On Reflection: Boating About Life
There is something mesmerising about this; about this activity, this way of life. I find the tactile nature of it seductive, there’s no doubt. Even the terrible days, the expensive infuriating days, even those days have something familiar and inviting about them.
It is the first click in the morning as the gear engages; the gloop and slosh of water once still but now screwed up against the counter plate under your feet. The half-protest rolling of the boat as it moves under the motion of people inside. It is the good-natured animosity between anglers and boaters; the gongoozlers leaning over the wall, silhouetted above the bridge ‘ole. Even the smell of bilge water and diesel, which endures on clothes and skin and eventually forms part of one’s identity has an almost homely quality. It is deeply intoxicating to me, and it has been enduringly so since the very first days I encountered boating as a ‘thing’.
The draw for me is myriad, it is all of these idiosyncratic things combined, plus the opportunity for being truly marginal in this crowded world. The activity though, the ‘thing’ of boating itself, well the attraction has a lot to do with reflection; both literal and figurative.
Not only does time on deck offer views of some of the comeliest scenery this country has to offer, but the enforced slowness of the whole thing provides one with some -increasingly rare- time to actually slow down and think. That’s not to say boating time is in any way idle time- in fact slipping to inattention will see the whole thing get out of shape quickly. It’s more that the semi-conscious engagement needed to maintain progress leaves space for the cerebrum to engage in some serious uninterrupted cognition, often leading to reflection on life present and past.
Sara Maitland has recently written on the value of finding silence in life, on seeking out isolation and noting how finding it can show other parts of life in stark relief. In A Book of Silence, she explains how the more she experienced remoteness and solitude, the more she began to not only look for it, but to recognise the mental cost of the failure to find it; herself referring to Richard Bird’s work on the ‘urgencies’ of modern life (e.g. economic, social, or romantic needs). I recognise this phenomenon all too well. The world many of us experience is exhausting to be part of; the continual over-stimulation, the constant demand to buy into ever more distant dreams, the thankless task of servicing the needs of daily life, and most of all the never. ending. noise.
Whilst I cannot claim that narrowboating is either a silent or isolated activity for the most part, it does enforce a kind of isolation in practice. On a purely functional level standing a few inches above a diesel engine robs one of the ability to have meaningful conversation, so the internal monologue gets free rein to take over. It is welcome, this practice of part-watching, part-thinking; even in my life, which is deliberately set up to be one step removed from the world.
This weekend more personal landmarks hove into view as we moved, bringing about more catalysed reflection. It began with sighs of relief as the once-again functioning engine sprang into life, and what followed was a day of tranquil passage under pendulous trees and past families of encircling adolescent ducks. In the restored sunshine it was a delight to be moving again.
On Saturday we passed under the white bridge, a small farm bridge over the cut; brick built and painted white many years ago. It is visible from the M6 as one travels between Crewe and Sandbach, in the field alongside the northbound carriageway. I remember seeing it on the very first drive up to Northwich many years ago, and subsequently being delighted when we passed under it on the boat a few days later.
Back then there was a pub called the Romping Donkey in the next field, just under the motorway to the east. Stuart and I (being half-drunk half-stoned idiots) had almost sunk the boat in the lock next to the pub (it became hooked in the bottom lock gate and we didn’t notice as the lock filled around the trapped boat). We got the boat out but had flooded engine and batteries and needed to call for support from home; so we took to the pub to beg use of the phone and wait. As we entered we passed a big sign above the door to the bar that read “No Gypsies, No Travellers”. Unfortunately it was a description fitted us both perfectly, a problem compounded a short time later when our mate David turned up with a van and caravan to really complete the look. They were, however, open to bribery in the manner of all pub landlords and upon seeing the colour of our money made us all welcome for both the night and following morning until we got going again.
The pub is no longer there, more’s the pity; its ghost barely visible now. There would be no visiting the bar to recount the story to a (doubtless unimpressed) staff member, so passing this week was the work of just a few uneventful minutes. The white bridge too is sporting much more of a shabby chic look, its paint peeling and faded from twenty more years of sun and rain. We move on, and nothing in our wake remains static.
Plenty of time to look and think on these days, and much for the mind to mull; some of it fresh experience, some the as-yet not organised events of recent years. This summer progression through the country is the perfect time for it all, the thought streams churning and plaiting out behind us like the spilling wake at the rudder.
The last few years have been momentous, dramatic at times, and well, life-changing. The illness and death of the woman who largely raised me coming after years of difficult family care; the work too much for the available hands at times. Finishing my DPhil, the culmination of twenty one years of study and personal sacrifice for me and those around me. The undoing of the gordian knot that the breakdown of a marriage brings, with two people finding themselves looking in opposite directions after a decade together. Cross words and time slipping past like ticker tape underneath a TV weather report: ‘The forecast is for storms, becoming calmer with time’. I lost my best mate Travis about this time 2 years ago, too; after almost 20 years of his presence at my side for both work and play. It seemed at times like the last few years were one suckerpunch after another; I suppose I should be grateful that it all happened at a time of global peace and stability, without anything “newsworthy” going on at the same time.
All these things swim together in the mind, mixing with new experiences and plans as the reddish brown water of ironstone country carries us towards a future so far only partially manifest. It’s a lot to process, and some of it only possible now at a couple of years distance.
The diesel thud is reassuring, and the miles slide under gently as we wend our way through the histories of the working people of Ireland; bodies broken by the labour in making this industrial route for the English, their world in turn bisected by the incursion of engineering at landscape scale; first canal then railway- always within touching distance of one another. There is perspective to be found here as the tiller bar swings back and forth to mark the way, and the mind meanders into the terra incognito of the coming days and years.
Today the sun is out, and the going is good; lock gears clack ahead signalling a soon-to-be opened gate. ‘Let’s get on’ I think, as the ghost-shadows of a journey already made grow longer behind me to the north and west, their outline distorted by the wake of the journey taken now. There’s a tunnel ahead and I’ve an appointment to keep with it. We’ve knocked off 14 locks over the weekend from Wheelock to Rode Heath; that’s not a bad run considering we had a 2 hour commute on Saturday and a starter motor to fit. It leaves another 13 to go to get to Harecastle Tunnel at Kidsgrove, the point which (to me at least) marks my entry into the Midlands proper, and I want to be through before the weekend coming.
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