The H Factor

Frozen – Madonna, Celebration

I think it is only fitting that the winter I decide to live on a boat should be the coldest winter since woolly mammoths roamed the earth.  It was inevitable when you think about it, which I do a great deal, mainly while I am chipping the ice off the inside of the windows.

So I realised that it’s been about two and a half months since I moved onto the boat, and it’s about two and a half months until I have to give it back.  Which leads me to logically conclude that I am about half way through my boat-dwelling odyssey, which probably justifies an update of some kind.

I spent New Year in in Norfolk with friends, very much enjoying the simple things in life like central heating, a proper bed and a bath tub. It’s amazing how quickly you get excited about radiators.  These days I worship them, like they are precious and need to be treated with respect and reverence.  However, when I returned to take repossession of my trusty floating home, I discovered that it was trapped in Trowbridge.  My parents had taken it for a week-long jaunt during my absence, waking up one morning to find the canal had frozen solid.  I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Trowbridge, but it’s not somewhere where you’d want to live alone without a hungry Rottweiler and a shotgun.

So I’m back in the cottage with GBF and SBF, taking advantage of their huggable radiators for a week or so, while my poor parents live in the ghetto ice coffin, feeding the hungry stove 24/7 to prevent the pipes from freezing.  Clearly I do feel bad, but find a hot shower and a cup of tea in front of the fire is enormously restorative. 

I haven’t fallen in the canal yet, although there have been a couple of hairy moments when I have got all bambi-legged on the icy towpath whilst carrying a giant blue IKEA bag full of logs on each shoulder.   Doing this in the dark adds a whole new dimension - it’s like Gladiators, but with less spandex and more shuffling.  I am now brilliant at building fires and twiddling greasy taps in dark hatches, and have discovered that, when spending evenings alone, I talk to myself.  I did not know this - prior to this experience I have never lived alone.  I give myself motivational speeches, and berate myself for getting distracted.  As far as I know I’m not actually losing the plot, but I’ll keep you posted.

Some of the time I look forward to March and living in a proper house again, but a lot of the time I find myself feeling very lucky to be (mostly) enjoying such a unique experience.  It’s not every day you wake up to a family of swans tapping on the side of the boat, looking for breakfast.   Bread, they like; Special K, not so much.