Now that I have finally rented (alas not sold) my house that I have lived in for more than 25 years, I am gradually moving my most portable stuff to Pangolin, the 62 feet long 6.5 feet wide narrowboat I bought not long after I put the house on the market. 

On Saturday I moved some cushions, a little oriental rug, two bags of wood and three candles to the boat.  It felt like progress, so I celebrated by hanging out at the Rock of Gibraltar and ordering a Greek salad.  The salad was small and expensive (£6.45) and the oil faintly rancid, but the pub is a five minute walk up the towpath, and I guess that makes it mine.

The next morning, as I stood on Pangolin’s stern deck drinking tea and checking my batteries, someone from a passing boat shouted that the one behind me had come adrift.  I looked up to see its bow floating across the canal.  Grabbing my shoes, I stepped outside and just about managed to reach the stern line as it drifted away.  I hung on and looked for help.

I couldn’t secure the line, because I couldn’t let go in order to fetch mooring pins or mallet or reinforcements or anything.  If I let go, the boat would be completely adrift.  The canal isn’t wide or deep, of course, but it is a nuisance to lose a boat, even so.  The canal is wet and cold and rats piss in the water.  You don’t jump in if you don’t have to.

The canal and the towpath suddenly seemed remarkably empty, but after a while a woman and child in a kayak – I think the boy must have been about 12 years old – paddled by. The mother asked if I needed help, and still hanging on to the rope of the drifting boat (which weighs about 17 tonnes), I admitted I did. 

The kayak mother hailed another passerby and suggested that if young Liam, who had now managed to board the drifting boat, could throw a rope, the passerby, a woman in her late 50s or early 60s, could catch the rope and guide the bow in while Liam manned the boat and I held the stern line.  The mother in the kayak would shove the boat and shout orders.  It sounded like a plan to me.

The passerby said our instructions were very unclear and she didn’t have time.  She needed to walk.  She shuffled grumpily up the tow path.

Nevertheless, the youngster on the drifting boat, his mother in a kayak and I on the tow path, eventually managed to get control of the heavy, drifting boat.  I secured the stern line first and then hammered in the mooring pin attached to the bow line that young Liam recovered from the canal.  Liam climbed back into the kayak and he and his mother continued on their journey.

An hour or so later I was all packed up and ready to return to the task of moving out of my house.  By chance, just as I was locking up Pangolin, the unhelpful passerby was returning from her walk. I told her that she ought to check out the story of the Good Samaritan.

I thought there was a good chance I was offering her useful information.  According to the morning’s religious reports, only 16% of the British public know that story.

Sometimes the Sunday news comes in handy.