ON A BOAT

Life on the River!

pizza chain gang

It has come to my attention that the restaurant at the end of the road has painted it’s walls the same colour as our kitchen wall: the turquoise blue colour that I took my South American Hotel picture to the local B & Q to achieve.  Whilst this is not a major problem, it kind of upsets me.  I wonder if I was subliminally influenced by it.  To be honest, I thought I was immune to infiltration from interior design styles of major restaurant chains.  It makes me feel sick that I might not be.

Today has been a very long, very tiring day.  It started with tears and ended with a sort of grubby feeling, mostly because its still very warm in London.  There have been a few hiccups on the way in to the boat, which started with our exit from Dad’s which, to be honest was shoddy on our part.  I won’t go into details, but in our over-excitement to get on the boat, we forgot to say goodbye properly to those who had been sheltering and feeding us for the past six months.  So when I went back today to pack I was suddenly a bit overwhelmed with it all and as I hate moving anyway, I had another mini-meltdown.

The other hiccup is the water situation on the boat. The water does not come out of the taps, it violently ejects itself out- with big bursts of air in between.  I find this a bit traumatic, because you just don’t know when the next burst will be and then you might not be prepared for it when it does come.  Especially  if you’re washing up, which I do in the bathroom at the moment because we don’t have a kitchen sink.  Anyway, the main problem with the water situation is that every so often- particularly in hot weather, the water pump just decides to stop working, and the only way to get it to work again is to poke it with a broom.  Which was fine when there was a big hole under the stairs to poke it through.  But now it is complicated because Pat (I tend not to do this sort of thing) has to climb all the way up and round and down into the engine room to get to the pesky pump just to prod it.  So we will perhaps have to invest in a new pump soon.  See if the sputtering and silence improves.

Tomorrow, we have to order a wood burning stove, a kitchen cooker, a shower, the kitchen units and then we’re all set to sail to kentucky, if we want.  Except we would need to save up for diesel to propel us forth.  It is late, and the moon is big and green!  Also, it’s high tide, which is a good thing at bedtime because it makes you sleepy.

Oh, and also, the scaffolding you have to climb to get on to the boat is being changed to make it easier to get on, but in the meantime it’s harder because there’s no railing.  Maybe it’s a sign.

Monday morning

Pat is currently doing woodwork, which is making him excited.  He is making a piece of wood which fits into the only remaining non-white area of the soon to be white bits.  If you see what I mean.  For a Monday morning, this is excellent.  Today we discussed the possibility of going to a shop to buy a laundry basket and some lamps. But we’re not sure we can do it. (the shop was the one I promised not to buy anything from).  So we’re ignoring the whole thing.  (along with work and normal life things).  He is now painting the finished woodwork white.  He also just asked if it was acceptable to paint in his pants.  I guess it’s fine?  They look like shorts.  He’s very proud of his woodwork.  Oh, below some photos of the new blue wall in the kitchen and also the sky yesterday eve.  Ahhh!

ALL WHITE NOW

Its almost ALL WHITE…. almost.

OMG.

Ok. So I know it’s now the 15th July 2010 and I last wrote on 8th June.  My blogging is shameful and I am ashamed.  But I’ve been away.

So. BIG news.  We’ve moved in!!! OMG!!! LOL@!!! or whatever it is I should be exclaiming.  We have no kitchen and no shower, but we are ‘making do’!  Mum bought us a one-hob gas cooker and I’ve created a makeshift kitchen where the real kitchen will be.  We have painted everything in sight white, and, frankly, it’s looking good.  Right now I am sitting in makeshift kitchen watching the tide roll by, the sun is reflecting off the water making shapes on the roof and we are moving, quite a lot, as it’s windy.  I am very, very tired today because I haven’t stopped since we got in last Saturday.  The movement of the boat is new to me, so when the tide is high I get really sleepy, like a baby in a big cradle.  Either that or the toxic fumes are going to my head.  The old camera broke, so I am taking photos on my phone at the moment which I will upload- I also need to update the older photos- we have many from the interim, non-writing period.  Sorry- I know the photos are the best bit.  So far we’ve had a few friends over, and quite a few toddlers and crawly babies- which is interesting to observe as they get very excited and run or crawl everywhere shouting ‘boat!”, ‘it floats!’ and ‘AHOY!’, which I think is beautiful and exciting, but I am terrified they might lurch themselves off and, as Tammy pointed out yesterday- we don’t want a Micheal Barrymore situation on our hands.  Albeit without the swimming pool or the drugs.

So far it feels quite surreal.  The water comes in and out around us, I am finding my sea legs. OH! But the bath- I’ve had a bath at high tide and the water moves and you move and really it is so very special! Our bedroom is like a boutique hotel, really stunning, but we’re not used to it yet.  Every evening we change the configuration of the light dimness, because we have three knobs to twiddle and I’ve never had a dimmer switch before, ever.  And our clothes are in a pile on the floor still, even though we put some very stylish knobs (more knobs?) on the built in wardrobe (built in wardrobe!! ha ha! It’s SO BESPOKE!) which means we can officially open them now. We’ve just forgotten about putting things in drawers, at Dad’s our room is a sort of large laundry basket with some bits of furniture in it.

At night there are many sounds, every night a new sound and this is a wondrous thing.  Last night it was bubbles, thousands and millions of bubbles under our bed.  It rained a lot during the night and the tide came in, bubbling under our heads.  I woke up, perhaps the boat was sinking, but it wasn’t.  And then I dreamt of holes in the roof and puddles all over the new floor- oh what a floor (did we talk about the floor already??  It looks perfect- better then I ever expected).  And when I woke up I found one puddle because we’d left a window open.  On Sunday afternoon we both fell asleep, exhausted after all the moving and painting and impromptu barbecue the night before.  While we slept the tide came in and the boat rocked and swayed, and I fell in and out of drowsy half-sleep and the door to the bedroom creaked backwards and forwards- and, yes, it did, it felt like we were at sea, far out to sea.  The sun was warm that day and it came in through the porthole.

This boat is very special, and I don’t think I know what to feel about that yet.  Perhaps it feels like a fairy tale and there’s still more to come.  I’m quite sentimental today.  Yesterday, Pat and I had our three year anniversary.

june

It’s now been another month since I last wrote!  Well!  Time flies!  And it’s been SO much fun.  The boat has gone from building site to, well,  building site, only of larger proportions.  I have been close to having a breakdown, and have instead had a ‘meltdown’.  Which is milder.  Mainly, the bedroom has continued to go from strength to strength, white walls, plug sockets, light fittings.  It is a beautiful piece of interior design and Tom, who has worked on it, is nothing short of an artist in his approach to making it.  Every detail has been carefully considered.  The curves and lines of the room are amazing, it is really quite special. The bath is in position, so is the little stove.  All things are poised, ready to spring into action when we get round to actually connecting them to other things that they need to be connected to in order to actually work.  However, the reality is there is still no bed- there is a bed frame, but not with slats. The port holes look great- but they still need glass in them.  I know the glass half empty thing is resonating here, and I appreciate how long these things take (they take long), but it’s just that I REALLY want to live in MY boat.

Rather then continuing in this ever so slightly sarcastic tone I shall revert to my usual, happy-go-lucky tone.  On the UP side, the boat now has floorboards throughout.  The scaffolding plank thing worked really well, and now we need to sand them down and fill in the gaps between them with black stuff that stops crumbs going between them (this is thrilling stuff right?).  We no longer have a big hole in the ceiling because Stuart the welder came back and sealed it up.  He stayed on the boat while doing this (he’s ‘NFA’ you see) and got very familiar with the over priced pizza company up the road.  So that’s good!  Also, we found another 14 buckets worth of slop under the wheelhouse- in the proper bilges of the boat!  And Pat got them all out, bless his cotton socks (which are not white anymore).  So that’s also good as it was making the wheelhouse smell freaky.

So all of this good progress, and here am I a little bit twitchy and irritated in my tone. Well.  The truth is, we have done the classic novice building thing of spending too much time and money on the first stage of the project.  We’ve been careful overall and we’re not in bad shape.  But we will need to build the kitchen ourselves.  Out of chipboard.  Pat’s working on some designs for a home-made washing machine using an old whisk, some rubber bands and an oil drum.  And we’ve also decided we don’t really need a fridge- we’re just going to cut a hole in the side of the boat and put our food through it.  That way the local wildlife benefit too.  The great thing is, that we’ll have this amazing bedroom that we can spend all our time in- it’s about half the size of our old boat, which suited us fine!

I stayed sarcastic didn’t I?  Oops.  It’s more fun writing sarcastic then not.  I’m going to go over to the   b  o  a  t later and measure the kitchen up.  Because we are actually going to build it ourselves (with the help of some nice unit makers in Nottingham).   Then, I’ll put some photos up and you can all see what I mean….