So much for summer. This morning bought thick drizzle and
irritating gales which blew the miserable mist into every nook and cranny from
your pants down to your socks. Now and then the weather would pause, leading
you down the garden path in terms of being hopeful that it might stop. Only the
ducks and geese at the marina appeared overjoyed at the prospect of even more
water falling from the sky.
We clambered onto the boat and Dad fiddled with the knobs on
the radiators - now I know what the teeny key in the kitchen drawer was for -
the knife left in there I'm slightly concerned about. Perhaps it was to keep
the monsters that gurgle in the heating system at bay.
The heating itself started up like that of a jet engine,
leaving us clamping our ears and freezing to the spot as the noise grew to a
higher pitch. I had serious considerations of jumping out of the swan hatch as
it got higher, but found my feet glued firmly to the floor in anticipation of
an explosion.
Either Dad couldn't hear it, or he pretended he couldn't, as
he wandered around feeling the radiators and explaining things about plumbing
that were way beyond my knowledge. All I know is you press a button and
magically the monster in the engine bay uncurls itself, roaring and burbling
and, just like magic, there's something called heating. On a boat. Magic, that
is.
After getting over the excitement of some warmth, it was
time to get down and dirty with our girl down in the pits. I only thought there
was one pit, but there seems to be three. Or maybe four, I lost count whilst
figuring out the combination to replace the boards by.
Dad climbed into pit one and I sat and watched him as he
pointed and pulled things out of her naughty parts and checked dipsticks and
other strange orafices. I discovered a whole new world down below (it was like
journey to the centre of the earth) with chasms of rust patches, a miniature
sea in the bilge bucket and a monstrous-sized spider which crawled up the pipe
work to stare at Dad. It was so big, I'm surprised Dad didn't shake its hand.
In pit two (in the shed) came another couple of naughty bits
including a dipstick for oil and a water hole (not the sort you get in Africa
with Rhinos and Zebras crowded around). A quick skinny dip of the fingers made
sure our girl was well hydrated. Her green engine body is marvellously shiny,
so much so, I am terrified of putting a dirty foot mark on it. It actually made
the spanners look dull next to it. I passed Dad a few after rummaging in the
bottomless bag he bought along from home which has about fifty different sizes
in. 'Hand me a spanner.' , all well and good, 'which one?'. You always end up
with the one that doesn't quite fit, so you have to rummage again to find the
next size down or up. Never hand a lady
a bag full of spanners. It's very dangerous in the wrong hands.
I used to consider owning a horse. Now I have fifty of them!
Well, sort of. Apparently the engine is 50 horsepower - a big step up from our
measly 35hp on our old narrowboat. In the good old days fifty horsepower
pulling a boat with ropes meant you had to seriously consider getting out of
the way or end up a flattened pancake in the dust. Nowadays it's only the
cyclists on the towpath that actively seek to mow you down at any given
opportunity.
After finishing playing with spanners and grease, we
retreated into the boat, marvelling at the new-found kitchen space where the
fridge and microwave had been. Yesterday morning was a real treat and both were
disposed of at the local dump, polar bears and all. The ice somehow remained
intact and refused to melt, much to Dad's disgust, as he expected to have a
chuckle by driving along in the truck with the meltwater spewing along behind
and decorating the windscreen of prospect tailgaters. Instead, the polar bears
wandered off in search of the nearest champagne bucket to cool off in and
celebrate their release into the wild.
This morning Dad decided to tackle cleaning the back of the
sofa (an excellent effort achieved in just five minutes, a record time for a
surface area bigger than our dining room table at home). He handed me a bucket
to take back to the shed whilst he nipped to the loo. Casually, I took my time
in the shed, admiring the scenery from the back doors of rolling distant hills
swathed in fluffy cloud. As I breathed in deep, the toilet flushed. And I
forgot. There's a toilet tank vent at the back of the boat. The smell was
horrific, so much so, I had to check the contents of the bucket, just to make
sure there wasn't something lurking in there by mistake. In one quick bound, I
dropped the bucket and dashed down inside the boat back to the kitchen, face
next to the window for a gulp of fresh air, staring at Dad as he came out of
the loo. He frowned. 'What's the matter with you?' I looked at him again.
'Nothing. By the way, that smell - it wasn't me.'
I haven't used the toilet yet. I'm worried that if I do,
something might get stuck and the macerator teeth might growl at me and refuse
to dispose of something unmentionable.
How embarrassing.
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