FEATURES

Former narrow boat dweller Jim Edmiston watches the world go by on the Kennet and Avon canal.

Don’t get me wrong. I love narrowboats. I lived on one for a while. Skinny icons of the English landscape. Like Morris Minors of the waterway system. Drifting along at the pace of an old dog with a bad leg. Wakened by swans tapping their beaks on the hull. Kingfishers like iridescent bullets. Willing hands to help with the lock gates. These are the delights of time spent on the Kennet and Avon.

It has its ups and downs, however. I rolled out of bed one night to find my boat hanging by its mooring ropes at a very jaunty angle. The River Avon had emptied when some hyperactive flood-control gate opened and sent Bath water gurgling its way to Bristol.

So life can be eventful. I can’t say it was quiet. People would shout: “Canal boat, eh!” On summer evenings, the karaoke boat went by and returned a couple of hours later utterly trousered. What a treat that was!

I sold my Summer Island to a young couple with a baby. And off they chugged to London. I wasn’t so adventurous. Sainsbury’s was just round the bend in the river. That was far enough for me.

But I still have a connection with the canal. It runs right by my allotment, so I often witness weekenders doing the getting-away-from-it-all thing. Why shouldn’t they have their fantasy of peace and quiet?

But there are so many holidaymakers here, the seagulls think it’s the seaside.

I stop troweling to watch a pirate float by. Pirate hat, eye-patch and wearing a kilt, bare-chested on the prow, his good eye peeled for locks up ahead. The first mate staggers along the roof of the boat, spilling his drink. Someone on the bank shouts out: “Avast there, me hearties!” Her companion adds: “A vast arse, me hearties!” Whoops of laughter follow and seven or eight repetitions of the phrase. “That’s you, that is, Kenny!” yell the pirate’s scurvy mates at the back, swigging back their dog-watch alcohol ration and waving their skull and cross-bones flags.

They’re followed by an older Yorkshire couple. Derek is on the towpath with his windlass and cigarette. Doreen at the tiller is unhappy about steering her way into the lock alongside the pirates.

“Do you trust me?”

“Of course, I trust you.”

“Are you sure, Derek?”

“Doreen, you’re a natural. Of course, I trust you.”

“If you say so, Derek.”

“Just go left a bit, luv. Left hand down a bit. More, Doreen! More! More! Focken ’ell, Doreen!”

There is a loud bang like the gong at the beginning of those J. Arthur Rank films as Doreen tries to enter the lock gates sideways. “Focken ’ell. Doreen!”

“You said you trusted me.”

Cutting right across this blissful, domestic scene, the strident tones of an east-coast American woman are hurled at me. “Vichyssoise! Right?” I’m not prepared. No bat. No catcher’s mitt. I shrug like a green-fingered idiot, stare at the earthy leeks in my hand and nod stupidly. Her boat, the Surrey Wangler, has Captain Beefheart blasting out of every nautical orifice. She ties up and waits for the lock to empty.

A local man explains the genius of the lock system to an unwilling group of Japanese students and two demented Jack Russells. “This is closed. They open this one. Close it behind them. It fills up, if they’ve remembered to close that one. They open that one and out they go – a miracle of Victorian engineering.”

“Hey, mom!” shouts the American woman. “You made it! Richard, get up here! Look, she made it.”

Mom is pushing 80 as well as a shopping trolley laden with luggage. How far has the old dear come? Perhaps they gave her a head start at the staircase of locks at Devizes just to see if she could keep up. But maybe not, for the old woman, breathless but smiling, shouts back: “Helsinki! My God!”

Some Canadian cyclists pull up. Thankfully nowhere near as loud as their shorts. The narrowboat they’re admiring, the Northolt Flea, has a mini-allotment on the roof, solar panels, a windmill and twisted tree stumps passing for art.

“Hey, Richard!” shouts you-know-who. “Look at this ’erb selection! Isn’t that dandy!”

The young woman with the baby in her arms and her bearded partner nod benignly – no sign of the irrational grumpiness I’m feeling.

But, then, I’m not part of the action, am I? This internationalism. In the space of 15 minutes, local Bath people, Yorkshire holidaymakers, Canadians, Americans, Japanese and representatives of the canine world have all rubbed along. These narrowboats haven’t provided an escape from the noise and pace of life. And Richard is now reversing into some overhanging branches – something is snapping. But, nonetheless, the world has come to them. And all at four miles an hour – tops.

Copyright Jim Edmiston 2011