 | Blogs > ladykitty22 > The Cat's Eye > Planes, Narrowboats and Automobiles |
8/14/2008 4:44 pm |
There was an Old Man in a boat, Who said, 'I'm afloat, I'm afloat!' When they said, 'No! you ain't!' He was ready to faint, That unhappy Old Man in a boat. --Edward Lear It was June and I had the best World Tour that I could possibly have planned in front of me: a flying visit to the East Bay, a no-holds-barred graduation party in San Francisco’s North Beach, and a fantasy trip into the heretofore unknown wilds of the UK, land of my forebears. I had been imagining this day for months. It’s Friday and John’s last exam is finished. Birds are fed, the dog’s had her last pee, and I have a second to catch my breath. The entry hall is piled with suitcases. The house is quiet, the mad rush of cleaning and straightening done. I enjoy the smell of polish and the shine of the floors, the quiet order of it all. Now picture one of those animated world maps where a little plane takes off and follows the red line across the globe. Plunk! We’re in California. Middle child Liz is graduating from high school, having spent the final six months of it living in my best friend’s spare bedroom, wrapping up her senior year 2,200 miles from Mom. She did a marvelous job. Her grades were up; she even got a scholarship. At the ceremony, the huge open-air auditorium was crazy with life, a sunny California summer with mad celebrations going on all around us. My heart was full when I saw how many people had gathered for her. All my kids were around me; all their friends, all my friends. Parents of kids who’s young lives were played out in my back yard. People I hadn’t seen for donkey’s years. That night, we gathered at a twenty-foot-long table running most of the length of Figaro’s in North Beach, the Italian section of San Francisco. Celebrating with Lizzie were old friends, new friends, sisters, dance kids, kids whose pigtails and sunburned grins adorn my picture albums, kids whose first hangovers had been spent crouched in my hall bathroom. Platters of gnocchi and bottles of wine littered the table. Ancient Italian fiddlers are trolling for tips. A sudden commotion starts; half a dozen kids start kicking off their shoes. I laugh and pour another liberal round of wine, waiting for the inevitable. The kids have nabbed the fiddler and heads are bent in quick discussion.. Ties come off and skirts are tucked into waistbands. For, my friends, reels are the same in every language. The entire restaurant was treated to the impromptu prowess of some of San Francisco’s finest Irish dancers as they leaped and spun like the insanely happy dervishes they were. They were kids out of school for summer, after all. It was magic to see the wonder on their faces. A mighty party it was, a fit celebration for the achievements of my little Liz-Cat, Lizzy Lou, my brown-eyed girl. Next it was my turn. And about bloody time. It’s animated-world-map time again. This time the plane’s going East, across North America, across the big ocean, to England. That’s, let me see, three time zones West followed by eight time zones East. (Forget any thoughts that this was simply a good lesson in orienteering; it just shows you how far I’ll go to make sure I have a proper babysitter. In any event, it was enough to give a Kitty vertigo. For real. I still have it!) Landing in England was a visceral memory, more like I was coming home than visiting a foreign country. It is the home of my DNA and my heritage; the place where six degrees of separation quickly narrow to five, maybe four. (Yeeessssss, I can sense all of you “real” English out there looking down your noses, and if I am very, very quiet I can even hear the harrumphs. Damned Colonials giving themselves airs. Harrumph! Harrumph! However, you simply can’t change facts. Me Gaffer Ollie waved goodbye and took Gammy Becky with him when he sailed with Penn on that last trip to Delaware back in 1683, that’s all. This lot just got born on the wrong shore and grew up talking funny.) Back in the 21st century, the plane taxied through an overcast morning, green trees surrounding the runway. This is the land of Sir William, Oliver’s ancestor, Keeper of the King’s Privy Purse to Henry VII (that’s a cool title; after reading up on it a bit, it appears he was one of the finance guys). His 500-year-old manor house lies just a couple of hours up the road. His son, Sir Stephen, was Gentleman of the Bedchamber and Sergeant of the Poultry to Henry VIII (I have this picture of him as being one of the king’s valets who also happened to be in charge of the henhouse). It’s their surname that was handed, father to son, right on down to my father, and so on down to me. Skipping down the stairs to join the crowds for Customs, I permitted myself a little Kitty grin. After a tense exchange with a particularly thick border agent, I’m wondering if she’s going to ship me back to the Colonies. “Address where you’re staying?” “Well, I’m staying on a narrowboat, so there won’t be a fixed address, as such.” “A narrowboat?” (She says this like a narrowboat is a hand grenade. I have this sudden vision of Mr. Humphries from Are You Being Served?, dressed up as his own mother and saying “A HANDBAG???”) In the meantime, Brunhilda over here starts looking at me like I’ve got an AK-47 hidden under my shirt. It occurs to me that I’m not going to win this one. There’s an empty box on the form and Brunhilda says I ain’t passing Go until I find something to put in it. I produce the address of the boat-hire company and that’s good enough for her. Whew. I was on my way. And a bit nervous, too; after all, I’m meeting a man I met online over a year ago. Mark is there as I exit Customs, tall, as handsome as his picture, and the recognition is warm and easy. Ours is an unconventional relationship from the perspective that it continually defies definition; there don’t seem to be any rules, “shoulds” or “have-to’s”. I love how we are the same in person as we have been online. It’s a perfect start: a quick hug and the luggage is stashed in the boot. Before we know it, the adventure has begun. There are many kinds of boats in the world, but I am convinced that none is quite so satisfying as a narrowboat. They are indigenous to English canals, though they’re no longer made only in England. The traditional style is extremely distinct. The Olson 30 ultralights we used to sail in LA weren’t as long as these, and as they are extraordinarily stable, I don’t get seasick like I do on sailboats. There is something that’s vaguely reminiscent of a gondola, but I think that’s just because both craft are narrow, and the stately cruising on England’s canal network is rather the same speed that you might achieve on a Venetian canal. They are indeed narrow – just 6’ 10” wide. Most of the canals we sailed were just wide enough for one boat to be moored on each side, and for two boats to pass in the middle. Speeds generally don’t exceed 4 mph, and we found, as we learned how to navigate the boat and began to relax into our holiday, that even 4 mph is considered Autobahn speeds to some. “What do you think this is, the bloody M6?” was the snarky comment of one disgruntled homeowner as we motored by in stately dignity. And, I admit that the longer we were out, the slower we went. It is the nature of, well...nature. A “short” narrowboat is 37’ long, and the longest is perhaps 70’. We were getting ready to moor one evening, enjoying the lengthening shadows, when suddenly we saw a monster 70-footer bearing down on us, plowing through the water at a shattering 5 mph and weaving madly (which could be considered a bad thing when the boat’s longer than the canal is wide). It was a beautiful green model that had clearly been hired for the day, and was being driven by a middle-aged Liverpudlian, dressed to the nines and drunk as a lord. The front deck was draped with his well-oiled buddies, arms slung about shoulders, high jinks underway. As they weaved past us, Guv’ner waves over at me, hat pushed back, tie askew, and shouts, “Where’s the next pub, luv?” I suddenly saw that six-degrees-of-separation thing in a whole new light. Below deck, the boats are totally self-contained, from tiny bedrooms and showers to a fully-functional gas cooker. While anything electric is powered by battery (Kitty bravely left her  dryer at home – I know, Balty, it was terrible, I almost broke out in hives), there are HD televisions and surround-sound systems adapted to narrowboat use. We saw narrowboats with solar panels, miniature windmills and satellite dishes; narrowboats with Vespas on them; narrowboats crowned with herb gardens and geraniums, open stern doors revealing marvelous tiny washers and dryers; lace-curtained front doors, potted plants, doormats and garden gnomes.The countryside was an unending feast for Kitty, who used to consider her library of English children’s books and literature and poetry and history a far more desirable bag of loot than the boring junk that other kids played with. As we sailed, my dreams and memories played havoc with reality. Besides the relaxed population of everyday canal-goers, there were characters out of Edward Lear and countryside out of Wind In The Willows. Bits and sights showed up from Carroll and Barrie, Lewis and Tolkien and Shakespeare. I was in heaven. Mark drove while Kitty got to spend her days standing on the prow with her face in the wind. The wildlife was kin to my own river creatures, tidy brown mallard housewives tending their fluffy young while their green-headed mates petitioned us for leftovers. Swifts and cormorants; herons and swans. Reeds and towpaths and Renoir clouds. English canals are smaller than their American counterparts, which meant that I could see everything marvelously close up. So see I did. I gobbled up the scenery like an apple tart. As you cruise the canals there are inevitably locks to be navigated to accommodate the rise and fall of the landscape. Coming up on a lock, we would find a place behind the others patiently waiting to get through. Mooring, we would jump to shore and walk up to the lock to see the order of business and get a bit of a stretch. Inevitably, if there was any kind of a queue at all, the boat-bound sheep-dogs and pointers of our fellow sailors would be literally flinging themselves around the shore, bouncing madly up and down in the sheer joy of being free. Spotted dogs, liver dogs, scruffy and smooth; tongues hanging out, eyes sparkling with laughter. Rolling with abandon in the grass to get a good scratch. Plotting their escapes from their Lord and Master. I fell hard for those boat-dogs. Really hard. Like, if-I-ever-go-back-I’ll-have-a-dog hard. For go back I shall. Next summer’s plot is being hatched already, and I find that I have many more memories than I can possibly attribute to the few days Mark and I shared on the canals. Life was so slow, so peaceful, so utterly far removed from all that we face every day on this planet. I need some of that as part of my life. Every day. Forever and ever, amen. As I read over this tonight I am filled with memories and affection. A memento of our journey sits on my desk. It was from a tea-shop we visited, a sunny little café that was attached to one of the many drydocks that cater to the boating community. It’s a small brass plaque; as I’m examining the shop wares, Mark brings it over to me, a soft grin on his face. Please Don’t Walk On The Water, it says. God, I'd love to walk on the water. I'm almost tempted to try. But I think not. Not today. I'd rather lounge on the foredeck with my imagination in full Technicolor. |
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8/15/2008 7:19 am |
This is so lovely I have had to read it more than once, and yet each time I do I still find some little nugget, a gem to mull over, a mini-vignette of you having a wonderful time, another detail to savor. You've engaged my imagination in full Technicolor, and more. I can almost hear the slap of the water against the boat, and feel the wind in my face. Marvelous. I'm dyslexic. I scream Ho Dog instead of Oh God in the throes of passion.
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8/15/2008 1:17 pm |
This is so lovely I have had to read it more than once, and yet each time I do I still find some little nugget, a gem to mull over, a mini-vignette of you having a wonderful time, another detail to savor. You've engaged my imagination in full Technicolor, and more. I can almost hear the slap of the water against the boat, and feel the wind in my face. Marvelous. Love, LK
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8/17/2008 12:04 pm |
Hmmm not sure if I've come in before or after a rewrite but I found this account fascinating and well written. If it doesn't stop raining here I may have to build a narrow boat. What's a liver dog? Enjoy the ride. All you take with you when you leave is the experience.
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8/17/2008 2:46 pm |
Liver as in liver-colored. Sort of a pale brown, like, well....like liver. I got some great video of the boat dogs bouncing around, and one of them came right up to the camera with these big laughing eyes -- marvelous. I like the sheepdogs best. Thanks for visiting. Hope the rain dries up. Love, LK
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9/13/2008 12:25 pm |
It's better for your if you let it drip dry!
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9/21/2008 3:42 pm |
It's better for your if you let it drip dry!Love, LK
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