A Winter Warmer
Bringing the sunshine to midwinter
Funny how time is passing in a haze here. As I started to write this post in January, the opening line of 'Storm after storm batters us this winter, from the rains of the Autumn and pre-Christmas weeks, to the winds of the new year' was not only true, but prescient. All of a sudden two largely benign weeks make that seem overly dramatic. Still, it has been a dirge of a season so far. As we all know by now, this is the norm for the UK. Our 'energy-rich' weather system is primed to make things wet and windy for time to come, and if some of the predictions are to be believed, it'll be much worse in years to come.
Here, the comfort of the season remains novel and most welcome. The new boat hosted its first Christmas, and marvellous it was. The winter break saw me transition between jobs, and the enforced fortnight of holiday although costly did give me chance to really begin to piece parts of my life together that have been waiting for such for a long time. Whilst the last two years onboard Solsbury Hill have been interesting, and the first year of the 'Restless' project added a much needed dose of adventure to our lives, much of the life I packed into boxes on leaving the former home in 2022 had remained untouched. Some of the things I used to hold dear have not fared well in storage; and the rats of Kingston Grange have feathered their beds with clothes, books, and other consumables. It's a sobering job, sorting through old possessions and being forced to remove the importance they held for you, because they are now only good for burning; but an important reminder of the temporary nature not only of our existence but of the waypoints of our time. too. I'm minded throughout of Caitlyn DeSilvey's work on decay and loss in heritage studies. In the last few years I've been lucky enough to meet her and talk about the reality of this process of release, and these conversations lend a sense of purpose or form to the process as I sort through my own artefacts and discard each as is necessary. I don't begrudge the mice and rats their homes, nor the birds that nested last year in an old gym bag of mine, but it's a reminder of our own temporality.
As I worked through items both personal and professional, I was also able to recondition all of my sheet metal equipment- slip rollers, guillotine, and power saws; and then I wired the big trailer up for both 110 and 240v feeds from my generator so I can now work under lights and use all of the bench equipment at my disposal. By the time I started the new job on January 6th, I was full into the swing of fitting the trailer workshop out. In fact, the imposition of this new working pattern on my life has been frankly unwelcome. The money, however, would be greatly received; I mused. Alas, in this I was again to be disappointed. It seems that whenever I take employment (as opposed to self-employment), the numbers may change on my contract, but the amount delivered to me never seems to go up! It's the most baffling thing, but I suspect it'll work itself out in the end; that or I'll go back to working for myself. Having a job is something that not only seems incongruent to me, but gets in the way of all the things I need to do, after all.
Away from the trailer, work actually begins on the forge- if remotely. The roof for Murphy is to be made from steel and aluminium rescued from a lorry trailer and a set of heavy barn doors; both need cutting up and sectioning into useful pieces, which has now begun. It's a slow process, but things are moving at last.
On the water, Murphy's Game is crawling along the local waterways; though with stoppages, storms, and sheet ice across the canal, movement has been both uncomfortable and hard to achieve. Since late November I've made a grand total of about 3 miles progress; not least because the Napton lock flight was closed for repairs for over a month. I'm now up on the 'Fenny pound' a 10-ish mile chunk of flat canal to the north of Banbury. It's picturesque in many ways, and for a couple of years in the 2000's was the part of the network I called home. However, it does seem to go on forever in the winter- bleak in the wind and exposed in the rain; the route loops round and almost back on itself in a horseshoe as it skirts a low rise in the terrain. As it does so, it envelopes a huge radio mast which you pass first on one side and then the other. The Trinity House coastal GPS system used to run from this mast- close to the centre of the British mainland it spat out a low frequency rectification signal for the coastal stations, increasing the accuracy of the GPS location information given to offshore marine traffic and the RNLI. An odd little fringe benefit for me- working in the midlands in Archaeology- was that by using this system (and proximity to this mast) I could make my old Magellan D-GPS far more accurate than it was ever designed for, making the laying out of archaeological surveys much more efficient for no extra cost. Decommissioned a couple of years ago, I wonder what future for this big 20th Century 'coastal' landmark in Warwickshire will be.
There are many more landmarks, physical and memorial, little vignetttes of life to spill from the mind around here. Muddy to my knees with memory I am in this, the landscape of some of the most perplexing years of my life. Some are pleasant memories, others not. Sobriety found me here, marriage caught me for the first time (I've always been a reluctant groom), and in the shadow of the pub at Fenny Compton I found first friendship and then duplicity.
As always there are moments of pure comedy within the milieu; perhaps most surprisingly of all the moment my first wife announced that she was leaving. The high drama one might expect in such an event was burst by her unfortunate timing, however. Clearly holding something in, by the moment she felt she had to speak up we were holding up the opposite ends of a plywood sheet- reinstalling the cabin ceiling in the boat- while her words and tears fell clumsily onto the floor between us. Several awkward moments inevitably passed; makeup streamed on her face and the only words exchanged were 'hold that up a bit higher'. Finally, when enough screws were installed, I said 'that'll do, you can let go now'; though of course, she had already done so.
Soon after, little Trav and I moved away to moor in the village I passed this Christmas past; and in the darkening weeks that followed, I came back to life- finding surprise and delight in the friendship of a former university tutor ("am I allowed to call her a bitch? go on, let me call her a bitch" she said, conspiratorially, over a whiskey). On the night my ex came to the boat to take the last of her things, a young Welshman called Gareth Bale reached out of my Medium Wave radio and in destroying Inter Milan blew all of my remaining cobwebs away. The land around me froze soon after, but the little dog and I remained warm in our cabin.
As I write, I muse that this long pound ahead is a stretch of canal I find I have avoided since that time; perhaps the scars have been still too pink in places for the daylight, up til now. It's the dishonesty of others who had colluded in the episode that has always rankled; the pointlessness of all the lying. Once I left Fenny Compton on the Tuesday following the break-up, I never went back; and though I've passed through since then I've not so much as paused for water. Will I do so now it's all ancient history? we'll see. It won't be the same person who passes under the bridge by the Wharf, that's for sure, though the familiar faces I've encountered along the way here have all embraced me with apparent happiness at my return. It promises to be an interesting passage.
A quick note to subscribers
I have now completed the move away from Substack, and all subscriptions and payments have been moved as well. Hopefully this is all seamless, but if anyone notices anything weird, email me at therestlessforge[at]gmail.com.
One thing which I have yet to resolve however, is how to host videos on Ghost, I have several long-form trips from last year to share, and I may have to link them to a YouTube account for now to get you access. Watch this space for news on that.
