The crew and I meant to spend the day at Hampton Court Palace, but as we were waiting for the ticket office to open I took a phone call that changed my plans.

My younger daughter, ever the Baby of the family, though she is 18, has given me some of the worst moments of my life (lovely creature though she is), and she started very early.  When she was less than a year old she took up that toddler trick I had heard about but never before seen – holding her breath until she went rigid, turned blue and shook as if convulsing, and then holding her breath some more, until her eyes rolled back in her head, and she passed out.

By the time she was two or three I was in danger of being reported to the Social Services for gross neglect.  Onlookers who witnessed this performance (I am telling you, it is scary) shouted Do something!  Call an ambulance!  How can you just sit there?  And I would answer casually, Oh don’t worry, she’ll come round in a minute or two.

The first time she did it, however, I thought she was dead.   I thought something like that today.

I spent much of the day on the telephone.  Everyone agreed there was nothing I could do by returning immediately to Oxford, and in any case the boat would have to be got back to its home mooring somehow.  The crew were very sympathetic, and when they came back from their day at the palace, they urged me to do whatever I thought best, and they would help in any way they could.

By evening the situation was more stable, no one was dead, and it was quite clear that nothing could be gained, for the time being at least, by turning the boat around and heading back.  In fact, after I had discussed the alternatives with the Baby’s father, we agreed that the best plan would be for me to get the boat to London as soon as possible.  There I would be able to catch a fast train to Oxford.

Day 8 statistics: 0 locks and 0 miles, except for the many miles I paced.

Pangolin stayed moored up by the Eton playing fields on the sixth day of our cruise; the Bursar gained an extra £6 mooring fee, the crew spent the day at Windsor Palace, and I got a much needed rest and a day alone.

The following morning the journey downstream from Windsor was uneventful.  We passed miles of parkland with signs warning us not to stop, because it was Crown property. I had brief fantasies of defying the notices just to see if the SAS would parachute in, jump out of the bushes, and leap over the barbed wire fences to arrest us, but, happily, I soon became distracted by a bird I had not seen before.  I abandoned thoughts of high treason and took photographs instead. 

A new bird

After much puzzling I identified this as an Egyptian Goose, listed in my bird book as a rare species (though I now know it to be plentiful along a small stretch of the Thames), introduced to this country as an ornamental bird in the 18th century and escaped to the wild.  Though it is not widespread – unlike those pesky Canadian geese – it was officially declared anser non gratus in 2009.  Actually it was declared a “pest”, but I think the Latin sounds less hurtful, don’t you?  They are rather pretty creatures, and they can’t help being foreign, poor things.

By now the crew and I have become very used to Thames locks, which seemed quite daunting when we first joined the river.  These locks are much wider, longer, and often deeper than those on the Oxford Canal (which take the 6.5 feet wide narrow boats sometimes with barely an inch to spare).  One Thames lockkeeper told me his lock could theoretically hold three narrowboats across and three deep; he’s never yet had an opportunity to prove the theory, but he seemed very hopeful that one day nine might arrive all at once and give him his chance.

On the whole, the locks are filled with more usual river going craft, and every one of them, even the canoes, seemed to go faster than Pangolin.  Everywhere we encountered the “gin palaces” I had been warned about, great fibre glass tubs bobbing in the water.  Their captains always look just a wee bit nervous when my 15 tonne (give or take a tonne or two), 62 foot boat enters the lock behind them.  I know they are nervous, so by the time I pull up to the edge of the lock, my goal is to be crawling along at less than half a mile per hour, though I only have good steerage at much faster speeds.  Fast is good, if you want to make nifty turns.  Fast is not good if you don’t want to run over gin palaces.  Where it gets tricky is when you need to make a nifty turn so as not to run over a gin palace…

Approaching each lock, we come to the weir first.  There is usually a lot of discussion and consultation of guidebook and binoculars amongst the crew, but generally speaking, when I am driving, I think a good rule of thumb is to steer away from the big DANGER signs. 

Should I go to the left or to the right?

Once in the lock the crew lassoes a bollard, front and back, and gently lets the rope go slack as the lockkeeper presses the buttons that work the paddles.  There’s a good deal of chit chat as the lock empties.  Below Oxford all the Thames locks are electric and manned, so the boaters can concentrate on their ropes and their chat.  Where are you from? Where are you headed?  Where will you stop tonight? 

Mr and Mrs Crew are in their element, but I have to unlearn 30+ years of British reserve.  Who knew that though you mustn’t talk at breakfast in an Oxford college, and never ever under any circumstances short of terrorist atrocity in a train carriage, lock chit chat is required?

It’s her boat, the crew says, pointing at me. She lives on it, near Oxford.  The crew hands everyone a business card printed with a picture of their own boat back home, and I nod and offer a mute wave and hope my driving looks almost like that of someone who might reasonably be left in charge of something that would definitely squash them if I twitched the throttle in the wrong direction.

As the boats drop to the river’s next level, the crew release the ropes, the gates open, everyone says good bye to each other, and thank you to the lockkeeper, and off we all go, often to meet again at the next lock, a couple of miles further down the river.

Approaching the last lock of the day

Hampton Court Palace from the river

We reached Hampton Court late afternoon and once again were lucky in our mooring.  I stood on the roof of the boat and took this photograph of the palace gates.

The view from our mooring

And this, when I clambered over the fence.

Hampton Court Palace

I don’t think we could have got a lot closer.

Day 7 statistics: Windsor to Hampton Court: 19 large river miles and 8 wide locks

We set off in mist and heavy rain, and the emotional boaty weather was not a lot better.  Mr Crew was at the helm (narrowboats are driven from the back) and I was up front with the binoculars – not concentrating on what was ahead, as I probably ought to have been, but on ducks instead. 

Within moments Mr Crew was shouting at me to summon his wife, and I called back to say she was in the loo. As that only produced louder shouts from the helm, I put down the binoculars and went back to see what the problem was.

I was met only with an angry, screaming insistence that Mr Crew wanted to talk to his wife, so I retreated to my lookout spot on the bow.

Moments later, Mrs Crew emerged agitated from the loo to find out what all the shouting was about, spoke to her husband, and raced forward to ask me for the binoculars (which was apparently what Mr Crew wanted all along).  Alas, by then I was so flustered by all the angry screaming that I could not remember where I had put them.

The binoculars were eventually found, consulted, and Mr Crew altered our course so that the boat didn’t run into a riverly dead end, which I quite agreed would have been very inconvenient. 

The Duchess at the bow, leaving Henley

The morning’s event had three effects:

1. I silently surrendered the binoculars to the helm, though they had always been meant for birdwatching, and never for navigation.  I hate conflict a lot more than I love ducks.

2. Mr and Mrs Crew began to treat me more gently, as if I were some semi-crazed imbecile, who mustn’t be upset, or who knows what she might do: losing the binoculars was probably only the beginning.

3. After briefly contemplating abandoning ship (but where would I go?  the boat is my home) I began to feel liberated.  I considered Mr Crew’s behaviour so rude, so unreasonable, and so improper in a guest that I felt absolved from many ordinary host rules, and especially from paying attention to anything he said.

Mrs Crew particularly encouraged me in the last.  She quietly assured me that the secret of a happy marriage was “Yes, Dear” and I might like to practice it, in case I ever got married again.

Without saying anything to me, she also banned Mr Crew from the helm when I was driving (bless her) and stood with me while I practised ignoring his instructions shouted from the front.  I got a lot of extra practise ignoring him whenever I was driving into a lock (Hurry up! hurry up! left! right! neutral! reverse! forward! right! left! neutral! reverse! hurry up! hurry up! hurry up!)

Yes, Dear, Mrs Crew whispered in my ear.

At Windsor the river was suddenly once again extraordinarily busy, with row boats and cruise boats everywhere, and whole flotillas of eager schoolboys slicing the water with their sculls.  Mr Crew was driving, and he skilfully dodged the river traffic, swung the boat around, and pulled us up alongside the playing fields of Eton, where we moored, paying the Bursar a mere trifle for the privilege.

We tied onto the bank with the boat facing upstream

For the first time I saw Mr Crew really happy.  I had promised they would want to stop at Windsor, and sad, crazed person that I am, I wasn’t wrong, just this once.  We had a mooring with a view of the castle overlooking the town, and Mr Crew was enchanted by the dozens of swans who flocked our boat, demanding bread. When I explained that the queen officially owns all the swans in the whole country he roared with laughter and took pictures of swan butts in the air.  What, he asked, would Her Majesty think of that?

One of Mr Crew's photos

The crew and I drank gin and tonics on the Eton playing field.  I don’t think our boaty war was either won or lost, but for the time being peace reigned.

Day 5 statistics: Henley Bridge to Windsor Bridge.  21 large river miles and 8 wide river locks.

The crew were up so early that over breakfast I had to make a unilateral declaration that there was to be no talking or any activity of any sort aboard Pangolin before 6 am, except for essential trips to the loo (or, if like my crew, you insist on boaty talk, the “head”). 

Mr Crew said that Mrs Crew had told him he should apologise for the lock incident the day before, and he promised to follow the rules from now on, so we were more or less friendly again. 

Nevertheless, I thought everyone would be happier if I let Mr Crew drive for most of the day.  He and Mrs Crew stood at the stern, while I took my binoculars up front, in pursuit of  ducks. 

It quickly became clear that bird watching was an irritant to Mr Crew.  The binoculars belonged at the helm, and to add insult to injury I took pictures when I ought to have been concentrating on throwing ropes.  My ropes were never tidily coiled as we approached the locks.  Instead I busily photographed dozens of ducks, hundreds of pesky Canada geese, and the occasional, endlessly patient heron.

I admit that Mr Crew had a point about the binoculars, at least, but I didn’t care.  I was being petty: they are my binoculars, and if Mr Crew wanted to see where he was going he should have brought his own.

I don’t think our morning’s truce lasted until lunch time.

Bit by bit the river widened and for much of the day Pangolin seemed to be the only boat on the river, now and again followed by a single narrowboat or cruiser.  Just before five o’clock we slipped into a mooring at Henley on Thames, where the river was suddenly crowded, and we had to dodge crews practising for next month’s Royal Regatta.

The river Thames

Geese and swans

A heron by the bank

A cormorant in the trees

Okay, I admit it: I took pictures of cows too.

I

Day 4 statistics: 24 large river miles and 7 wide locks.

The day began badly and got worse.  My crew has been mutinous and I have had some difficulty reasserting my authority as Captain. 

It seems that proper captains do not ground the boat because they are too busy exclaiming over sweet little new born baby cygnets to notice a sand bar.

Mr Crew had been standing by my side at the helm in stony silence, except when he was barking orders at me.  He had a sore head all day because we had had a disagreement first thing in the morning: without a word to me, he and Mrs Crew had slipped up to the lock and filled it, setting it in our favour before our boat was up by the lock and ready. 

That’s against the rules.  Especially in the summer months when the rivers and canals are busy, if the water is against you, you must not change the water (empty or fill the lock) until your boat is waiting beside the lock, ready to go in, and then only if no boat is in sight who might be able to use the water first.  To do otherwise is to “steal the other boat’s water” and it is discourteous as well as environmentally unfriendly (because it is wastes water). 

Of course you don’t often get the opportunity on the Thames to misbehave in this way, because the locks are manned most of the day, but my crew get up early, and the lock keeper had not yet arrived. 

I was still in my pajamas and I thought the crew were just going up to the lock for a look.  As soon as I realised what they were doing I threw on my clothes and ran up.  I met Mr Crew coming back along the path.

“Bring the boat up”, he demanded.

I stopped and opened my mouth to speak.

“Bring the boat up”, he repeated, speaking to me slowly and very loudly, as if I were a particularly stupid child.

He scornfully dismissed my explanation of the lock rules.  I brought the boat up, drove into the lock, and we emptied it.  As the water was running out we saw the lock keeper arriving, but he wasn’t yet manning the gates when we opened them and slid out.

On the other side four boats were waiting to enter the lock.  Mr Crew was triumphant. 

“I won’t say I told you so,” he said.  “But if we hadn’t done it my way, we would have had to wait for those boats.”

That, I replied, was precisely my point.

In the end I simply said that as we were driving on my license I would have to insist he obeyed the rules.  Then I spent the rest of the day trying to be extra friendly and solicitous, but it was no good.  I knew he was sulking angrily.  When he spoke at all he made nasty remarks about my driving and about the way I kept my boat.

When I ran the boat aground he informed me that he had seen the sandbar coming but had chosen not to tell me, because of what he called our “breakdown in communication”. 

No real harm was done.  A big boat cruised by, Mr Crew threw them a rope, and we were back in deep water in moments.  Mrs Crew came from inside the boat and was very nice to me and said she had run her boat aground once and did thousands of dollars of damage and I had probably been driving for too long and not to worry.  She didn’t understand that I wasn’t really worried about running the boat aground.  It happens a lot on the canals.  What upset me was what Mr Crew said, and the way he said it.

Later I was pretty sure Mr Crew had seen the sandbar only seconds, if at all, before me.  If he had really seen it he probably would have warned me, because if we had done serious damage to the boat, his holiday would have been ruined. 

We stopped for the night at Wallingford, a lovely little town with medieval roots.  It was too pretty not to enjoy, and anyway, the crew and I were, quite literally, all in the same boat together. I was friendly and polite and joined them for a drink at the local pub, but excused myself, and returned to the boat alone, when they ordered dinner. 

A few days earlier, when my crew first arrived I explained that I was turning over the back cabin (my usual bedroom) to them, and because the cabin had no door, I had hung a curtain.

Don’t worry, said my friend.  We really need very little privacy. 

She didn’t get it that the curtain was for me.

Day 3 statistics 18 (large river) miles and 5 (wide) locks.

The crew were up very early and eager to get started.  We were off before 8 and in Oxford by noon.  I did most of the driving, and our route took us along the narrow canal and through 4 locks before we reached the centre of Oxford. 

There isn’t a lot of clearance – often only 3 inches each side – to get into the narrow canal locks.

Or to get out of them.

As we got closer to Oxford, I was amused by the range of boat decorating styles:

It is amazing how quiet and rural the canal is, right into the centre of the city.

When we finally got to town,  I insisted on stopping for lunch: I had navigated for several hours though locks, under lift bridges and past moored boats, and I needed a rest.

Though they hadn’t at first wanted to stop, almost as soon as we were tied up, the crew declared that we required a hardware store.  My tool collection on board is a little hit and miss, and the crew have high standards (as well as Views). I warned them that it would be a bit of a walk, there being only one hardware store in the city centre, but they said our need was urgent. 

So as soon as we had eaten I took them on a fast march through Jericho, as the canal side section of Oxford, once the redlight district of the city, is called.  From there we carried on past several colleges and through the busy streets until we reached The High.  My crew was a little sceptical as we ducked down a little medieval alley and I pointed out Gills Ironmongers, purveyor of brazery, tin ware and ironmongery since at least the 18th century (the man inside claimed considerably longer). 

Gill and Co Ironmongers

Under instruction I purchased something I am told is called “channel locks”.  Considering their provenance, they are practically historic, and anyway, I am assured that once I know what I was missing all these years, I will find them essential and well worth the £17.50 and the scrum of a city so crowded that we could barely move.

Back to the peace of the canal, I drove through the last lock on the South Oxford Canal and we joined the River Thames in late afternoon sunshine. 

Elder daughter came along for the ride on the last canal lock and first river one, before we left the city behind.  That’s me driving.

Suddenly there were boats everywhere – large powered steamers taking tourists for rides, fast boats with outboard motors, the enormous fibre glass “gin palaces” I had been warned about, and many sculling boats – eights, fours, twos and single rowers, all training hard.  Every one of them was going faster than Pangolin.

A couple of hours later the crew performed some snazzy upstream manoeuvring (they’re good that way) to slot us into our mooring for the night, and later we found the only air conditioned pub within about a hundred miles to toast our first evening on the Thames.

Day 2 statistics: Thrupp cottages to Sandford lock. 10 miles, 7 locks (5 narrow and 2 wide), and 7 moveable bridges (most, but not all, open).

We left my home moorings at Enslow in late afternoon.  Half my crew was hung over from partying with the squatters and ne’er do wells down the pub the night before, the other half was happy to chill writing her journal, and I was busy doing all the jobs I hadn’t managed when I suddenly realised I had to take a day out getting a radio license. 

By mid afternoon I had the parts I needed for my BBQ, my plants were watered and the birds fed, and the young archaeologists who were moving into the mooring for the month were ready to take over.  And the crew had recovered and were ready.

I drove Pangolin up to the winding hole and turned her around.  Anyone remember the country classic, Give me forty acres and I’ll turn this rig around?  That’s how I feel when I turn the boat.

In the late afternoon we cruised back along the moorings toward the lock.  My neighbours, who may have got just a wee bit tired of all my questions about how to cruise the Thames, sang a chorus of “I am sailing” as we headed into the lock and down the Cherwell.

Everyone had a go at driving on the Cherwell and we handled the next lock and lift bridge easily.

My crew are very experienced sailors and also they are American.  Therefore they have Views about All Boating Matters.  Their View was we should fill up with water whenever possible, even though I promised them that I had filled up before they came and we had plenty.

But eventually we found a spot at Thrupp, drank canalside cocktails, and cooked on my newly fitted out BBQ. 

There was some grumbling from the crew that things weren’t exactly shipshape and there would be no more dinners at 9 pm.  But it was mostly a happy start.

Day 1 total: Pangolin mooring to Thrupp, via Enslow winding hole.  3 miles, 2 locks and 1 lift bridge.

Papa, alpha, November, golf, oscar, lima, india, November.

Pangolin is a narrowboat, 62 feet long and 6.5 feet wide.  Her normal maximum speed is four miles per hour, cruising along the chest-high water of the canals of Great Britain.  In an emergency the best plan is to step onto the towpath.

Just for fun, I thought my visiting friends and I would have a run down to London, and, because it is there, we might cruise up the Tidal Thames, past the Houses of Parliament and Tower Bridge.

I told the plan to my younger son, who gasped, But that’s dangerous!

Well, it is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, and it is a bit dodgy in a narrowboat, but I’ll have savvy boaters with me (not that they have ever before been on a boat anything like this one…).  Whatever else it will be, our journey will be an adventure.

Although I had repeatedly been assured that narrowboats were exempt from the requirement to carry a VHF radio on the Thames, last week I learned that that exemption was withdrawn 3 years ago from all boats over 45 feet.  Pangolin – papa alpha November golf oscar lima india November – is 62 feet.  I needed a radio, a license, and a certificate of competence, fast.

My friends could bring the radio, and the license is free and routine.  But the certificate of competence was another matter.  To get the certificate required that I attend a full day course in radio use, terminology and procedures, and pass an exam at the end of the day.

Since these certificates are meant for people who are wandering around the Atlantic in yachts (and, by the way, radios are merely recommended for them, not required as they are for me) the courses all take place by the seaside.  Oxford is almost as far from the sea as you can get on this small island, and the only course I could find at late notice was near Portsmouth, a hundred miles away.

I spent the day learning to make Mayday calls.  I also practiced how to call my friends on the radio to arrange to meet them later for dinner (except I have no friends with VHF radios), and I memorized the correct channel on which to call a marina to book a berth for the night. I asked why I wouldn’t rather call my friends, the marina, or even the Coastguard on my mobile telephone.  Well, yes, I must admit that is what I would recommend, said the instructor.

I had to learn a lot of acronyms.  For instance, my new license will allow me to carry one (but only one) E.P.I.R.B (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beam) in case I get lost.  It looks like a nice bit of kit, activated on contact with water, so that the search and rescue helicopters can pick up your signal and find you wherever you are.  But I think it might worry the ducks. It probably would work better to get out of the canal and wander up to the pub to ask if anyone had missed me.

There were lots and lots of spelling exercises involving the International Phonetic Alphabet.  And we all had to practice saying “Over” quite a lot, and “Out” now and again. 

I also learned that the French had cleverly hijacked the radio language (everyone was unclear on how they had pulled this off).  The keywords are all in French, but Anglophiles have retaliated in their usual fashion, by getting it all wrong: the French demanded M’aidez! Help me! And Brits responded Mayday!  Help me!

In class we did a lot of role play with our radio practice and spelled out many disasters: Foxtrot! India! Romeo! Echo!  I would have thought I was in a B movie, except that in the movies the men are a whole lot better looking.  I was the only woman in a class of six middle aged boaters, all of whom (including me) had too much hair, but at least mine grows mainly on the top of my head.  Theirs grew everywhere else.

I passed the exam, and the trip is still on.  So that you can follow our progress, I’ll try to be a more regular blogger.

 Or, as we radio buffs like to say, Seelonce feenee.

There’s a proper order to things, especially on boats.

I have been getting ready for a couple of American friends coming to England for the first time. Since I thought I had better offer them an adventure, we’ll be heading down the Thames for London.

But even if I weren’t off for a trip, I would need diesel and water.  Dusty, the fuel boat that cruises up and down the South Oxford, was due any day, and I hadn’t filled up with water since Easter Sunday when I bribed kids and friends with roast lamb afloat in return for helping me cruise a quarter mile up the canal, tap into a nearby hydrant (shhhhh – that’s why we do it evenings and Sundays), and reverse back to my mooring. 

I love living on my boat, but I admit that moving it makes me so anxious that I barely sleep for days before and after the shortest journey.  Steering 62 foot long, 6.5 feet wide Pangolin is a bit like how I imagine driving a tank would feel – except tanks are a lot shorter, and I’m guessing they have brakes. 

Well, anyway, the rule is, water before diesel.  If you do it the other way, the weight of the water (in front) could make the diesel (in back) spill into the canal.

In the meantime, I also ordered half a tonne of ballast (steel bricks), on account of the promised Thames adventure.  Even good drivers have trouble working my boat and anyone who has attempted reverse gear has been muttering about ballast for years.

I negotiated (with promise of the Queen’s head) for my ballast to be delivered to the car park, right by the (dodgy) water point.  My cunning plan was to drive up for water one evening, pick up the ballast next day, and reverse back just in time for Dusty:  water, ballast, diesel, in that order, with a little coal thrown in, because it has been a long winter, and a cold spring. 

But the timing needed luck: hanging out by the water point more than just overnight, waiting for deliveries, is Not Done.  Water, ballast, diesel, was what I wanted.

Alas, Dusty beat the ballast man by two days, so by the time the bricks arrived I was watered and fuelled and back on my mooring.  I had a half a metric tonne of steel bricks to load onto my boat, and the bricks were a quarter of a mile away.  The choice was, move the boat to the bricks, or move the bricks to the boat. 

I decided that I could carry 500kg of bricks by wheelbarrow, if I didn’t care how many times I went up and down the path, and so I went on until I had about a third of the bricks piled on the grass by my boat’s stern.

By early evening the Grumpy Mechanic, watching me trudge up and down with the wheelbarrow, had had quite enough.

Sod that! he shouted, and then excused himself, because he never uses bad language in front of a woman without apologising. 

He drove his boat up to the water point and ordered me to hand him the bricks, two by two.  Piling them onto the bow deck, he reversed his boat back to mine (it’s all right for him – his boat is fitted with a bow thruster).  Together, in the late evening sunshine we tossed the bricks onto the towpath.

The next day, with my boat now full of water and fuel, I carefully placed the brick ballast in the stern of the boat.  British summer had finally arrived and the temperature was in the high 80s as I leapt on and off the boat holding 10kg with each load.

When I had finished loading the bricks I changed clothes and went to a party, a three mile walk there, and another three back.  I hadn’t had anything to drink stronger than water for a week or so, but as I felt the weight of the bottle of wine in my knapsack on the way to the party, I comforted myself that I wouldn’t be lugging it home.

In the morning I noticed, but ignored, a pain in my left calf.  The pain got worse over the next few days until I could barely walk.  My elder daughter became more and more anxious and urged me to go to the hospital.  It isn’t like you to be hobbling about, Mum!  she said.

I googled unexplained calf pain – unexplained because I really couldn’t think of anything I might have done to hurt myself – and read Deep Vein Thrombosis.  I broke my six year no doctor stint.

I don’t have DVT.  I do have water, diesel, ballast, and several empty wine bottles.  Also a badly sprained calf muscle, unexplained. 

The doctor says that something as simple as standing up too quickly can do it, at my age.

Well, it is all very exciting, but frankly a bit of a disaster.

After our usual, orderly elections, the new PM (or the re-blessed old one) cheerfully swings round Buck House in a posh chauffeur driven car, kisses hands with the Queen and Bob’s your uncle. Meanwhile the old PM calls in the movers and slinks out the back door of No. 10 Downing Street.

By lunch time it’s all over. It is a pretty brutal business – one lot moves out and the other lot moves in before anybody has even gone to bed. None of this genteel US elect a President in November and install him in late January stuff. The Brits can be hard nosed and brisk when they want to be. Maybe it’s a legacy of all those upper class nannies: Spit spot, chop chop, and no dawdling!

The process of replacing one Prime Minister with another, or renewing the old one, is called Kissing of Hands and really does require contact with the Royal digits. That’s exactly what we expect along with our boiled eggs and marmite soldiers the morning after election day.

Instead, this morning, Her Majesty, having read the exit polls announced that she would see no one (and therefore not accept any kisses) at least until lunch time. Given Gordon Brown’s unfortunate election encounter with another British grandmother, the PM wasn’t in a position to complain. HM was likely to be a grandmother too far.

In the event, Her Majesty saw no one, and her hands have remained officially untouched. For the first time since 1974 we have an inconclusive election result. The stock market and sterling are falling fast (good time to book that visit to the UK, as long as you are willing to dodge the twin perils of airline strikes and volcanic ash).

Neither of the two main parties got enough seats to form a government, so the folks famous for coming last, wearing socks with their sandals, and growing beards get to decide which of the two front runners they’ll prop up. I expect it almost looks like power to someone who has lived on warm beer for four or five decades.

While the sock guys are making up their minds whom to back, political junkies (like me) are walking around like zombies, sleepless after a night of election results and a day of political horse trading, drunk on the heady mixture of caffeine and political spin. Who needs booze? The lucky ones (mostly Conservatives) have mixed champagne with their spin, but everyone is exhausted – and this could go on for days.

Thank you to all who asked if I had managed to sort out my voting problems, now that I am of no fixed address. I learned that you don’t have to live somewhere to vote, you just have to prove that you have a connection to a place.

If all else fails you can declare yourself homeless and still register.  That casual and humane flexibility is also very British. 

So, although I was deleted when my house was rented, I re-registered at my old home. 

The village was looking its best, as it always does in spring, with each walled garden draped in aubrieta, and blue bells, grape hyacinths, cherry trees and magnolias just at their peak. I talked to a few of my old neighbours and drove past my house. The pub has changed hands, and finally (after about 25 years) also changed a few items on the menu. It is still overpriced, and still felt just like home.

I voted for the socks and sandal guys. I’m daft that way.

Ho hum. Interesting times.