We’ve been away for a while and now it’s back to normal life and work.\u00a0 Over Christmas, when we came back, we looked for Eric and were delighted to see that he wasn’t there.\u00a0 Good- he’s taken himself to a “nice” shelter for some turkey.\u00a0 But alas, the next day he returned and we were presented with our usual problem.\u00a0 What the hecky-peck do we give him\/do to him\/say to improve his predicament?\u00a0 So Pat went off with the hot-water bottle at around 11.00pm and found Eric shuffling around a piece of polystyrene, in his usual outfit.\u00a0 I imagine he was pleased to see Pat as it had been a while- over a month in fact.\u00a0 Pat questioned him about the polystyrene, and Eric told him it had been given to him by a nice man called Roger.\u00a0 We know Roger, he lives on one of the boats next to us, and he is indeed a nice man.\u00a0 When Pat told me about this, I was a little miffed that Eric had accepted Roger’s polystyrene but not the ‘arctic-ready’ sleeping bag we had offered him a few weeks before.\u00a0 Maybe Eric likes Roger more than us, I thought.\u00a0 Maybe Eric thinks we neglected him by going away for so long.\u00a0 Probably he just didn’t feel the sleeping bag was a necessary addition.\u00a0 I guess he’s better equipped to decide which materials best suit his needs. And I guess polystyrene is probably a very good way of keeping yourself warm, and it offers some ‘squish’\/comfort underneath you.<\/p>\n
So Pat and Eric had a chat, and it turns out that Eric has a store unit where he keeps his things, somewhere in central London.\u00a0 And when it got REALLY cold before Christmas he took to sleeping in there secretly.\u00a0 Phew.\u00a0 Because being outside during that cold spell, well, it wouldn’t have been advisable. Eric told Pat more about his work, and what he did over Christmas and Pat took a secret mental note of the company that Eric said he worked for.<\/p>\n
To be honest, I think we both imagined that Eric didn’t really go to work at all in the day, but just pretended to.\u00a0 Although, when I’d spoken to Eric about it he sounded very convincing.\u00a0 I definitely wanted to imagine him waking up in the morning, getting on the train with the rest of the work-force, grabbing a latte on the way and arriving fresh-faced for a day at the office.\u00a0 With his rucksack, sleeping back and polystyrene. \u00a0 But I kind of thought it very unlikely.<\/p>\n
Happily enough, I was wrong. Pat made a call to the alleged company and spoke to a nice lady who knew exactly who Eric was, and expressed grave concern at his situation, which she already knew all about.\u00a0 Pat explained to her that he’d been worried about Eric, but that actually, it was reassuring to know that at least he did have somewhere to go every day, that he could therefore probably afford to eat, and even rent somewhere if he really wanted to.\u00a0 Which then made the whole situation even more interesting, because he really is choosing this way of life.\u00a0 Which I’ve said before, but the difference is that now, I KNOW he is.\u00a0 Because he could get himself out of it if he wanted to.<\/p>\n
Last week I went to a ‘Zumba’ class near the boat, (don’t know what I was thinking- and I’m not even going to explain what it entailed. Use your imagination) and I was terrible at it.\u00a0 There I met some well-heeled local ladies, who told me about what other classes they’d done and what leisure centres they frequented. When I told them where I lived they looked a bit baffled- not excited or curious, just plain confused.\u00a0 No- not confused, SUSPICIOUS.\u00a0 Yes, they eyed me with suspicion and changed the subject for a while (presumably to let the information sink in a bit).\u00a0 Then they came back with a string of questions, which I attempted to answer without making myself sound like some sort of freak.\u00a0 But the general gist was- “WHY?\u00a0 Why, on earth do you choose to live in such a way?”\u00a0 Without, of course, actual saying that.\u00a0 More in a “so what’s it like not having any utilities?” or ”and what do you do about sewage?” (Which could be translated as ‘so what’s it like to to be dirty?’ and ‘what’s it like to poo into the river?”.\u00a0 (It’s quite normal to ask these questions but they shouldn’t be the very first\/only questions asked to someone living on a boat.)\u00a0 So anyway- in a roundabout way, what I’m thinking is- I AM ERIC!\u00a0 In this situation.\u00a0 In this very specific situation.<\/p>\n
So, now I feel it is not my place to question Eric’s choices.\u00a0 They’re his.\u00a0 And in the meantime, we can just keep an eye on him- as we would any neighbour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We’ve been away for a while and now it’s back to normal life and work.\u00a0 Over Christmas, when we came back, we looked for Eric and were delighted to see that he wasn’t there.\u00a0 Good- he’s taken himself to a “nice” shelter for some turkey.\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people-we-meet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=648"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":652,"href":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions\/652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onaboat.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}