Living on a Boat Part 1

It's around this time of year that I traditionally question my sanity. I've done this every year for the last four years because, for the last four years, I've been living on a boat.

It was actually my brother who suggested it. I'd split up from my son's mother and found myself with very little cash and no home. My sister put me up for a few weeks and my brother rang me to see how I was doing. During the course of the conversation, he quipped: "You should buy a houseboat, mate!" And, in  hindsight, I can see he was joking; I'm the least technical, practical and self-sufficient person I know.

"Hooray!" I thought, as pictures of Rosie and Jim flooded through my mind. "The answer to all my problems!"

So, for the next few days, I trawled the Internet, looking for houseboats for sale. The problem with checking out Internet ads is that they only show lovely pictures of your chosen item and, in this case, in sunny weather. The fantasy was underway: I could see myself living like third-rate David Essex, befriending ducks, cuddling swans and generally having a high old time. It was going to be tranquil and relaxing; the perfect picture of peace.

Without further ado, I booked in some appointments and, full of nautical optimisim, went to go and see some boats.

The only prior experience I'd had with boats was a swan-shaped pedalo on Exmouth Boating Pond, when I was about five. And although the water was only a couple of feet deep, it terrified me. Amazingly, my brain decided to put a gagging order on this particular memory during the whole process: I was going to become a Gentleman of the River!

The first boat I saw was an absolute heap. Even with my zero experience, I could see that it was in bad nick and overpriced. No disrespect to anyone with a narrow boat, but it would have been like living in a train carriage. And it rocked when you walked and that unsettled me. But, brimming with naivety, I decided to continue with my quest.

Over the next two days, I think I saw about 16 - 20 boats, all in varying states of disrepair. Some of them were vaguely habitable but, being brutally honest, a lot of the owners put me off. It wasn't that they were nasty people, most of them were very nice and helpful. The thing was that they all seemed to be a bit mad and all had some story to tell, generally about how the hell they ended up living on a boat. And I didn't want to hear that, so I sort of tuned it out. Probably because I was starting to feel a bit mad, but didn't want to admit it. During that 48 hours, I met recovering alcoholics, a newly-emerged transsexual, divorcees and a guy with possibly the worst dental hygene I've ever seen outside of toothpaste adverts. Don't get me wrong; it was probably my frail mental state at the time that exaggerated these people into lurid cartoon characters, but I was still determined to find my new floating home.

It was during the failing daylight one Sunday in March that I shuffled despondently into a riverside broker's yard and announced my intent to by a houseboat. If only I'd known at the time what those knowing nods actually meant.

To be continued...