Thursday's Child while Promise had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on me ****

Today

But I have to work today. How rude.

I am waking up to the smell of coffee.

I am dreaming of fresh baguette and mummy’s fig jam.

Squeezed Spanish orange juice.

Enough time to eat it. 

Maybe take a shower. 

It’s not happening. I think it's Friday. 

I am in England and on the boat.

It is raining. 

I can hear the swans pecking the long hairy canal weed growing on the hull.

I know it is food for them. But it does not appeal to them that maybe they could find better?

The amount of take-away boxes and litter in the canal is very much part of the wild life.

They should find some left overs. But I guess they don't digest plastic. 

I wonder sometimes if these animals have taste though.

So elegant and yet so unrefined. 

Faithful but unpredictable. 

They have an impeccable composure above the water line and yet they have to paddle hard. 

Their life is a bit like having the arse stuck between two stools, stuck in a quandary on the horns of a dilemna. 

I don't want to be like them. 

So I feed them with some Kellog's Fruit & Fibre. They like it. Better than the canal weed. 
A guy told me off the other day for feeding them. He said they are wheat intolerant. 
Isn't it one of the oldest job in the universe? Feeding swans with dry bread? 
Even children do it. 
If children do it then that must be fine.
I wondered if that guy was real. 

One of them has a Tesco bag around his webbed foot. 

 I am not surprised.

Tesco bags are probably the most common aquatic flower in London. It is a perennial white and blue flower. 

It's got a Latin name. 
Tescolea Plastica. 

In other mooring places in London, it is possible to find the Sainsburo Aurentiaco, a vivid orange shade.

In posher places, Little Venice or Angel, admirers of the Marksum and Spenceralinis can be contented. 
A rich dark organic green colour. 

But these ones are the rarest. And the reason is because they are being consistently picked up. 

People picking up, usually on Saturday morning, the Marksum and Spenceralinis.

These people seem really on it. They never pick up any other plastic flowers... only that one. 

It looks as though they are taking them so that no one sees them around and only see Tescoleas and Sainsburos. 

Why?

...

No? Really...?

Even my cynicism does not allow me to think that. 

And it is time for breakfast.

Italian biscuits will do. As ever.  

They make me happy but sometimes I’d like to throw a party for my breakfast. People do that for their birthday, why can’t I do that for my breakfast?

I think about what it would be like to have lots of friends turning up for my breakfast. Bringing me things, like doritos and dips, listening to music rather than BBC4… not worrying about tomorrow, drinking coffee like it was a rhum and guava cocktail.

Meeting strangers.

When was the last time I met someone new at breakfast?

I am getting dressed. I put on a nice bespoke shirt that has been especially tailored but not for me and yet it fits me perfectly. My neighbour gave it to me *.

I still grimace when I get dressed but I start to believe that I do it more by automatism than by response to an acute pain.

It is patience that I am lacking now. I have used roughly two years’ worth of patience in the last four weeks.

I haven‘t got much left.

But I am getting better.  

So, what's next?

My ribs are reforming, that's a fact.

But will they be the way they used to be?

I have heard a few things about what happens after an accident. Sometimes things aren’t the same after, especially for bones.

The thing is I want my ribs back the way they used to be. Not stronger or weaker. Just the same. If not my rib cage would be like when a band gets together again after not having played for twenty years.

Usually they turn out to be the best tribute band of their own songs.

I have no sympathy for these devils.

And tribute bands always remind me of that Beatles tribute band I once saw in Dundee. And the Beatles remind of a friend of mine who has fucked up seriously with most of our friends.

And my friends remind me of home and home is here and home is there and I feel alienated. And being alienated is very much like living in London. This reminds me that England has never been on my list of places I would love to live in, but there I am. 

Here, some call me 'expatriated' because I am from Western Europe. I know that it is only a word.
'Expatriated' is a word that is used if someone is an immigrant coming originally from a country that is considered superior or on an equal footing with the country of adoption. 

In my case, what makes a difference is probably the use of the language. Had I not learnt English in the first place, I may not have stayed here for six years. The choice was mine to make. Only time got on the way.

Maybe the hint that got me to learn English in the first place is the music I never understood.

I always enjoyed the melody first. The words came last.
The less I heard the words, the better the harmony was. It was an advantage to be half a beginner, reading little English, speaking it even less and hardly understanding most parts of the songs.
Such was my pleasure as De Quincey would say.

There are songs I have been listening to, for twenty odd years, and only got to understand what they are saying a few months ago. 

Hum.

So I go back to think about the Beatles. And the Beatles remind me of that tribute band from Dundee. 
And Dundee, Scotland, reminds me of my first car, a red Peugeot 309 diesel. And this car, really… reminds me that I lived in it for a while. 

And that reminds me that it is probably when I learnt how to live on a boat.

 The Ho(me)ly Corridor

All boats are different. 

But the lowest common denominator is the confinement, impediment, thinness, in short the narrowness. 

It's like living in a corridor. 
I never thought I would do that. I never tried before to fit in a corridor with all mod-cons. 

But I have listened to The Jam in a corridor before so...

It all makes sense here. 

Before moving on Thursday's Child, I lived on a small boat called the Promise. She had what it needs to make life difficult. 

There was quite a significant gap between the frame and the door. If I had had an address, the postman would have slipped the letters through it thinking it was the mailbox. 

There was rust in the water tank. When the water was running low, I would know it after a shower. I was covered in orange rust which gave me a Southend look. OMG.

The stove could fit a log the size of a match. It was so cold in the morning I had to get dressed in the evening and jump under four blankets to sleep.
The top blanket would always freeze overnight. 

There was a fridge that did not work. I then realised she was the fridge. 

Once I broke down crossing Islington tunnel, right in the middle. 
It was a dark night, maybe in June.
Late.
Foggy.
The old diesel engine, a BMC 1.5 which used to power a black cab, had started to play on me a couple of weeks before.
I remembered calling my neighbour, told him I was about to cross the tunnel.
Told him that if I was not out within thirty minutes he should do something.
Like panicking or something like that.

I broke down.

Alone in the dark.

As a habit I don't panic in an emergency. I stay smart. Quiet.
I panic afterwards.
Afterward panic is a bit like having an argument with someone but thinking of the most vivacious and spiritual retort five minutes too late**.
It's galling.

It took me twenty-five minutes to get out, using a barge pole and the walls.
Back in the days that's the way they were doing it. They're cute ,aren't they?

It was so dark inside I could not even see my hands.
Then a bat decided to get tangled in my hair.
And I made it.
I finally got out.
And saw the neighbour with a cup of cider in his hand.

- What the...? Didn't I ask you to panic in case I don't come out?

- Yeah, but, you've only been twenty-five minutes...
   And you said thirty minutes before panic.

- ...

Authentic.


I heard The Promise is being considered for compression.
A woman, who lived on that boat last, found under the sink a mushroom the size of a pillow.
I heard people calling this boat the Broken Promise.
I almost celebrated a wedding on her, once.
She is a legendary boat.

Courtesy of D. Summers, Feb 1950

And then 

I guess I feel a bit out of breath today. A bit like a sentence without punctuation.
And not much can help me recompose myself. I still have to get to places and I will need my ribs fully back soon.

Being on a boat that is pretty much like a corridor, with cracked ribs, is a challenge.

But being on a promise with cracked ribs, boy, that'd be a whole different ball game.
Hum...

Luckily I am going through my invalidity experience on Thursday's Child, which, while I am here, has not been named after Bowie's song but after a nursery rhyme ***.

Being on a boat with, still, cracked ribs, I can spend my afternoon wondering how far I have to go. 

Beautiful Eartha Kitt.
I leave with this one


B.

* I said it before; my neighbour is a good man. And he likes featuring in the footnotes. 

** And that is called 'l'esprit d'escalier', French expression used in English, meaning something like the spirit of the staircase or staircase wit. 

*** Monday's child is fair of  face

Tuesday's child is full of grace

Wednesday's child is full of woe

Thursday's child has far to go

Friday's child is loving and giving

Saturday's child works hard for a living

But the child who is born on the Sabbath day

Is bonny and blithe and good and gay
(Traditional, 1838)

**** The Promise had a good effect on me although Thursday's Child had already had the charm I wanted.
It was a matter of time I found her.
Thursday's child, while Promise had had "had", had had "had had"; "had had" had had a better effect on me.

The (Bone) Marrow boat

today

The Italian in me house has taken over the breakfast.
The coffee is good again.
But the biscuits go faster.
That's politics, isn't it?

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~

Things seem to slowly come back to a natural state. And yet.

I am starting to acknowledge rib pain as a way of life.

I am looking around the house and think about what can be done with restricted movements.
I am contemplating where I would like to have shelves.
I like my new rug. It's got colours. It's made of recycled plastic.
I have two  friends with great make-up who call it up-cycled.
I make kefir with water and dates.
And lemon.
I make vinegar. The mother is growing.

I am domesticating myself.
But I am taking it slowly.

I start seeing things from a counter-chauvinist point of view, which is, for a Mediterranean man quite a progress already, even though Dr Block told me at the beginning of this adventure * that  I must do as little as possible and rest (that, on another hand, is most manageable for a Mediterranean man).
Hence being served breakfast and enjoying it.
Not having to worry about cleaning up.
Doing as little as possible.
But if I am true to myself, this goes against the root of my up-bringing. I ain't no machist.

I have been raised as a boy who can iron socks, fold tissues and pretend to take a shower by turning the tap on for twenty minutes while sitting on the tub reading comics, cook meals for more than one without microwave or pizzaioli but enjoying eating honey in bed from the pot with the finger, sew on buttons or even make alterations to clothes and do DIY almost at the same time, watch TV like it was a radio set while doing the dishes...
The list goes on, but I'll stop, it brings all sorts of memories... and shows that I might be slightly psycho-neurotic... which is a paradox. But does one know the difference between a psychotic and a neurotic person?
As Pierre would say, a psychotic is a firm believer that 2+2=5 and is very content about that. A neurotic is someone who pertinently knows that 2+2=4 and that makes him sad.

I have been raised like that, although I did not choose to.
Now, I might be at odds with the truth and merely articulated, but I have learnt a few things,
for I have sworn that it was fair and have regarded it as beautiful practically and morally, although it was as boring as hell, as gloomy as night.
I have learnt one thing. Big thing.
But I cannot say really, that'd be spoiling it for too many.
I can't do that.
I shall not spoil.
I saw it, the other day.
The act of 'spoiling'.
I saw it with my eyes.
In vivo.
Or even medias res. 
(yep, Mediterranean men can speak Latin...)
I saw the reaction the other day, in people's eyes, on the tube...
Anger.
Anger, because one of the free abominationalist newspaper made an article about The Game of Thrones, revealing a major twist in the serie.
People were not pleased... so they wrote letters to the editor... actually no, they texted their angst to the editor.
I saw this commuter.
Let's call him Roger.
I saw Roger the Commuter, fulminating.
Crushing teeth against teeth. Because he does not have Sky TV, Roger... he could not see the episode before hand... But Roger can read the free newspaper and no, Roger was not pleased so Roger took his phone and offloaded his besmirched ignorance onto his iPhone.
Someone had to be the recipient of his wrath and like a sailor fearing raging seas he jumped on the next train like it was a life raft, leaving behind the proscribed newspaper that sunk his imagination, before he could fall prey for madness.
Folly awaits and I can only recommend, Roger and others, this.

So I won't say. And I will continue to take it slowly.

Scarecrow 

What separates me from a scarecrow?
I wear a hat rather well.
Birds don't come near me or if they do they usually end up regretting it...
The latter usually takes a few years though.

But I have realised, since I started paying attention, that scarecrows are scary.
And ugly.
So I made one, rather pretty and fit.
I needed help for the garden and needed to talk to someone who does not necessarily need to tell me to take paracetamol. But I did not want to freak out anytime I go home or go out.
So I shaped him nice and welcoming. I gave him clothes. A good hat.

Mine is an activist.
He has an Amnesty International T-shirt.
On a boat with a cracked rib, I can have an activist scarecrow.

He protects my suspended garden while I am recovering.
He has duties. Mostly chasing the bastards who have consistently been eating my seeds.
Six seeds of corn, six seeds of cherry tomatoes and twelve seeds of garden peas. Straight from the wooden box where they try to grow**.

If he could make sure that I don't get broken into, that'd be a bonus.
Last week two boats were broken into. That happens a lot here, in Victoria Park.
In fact it seems encouraged by the authority. Not that I want to cast a stone at the council but I thought that removing street lights from the park and subsequently from our temporary garden was not the most effective way to tackle night vandalism. I guess the scarecrow might not be very useful during night time anyway.

It is a constant question. Is it safe to be on a boat in London?
I don't personally think about it as a threat. I have lived a few years in a house and I got broken into once.
I have lived four years on a boat and I have never been broken into. They attempted it once.
On a Tuesday evening. At three in the morning.
I had been occasionally thinking about what my reaction would be, if something like that would happen. How should I react? I never found the answer but I put an axe under the bed.
When I awoke to the sound of a crow bar trying to crack open the side hatch, it made my blood boil and I jumped off bed and grabbed the axe.
Maybe five seconds passed. I was standing quietly, gripping firmly on the handle of the steel tool turned weapon, waiting. Listening to the housebreaker owls.
Was that plan A?
At the time I had not read the Walking Dead but I surely looked like a survivor surrounded by a herd of zombies.
In fact I did not have a plan. I only had a vague idea of what my instinctive reaction should be.
I switched. I felt like I had to get the owls away from here. By all means.  But then I switched back.
I dropped the axe. I put all the lights on. I opened a window. I shouted at them.
They eventually left.
That seemed to be a better plan.

I suppose scarecrows are no good with owls.

And then 

I guess I am feeling a little edgy today.
A bit like when I ring someone and they don't pick up.

Summer was nice last week, but it might be already over. It does not matter.
What matters is to get my joints and bones repaired. I am no man of straws. I want my ribs back. Being on a  boat with cracked ribs for too long, I could spend afternoons standing, looking scary. But I have a better plan.


I leave with this one


*See previous posts for info about Dr Block. Recently I have been in contact with them and they assured me that if I waited a bit longer I would be on the road to recovery. They insisted that I should rest and take paracetamol. I enjoy this sense of medical pragmatism. 

**My neighbour, who has a good eye for things, it's even his job, has been consistently pointing out that I should not have stolen that wooden box, that is why I get roamers of some sorts eating my meager crops. My neighbour believes in karma and is convinced that crime never pays. My neighbour is a good man. I may expend on that later. 

B(hull)shit

Today

Today is a lovely day.
I like to say the word "lovely". It's one the first word I learnt to enjoy saying when I lived up north. I just thought for a while it spelt "loafely". A combination of bread and love. The story of my life. I would not do without any of them two. And I could not choose.
I finally realised that I could stop failing my morning coffee. As I tend to forget the moka on the hob, it boils.
I made tea instead. Nicely boiled.
With biscuits. Three.

About these biscuits. They make me happy. They really do. Lots of things make me happy, but the biscuits, particularly happy. And because I meet them usually for breakfast, they kind of make me happy first.
I felt this morning I needed to give them back a bit of joy and happiness, besides the obvious joy and happiness that is to meet my lips, somehow quite a valued destination.

Today, because it is a lovely day, the biscuits need dressing. I have crème fraiche. I have plain chocolate. I have Nutella. I have peanut butter. I have time.

The trick when attempting to seduce italian biscuits or any other italian items of fantasy, is to give up most a priori of what is right or wrong and mentally sing this. It works.

 

 

The peanut butter starts melting in a red hot sauce pan. It smells nice; some steam starts condensing on the window panes. I throw the crème fraiche in the pan and boil it. Once boiled, it is easy to stir and make a nice velouté crémeux. It is still one step away from a ganache. I add the kind hearted chocolate, a bit plain but not for long, into the velvet fluid. I forget it for a while. I will stir, later.
The biscuits, shaking shy and naked, want attention. They get swirled with nutella and peanut butter, the three of them, but one of them gets lucky and gets done both side and looks like a Daft Punk song. I pile them up. On top of each other they look nice and blithe.
The ganache is done. The biscuits want more. I dive in.
They dive in. They roll, in the ganache, they roll about. It is beautiful. It is perfect.

The fridge does the rest while I try to get dressed.

The Bullshit Patrol

It is a nice morning. It is not sunny here but I hear that the sun shines in some part of the world; the thought that the bastard has not resigned from sky duty makes me feel nonchalantly cheerful. It just needs to show up here and everything will be in its right place. I have herbs and plants that need photosynthesising.
I eat the obnoxious biscuits. It is delightful. It is full of calories. But I have an allowance and it won't make a difference. Not today.
On a boat with cracked ribs, it can be as smooth as homemade snickers.
It can.
It is possible.

I got dressed.
Graphically buoyant and touching. The pain remains.
I look at the day with hope and sincere fondness in my heart.
I think it is Saturday. I think I am going to walk along the canal. I think I am going to stay happy for most of the day.
I think if I stay away from more news about extreme right wings idiots who are ruining it for everyone, I will stay happy.
But these days, too many hatred, too many strong words of dislike. It is unbelievable. It is bullshit. We need a bullshit patrol.
To stand up and point the finger and shout "Bullshit" to the pricks; can I say pricks?
Bullshit is everywhere. It is in my fridge when I prepare breakfast. It is in my words when I try to avoid an argument I know I will lose. It is in me most of the time. I know it but I would not admit it most of the time.
That's bullshit, too.
But hey, I keep it for myself.
I would not tell people what they should do, unless they ask me for advice. I would not just because mostly whatever I think belongs to a moment around the coffee table with my friends.

Bullshit. Even though I am good at it, I won't go and preach it.
In fact, in London these days, it would be mostly preaching to converts so..
Hence the Bullshit patrol. A neutral organism ready to step in whenever bullshit happens. Just a thought...

My walk along the canal showed me few things, amongst others.

There is a huge increase in boats.

After four years spent on the canals I have on a few occasions, synchronised my cyclic routine with another boats for a few days, a couple of hours, a week... And it also became ritual to cruise and pass by some boats once every three months**. It was usually in the same spot. It was lovely.
Would follow a sort of decent and engaging conversation.

Before:
- where are you off to?
- west... you?
- east... where were you moored?
- King's Cross... loads of space.
- cool, that's where I am heading. Fancy a coffee? I've got italian biscuits.
- lovely
- swell

But things have changed... are changing. I am a man of my time; I am not afraid to change and I like hip hop.
But in a society, we get the hip hop we deserve, as Chilly would say.
The conversation has also evolved.

Nowadays.
- where are you off to?
- west... you?
- east... where were you moored?
- King's Cross... absolute nightmare... boats all over the place. Triple moored mostly...
- bullshit! That's where I was heading...
- and it's the same in Camden and Little Venice...
- yeah you might want to get going as well 'cause we haven't seen an empty space either for seven miles or so... it's mayhem in Broadway market... Some boats in Victoria Park haven't moved in months...
- I know... apparently one of them was there for so long they found a fossile on the hull.
- Bullshit... I would offer you a coffee, but I 've got to get going... and I ran out of italian biscuits.

An important and neglected fact is that the hull of the boat gets more damaged and altered by the water if the boat is stationary.
Moving is also a way of preserving the blacking applied on the hull and it makes life easier for everyone.

Another thing I see on the towpath, walking my ennui. Locks (une écluse, quoi!)
Beautiful mechanism. Archaical but beautiful. Work of art, really. Almost invented by Da Vinci. Very simple and efficient to build long stretchs of canal on an uneven land. Very usuful to regulate an impetuous river.
Simple to use.
But there are many ways to misuse them, apparently. Loads and loads of lost opportunities for the Bullshit patrol, here.

So, a lock, how does it work. To be brief, the boat goes in the lock, the gates get closed behind her, the paddles get lifted from the winding gears, the water gets in or gets out, the boats moves up or moves down and once completed, the bottom or top gates get opened and that's it.

The boat exits the lock, the gates need closing and the winding gears need winding down.
That is the part that isn't fun to do. It actually isn't because it means stepping out of the boat after exiting the lock.
And that is what most of boats seem to forget to do, at least on the stretch of canal I walked along.
Why not taking the time to do it? In a rush? Hey, if a person drives a narrowboat, they cannot be in a rush.
Lazyness? No, bullshit!

It is primordial to do it though.
It saves water. Canal water is not natural. It is contained within the boundaries of canal sections. Eventually the rain tops it up. If a gate stays open too long or if the winding gears are left up, the level of water will drop. Fast.
As a consequence, boats will end up sitting on their hull. And again that's not good for the blacking of the hull or anything else poorly balanced inside the boat.

And then

Well, I guess I am a bit revolted today.

It is not just about the locks;
not about the increase of boats, the lack of commitment to a certain good practice and the lack of space that results from this lack of commitment;
not just about the extreme right wing extremists pricks polluting my city and the country,
in which I am an immigrant, although I am as concerned about their presence as I would be of a pile of steaming hot excrements in my living room;
But there is a certain reach and range and I like things to be in a certain spot.
A bit like dating someone too tall. It might not work.


And I feel I don't need to say more because I'd contradict myself here. I don't want to say. I wouldn't like to start bullshittin' myself, and I am fickle enough to know I would. On the boat with cracked ribs, I can spend an afternoon being focused on the real important things, being in the mood to be happy.

I leave with this one








B.

*read the post Bruising for a Cruising for details if needed
**another important element of a good constant cruising practice: it is implied that a boat that leaves an area after having stayed for two weeks will not return to the very same area for a period of three months