A long time ago, when I was young and foolish, I made the mistake of declaring that I believed Mothers’ Day was sentimental nonsense invented by Hallmark in order to make money.  It turns out that’s not even true, but even if it were, what kind of stupid woman would scorn the opportunity to be given flowers, gifts, cards and breakfast in bed?

That stupid woman would be me. 

As usual, all week there were signs in every shop shouting, Don’t forget Mum!  For days I have stood in supermarket queues behind people buying DVDs, booze and potted plants for their mothers.  Late yesterday afternoon there was a frenzy of flower shopping.  You couldn’t walk down the damn street without seeing dozens of people clutching bouquets.

For years I have been trying to recover from my grave Mothers’ Day Denial Error, and my children are, one by one, catching on.

My elder son lives in the US and I know from experience that he will call me on American Mothers’ Day; he will have no idea that today is the British version, though if he were more religious he would:  British Mothers’ Day (or, as it is more properly called, Mothering Sunday) always falls on the mid Sunday in Lent.  Its origins are about the Mother Church and nothing to do with mortal mothers at all.  Never mind!  This Sunday Mum collects the flowers and puts her feet up.

Last year my younger son was stung by being scolded for neglecting me: Oh, sharper than a serpent’s tooth, said I. 

But you don’t believe in Mothers’ Day, he pleaded.

My elder daughter said the same thing this afternoon when I asked where my flowers were.  But you don’t believe in Mothers’ Day.

By the time my youngest was born I was a lot older and a little wiser and I never once mentioned Hallmark with disrespect.  Every year The Baby prompted her father to make sure I had cards, gifts and flowers and her wide smile anticipated my pleasure.  If I had not already seen the error of my ways, I would have needed nothing more.

So this Friday I took the precaution of reminding The Baby that Sunday was Mothers’ Day.  You always remembered when you were a little girl, I said. 

She shrugged.  I guess I grew up.  (She’s 18 years and 10 days old.)

My Mothers’ Day went like this. 

The Sunday radio was filled with cloying reminders and when I had had all I could take I locked up the boat and drove into Oxford.  It was a beautiful day and my ex husband has hired me to be the gardener in his new house.  (very George Eliot, remarked a friend, but I know better: much more Thomas Hardy).

Anyway, the Ex is away (meeting the new grandson), and I also promised to check on the girls, who both live at his house, and to make sure the fish were fed, the door locked, and the rubbish taken out.

While I was chopping brambles in the garden the younger son telephoned to wish me a happy day.  He learned his lesson last year.

Later I attached a new basket to the second hand bike I bought my elder daughter yesterday.  While I was fumbling with bolts and allen keys she sat at the kitchen table sending text messages. 

I said, I don’t know why I am the one doing this. You could do it just as well.

She said, Don’t be silly.

Then she reminded me of the time when she was a little girl and I was making a Halloween costume for her and I invited her to help me do it so that she could learn to sew, and she looked at me as if I were crazy.

Don’t you want to learn to sew? I had asked.

She shook her head.

But what will you do when you grow up and you have a little girl and she needs a Halloween costume?

Oh, I’ll just get you to make it, she answered cheerfully.

This afternoon, as I was finishing up mounting the basket, The Baby appeared with a drawing she had done of me and my little grandson, a present for Mothers’ Day.  It isn’t finished, she said, but because you were whining so much I thought I had better give it to you now.

Admiring the drawing and glaring at my elder daughter, I noted that I had only one Bad Child after all.

You don’t believe in Mothers’ Day, she repeated emphatically.  But thanks for the bike, Mum. It’s the best bike ever.

My electrics have, to use slang my New Zealand grandmother favoured, been giving me gyp lately.  I replaced an alternator, disconnected the adverc, and ripped out the split diode thingy (and I barely know what any of this stuff is).  Nevertheless the batteries complain.  They reward my careful evening attention with nothing more grateful than red warning lights each morning.

The Grumpy Mechanic has had it up to here with my batteries.  He says his back has never been the same since he hauled mine out to test them last year and he isn’t doing it again.  I’m not complaining, he says, though he is.  Replace the lot, Girl, is his advice.

Since I usually do what I am told, I have.  That is, I ordered new ones, to be delivered to the pub today, because that’s our boaty poste restante.   Just after eleven o’clock opening time I trundled up the towpath with my computer and my dongle, ordered a latte, and set up camp.

On Twitter I read that Michael Foot, Labour Party leader 1980 – 1983 died this morning, aged 96.  I tweeted that I bet every obituary mentioned his donkey jacket and the longest suicide note in history.

In January 1979 I had just won a scholarship to Oxford, starting the following fall.  The US news was full of the Iranian revolution and what British journalists (an educated lot, on the whole) had dubbed their Winter of Discontent.  The UK Labour government was at war with the unions who had been their backers.  Despite beer and sandwiches at Downing Street, everything was going badly wrong.  

My friends said, You know that country you are going to?  It’s falling apart.

It sure looked like it from the television news.  Rubbish collectors, gravediggers, ambulance drivers and other public sector workers all were out on strike.  I watched films of mounds of garbage on the streets and heard dark reports of dead bodies piled up in morgues.   Inflation was only just down from a peak of 26.9%.

For the first time I took an interest in a UK election, called that spring.  Margaret Thatcher, Conservative, was elected, the first and only woman Prime Minister. 

The following year, 1980, the Labour Party lurched to the left and Michael Foot, a kindly maverick (really a maverick – he lost the party whip for two years because he was an inveterate peacenik) was their candidate for Prime Minister.  I am reluctant to say he was already elderly when he became party leader at 67, but it certainly seemed so to my much younger self.  An intellectual and wholly unworldly Socialist, he reminded me of my grandfather.  Of course, he was also wholly unfit to lead a political party.

He was ridiculed for his scruffy clothes, and particularly for the coat he wore on Remembrance Sunday (Veterans’ Day).  The press called it a “donkey jacket” and were outraged by what they claimed was disrespect to our Glorious Dead.  It was quite in vain that Foot repeatedly pleaded that the Queen Mother herself had admired his jacket as they both waited to lay their wreaths at the Cenotaph.

1983 was my first general election in the UK and I was a little puzzled at first to find that here politicians published election “manifestos”.  My high school history lessons had led me to believe that manifestos were strictly for commies.  I bought the full versions for all three main parties and read them closely.

Michael Foot’s party manifesto went into extraordinary detail.  I laughed out loud when I came to the bit that said “The Labour Party supports the wishes of women in childbirth.”  I was then expecting my second baby.  I adore my children once they exit the birth canal, but my wishes in childbirth generally involved mass murder.

That year the Labour Party suffered the worst general election defeat in 50 years, and the manifesto came to be known as “the longest suicide note in history.”

Meanwhile, back at the pub, I was the only customer, still nursing my latte two hours on.  Stematos, the Greek landlord, and I both had our laptops open on opposite sides of the bar.  I thought of telling Stematos that Michael Foot had died, but I wasn’t sure he would know who I was talking about.  Stematos was googling plant stands. 

There was no sign of the battery delivery, and after a while the punters began to arrive for lunch: the chatter was about pension fund bailouts, bowel cancer, birthdays, and how the Grumpy Mechanic might be getting on in his new flat.  No one mentioned Michael Foot.  I made Stematos happy by ordering feta cheese, olives, bread and a small glass of wine.  He thought I was going to sit there all day on the latte. 

Just as I was about to give up, five spanking new batteries were delivered to the pub porch.  I hauled them in two loads to the boat, a little less than half a mile from the pub, three batteries on the first journey (when I was fresh) and two on the next, when I was tired.  I needed to rest a lot on both trips.  Lifting them inside was pretty hard, and I was afraid I might drop one into the canal, since I was already exhausted from getting them there.

They cost £100 each, and I really did not want to lose any in the water.

Three batteries - the first load

When I got them onboard I put them on my scale, just out of curiosity.  Each battery weighed 62.8 pounds, meaning the load of two was almost exactly as heavy as I am (on a good day), and the load of three was a whole lot heavier.  I felt like one tough Duchess.

All five batteries safely in the engine room, waiting to be installed.

By the time I had pushed the empty cart back up the tow path it was 5 pm and I thought I deserved a big glass of wine.

I turned on the radio.  It was all about Michael Foot.  I wasn’t wrong.  Every report mentioned the donkey jacket and the suicide note.  You can read the BBC obituary here.

I haven’t quite forgotten that once I get the new batteries installed, I’ll have five old ones to haul up the tow path, but sufficient unto the day is the trouble thereof. Or so I am told.

For many years a pair of swans has lived at Enslow, where my boat Pangolin is moored.  The swans spend their days cruising along the canal and knocking at the sides of boats, begging for bread.  They rarely stray farther than the quarter of a mile line of moored narrowboats except to try their luck at the marina just beyond the bridge.

The male swan must have been part of a study at some time, because his left leg is tagged with the letters BUG.  All the boaters know the pair as Bugsy and his missus.

Last year was a rough one for the Bugsies. 

First, a much younger and larger swan (nicknamed Brutus) tried to move in on the territory, and though Bugsy saw him off, he was badly wounded.  The boaters were incensed.  Down the pub dark threats were muttered against this intruder, and one boater was rumoured to have called the RSPCA anonymously to say that if they didn’t come and take Brutus away he would take matters into his own hands. 

Perhaps Brutus knew what was good for him, but he wasn’t seen again that spring, and after awhile Bugsy dutifully made the missus several nests for her inspection.  She tried first one, and then another, and finally settled on the one almost opposite my boat.

In May I watched the proud parents take their day old cygnets for a first swimming lesson on the canal.  The little cygnets swam about for five minutes or so and then were tucked back into the nest for the night.

They were never seen again, though a mink was later spotted looking sleek and well fed by the lock.  Mrs Bugsy spent weeks more sitting on her nest, but if she had any more eggs they were eaten too.

It made me sad last summer not to see a brood of cygnets growing up.  I went away late September, and when I came back in January, a different family had moved in: Brutus and his missus were back, with one overgrown cygnet, the last one of a brood they must have hatched last spring.

The three begged at my window and I guiltily fed them.  I don’t think any of the other boaters did.  They’re very loyal at Enslow.

Bugsy was gone, and Mrs Bugsy spent her evenings swimming up and down and calling mournfully for him.  The Grumpy Mechanic said, It really just breaks your heart.  Dusty said it was a very bad sign that he had left her.  At the pub everyone asked each other, Have you seen Bugsy? Have you seen Bugsy?

Suddenly the word in the pub was he had been spotted in a field.  Everyone shook their heads: He was flopping about!  He must have had a stroke! Or something.  The Grumpy Mechanic said Bugsy was ever so old.  The Grumpy Mechanic has been here the longest, twenty years now, but he can’t remember just when Bugsy came.   Years and years back, he said.  He was sure there was a number you could call for Swan Rescue.  A van would come and pick Bugsy up.  Poor old Bugsy!  It breaks your heart!

Two of the boaters decided to pick him up themselves, but when they got to the field, he was gone, and we were back to, Have you seen Bugsy?  Have you seen Bugsy?

Brutus’ cygnet disappeared first – nine months old and time to strike off on his own, I suppose – and then, suddenly, he and his missus left too.  I watched them fly noisily over the canal and across the fields and I didn’t see them again. 

When I realised Mrs Bugsy had given up her mournful search and was gone as well, I was very sad.  For a while we had no swans at all.

I took a walk to Pigeon’s lock, two miles up the towpath, and spotted a pair of swans on the opposite side.  One swam close to me, begging for bread, and I felt ridiculously happy when I saw that it was Bugsy.

I was so glad Bugsy was all right and he and his missus were together again, but I wondered if they would ever come back to Enslow.  I missed them!

This morning they were here, knocking on the boat.  I opened my window to throw them bread, and a duck joined in the happy feasting.

It is my mother’s birthday, and I haven’t spoken to her since I got back to England six weeks or so ago.  I don’t have a landline anymore, and because it is awfully expensive to make or receive international calls on a cell phone, I bought a “phone card” this evening, especially to wish her many happy returns of the day.

What I really purchased, of course, was a phone number and a PIN, sent by email, costing £3.25 (just a fraction over $5).  I used my credit card.  In less than a quarter of an hour a customer service agent telephoned me to make sure the payment was “authorised”.  I knew from the agent’s accent that it was a very long distance call.

I always find Indian call centre employees charming and perfectly polite.  But this time I was so stunned to be telephoned from so far away for such a small purchase that I forgot to do what my mother always remembers – to ask what the weather is like.  It is my mother’s way of engaging with people who otherwise speak only from a script, hour after hour.

My elder brother and the Lawyer Sis have just the same charming (though much loonier) manner as my mother. They always chat to anyone who serves them, in person or over the phone. 

My own instinct is to be taciturn in person, and efficient and businesslike on the phone, to get both sorts of transactions completed as quickly as possible.  But I try to overcome that instinct, and remember instead, at the supermarket checkout and when India calls, to follow the example of my mother and my brother and sister. 

When I do I am almost always rewarded with courtesy and gratitude – and every now and again I get to chat with someone interesting.

Meanwhile, that Old Woman is galavanting about somewhere, as usual, and not answering her phone.  Nevertheless, her fans should hie on over there and wish her a happy birthday.

Actually I have never so much as seen a picture of a Persian bordello, let alone been inside such a place, but I fancy that I have decorated narrowboat Pangolin in what could have been a pre Ayatollah style.  That’s my improbable excuse for the excess of colour, pattern and just plain stuff I have thrown together. I’m thinking Marco Polo cosmopolitan; they are thinking Improvised Explosive Device.

Nevertheless, here is my boat from the outside, rather in need of a new paint job. (Click on any picture for more detail.) Pangolin is 62 feet long and 6 feet 10 inches wide, which may give you a clue why these are called narrow boats.  She was named (not by me) after a South American anteater-like creature.

Here’s the inside, photographed from the front doors. You can see the saloon (living room), the dining area, and the galley (kitchen). You can’t really see beyond the kitchen to the bathroom, bedroom and engine room: the corridor is behind the tall turquoise kitchen cabinet on the right.

Here is the saloon looking the other way, from the dining table.

There are shelves on either side. I photographed the shelves on the left in the day time and the shelves on the right at night.  The pictures are of my children, of course.  The little stone cats aren’t Persian – my daughter brought them back from Africa – and the rooster bird nest box is all American, now hanging outside the boat, waiting for expatriot tenants.

This time of year the fire is going all day and all night. I burn wood sometimes, but more often coal, which makes a fair amount of dust, probably known to the State of California to cause cancer. The stove is made in Norway, where they know a thing or two about cold weather. The fan is a Canadian invention. The hotter the stove, the faster the blades spin.  It’s quite cool (if you know what I mean). 

I often cook dinner, and warm my plates, on the fire, using the same fuel that keeps me warm to feed me.  But since most forms of cooking (not to mention food) are known to the State of California to cause cancer  I am not sure it is a good plan.  Whether or not it is eco friendly is a hard equation. 

If have turned down the airflow on the stove just right at bed time, when I get up in the morning the fan is moving very, very slowly; then I pull the knob that riddles the stove, open the bottom door, and in a few minutes the coals are glowing red again and the fan is spinning merrily. 

The ridiculous monkey candle holder is my mother’s idea of funny.  The rooster clock (like the bird box) is from my kids, and was once in my house in the village.  We lived next door to quite a few  roosters, and we adopted the principle of know thy enemy.  Or maybe we were just collecting talismans to ward the enemy off.  You think I am exaggerating.  You think roosters crow at dawn?  They crow all the bloody time. 

Next to the saloon is the dining area.

Rooster table cloth.

Rooster cushions.

The children are not to blame; I made the cushions and table cloth myself.

Opposite the dining table is a shelf with a drop down leaf. When it is raised the table will just about seat six, though guests on the saloon side of the boat have to crawl under the table or go out the front door to get to the loo.

The cat is a maneki neko, a Japanese lucky cat.  He’s left handed (like me!), and a little solar cell makes him wave, and when he waves he throws luck.  If he had been right handed, apparently he would have thrown money. That might have been better. My son Silverbridge brought him back from Japan.

The dining room doubles as the guest berth, with the table folding down to make a very comfortable bed (and my readers are welcome to come and test that assertion).  The bed is six foot six inches long, and theoretically sleeps two.  But since, like my bed, it is only four feet wide it needs to be two people who like each other quite a lot. 

Beyond the kitchen is the galley.  It’s small, but it has a sink, fridge, cupboards and cooker (stovetop and oven).

Here’s the floor to ceiling kitchen cupboard. It’s hard to get far enough away to get a good picture, but you might be able to see my rooster tea pot. The cupboard holds my dishes, cups and glasses, food store, bin, dust pan and brush, etc.

A curtain separates the main living area of the boat from the bathroom and bedroom.  On the right is the hatch; in the summer it is usually open to keep the boat cool, and to feed the ducks.

Beyond the curtain is the bathroom, the bedroom, the engine room and the back door. Narrowboats are driven from the back, using a tiller.

It’s a flush toilet!

The bath isn’t very big, but neither am I.  I feel very indulgent when I bathe instead of shower. Actually, I feel indulgent when I take a shower. When I run out of water I have to drive the boat somewhere to fill it up, and I am not a very good driver. 

The bedroom,where we started this tour, has the only truly Persian item – a bedspread brought back from Iran when Silverbridge took part in the first school trip to that country after the 1979 revolution. 

Right. What do you think? Have I achieved Persian bordello or merely Oxfordshire hen house?

It’s half past ten and I’m violating a fairly strict boaty rule: no engine running after eight. You can hear the big diesel rumble several boat lengths away, but as there is no one on board either in front or behind me, I am hoping I can get away with it, just this once.

When I don’t run the engine for a couple of hours a day the batteries reproach me in the morning. The charge needle dips below 12 volts and little red lights let me know I have done wrong. If I need any further nudging there’s the alarm that screams when the batteries are feeling malnourished and I happen to plug in my computer.

The batteries don’t care when they get their kicks, but experienced boaters shake their heads and cluck and mumble about efficiency and alternators if I switch on before nightfall, which leaves a narrow opportunity for doing right. I have begun to think that having five leisure batteries is not all that unlike having a husband and four children: I am expected to be home by six to do my duty.

I wasn’t home by six today, either to charge the batteries or to feed the fire, and I spent most of the hours I was away, not enjoying myself as I ought to have been (because it was my birthday), but in the John Radcliffe Hospital Accident and Emergency Department.

To while away the time I counted up how often I had already visited emergency rooms with my children. It’s a number so big I don’t like to confess to it, especially as one of my four has never contributed (touch wood), except as an innocent bystander.

Five broken bones and five foreign objects in the eye seem like the kinds of problems even a well-regulated, if a little unlucky, largish family might have. But there were at least half a dozen other ER visits, most of the complaints more exotic, like chlorine gas poisoning. I bet you didn’t think I was going to say that.

My youngest is responsible for more visits than all the others combined (including the chlorine incident). She’s especially not good with head injuries, having responded to her first toddler bump by holding her breath until she turned blue, went rigid, and passed out.

She went on as she had begun, though I only took her to the ER for that particular problem once. It was quite impressive when she did the blue rigid unconscious sequence in public and I had to restrain onlookers from calling ambulances first and child protection services next (apparently parental ennui at a comatose child is anti social and objectionable).

My Baby fell and banged her head on Sunday, and a few days later in the ER it was déjà vu all over again, except that this time she was almost all grown up and very funny while we waited for the radiographers and the neurologist. She didn’t pass out, but she did bump into things and she got several doctors upset.

Her mother was upset too.

The doctors were puzzled enough to keep her there for many hours, but not quite puzzled enough to bring out their expensive kit (MRI). They relaxed when they finally came up with a theory: Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo, brought on by a blow to the head. (They especially liked it because it was benign, and I liked it too, only I would have liked it better if they had done the MRI first.) Then they let her go home, because they had no solutions. BPPV is very hard to treat, they noted sadly.

When she was a toddler, and it became clear that she passed out not just because she was hurt but also because she was cross, I asked the doctors what I should do. They shrugged and suggested I try not to upset her.

I don’t think we know a lot about the human brain.

But batteries are quite another matter. I’m thinking of trading mine in for another model.

We were all running short of diesel, coal, gas and toilet fluid, because first Dusty was stuck in the ice at Duke’s Lock, and then he had to go north to reload his boat.  So everyone was glad to get his text message the other day.

Squirrels are searching out their nuts for a nibble, but you get Dusty’s nuts delivered. Rock on Tues, Thrupp Wed, and Dukes plus Oxford Thurs/Fri. You don’t need to nibble at my nuts – buy them by the bag.

Yesterday evening around half past five a bell jingled, a boat tied up alongside me, and I went out to greet Dusty. 

He loaded eight bags of coal onto my roof (that should do me for a fortnight), and then stepping onto Pangolin, filled the tank with diesel.

One hundred and sixty kilograms of coal, ninety litres of diesel and a litre of “green” toilet fluid was £148.50. 

Pangolin was his last call that day.  Dusty went through the lock and, not wanting to risk the river at night, moored up just by the bridge where the Cherwell flows into the canal and rushes south towards Oxford.

Dusty watches as Pangolin’s fuel tank fills.

My elder daughter tells me I gave up on Twitter too soon.  People get interested in your life, she says, if you just keep going. 

That’s probably good advice for blogging too, and for life in general.  Success is mostly about showing up.  I admire those like Ruth who always have ideas and themes and structure.  When I don’t manage, and then say nothing at all, later it seems to me that I should have at least mentioned what I ate for lunch.

So here’s the latest on my life, in case you got interested:

Last night I tucked my radio under the bedclothes and listened to the late night news.  Recaps of Andy Murray’s defeat in Australia were interrupted outside my window by a swan calling for her lover, a lone, mournful sound.

The fire must have gone out soon after I closed down the dampers, judging by the unburned coal in the morning and the deep chill on the boat.  There was a dusting of snow outside, and my indoor basil plant was stone, cold dead.  I guess I shut the stove down too tight, trying to conserve coal.  I needed the remnants of the last bag to keep me warm one more day.

I’ve got porthole covers on all the windows in the back part of the boat, but I still feel vaguely public when I linger under the covers past 7 or 8 o’clock.  No one can see me, but their footsteps along the tow path, right by my windows, make me feel slovenly.

Eventually I dressed under the covers, and though I thought I was very careful, wore my knickers inside out all day long. 

Once I got the fire going again, I spent the morning finally filling in the insurance form detailing what was stolen when the boat was burgled while I was away.  The only thing I really cared about was the iPod my ex husband bought me the first Christmas we were friendly again.  He had my name engraved on it.

I spent the afternoon dealing with British Waterways who were refusing to license the boat because they insisted it had no safety certificate, though I sent them proof a whole year ago and wrote about it here.

And I am sorry to disappoint you after all that build up, but I didn’t exactly eat lunch, unless a grumpy grande latte counts (grumpy is another story).  So when I got back to Pangolin after sending faxes and making phone calls and all, I was awfully hungry and still cold. I spread chicken fat on bread, poured myself a glass of wine and heaped about ton of coal on the stove.

The chicken fat is because I was Jewish in another life, and the wine is because I am middle class and anxious and all middle class anxious Brits guzzle wine like they have two livers.  The coal is because this is the room of my own. 

I opened up all the draughts on the stove and let it get really, really hot.  Dusty is coming tomorrow so tonight I can be as profligate as I like. 

I also let the engine run for a really, really long time, because the engine charges my batteries and that means my computer will run without alarms screaming.  The engine also heats the water to lovely internal combustion hot, and in a few minutes I can get into my teeny tiny steamy boaty bath and then to bed.

I hope the fire stays in.  I hope the swan finds her mate.

The new year is beginning to feel old, which, I guess, is a way of saying I am beginning to feel at home again along the tow path. 

I have a new neighbour (Mr Badger) and the swan family has changed, but otherwise things are pretty much as usual:  Ratty emerged from his boat for the first time this morning (that is, the first time I have seen him since I got back), off for a toilet run.  He’s still banned from the pub.  Ferret, working on the new boat, has broken up with Dina, but she still shows up at the pub now and then, never ever without her head covered.

Wheels finally got his engine up and running, and Tad is still moored by the pub because it is easier for Chris to get on and off since she broke her hip after the particularly jolly boaters Christmas party (which I missed) when more than one of my neighbours ended up at the hospital.

Kate, who has one good arm and one shrunken by thalidomide, greeted me warmly when we met along the tow path.  But I have also met her on the street when we are each in our respectable, Oxford lives, and she has shown no sign of recognition.

James and Emma, the young archaeologists, who used to rent Cherry Lea, are gone, leaving their vintage Triumph in the car park, so I guess they will be back.  Pat the Grumpy Mechanic will have a word or two to say then.  He’s let it known to anyone who cares to listen that they owe him at least two Jack Daniels and a Diet Coke for all the work he did on that car. 

John, the new boy in the pub, is now renting Cherry Lea, squatting a mile north by Pigeon’s Lock.

John says he’s going to marry Cherry Lea’s owner, who sometimes lives in the Seychelles and sometimes in Staffordshire, and then it will be their boat together.

I point out that he has just told me he already has a wife in Bicester, Oxfordshire, and several grown children.  He shrugs and says, I’m too old for you, anyway.

When I drift over to talk to Pat the Grumpy Mechanic he nods towards John and says, That guy works on a Bull Farm.

I reply, Oh no!  He makes specialist microscopes! He told me so.

I am an unusually literal person.

Anyway, I was only at the pub because Pat earlier reminded me that on Thursday the fiddly diddlies are there, and so he urged me to come.  I asked the Landlord, Stematos, if he paid them for the gig. 

He looked astonished, and said that he didn’t charge them for practicing in his pub.

Just before I went home alone, to be in bed by eleven (according to my new year’s resolution), I pointed out to Pat, in my literal way, that there wasn’t a single fiddler amongst them: two banjos and more accordions than are probably legal in a single location.

The fiddly diddlies

There’s a guy who cruises up and down the South Oxford Canal filling boats with diesel and delivering coal.  In the way that people call each other after their boats, he is known as Dusty.  I have his real name on a bit of paper somewhere, for when I write the cheques, but I think of him only as Dusty the Coal Man.  When he is on his way he sends text messages to everyone along the route, reminding us to fill up. 

The texts are usually vaguely suggestive: “Dusty – your man for hot nuts, exotic red juice and whiffy gas…Nice! Rock on Tuesday, Kidlington Wed, and on to Oxford Thurs/Friday.”

We are the “Rock”, short for the Rock of Gibraltar, the pub on the other side of the bridge.  I have no idea why it is called that.

For several weeks Dusty was stuck in the frozen canal, and now that the ice and snow have given way to rain, we hear he is headed toward Oxford and won’t be back at the Rock for another ten days or more.  Between him and us is a stretch of the River Cherwell, now in flood. 

So I am getting fit, not just by heaving my toilet cartridge up the tow path, but by heaving bags of coal down it.  I keep the fire going all the time, day and night: the trick is to stoke it up with coal and turn down the vents at bedtime, feeding it in the morning and opening the bottom door to fill it up with fresh air.

I was getting quite smug about how well I was doing until the fire went out yesterday afternoon (I got stingy with the coal when I had to carry it), and it has been troublesome ever since.

Meanwhile my engineer friend who fixes things for me whenever I smile pathetically appeared outside my window with sixty kilograms of coal that he had pushed along the path in a cart stolen from a nearby garden centre and left by the bridge for everyone’s use.  He stood absolutely knackered and barely breathing outside my boat, and then he lit up a cigarette to give him strength to hand the bags on board.

The fire, now glowing warmly again. I lit the candles just for you.