Coming Around Again

A nondescript town centre ring road. Four lanes in close formation sweep past historic hugger-mugger streets, skirting the parish church standing proud but ignored, and away over the bridge towards wonders unknown. All roads lead to Rome they say, but it’s a long way from here for sure. The march of some months in fact for those Imperial soldiers who settled here and founded the town two millennia ago. 

The Trent and Mersey threads under the pavement ahead of me, not quite perpendicular to the road and hidden in amongst the houses and shops. Another second of a busy day to take in the view, such as it is; but here I am, confronted with myself as I cross the then-deserted road one October evening in 2002. Stuart and Deb have just bought their monster 72ft boat from the old yard at Harral’s just up the way, and a gaggle of over-excited twenty somethings are making their way across to celebrate at the pub which today sports its ‘Vaults’ moniker in a huge, stylised mural on the terrace end. Lord only knows what it was called twenty-one years ago, we probably never looked. That day a short run in the boat was finished off by filling ourselves with stout and crisps. We meandered back to the boat to light the fire and roll comically outsized joints as we surrendered consciousness to the night; first sweating, then shaking with cold in the unfamiliar surroundings. It is a pleasant sensation to meet this young and impressionable, if already jaded beyond years person; even if it is only in the eye of memory.

This happens frequently, I may not yet be of ancient mariner vintage, but being ‘in the world’ constantly all these years (on the near constant move, perpetually trying new things, new ways of living) I frequently find myself again in half-remembered places. It is a running joke that you can’t drive me down a lane in the UK without hearing at some point ‘I worked in there for a bit’, ‘drained that field’, ‘we bought a boat up there’, and occasionally ‘I slept there for a while’. I’ve left a lot of footprints over time, fleeting and easily missed as they are.

It seems more prescient today, however. That October run twenty-one years ago was the first of many; and in retrospect definitely more formative than incidental. It was followed some months later by my own first boat purchase from the same yard, something that has been bookended this year by the purchase of Murphy’s Game from the very same broker; almost twenty years to the week after the first cheque was written.

The eyes are older now of course, but the vision is clearer; no longer muddied by drink or drugs I can see that young man careering around in some kind of opiate heaven. I’d just started college, given up home and job to do so, and was opening my eyes on myself for the first time; the lines of the thing that changed me so drastically as a teen still fresh in mind and ideal “If I could choose the life I lead then I would be a boatman…” (Levellers, The Boatman, 1991). Well I did, didn’t I. You can’t go in half-way with this stuff; everyone can stand in crowds and sing but if you believe it, you’ve got to live it.

Looking across those years today this is literally where and when it became clear that it was really the only sensible thing to do. I’d been around boats forever; my aunt and uncle always had river cruisers, I’d always fished and swum, and the canal had always been close to my grandparents’ place in Staffordshire and to my sometime-adoptive family in Cheshire. Oddly it was Michael Howard who made the final decision for me; when the Criminal Justice Act came into force in the mid 90’s my real dream of living on the roads was euthanised in the operations rooms of the British constabularies. To the boats then, where “no hasty words are spoken”. It has served me well over the years, and I pray it continues to do so; because now this world is home and I feel it will always be so.

Back to today, the simple flatland cutting of North Cheshire waterways are behind us, and the way south is punctuated by flights of locks up into Staffordshire and then back down into the Arden and home. The shoulders are about to get a workout and linear miles travelled are to be replaced with feet of uprising and descent. This is where the work really starts.

Out of Middlewich we go, in squally weather and wind. Another new phenomenon for the trip is passing traffic; up to this point the sight of another boat has prompted a surprised ‘Oh look!’ from anyone on board, but now we have entered the touring ring of holiday cruises and off-line marinas there is a marked increase in ‘floating puns’. English boats often carry the worst pun-inspired names, some of the prime offenders being ‘Not DunRoamin Yet’, ‘The Kid’s Inheritance’, and the near ubiquitous ‘Nauti Girl/Boy’ (the latter will be punishable with a custodial sentence should I ever reach high office). The people on board wave and point with interest “that looks like a project and a half”, they shout. They aren’t wrong on that.

The run down to Wheelock is peppered with paddocks and arable land deep into the turning of colour as harvest approaches. Canalside farmsteads reminiscent of the English Model Farm are also seen here, now mostly dilapidated and veering dangerously into the sort of condition that might inspire Wordsworth to pontificate at great length. The oft-heard refrain of ‘oh what we could DO with that space!’ echoes between us as we go. These places are crying out for my hands and my labour, but we are locked out by economics and time; everything here either earmarked for gentrification-with-concrete or for pulling down and replacing with the monochromatic edifice of modern Britain. Each to their own and all that, but where is the colour going from our buildings?

We plod on, heartbeats in sync with the low thud of the boat; and just as the climb up to Kidsgrove and its famous tunnel hove into view we are greeted with the news that lock 57 had sprung a gate and was now closed for major surgery. As I am soon to depart these shores for a work adventure to Los Angeles this heralds a major break in progress, and so there we must tie up for now; left on a 48-hour mooring with fingers raised to the rules. The end of this instalment is instead marked with a cold slaking Guinness in the Cheshire Cheese pub on the Crewe Road; the welcome help of the bar staff topped only by the pleasant attention of the beautiful little pub dog, Poppy, resplendent in her brand new haircut.

Away for now then; I’ve more reminiscing to do, this time at 30,000 feet.

See you next time.