The narrowboat was advertised as a “premium” boat, but when we got on it we wondered why. We kept saying to each other “But it was very cheap, and it’s fine for just a week, isn’t it?” We had fun, despite the gearbox packing up half way through the trip, making us come home early.
From my journal-
Sunday November 21st 2010, 7 a.m. The Llangollen Canal
In bed under 3 duvets, and on top of the seat cushion from the dinette, which itself is on top of the mattress to give the bed a smidge of springiness, and I am wearing pyjamas, bed socks, a thick Aran sweater, greasy hair and varifocals. The engine is loud and throbbing, and the whole boat vibrates: we have it turned on right now to make the heating work. It is dark outside. I have just finished off my packet of pork scratchings, which I gave up eating last night because in the quiet of the cabin on the silent canal, the crunching was too loud. It’s pretty awful to be eating pork scratchings first thing in the morning, but this barge lowers one’s standards. There is a putrid stench in the bathroom, which they know about because they have left a vapona in there to combat the smell. it does not combat the smell. When you are playing Scrabble, waiting for your tea to cook the cooker secretly cuts out, so that when you have totted up your final score and gloated because you got 600 between you (a minor gloating because 700 would be so much better) you take your cheese and lentil savoury and baked potato out of the oven and find it uncooked and lukewarm. I have been reading the Grapes of Wrath about poverty and hardship in Dust Bowl Oklahoma and migrant life in California in the 30’s. If there were a narrowboat in the Grapes of Wrath it would be like the one we are on.
1 comment:
Keep posting stuff like this i really like it
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