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The International Boater's Sign Language Guide

The following consists of a few helpful hints for those rather difficult boating situations where oral language is useless.

The Tea Break
Great for using to announce the kettle has boiled. Be wary of using it mid-argument or one may assume you're calling for time-out which could make the person intended for the message more frustrated.

The Panic
Perfect for those dire moments such as 'don't do it', 'no!' 'stop!' Hire boaters have been known to confuse this with 'get out of the way' and often end up stranded in bushes etc.

The Legless
The 'I'm walking to the next bridge/lock/etc'. Don't use this upright or people may assume you have a fetish for finger puppetry and laugh at you.

The Jaw-Jaw
Available for men or women to use, this one is normally directed to someone else with an accompanied roll of   the eyes to suggest someone who talks too much. There are some fancy variations, but be careful not to be caught.

The Earache
A point of the ear suggests 'I can't hear you'. Be warned not to point at your temple instead, or the person may assume you're calling them a nutcase.






The Naughty Dog
Usually used when bored or trying to make kids laugh in the dark, this one can be varied by pointing the 'ears' down to suggest a dog having a poo on the towpath.
 

The Squeeze
Useful for directing the skipper on how close they are to objects. ALWAYS over- exaggerate. It makes for an interesting game. Their face normally resorts to a frown of utter confusion and an 'are you sure?' expression.

The Double Scout's Honour
Works as a greeting for those who follow a particular sci-fi series. Always handy for greeting hire boaters (no-one knows who they are anyway) and the Queen if you happen to see her.

 

25th March - Silver Bullets

After finally putting down the paintbrushes, sponges, hand drills and rubber gloves, today was the epic day when we could say we had finished the interior of our portly girl. Except for one task.
The dreaded poo tank.

Sadly, the little gauge I fell in love with above the toilet doesn't actually move and has been stuck on zero for months. Evaporation is just not possible, and judging by the clean condition of the suitcases we found under the bed, there's definitely not a leak. (Mind you, a boater told me an interesting story recently how sweetcorn isn't digested by the human body and comes out whole the other end, so a leek or two of the other kind could be possible).

We decided not to risk any dramas out on the cut this summer, so an empty was in order.
After weaving around the other moored boats and odd tufts of grass called islands peppered with ducks and geese, we made it to the service quay and the marina manager came over with a bucket and a big smile to help us.

I didn't want to ask what the bucket was for, but decided it best to enjoy the picturesque Turner-like clouds whilst the pipe was inserted into our girl's bowels. The machine on the quayside shuddered and shook violently, as if it were sucking out demons from the tank. I had a terrible urge to fetch some garlic, a cross and some silver bullets, just in case something emerged, a bit like that film where a chap comes out of a vase in someone's living room. Instead, the marina manager pointed at the see-through tube. 'I can see what you've been eating!'

I dreaded to think. Last week was really topsy-turvey, what with a midweek roast, a pizza, fish cakes and a chilli con carne (not all on the same day, of course), followed by half a tonne of dried fruit and yoghurt. How he could tell all that was a mystery to me, and I dared not look, in case it revealed something about my personality. Raisins are enough to liven anyone up, especially if people are sat next to you. It does them more good than you.

After one final slurp, the machine was done. The monster left in the pipe gurgled one last goodbye, condemned for another year to live inside the steel case. So powerful and fast was this piece of kit, that our girl was practically sucked inside out. People on the Kleenex advert would say it's like wearing gold pants. There's nothing more satisfying than sitting on the loo with a nice empty tank at your disposal - I pledge to spray paint the loo seat gold, just so we get that everlasting golden glow applied to our cheeks.

Now the waste gauge no longer works, Dad has taught me a novel trick for determining how full the tank is by lifting the bed and tapping hard on the tank wall. I don't like to tap too hard in case the tank disintegrates and we end up with fossilised chunks distributed around the bedroom. I'm one of those 'soft' knockers who hate knocking a neighbour's door too hard in case it sounds angry/desperate/annoyed, or in some cases, in case my hand goes right through. At least boat doors are generally made of steel.

We've trained a local woodpecker to sit on ours and drum every time someone squeezes it. It costs a fortune to keep what with all the neurofen and peanuts it consumes.

Thankfully now the beds are in place and the duvet sets are on, still wrapped in their plastic. There's nothing quite like fresh duvets still in their wrappers (even if they make crinkly noises when you sit on them). One of our bed sets has a giant map of the underground on it, just in case we take a wrong turn on the cut when on holiday and end up somewhere we shouldn't. The map is jolly useful for train buffs too.

And the plastic, in case you were wondering, is to stop the occasional drip entering the boat and spoiling the furniture.

18th March - Giant Squid

Getting a mattress on a boat is a work of art in itself, but trying to get it through a 2ft corridor and around a 95 degree angle is a challenge, especially when the room it's going in resembles an elevator.

Mattresses aren't the most bendy-ist of things either. It was like trying to stuff an elephant into a wetsuit - the more I tugged, the more stuck it became, until, panting and puffing, I stood on top of the bed bent in half, arse touching the ceiling. With a grunt any tennis player would be proud of, the monstrous thing slid into place. I glared at it suspiciously and left it to its own devices whilst we prepared our girl with a few other items in anticipation of something called 'summer' and 'holidays', two words I've never heard of in two sentences, let alone together in one.

Mum's been slowly buying cushions over the past few months, in batches so that hopefully Dad and I don't notice the sudden invasion of puffed squares that continue to multiply like rabbits on the sofa. Eventually the living room will be so full of cushions it will be like a kiddies soft ball pool. Every time I straighten them I make sure they're an inch apart in case they have any ideas about hanky panky. I have the same problem with peas and mashed potato. Mixing them is against all laws of physics. And psychology.

We now also have a nice plastic box to keep our toothbrushes in (no flies on mine, thank you) and a bath mat in what is described as 'petrol blue'. Quite frankly, I've ever see blue petrol, and if it was that colour, everyone would want a transparent petrol tank, just for the fun of it.

Although planning ahead was entertaining, the weather itself was rather grim and uninviting, and we dared only stay for a short while before a trip to the pub for a well-deserved pint and a chat to some fellow boaters who were huddled out of the cold Easterly wind around the bar.
Apparently it was the wind itself that had blown everyone in that day.

We quickly made some new friends who live permanently on their narrowboat, and have the most intriguing canal names of 'Badger' and 'Mouse'. I thought the names rather charming and endearing and far easier to identify than the usual 'Dave'.

Boaters are always so vibrant and exciting - they even cut their own hair. I admire them. I tried to cut someone's fringe once and it ended up something a Vulcan would be hugely disappointed with. Not a good look (hence why I don't have a fringe). It's just not logical.

I did overhear a snippet of conversation in the pub that consisted of 'giant squid' and 'canal'. Overhearing things is not good for you, and I went away terrified of the thought of those age-old pictures of sea ships with masses of tentacles wrapped around them. I dread to think what lives in the Brassknocker Basin, what with it being over 12ft deep. If you see a fat boat speeding around the Dundas corner, you'll know why. I'm not hanging around to find out.

The next day we went in the pub again (the wind blew us in) and it was Mothers Day. Within seconds we were swamped by a group of men who looked as if they'd been exploring the arctic and needed a roast to defrost. Once they'd thawed and had a few pints, the conversation really got going. These chaps were holiday boaters who fiercely believed fishing was really only a form of maggot drowning, and what on earth is the point of sitting on the bank all day if all fishermen do is swear at boaters.

People say that boating is a contact sport. Although bumping into boats all day is fun and amusing, 'contact' doesn't really exist between boaters and fishermen. They don't exactly swap numbers, either, preferring to ignore each other or, to another extreme, exchange rude words. Some boaters I've known have pulled a fast one and taken maggot drowning to a whole new level, rather drowning an entire box of maggots with a ginormous bow wave. How courteous.

These chaps however, didn't mind either way and soon finished their drinks and were off to be back in the wild again, joking that being down at the bottom of the locks meant it was all downhill, and far easier to walk back to their boat. They teased the smallest in their group, saying he could roll home what with whatever it was stuck to his front.

Personally, after a roast dinner and a pudding, I think anyone could have rolled home. My job was a bit harder, considering I live on top of a hill. The centre of gravity is all wrong up there. Hence I often stay a bit longer for another pint whilst my body assimilates dinner, alleviating the front load and swapping it to the back.

We're all longing for some warm summer sun and those long days once more, when there are more hours in the day for boating and giving holiday boaters some well-needed tuition. We love them, really.

Just watch them move when I give them an award-winning smile and a fat boat on the end of a tiller.

15th February, 2015 - Panning for Gold

The birds have begun to sing triumphantly from the treetops, signifying spring is well and truly on its way.

Still too grim and cold for a gentle trip out on our girl, we decided instead to go for a steady walk on the towpath and catch up with a few friends, one of whom was rinsing out his saucepan in the canal from his swan hatch.

I've heard Fairy Liquid goes a long way, but perhaps this was a stretch too far. Terry the Paint is an ambitious friend of ours, so the only logical explanation was that he was panning for gold in the muddy flow. Panning for gold in the canal is a dangerous game, and often you can expect the unexpected. Whole swedes, dead sheep, undergarments, floating unmentionables and hats can cause obstructions in the fine mesh required to achieve a handful of gold flakes. Perhaps the nearest anyone has got to it is a handful of cornflakes, which, quite frankly, are pretty expensive and are well worth collecting.

Terry shrugged when we asked him what he was doing, and so we settled on the thought that it could well be a new form of interactive water feature.

A boater next to us chuckled, whilst we basked in the glory of his brilliant sky-blue boat with yellow accents. I haven't seen blue sky for a week what with being stuck in an office - I was tempted to ask him if it was possible to get a chair and sit within a foot of the boat so that I could pretend it was summer for a couple of hours.

The gentleman on it told us that apparently that morning the canal was as dry as a chip (hence Terry was still enjoying the novelty of it with his saucepan in the background). When he got up in the morning to step off the boat he thought he was on a mudflat and hit his head against the canal wall (which normally is less than half a foot above water level).

Instantly, we blamed someone leaving the lock paddles open, and the chap shook his head earnestly, a big grin on his face. Oh, no, it was something much more exciting than that.

An entire herd of bull calves had escaped from the farmer's field the previous day and rampaged up the towpath, squeezing under the bridge and scaring the dog walkers to death, who turned and ran in the opposite direction (who wouldn't). One of the bulls fell in the water, splashed about and collapsed a huge chunk of wall section, leaving a nice big drain hole as if it had pulled an enormous bath plug. We all know what a novelty it is to live with one leg longer than the other on a boat. Especially when it comes to relieving oneself in the bathroom. Blu-tac in these situations is a glorious and normally undervalued creation.

It does, however, beg the question - what do you do when confronted with a herd of bulls on a narrow towpath, armed only with a windlass, a British Waterways key and a mug of tea?
I'd ask Terry for his saucepan.