgent business elsewhere and ran off, possibly to converse with people who weren't going to make up complicated theological systems located in London's sewage networks.
Their mum wheeled them round in a double buggy to say goodbye when they left and I was kind of sad to see them go. Sometimes it's easier to talk to a two and a half year old and a lot more fun. After all, it's not every man who's going to go along with you when you suggest making sacrifices to underground deities you've randomly made up, more's the pity.
Monday 17 August 2009
Neptune, whom Wikipedia, the fount of all knowledge, informs me is the God of Water (my classical education's not up to much), has been attacking me repeatedly lately, despite me offering myself to him and his aqueous minions on the barge the other week (almost literally). Not only did the watery deity choose to shut off my shower just when I should've been sprucing up in order to try to snag myself a husband, but he also decided to hit me where it really hurts by breaking my loo.
A day and a night without water you can just about cope with (although when I found there was still no water when I returned, having failed to alter my spinster status, after my evening at the book launch, I was, I confess, reduced to tears of frustration and impotent rage). But a broken loo is really annoying, because it means you have to call out a plumber. Unless it's merely blocked, in which case you can try improvising a plunger with a deconstructed wire coathanger, which is what I once did when I was at uni. The other three girls I lived with squealed with horror, but I saved us the call out charge just by refusing to be totally squeamish, and was feted accordingly.
I suppose I could've dismantled my concealed cistern (turns out that the cistern is in no way as fancy as this suggests - it's just a normal cistern, but with the top taken off it, and a box built round it) and seen if I could fix the loo's flush system myself. But would I know what I was looking for? No, I would not. And of course I don't know any handy men who might know what was wrong with it, and how to fix it without paying £85, either. So, after a tip off from my colleagues that Rated People was the place to find a good plumber, I posted a request and sat back to wait for a Rated Person to contact me. This seemed a better option than phoning any of the frankly rubbish selection of personnel who've done things to my flat so far. (I have to put a cup under the pipework for the shower, as it's still leaking, despite two sets of builders/plumbers telling me it's fixed. The second lot jammed the bath panel back on, probably without even trying to fix the problem thinking that, what, all the water would just flood straight through the floorboards into the flat below, and I'd never find out till I suddenly crashed through the ceiling whilst mid-ablutions, like something out of a Benny Hill sketch?)
By some sort of miracle, having posted the ad on a Friday afternoon, on Saturday morning a man called Dave phoned me to see if he could come over right away (well, after he'd eaten a bacon sarnie his wife had made him - this insight into his domestic arrangements automatically made me like him) to price up the job. Within the hour, there he was, ready to quote. And he could come round on Friday afternoon. I sent a prayer of thanks to the interweb, and resigned myself to chucking buckets of water down the loo for a week. It's not that much of a hardship, but it makes you appreciate sanitation when you can effortlessly flush a loo. In these recessionary times, one should be pleased with any free pleasures, no matter how seemingly small.
Friday afternoon saw Dave arrive, fresh from a job in Blackheath. 'I've just had the most amazing 24 hours of my life', he announced as he tried to connect a fiddly pipe to my gas meter, to ensure I didn't have any leaks. (I'd taken the opportunity of getting him to connect my hob, which has been sitting there, unconnected and gathering dust because ANOTHER BLOODY BUILDER NEGLECTED TO DO WHAT HE SAID HE'D DO AND THEN DISAPPEARED for... well, let's say it's been a significant amount of time). 'Blimey', I thought, 'that's quite a claim'. 'Why, what's happened?' I asked. 'Well', he replied, 'I've got a daughter that I haven't seen since she was eight. And now she's 30. I've been looking for her for years. And I found her last night on Facebook. And I'm going to see her tonight!' Bloody hell! Imagine that! And they say the internet's no good for anything except porn! I somehow felt he should be telling everyone else in his family, and all of his friends, rather than me, a random stranger whose loo he was about to fix.
'Yeah,' he continued, 'I'm feeling a bit all over the place' (good to tell me this, just as he was about to start messing about with gas pipes). 'I've only ever cried four times in my life - once when my mum and dad died, once when my dog died and last night.' People reveal odd stuff to you sometimes, don't they? I kind of wanted to ask loads of questions, but it all felt too personal, so I left it, other than wishing him the best of luck when he left to go off and meet her. He said that she'd been looking for him too, which made me hopeful that the outcome would be positive and that she hadn't thought he'd just abandoned her, didn't care and that she never wanted to see him again. He disappeared in a flurry of winks, and told me he'd come back soon to fix my shower. For free.
Ha! In your face, Neptune.
A day and a night without water you can just about cope with (although when I found there was still no water when I returned, having failed to alter my spinster status, after my evening at the book launch, I was, I confess, reduced to tears of frustration and impotent rage). But a broken loo is really annoying, because it means you have to call out a plumber. Unless it's merely blocked, in which case you can try improvising a plunger with a deconstructed wire coathanger, which is what I once did when I was at uni. The other three girls I lived with squealed with horror, but I saved us the call out charge just by refusing to be totally squeamish, and was feted accordingly.
I suppose I could've dismantled my concealed cistern (turns out that the cistern is in no way as fancy as this suggests - it's just a normal cistern, but with the top taken off it, and a box built round it) and seen if I could fix the loo's flush system myself. But would I know what I was looking for? No, I would not. And of course I don't know any handy men who might know what was wrong with it, and how to fix it without paying £85, either. So, after a tip off from my colleagues that Rated People was the place to find a good plumber, I posted a request and sat back to wait for a Rated Person to contact me. This seemed a better option than phoning any of the frankly rubbish selection of personnel who've done things to my flat so far. (I have to put a cup under the pipework for the shower, as it's still leaking, despite two sets of builders/plumbers telling me it's fixed. The second lot jammed the bath panel back on, probably without even trying to fix the problem thinking that, what, all the water would just flood straight through the floorboards into the flat below, and I'd never find out till I suddenly crashed through the ceiling whilst mid-ablutions, like something out of a Benny Hill sketch?)
By some sort of miracle, having posted the ad on a Friday afternoon, on Saturday morning a man called Dave phoned me to see if he could come over right away (well, after he'd eaten a bacon sarnie his wife had made him - this insight into his domestic arrangements automatically made me like him) to price up the job. Within the hour, there he was, ready to quote. And he could come round on Friday afternoon. I sent a prayer of thanks to the interweb, and resigned myself to chucking buckets of water down the loo for a week. It's not that much of a hardship, but it makes you appreciate sanitation when you can effortlessly flush a loo. In these recessionary times, one should be pleased with any free pleasures, no matter how seemingly small.
Friday afternoon saw Dave arrive, fresh from a job in Blackheath. 'I've just had the most amazing 24 hours of my life', he announced as he tried to connect a fiddly pipe to my gas meter, to ensure I didn't have any leaks. (I'd taken the opportunity of getting him to connect my hob, which has been sitting there, unconnected and gathering dust because ANOTHER BLOODY BUILDER NEGLECTED TO DO WHAT HE SAID HE'D DO AND THEN DISAPPEARED for... well, let's say it's been a significant amount of time). 'Blimey', I thought, 'that's quite a claim'. 'Why, what's happened?' I asked. 'Well', he replied, 'I've got a daughter that I haven't seen since she was eight. And now she's 30. I've been looking for her for years. And I found her last night on Facebook. And I'm going to see her tonight!' Bloody hell! Imagine that! And they say the internet's no good for anything except porn! I somehow felt he should be telling everyone else in his family, and all of his friends, rather than me, a random stranger whose loo he was about to fix.
'Yeah,' he continued, 'I'm feeling a bit all over the place' (good to tell me this, just as he was about to start messing about with gas pipes). 'I've only ever cried four times in my life - once when my mum and dad died, once when my dog died and last night.' People reveal odd stuff to you sometimes, don't they? I kind of wanted to ask loads of questions, but it all felt too personal, so I left it, other than wishing him the best of luck when he left to go off and meet her. He said that she'd been looking for him too, which made me hopeful that the outcome would be positive and that she hadn't thought he'd just abandoned her, didn't care and that she never wanted to see him again. He disappeared in a flurry of winks, and told me he'd come back soon to fix my shower. For free.
Ha! In your face, Neptune.
Friday 7 August 2009
Not such a Homeric Odyssey after all...
Well, well, well - clearly I'm going to have to start believing in The Secret, or somesuch, because no sooner have I asked the Universe to deliver me David Mitchell, than the Universe... delivers me David Mitchell. I forwarded my friend Mary the Caitlin Moran article about what an uphill battle it is being a single girl about town when you're in your 30s. 'I met David Mitchell, for he is the flatmate of Robbie, who was at the drinks on Thursday [Mary had a birthday do in a pub, which I went to last week]. DM is a lot of fun – he should totally be your husband!', she replied. WHAT? How is that possible? That I am so few degrees of separation from D. Mitchell Esq? Extraordinary. She then went on to say that Robbie was having a book launch on Thursday, which DM was bound to be at, so did I want to go?
Much twittering (no, not that kind) in the office and discussion about whether this was 'stalky' or not. It was decided not. (Of course.) Perfectly reasonable that I should turn up to a launch party, be introduced by a mutual friend and then get on famously with the object of my affections. As long as I didn't get drunk and accidentally tell him I'd written a number of blogs about him, all would be fine.
The day, however, did not start auspiciously. I got up, thinking that I would spend some time crafting both hair and make-up in order to Look My Best (see Rule 3.4 of Being Single). I wandered casually into the bathroom and put on the shower. Splutter. Cough. Distinct lack of water. Eh? I tried the sink. Nada. The kitchen sink? Drier than the Kalahari. Oh God, what manner of fuckery was this? Had our water supply been shut off for some reason and no-one had told me? Were the Bachelor Gods smiting me in advance for the temerity I was showing in gate-crashing a party specifically to try to talk to one of their subjects? Gah. I unleashed some choice swearwords, and prepared to hit the gym for the first time in many months. Just to use the showers, mind.
I arrived at work to a barrage of questions: was I going to change my shoes before the party (yes, although God knows, men never notice your shoes unless they're gay); what was my opening line going to be (umm, 'They're not really going to close down The Observer, are they? It's the only decent Sunday paper available!' would probably go down OK? Topical and could segue into 'I really love your column!', etc); was I going to try to snog him (no! NO. God, no - how quickly would that make him totally head for the hills? Also, being that drunk would be a very bad idea indeed and would doubtless result in me falling over and taking half the rest of the bar with me, given the slightly perilous heels I was planning on wearing. Not a good first impression.)
My main worry was that I was going to get introduced to him, throw a glass of wine down his front and then turn into the female equivalent of Hugh Grant, swear profusely, blush madly and then tell him I’d written a blog about him, then run away crying. Leaving him thinking, ‘Who’s that mental girl? I’m glad I never have to see her again’.
So, with not a small amount of trepidation, I set off, fully frocked-and-heeled up, into yet another monsoon of biblical proportions. I had an umbrella, but had foolishly not brought a jacket. Curse these British 'summers'! Mary and I managed to get to the party without looking too much like drowned rats. The venue was very packed and very noisy. We established ourselves at the bar, and got introduced to two blokes by the author’s extremely enthusiastic agent. One of them immediately did a runner. The other took a shine to Mary, which was unfortunate, as he looked like the kind of man you wouldn't even want to share a bus stop with, let alone a drink (still wearing what can only be described as ‘a windcheater’, despite the fact that the bar was about 100 degrees; sweaty; comb-over hair; dodgy specs) and was one of those men who invades your personal space, then bores you to a slow death. We eventually shook him off. We drank several drinks, whilst keeping an eager eye out for DM. Eventually, we had news that he was at the other end of the bar. We were off!
We stationed ourselves carefully within his eyeline, and waited for him to come within range, much like a pair of hungry lionesses eyeing up a baby antelope. Finally, he was on his own! ‘GO!’ I shouted at Mary, who sprung into action, tapping him on the arm and engaging him in conversation. She was a pro. After much advice from all my friends to 'be yourself', and even 'be your wonderful, beautiful self' from my old flatmate (aww!), I sadly decided that the self that I would present was in fact my 18 year-old one: gauche, smiling like a simpleton and not really saying anything. It’s kind of difficult when the bar is so loud that most of the conversation involves one person saying, ‘What? Sorry?’, you repeat yourself three times and then the situation is reversed.
So, on the strength of this encounter, I won’t be marrying David Mitchell. He seems perfectly nice, and was quite smiley (although his look of abject horror when I asked for a glass of water when he offered me a drink led me to think that strategic teetotalism wasn't perhaps my wisest move after all), but Mary was finding it hard work trying to keep a conversation going with him, despite the fact that she's brilliantly funny, very cool and incredibly pretty. So he’s either not good at parties, not good with people he doesn’t really know, or just not good at conversation full stop. Oh well, I achieved my aim of speaking to him, rather than hiding in a corner and repeatedly wibbling, 'Oh God, I can't', so on that front it was a success. But equally, I'm rather sad that my Odyssey has ended so quickly, and with a somewhat damp squib-ish result (and with me having a total personality failure). On the plus side, if it's that easy to get the Universe to deliver celebrity men to your door, who can I target next? Suggestions on the back of a Peep Show script.
Much twittering (no, not that kind) in the office and discussion about whether this was 'stalky' or not. It was decided not. (Of course.) Perfectly reasonable that I should turn up to a launch party, be introduced by a mutual friend and then get on famously with the object of my affections. As long as I didn't get drunk and accidentally tell him I'd written a number of blogs about him, all would be fine.
The day, however, did not start auspiciously. I got up, thinking that I would spend some time crafting both hair and make-up in order to Look My Best (see Rule 3.4 of Being Single). I wandered casually into the bathroom and put on the shower. Splutter. Cough. Distinct lack of water. Eh? I tried the sink. Nada. The kitchen sink? Drier than the Kalahari. Oh God, what manner of fuckery was this? Had our water supply been shut off for some reason and no-one had told me? Were the Bachelor Gods smiting me in advance for the temerity I was showing in gate-crashing a party specifically to try to talk to one of their subjects? Gah. I unleashed some choice swearwords, and prepared to hit the gym for the first time in many months. Just to use the showers, mind.
I arrived at work to a barrage of questions: was I going to change my shoes before the party (yes, although God knows, men never notice your shoes unless they're gay); what was my opening line going to be (umm, 'They're not really going to close down The Observer, are they? It's the only decent Sunday paper available!' would probably go down OK? Topical and could segue into 'I really love your column!', etc); was I going to try to snog him (no! NO. God, no - how quickly would that make him totally head for the hills? Also, being that drunk would be a very bad idea indeed and would doubtless result in me falling over and taking half the rest of the bar with me, given the slightly perilous heels I was planning on wearing. Not a good first impression.)
My main worry was that I was going to get introduced to him, throw a glass of wine down his front and then turn into the female equivalent of Hugh Grant, swear profusely, blush madly and then tell him I’d written a blog about him, then run away crying. Leaving him thinking, ‘Who’s that mental girl? I’m glad I never have to see her again’.
So, with not a small amount of trepidation, I set off, fully frocked-and-heeled up, into yet another monsoon of biblical proportions. I had an umbrella, but had foolishly not brought a jacket. Curse these British 'summers'! Mary and I managed to get to the party without looking too much like drowned rats. The venue was very packed and very noisy. We established ourselves at the bar, and got introduced to two blokes by the author’s extremely enthusiastic agent. One of them immediately did a runner. The other took a shine to Mary, which was unfortunate, as he looked like the kind of man you wouldn't even want to share a bus stop with, let alone a drink (still wearing what can only be described as ‘a windcheater’, despite the fact that the bar was about 100 degrees; sweaty; comb-over hair; dodgy specs) and was one of those men who invades your personal space, then bores you to a slow death. We eventually shook him off. We drank several drinks, whilst keeping an eager eye out for DM. Eventually, we had news that he was at the other end of the bar. We were off!
We stationed ourselves carefully within his eyeline, and waited for him to come within range, much like a pair of hungry lionesses eyeing up a baby antelope. Finally, he was on his own! ‘GO!’ I shouted at Mary, who sprung into action, tapping him on the arm and engaging him in conversation. She was a pro. After much advice from all my friends to 'be yourself', and even 'be your wonderful, beautiful self' from my old flatmate (aww!), I sadly decided that the self that I would present was in fact my 18 year-old one: gauche, smiling like a simpleton and not really saying anything. It’s kind of difficult when the bar is so loud that most of the conversation involves one person saying, ‘What? Sorry?’, you repeat yourself three times and then the situation is reversed.
So, on the strength of this encounter, I won’t be marrying David Mitchell. He seems perfectly nice, and was quite smiley (although his look of abject horror when I asked for a glass of water when he offered me a drink led me to think that strategic teetotalism wasn't perhaps my wisest move after all), but Mary was finding it hard work trying to keep a conversation going with him, despite the fact that she's brilliantly funny, very cool and incredibly pretty. So he’s either not good at parties, not good with people he doesn’t really know, or just not good at conversation full stop. Oh well, I achieved my aim of speaking to him, rather than hiding in a corner and repeatedly wibbling, 'Oh God, I can't', so on that front it was a success. But equally, I'm rather sad that my Odyssey has ended so quickly, and with a somewhat damp squib-ish result (and with me having a total personality failure). On the plus side, if it's that easy to get the Universe to deliver celebrity men to your door, who can I target next? Suggestions on the back of a Peep Show script.
Tuesday 4 August 2009
More Toad of Toad Hall than Ratty...
It's hard to believe, but after only two and a half days on a barge, (the top speed for which, in case you don't know, is a mighty four miles an hour), and a day and a half off it, I still feel as though I'm tilting from side to side, which is most disconcerting. It feels rather like a hangover, but minus the attendant Fear that you've done something dreadful, which you can't remember, but you know that other people can, or said something offensive, which you equally have no recollection of, but which a vengeful 'friend' is going to post onto your Facebook wall for everyone to see. Although as I have about 2.4 friends on Facebook, that wouldn't necessarily bring my reputation crashing down around my ears.
The barge trip was with four other girls and was in honour of my sister's birthday. Although, carrying on the tradition of disastrous boating holidays undertaken by my family (of which more in a moment), my sister didn't actually make it aboard. She was summoned two days beforehand to France, where she is producing a film, in order to try to Sort Things Out. (Such is the lot of a producer). The film has thus far been blighted in myriad ways, the most impressive of which have been their lead actress pulling out two weeks before shooting was due to begin; half of the crew having to apply for Irish citizenship because of complicated funding issues; one of their leads getting swine flu just as he was about to fly out to France and their location, a wood full of well-established trees in full and glorious leaf, being reduced to a less aesthetically pleasing collection of stumps, with no warning, last month. I receive a text from her as we're handing the barge back on the Monday morning saying, 'I'm in an area of oustanding national boredom. It is pissing down with rain. I've eaten something that I've had an allergic reaction to, and I'm now wandering around with a face that looks like Raging Bull'. Poor thing!
So, yes, back to the boat. Much like Emma Kennedy's brilliant and pant-wettingly hysterical The Tent, The Bucket And Me, which details her family's disastrous attempts to go camping in the 70s, my family has quite a varied history with disastrous boating holidays in the 80s. We tried a motor boat on the Norfolk Broads, and a couple of barges round Oxfordshire. Our mishaps, in no particular order, included:
1/ Taking possession of the boat, driving out of the boatyard and then deciding to moor up about an hour and a half later. None of the four adults on board (including my dad and my uncle, both of whom had reached senior positions in the army) could work out how to turn off the engine. As this was pre-mobile phones, we thus had to spend an hour and a half motoring back to the boatyard. Where a despairing man rolled his eyes extravagantly, pushed a button somewhere on the boat's dashboard and our motor stopped.
2/ Finding a lovely spot to moor up and my uncle inadvertently hammering the mooring post into an underground wasps' nest. Much stinging of all aboard, including Daisy the spaniel who'd come on holiday with us. This caused her to have the runs all over the boat once we'd all gone to bed. My sister, naturally, had no idea of this until she ventured to the loo, in the dark, without any slippers on...
3/ Getting rope tangled round the propeller. My uncle did what is still referred to by the whole family as A Very Brave Thing and disappeared into the murky depths clutching a bread knife between his teeth to try to cut us free. He failed, and we had to call out an emergency frogman, in full wetsuit, flippers and snorkel garb.
4/ Nearly killing our French exchange boy. My uncle and cousin took him out in a dinghy, which promptly capsized, trapping him under the sail. He really nearly drowned.
5/ Going under a very low bridge, and knocking all the deckchairs that we'd balanced on the back of the boat straight into the canal, never to be seen again.
6/ Crossing a very choppy stretch of water, and smashing half the glasses and crockery in the boat's sink.
7/ Taking a tin of maggots on board, because someone thought we might do some fishing (to my knowledge, no-one in my family had ever fished before, nor have they since). Putting said maggots in the fridge, because the cold would... I've no idea what the reasoning was. Managing to leave the tin lid ever so slightly ajar (so they didn't suffocate? Maybe). Realising, when awoken by small wriggly things dropping into your hair from the ceiling whilst you were lying in bed, that the maggots had escaped the tin, the fridge and the kitchen area as a whole, and were, lemming-like, all making for one end of the boat. Panicking. Waking up the other adults, and trying your best to sweep all the maggots off the side of the boat and into the water with a broom, without waking up the children. Going into the children's rooms, flicking on the lights and frantically checking for maggoty activity, whilst telling the youngsters that there was a swarm of mosquitoes on board, and they wanted to make sure there weren't any in here. Reassuring them that everything was fine, absolutely fine, yes, go back to sleep, no need to worry. Realising in the morning that the spag bol that you'd made for next day's lunch, for 8 people, and that you'd left in the fridge, was somewhat tarnished by having maggots rampaging through it, building themselves up for The Big Push. Throwing the spag bol promptly over the side, thus affording the local fish the biggest free lunch they'd had in many a year.
So, it's fair to say that I was a bit apprehensive about getting on a boat again, especially when the girls merrily declared that I was the expert, as I'd house-sat for my friend Jess when she lived on a barge (that, I was swift to point out, was entirely stationary, and the only challenge I'd faced was trying to get a pill down her cat every day). Yes, I'd been out on Jess's barge a couple of times, but it was a long time ago, and I was never allowed near the steering mechanism. Plus, you know, there'd been men aboard, so I'd left most of the tricky stuff to them. The boatyard man giving us the lesson on steering, locks and how to turn the boat around looked a bit worried. It might have had something to do with the fact that one of us was wearing Strictly Come Dancing-style silver sandals, and one was holding a four month-old baby. We looked like some sort of Channel 4 reality show on dim-witted city dwellers who'd decided to downsize in search of a life filled with bucolic charm.
He took us through starting the engine, stopping the engine and where to fill up with water. He showed us how to flush the loos. He pointed out the fridge, the cooker and the 12-volt hairdryer. He gave us a pair of windlasses for cranking lock gates, and a mallet and a couple of mooring pegs. We started the engine, cranked our way through a lock, turned the boat around and came back through the lock. He told us you have to steer the opposite way to the way you want to go, and that it was best to stick in the middle of the canal, as it's very shallow and it's not the easiest thing in the world to move 15 tons of metal when your propeller is jammed in the mud. He told us that you can only turn around at certain places and roughly where that would be on our trip. And that was it. We were off!
I promptly refused to do any steering, volunteering for lock and chain-bridge action (there are quite a lot of these - basically you have to pull a big chain, it goes up like Tower Bridge, you and a friend sit on either side of it like a see-saw to keep it up, then let it go crashing down and jump back on the boat), throwing of ropes and getting of glasses of wine. I knew it couldn't last, but I was determined to avoid crashing into things for as long as possible. Sadly, when there are only five of you aboard, and one of them has to spend quite a lot of time breastfeeding a baby, you eventually have to take a turn at steering.
I managed to avoid it till about lunchtime on Saturday, by which time it was pissing it down with rain in an almost biblical way. We'd moored up for lunch, then discovered halfway through that we were drifting backwards at quite a rate, having come totally unmoored. (Good job that hadn't happened at night). So I was already feeling a bit nervous. 'Come on', I thought, 'can't be that tricky, you've just got to concentrate'. I rapidly remembered why I gave up any attempt to learn how to drive at 18, as I steered totally the wrong way, panicked, and drove straight into a tree, in full view of an angler and his son. We spent the next 15 minutes trying to untangle the boat, whilst the angler helpfully told us that it was shallow at the sides, and deeper in the middle of the canal. I tried to shimmy down the side of the boat (there's a running board that's about two inches wide) to get the big pole that was on the top of the boat, that I could gondolier us off the bank with. And promptly got attacked by a swan that'd sidled up next to us. It hissed at me in that famous, 'I'm going to break your arm!' way that they have. I shrieked and leapt back into the boat. I screamed at it to fuck off, and told it that I didn't give a toss if it belonged to the Queen, I'd kill it and roast it if it didn't leave me alone. It hissed some more and followed us for three miles, in a quietly menacing fashion.
I managed to steer for about three minutes at a time, if I concentrated really really hard, and moved at the slowest pace possible (my constant cry every time I was required to take the tiller was, 'Can you make it go any slower?!', as someone else had to do the gears for me.) Going round corners utterly defeated me, as did any sort of 'getting the boat near to the bank so that someone can get off and do a lock' manoeuvre. If I couldn't park my mum's Renault when I was 18, there was no way I was going to be able to park 50-foot of cast iron, steering the opposite way to that in which you wish to go. It's a total headfuck. We were passed by a boatload of men wearing Hawaiian shirts on a stag do. We were passed by another boatload of blokes all dressed as pirates. The girls at the front of the boat beamed at them. 'Do you need rescuing?' they chortled cheekily. I panicked as their boat came past us with four foot to spare and drove us straight into another bank.
Anyone who thinks that life aboard a barge is all 'messing about on the river' should really try it. Your shoulders end up in agony because you're reaching behind you to steer, constantly correcting the boat and it's really bloody heavy. Plus if you're not that tall, you have to stand on tiptoes to see over the end of the boat to try to ascertain where you're going and if you're in a straight line. Cranking open the sluice gates on the locks requires some pretty serious biceps and then you have to give the gates a huge shove to get them open and closed. Then you have to contend with the fact that the sleeping arrangements are somewhat challenging. I spent the first night trying to sleep in the top bunk, which I only realised once I was wedged into it was quite a tight fit for an undernourished eight year-old, let alone an overnourished 38 year-old. Like an aquatic Goldilocks, I decided to try out the lower bunk for the other two nights, which was marginally wider, but did have a bit of a coffiny feel to it.
Still, it is good fun. You meet a lot of very smiley people. You also, if you're mean types like us, laugh at the barge pros, who all look like characters in a Mike Leigh film. The women all have big droopy boobs and look like they should be called Maureen. The men are either entirely spherical, with Captain Birdseye beards, or weedy, henpecked sorts who look like Nigels. Every time we started to get a bit misty-eyed about how lovely it was to move at such a slow speed, and really take in everything around us (fields, ducks, trees, cute cottages with thatched roofs), we'd shriek, 'Yes, but think of how DROOPY YOUR BOOBS WOULD BE if you lived on a barge!', cackle wildly and go back to talking about property prices and having to attend church in order to get your kids into the right school. I got confused by a sudden outbreak of sunshine on Sunday, and managed to get a hopelessly chavvy cleavage sunburn because I hadn't put on any suncream, having spent all of the previous day under a mammoth golf umbrella, wearing a huge waterproof coat and barely being able to see through the driving rain.
The British countryside really is beautiful. We stopped off at a village to have tea and to buy sausages for supper. I saw the most idyllic cottage, which had hollyhocks and a plethora of other flowers in the garden, as well as a thatched roof. 'Look at this, it's gorgeous!' I said. 'Hmm, this place is a bit Midsomer Murders, if you ask me', said one of the other girls darkly, alarmed by the village's manicured perfection. Well, I liked it.
We managed to return the boat to the yard unscathed. We hadn't dropped the baby over the side. We'd only broken two wine glasses, and we hadn't been attacked by maggots. We'd played two games of Trivial Pursuit from 1980 (that's quite confusing, when there are vaguely 'topical' questions, by the way). We'd turned the boat round with help from a lovely Captain Birdseye. We'd laughed our heads off at a family that included a granny sporting a minidress and cycling shorts and a bouffant hairpiece, who had clearly been an early adopter when it came to facelifts. I had been a kind of Tourette's version of Rosie and Jim, swearing every time I had to negotiate a row of parked barges, a bridge, a speed of more than half a mile an hour or a particularly moody swan. I'd also narrowly avoided falling in and being crushed by Helen driving the barge straight at me. I had extravagantly weird dreams, probably caused by claustrophobia. I'm hoping that when I wake up tomorrow morning, I will have stopped gently rocking and gradually morphing into Alison Steadman.
The barge trip was with four other girls and was in honour of my sister's birthday. Although, carrying on the tradition of disastrous boating holidays undertaken by my family (of which more in a moment), my sister didn't actually make it aboard. She was summoned two days beforehand to France, where she is producing a film, in order to try to Sort Things Out. (Such is the lot of a producer). The film has thus far been blighted in myriad ways, the most impressive of which have been their lead actress pulling out two weeks before shooting was due to begin; half of the crew having to apply for Irish citizenship because of complicated funding issues; one of their leads getting swine flu just as he was about to fly out to France and their location, a wood full of well-established trees in full and glorious leaf, being reduced to a less aesthetically pleasing collection of stumps, with no warning, last month. I receive a text from her as we're handing the barge back on the Monday morning saying, 'I'm in an area of oustanding national boredom. It is pissing down with rain. I've eaten something that I've had an allergic reaction to, and I'm now wandering around with a face that looks like Raging Bull'. Poor thing!
So, yes, back to the boat. Much like Emma Kennedy's brilliant and pant-wettingly hysterical The Tent, The Bucket And Me, which details her family's disastrous attempts to go camping in the 70s, my family has quite a varied history with disastrous boating holidays in the 80s. We tried a motor boat on the Norfolk Broads, and a couple of barges round Oxfordshire. Our mishaps, in no particular order, included:
1/ Taking possession of the boat, driving out of the boatyard and then deciding to moor up about an hour and a half later. None of the four adults on board (including my dad and my uncle, both of whom had reached senior positions in the army) could work out how to turn off the engine. As this was pre-mobile phones, we thus had to spend an hour and a half motoring back to the boatyard. Where a despairing man rolled his eyes extravagantly, pushed a button somewhere on the boat's dashboard and our motor stopped.
2/ Finding a lovely spot to moor up and my uncle inadvertently hammering the mooring post into an underground wasps' nest. Much stinging of all aboard, including Daisy the spaniel who'd come on holiday with us. This caused her to have the runs all over the boat once we'd all gone to bed. My sister, naturally, had no idea of this until she ventured to the loo, in the dark, without any slippers on...
3/ Getting rope tangled round the propeller. My uncle did what is still referred to by the whole family as A Very Brave Thing and disappeared into the murky depths clutching a bread knife between his teeth to try to cut us free. He failed, and we had to call out an emergency frogman, in full wetsuit, flippers and snorkel garb.
4/ Nearly killing our French exchange boy. My uncle and cousin took him out in a dinghy, which promptly capsized, trapping him under the sail. He really nearly drowned.
5/ Going under a very low bridge, and knocking all the deckchairs that we'd balanced on the back of the boat straight into the canal, never to be seen again.
6/ Crossing a very choppy stretch of water, and smashing half the glasses and crockery in the boat's sink.
7/ Taking a tin of maggots on board, because someone thought we might do some fishing (to my knowledge, no-one in my family had ever fished before, nor have they since). Putting said maggots in the fridge, because the cold would... I've no idea what the reasoning was. Managing to leave the tin lid ever so slightly ajar (so they didn't suffocate? Maybe). Realising, when awoken by small wriggly things dropping into your hair from the ceiling whilst you were lying in bed, that the maggots had escaped the tin, the fridge and the kitchen area as a whole, and were, lemming-like, all making for one end of the boat. Panicking. Waking up the other adults, and trying your best to sweep all the maggots off the side of the boat and into the water with a broom, without waking up the children. Going into the children's rooms, flicking on the lights and frantically checking for maggoty activity, whilst telling the youngsters that there was a swarm of mosquitoes on board, and they wanted to make sure there weren't any in here. Reassuring them that everything was fine, absolutely fine, yes, go back to sleep, no need to worry. Realising in the morning that the spag bol that you'd made for next day's lunch, for 8 people, and that you'd left in the fridge, was somewhat tarnished by having maggots rampaging through it, building themselves up for The Big Push. Throwing the spag bol promptly over the side, thus affording the local fish the biggest free lunch they'd had in many a year.
So, it's fair to say that I was a bit apprehensive about getting on a boat again, especially when the girls merrily declared that I was the expert, as I'd house-sat for my friend Jess when she lived on a barge (that, I was swift to point out, was entirely stationary, and the only challenge I'd faced was trying to get a pill down her cat every day). Yes, I'd been out on Jess's barge a couple of times, but it was a long time ago, and I was never allowed near the steering mechanism. Plus, you know, there'd been men aboard, so I'd left most of the tricky stuff to them. The boatyard man giving us the lesson on steering, locks and how to turn the boat around looked a bit worried. It might have had something to do with the fact that one of us was wearing Strictly Come Dancing-style silver sandals, and one was holding a four month-old baby. We looked like some sort of Channel 4 reality show on dim-witted city dwellers who'd decided to downsize in search of a life filled with bucolic charm.
He took us through starting the engine, stopping the engine and where to fill up with water. He showed us how to flush the loos. He pointed out the fridge, the cooker and the 12-volt hairdryer. He gave us a pair of windlasses for cranking lock gates, and a mallet and a couple of mooring pegs. We started the engine, cranked our way through a lock, turned the boat around and came back through the lock. He told us you have to steer the opposite way to the way you want to go, and that it was best to stick in the middle of the canal, as it's very shallow and it's not the easiest thing in the world to move 15 tons of metal when your propeller is jammed in the mud. He told us that you can only turn around at certain places and roughly where that would be on our trip. And that was it. We were off!
I promptly refused to do any steering, volunteering for lock and chain-bridge action (there are quite a lot of these - basically you have to pull a big chain, it goes up like Tower Bridge, you and a friend sit on either side of it like a see-saw to keep it up, then let it go crashing down and jump back on the boat), throwing of ropes and getting of glasses of wine. I knew it couldn't last, but I was determined to avoid crashing into things for as long as possible. Sadly, when there are only five of you aboard, and one of them has to spend quite a lot of time breastfeeding a baby, you eventually have to take a turn at steering.
I managed to avoid it till about lunchtime on Saturday, by which time it was pissing it down with rain in an almost biblical way. We'd moored up for lunch, then discovered halfway through that we were drifting backwards at quite a rate, having come totally unmoored. (Good job that hadn't happened at night). So I was already feeling a bit nervous. 'Come on', I thought, 'can't be that tricky, you've just got to concentrate'. I rapidly remembered why I gave up any attempt to learn how to drive at 18, as I steered totally the wrong way, panicked, and drove straight into a tree, in full view of an angler and his son. We spent the next 15 minutes trying to untangle the boat, whilst the angler helpfully told us that it was shallow at the sides, and deeper in the middle of the canal. I tried to shimmy down the side of the boat (there's a running board that's about two inches wide) to get the big pole that was on the top of the boat, that I could gondolier us off the bank with. And promptly got attacked by a swan that'd sidled up next to us. It hissed at me in that famous, 'I'm going to break your arm!' way that they have. I shrieked and leapt back into the boat. I screamed at it to fuck off, and told it that I didn't give a toss if it belonged to the Queen, I'd kill it and roast it if it didn't leave me alone. It hissed some more and followed us for three miles, in a quietly menacing fashion.
I managed to steer for about three minutes at a time, if I concentrated really really hard, and moved at the slowest pace possible (my constant cry every time I was required to take the tiller was, 'Can you make it go any slower?!', as someone else had to do the gears for me.) Going round corners utterly defeated me, as did any sort of 'getting the boat near to the bank so that someone can get off and do a lock' manoeuvre. If I couldn't park my mum's Renault when I was 18, there was no way I was going to be able to park 50-foot of cast iron, steering the opposite way to that in which you wish to go. It's a total headfuck. We were passed by a boatload of men wearing Hawaiian shirts on a stag do. We were passed by another boatload of blokes all dressed as pirates. The girls at the front of the boat beamed at them. 'Do you need rescuing?' they chortled cheekily. I panicked as their boat came past us with four foot to spare and drove us straight into another bank.
Anyone who thinks that life aboard a barge is all 'messing about on the river' should really try it. Your shoulders end up in agony because you're reaching behind you to steer, constantly correcting the boat and it's really bloody heavy. Plus if you're not that tall, you have to stand on tiptoes to see over the end of the boat to try to ascertain where you're going and if you're in a straight line. Cranking open the sluice gates on the locks requires some pretty serious biceps and then you have to give the gates a huge shove to get them open and closed. Then you have to contend with the fact that the sleeping arrangements are somewhat challenging. I spent the first night trying to sleep in the top bunk, which I only realised once I was wedged into it was quite a tight fit for an undernourished eight year-old, let alone an overnourished 38 year-old. Like an aquatic Goldilocks, I decided to try out the lower bunk for the other two nights, which was marginally wider, but did have a bit of a coffiny feel to it.
Still, it is good fun. You meet a lot of very smiley people. You also, if you're mean types like us, laugh at the barge pros, who all look like characters in a Mike Leigh film. The women all have big droopy boobs and look like they should be called Maureen. The men are either entirely spherical, with Captain Birdseye beards, or weedy, henpecked sorts who look like Nigels. Every time we started to get a bit misty-eyed about how lovely it was to move at such a slow speed, and really take in everything around us (fields, ducks, trees, cute cottages with thatched roofs), we'd shriek, 'Yes, but think of how DROOPY YOUR BOOBS WOULD BE if you lived on a barge!', cackle wildly and go back to talking about property prices and having to attend church in order to get your kids into the right school. I got confused by a sudden outbreak of sunshine on Sunday, and managed to get a hopelessly chavvy cleavage sunburn because I hadn't put on any suncream, having spent all of the previous day under a mammoth golf umbrella, wearing a huge waterproof coat and barely being able to see through the driving rain.
The British countryside really is beautiful. We stopped off at a village to have tea and to buy sausages for supper. I saw the most idyllic cottage, which had hollyhocks and a plethora of other flowers in the garden, as well as a thatched roof. 'Look at this, it's gorgeous!' I said. 'Hmm, this place is a bit Midsomer Murders, if you ask me', said one of the other girls darkly, alarmed by the village's manicured perfection. Well, I liked it.
We managed to return the boat to the yard unscathed. We hadn't dropped the baby over the side. We'd only broken two wine glasses, and we hadn't been attacked by maggots. We'd played two games of Trivial Pursuit from 1980 (that's quite confusing, when there are vaguely 'topical' questions, by the way). We'd turned the boat round with help from a lovely Captain Birdseye. We'd laughed our heads off at a family that included a granny sporting a minidress and cycling shorts and a bouffant hairpiece, who had clearly been an early adopter when it came to facelifts. I had been a kind of Tourette's version of Rosie and Jim, swearing every time I had to negotiate a row of parked barges, a bridge, a speed of more than half a mile an hour or a particularly moody swan. I'd also narrowly avoided falling in and being crushed by Helen driving the barge straight at me. I had extravagantly weird dreams, probably caused by claustrophobia. I'm hoping that when I wake up tomorrow morning, I will have stopped gently rocking and gradually morphing into Alison Steadman.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)