5th October - Battle of the Bilge

This weekend started off wet and miserable, with heavy showers dampening our spirits on Saturday morning.

However, even a spot of rain couldn't stop Mum's tenacity with a paintbrush and the inside gunnels received a lick of green paint (the occasional splash of paint too, as Dad's and my impatience proved too much and our pacing caused momentary wobbles and a spattered finish on the floor).  After being threatened by a paintbrush, I was promptly sat on a stool and given two brass air vent grills to polish. Judging by their colouring, they had never seen Brasso in their lives, let alone BB cream (Big Boat cream, that's what it means, ladies). This fancy new cream we have comes in a big white pot, and boy, it's better than any of that anti-ageing rubbish. Stuff laser renewal, this cream can wipe prehistoric crud off of anything brass in under a minute (with a bit of elbow grease, of course). With about twenty grill sections on each, it took over three hours, during which time my white apron had turned charcoal and I had to be fed biscuits like a duck - basically, open my mouth and hope who ever passes plonks one in. Squeaky 'feed me!' impressions work great and imply that you are suffering for a great cause - in this case turning dirty brass into gold. You could see me plus the biscuits in them when I had finished.

As the rain started to cease, Sign Writer Rob loomed up in front of our girl's doors and waved, a grin on his face. The water-stained windows amplified it. 'I've come to do your bilge!'

Dad showed him in the back of our girl, and there was a great deal of banging and scraping, after which I came to look out of curiosity.

When I peered over Dad's shoulder into the man shed, Rob brandished a bucket and a scraper with glee, his body contorted into an isosceles triangle and back propped against the hot water tank. He patted our girl's bottom. 'Oooh, she's warm.' He passed up the bucket full of her rusty shavings. He frowned. 'She's got a dirty bottom mind, I'll say that.'

Dad looked up and spotted the sun breaking through the clouds.

Sign Writer Rob carried on scraping. 'Wonderful, I can't see nothing down here, only engine bits and greasy things.'

It looked like Rob needed greasing up too, so I dashed off to the marina office to buy a jar of coffee, his shouts echoing in my ears.

'See if they've got carrot juice as well, will you, it might help me see in the dark!'

When I came back later, the paint tin had come off and our girl's bottom was starting to look marvellous. Mind you, anything looked marvellous at that point with the waft of paint fumes erupting from the bilge. By the end of the makeover, we were giggling like chihuahuas on helium and anyone who happened to walk by raised their eyebrows and ran, in case the fumes caught up with them, too.

Rob walked slowly out of the bilge like a Halloween monster dripping with grey primer, hair encrusted and stood on end. Several big creases ran across him where he had been wedged like a ham sandwich next to our girl's mighty engine. Even an ironing board would have a job straightening them.

He ambled off for a shower and we headed home to relax before coming back the next day.

Our bilge can now dazzle anyone who happens to opens the hatch, and Dad stood admiring it in the morning, sunglasses on, before we set off for a brief cruise to the pub and back for some lunch. As we set off, a little bi-plane roared overhead and I laughed, undoing the ropes at the front. 'Chocks away!' Why I found it funny, I don't know. It must have been the lingering fumes.

We dashed off onto the cut and paused to eat our Sunday roast at the pub before turning back to the marina and mooring up once more to prepare our minds for the coming working week.

There was Sign Writer Rob on the jetty boards, grinning, his creases gone, and every inch of grey scrubbed off. He stood, shivering in his shorts and t-shirt. The autumn weather was starting to crawl in from the North.

The morning had been cold, and Rob had bought some celotex board to stick in his hatch above his bed, after being tortured by condensation dripping onto his face in the early hours. Apparently, there's lots you can do with leftover foam board and a tin of beans. How someone didn't discover the power of flight sooner we'll never know.

Beans, as always, turned the conversation naturally towards poo, and Rob turned his nose up at the idea of having a pump out tank. When he and his lovely lady took on their narrowboat, the poo tank split, leaving them with a rather fetching mess, and years of fossilised dumps left from the dark ages which took several days of chiselling to get off of the floor. The tank itself had become encrusted to the ground, stuck like the glass case that surrounds the Crown Jewels.

We looked at Rob, horrified, then gazed open-mouthed at each other.

'I think ours is under the bed, isn't it?' Dad said.

Rob smirked.

'Just think of it - you're laying on three tonnes of s**t!'

Aren't we all.