Anne Husar - A Cigar in Belgium: Journeys of a Narrowboat

A CIGAR IN BELGIUM

Journeys of a Narrowboat

Copyright 2013 Anne Husar

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 978 1783069 521

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

The events related in this book are true as far as my memory and diary can be relied upon. There will almost certainly be mistakes and inaccuracies and for these I humbly apologise.

For Oliver and Amy

May they continue to be understanding. Thanks also to everyone who has helped and encouraged me to finish this book especially Terry and Carole, Val and Koos and of course Skipper without whom none of this would have been possible.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.

An abridged version of Stuck in Walloon as recounted in first appeared in Canalboat magazine.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

CHAPTER 1.

CHAPTER 2.

CHAPTER 3.

CHAPTER 4.

CHAPTER 5.

CHAPTER 6.

CHAPTER 7.

CHAPTER 8.

CHAPTER 9.

CHAPTER 10.

CHAPTER 11.

CHAPTER 12.

INTRODUCTION.

If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow and which will not.

Willliam Shakespeare

It was getting more and more difficult to get the children to go to bed now that they were in their early teens but at last the oldest had stomped off upstairs where the youngest was already asleep and we could sit down and have a quiet chat. Very soon our conversation turned to the future as it often did at that time and what we may want to do with our lives when the children had finished in full time education and were less dependant. One word summed it up travel but beyond that we hadnt really thought. That year saw in a milestone birthday which just had to be celebrated in a special way. Into my head popped the idea of a surprise canal boat holiday and it wouldnt go away. Eventually I gave in to it and booked us a weeks hire on a 45 ft narrowboat. That birthday treat would turn out to be the start of our future.

Over the following years we inflicted more hire boat holidays on our growing teenagers who quickly got bored with the slow pace of life on the canals. They couldnt understand that this was just the element that we were enjoying and it wasnt long before we were devouring the boaty magazines dreaming of our own narrowboat. The ideas pictured in these glossy mags led to many evenings spent designing an imagined narrowboat layout on long pieces of paper spread over the kitchen table. We were getting more and more enthusiastic but the whole idea was still only one of many possibilities, wasnt it? Who were we kidding? It was becoming increasingly difficult to think of anything else.

There were about 150 boat builders to choose from, a seemingly impossible task so we went to a few boat shows and asked some of the established boat traders and brokers there who they would use to build themselves a boat. The same four names kept cropping up. All of a sudden it was going to be easier than we had thought and less easy to find excuses not to go ahead. We found time to visit the four and made our choice, a boat builder based at Braunston, the village that was well known on the cut (as the canals were called) as the historic centre of the canal system. He had a year long waiting list, disappointing but it would give us cooling off time.

As we waited for our turn on the boatbuilders list our designs were drawn and re-drawn until we hoped wed got it right. Talking to other boat owners the consensus of opinion was that it wasnt until youd fitted out your third boat that this degree of complete satisfaction was achieved. We hoped they were winding us up and stuck with our plans but did wonder at this point about naming our boat Never Again 1 and then got side-tracked and started thinking of actual names. Dragon Fly might be pretty and we stuck with this for quite a while until we saw there were already lots of other boats using it. Choosing the right name was almost as difficult as choosing the boat builder. It was in the pub one night that Skipper had his eureka moment, sketching some thoughts on a beer mat. If we could incorporate snail into the name, we could paint Less Cargo Carrying Co. on the boat sides, both a pun and a nod towards the history of these boats. Okay, lets look up snail in our wildlife books and see what we can come up with. All of them featured a common water snail called the wandering snail and what could better describe us? Another decision made and we both realised that we were most certainly not cooling off.

We had decided that we wanted the boat builder to make us a sailaway. This would simply consist of the boat shell with glazing in the portholes and side doors. The interior would be empty apart from the engine which the boat builder would fit for us in the stern of the boat. All the rest, the interior fit out, plumbing and electrics would be down to us or rather more accurately, Skipper. The major decision regarding the boats length had already been made. As we hoped that this would eventually be our home we wanted as much room as possible so went for a full length narrowboat, in other words 70 foot long. Now this might sound a lot and sat in our 45 foot wide house realising how much more it would extend outside was scary but the fact that it was only a smidge over 6 foot wide (the clues in the name) meant that fitting everything in that we thought we would need was a big challenge.

The big day came at last when our boat was craned into the space prepared for it at the end of our garden. The village turned out to watch as our 22 tons of pride and joy swung over the hedgetops and landed, more or less, on the waiting railway sleepers set into the ground. We couldnt wait to get inside, it was all so exciting this dream come true and it was around this point that reality struck when we found ourselves standing in a very long and very empty tube. It was impossible to imagine this vast, bare space ever looking like the lovely narrowboat home that we had spent so long planning for, or perhaps that was why we were experiencing the sickening rise of panic, because we could now imagine the amount of work that would be needed. Heroically over the next two years Skipper spent every evening after work and every weekend making the miracle that would be our new home. He already had the cabinetmaking skills required and cleverly learnt the rest. Friends turned up willingly when asked and they also took photos for us to keep of the slowly evolving and very beautiful interior. And will we ever forget the painting party? One hundred and forty foot of boat is a lot to paint but again friends rallied round, encouraged by the offer of liquid refreshment and the chance to wear all white, baggy coveralls. On a gloriously sunny and happy day the undercoat went on, enough to protect the outside from the elements until we were ready to decide on the final livery, another tough but fun to make decision. All was so well with our world, our future was looking very bright.