Canal Boating: Running the Gauntlet of Humilation

I know I have intense bad luck with holidays. It is now six years since I wrote: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2008/03/when-holiday-is-worse-than-no-holiday.html and in that period I have only had one holiday which has lasted more than 2 days before something has led to it being terminated. The last week-long holiday was in December 2012 in a cottage 45 Km from home. The last holiday I took did not even last two days as on the morning of the second day we woke to find the electricity had been cut to the whole district by a storm; power was not restored for twelve hours, so we simply went home.

I remain the eternal optimist and having finally got some compensation, after seven months of battling, for the car which lasted me 13 days before breaking down entirely, never to move again, I decided to go on a canal boat holiday. This is a very British style of holiday. Americans and Canadians do not have this kind of holiday and fall enthusiastically in love with it. Even northern continental Europeans prefer our quaint, narrow canals to the vast still industrial/commercial ones of Belgium/Netherlands/Germany. I am part of the canal generation. Growing up living near a canal I saw it transformed during the 1970s and 1980s from a disused channel with little water in it and a lot of rubbish, into a functioning canal which attracted the growing leisure boat crowd. Yachting and power boating has always been popular among the well-off of southern England where I lived, but canals now offered a whole new opportunity with less risk of storms and less distance to travel to reach your boat. With boats on canals limited to 4mph (6.4kph) it also appears to be a relaxed way to travel. Canals were built originally to move heavy goods like coal or stone to industrial areas and for this reason they are densest in England in the industrial Black Country of the West Midlands. However, also linked to rivers, they also pass through rural and former industrial areas which are more pleasant to go through and connect historic towns which are tourist attractions in their own right such as Oxford and Bath.

Aside from the 'boating set' canals have also had an attraction for a more 'hippie' like clientele. The association with moving freely around the country, tying up mostly where you choose, obviously has an appeal for people who like a less tied-down way of life. Certainly in the 1970s canals were heavily associated with folk music and handicrafts. It has only been in recent years that the styles and decor of them has been allowed to diversify from the black, red, green colouring of 'trad', i.e. traditional, boats. More and more have been built, many these days with modern facilities such as televisions and washing machines; steps are now in place to allow wi-fi on them. Perhaps the fad is passing as the number of canal boats for sale has reached an all time high and you can pick one up for as cheap as £32,000 (€38,700; US$54,000). This may seem a great deal, but new ones cost double or more that price. You are buying something 2.1m wide (for what is called a narrowboat, i.e. one that will fit all canals in the UK) and 16m long. The longest are 24m (72 feet) long, made of steel with water and toilet tank, a cooker, etc. on board. You can live on a narrowboat and in many parts of the country you will find people doing so for part or indeed all of the year, though it can get cold. You find the entire range from modern ones with double glazing and solar panels to traditional ones with the engine visible in the middle of the boat and a coal oven on board.

All over the UK you can hire canal boats for a holiday. They typically sleep six people but you can get ones accommodating more. For £1000-2000 depending on where you start from and the quality of your boat and its facilities, you can rent one for a week. You are permitted to drive it with only one hour's training. This is one challenge, people moving vessels 72m long in channels sometimes only a couple of metres wide with other canal users, notably canoeists and people on the towpath running beside the canal, including pedestrians, anglers and increasing numbers of cyclists. The other thing is that the momentum of a canal boat even when moving at 2kph is immense and water does not provide much friction. Lock gates weigh anything from 800Kg to 2 tonnes. There is a lot of room for bumps and knocks. One woman described it to me as 'a contact sport'. However, despite this, given the attitudes of canal users outlined below, you have to move as if walking on eggshells.

On paper a canal boat holiday might seem ideal. You can move at your own pace. It is like camping without having to give up all the facilities or having to queue to have a shower or use the toilet. In addition, if it rains you can retreat inside and watch television or a DVD; going through urban areas you can even use your mobile phone. The trouble is, the thing that ruins it is the British and indeed foreigners who aspire to behave like middle class Britons. You can do nothing in the UK these days without someone telling you very loudly that you are doing it wrong. They do this for two reasons: 1) to assert their social status, through having a privately owned boat or one that is 'proper' or better equipped compared to what you might be aboard; 2) to massage their egos, by showing you up to be ignorant or a fool.

Encouraged by the woman I used to live with and her son, I hired a 33-metre, 6-berth narrowboat on a canal in southern England for one week. In many ways this holiday was a 'success'. It lasted 5 days rather 2 days, though it was supposed to last 7 days. I lost a hat and a map; a watch strap was broken but no electrical items or money were lost. I had some scrapes but no serious injuries. It did not rain and the weather was fine, with some reprieve from intense sunshine. We moved very slowly, covering around 7Km per day. In part that was due to the number of locks and swing bridges along the way. A lock is a large mechanism sometimes 3 metres deep with usually four, though sometimes two, of the large gates already mentioned. They allow the lifting or dropping of the water level in an enclosed space, so permitting a boat or sometimes a pair of boats, to go up or down hills. They are marvels of 18th century engineering and can be entirely operated by a single person if required, though it is typical to use two or more. You also need someone on the boat to move it in and out of the lock. To operate the lock there is no power bar that from your arms and legs. You let water in and out of the lock by turning ratchets and you open and close the locks with the strength of your back. Thus you need to be physically healthy and fit. However, of course, the British work at two extremes, either they lay utterly passive on the beach or they insist on a holiday which in centuries passed would have been deemed labour.

I knew locks well. Probably better than almost anyone we met. When the canal behind my house was derelict friends and me would climb down the tunnels that run through the locks. They were dry then and are now literally filled with tonnes of water. I have climbed up and down lock gates that most people now only see as they pass them. I am unfit and overweight, but thought I remained strong enough to do the job. Despite some 'sticky' lock gates, this proved to be the case. Indeed the 12-year old boy (1.67m; size 42 feet) with us was able to operate them alone.

The trouble with the holiday was not the mechanics, it was the people.  It was the not so wonderful British public who cannot let anyone pass without making some jibe or instructing them about how pathetic they are or simply insulting them.  When you are in a hire boat, you are the lowest of the low.  The company you are hiring from has its logo, its name and telephone number emblazoned on the boat.  Everyone knows precisely where you have come from and that you are not a 'proper' boater despite all the exhortations in the canal associated publications that people like us are an important source of revenue for the upkeep of the canals and for restoring the many miles of canal that still remained disused.  However, the British cannot stop themselves and it even seems the hobby for people to hang around locks simply to shout advice/abuse.  Within the first hour you get used to person after person telling you exactly what you have been told in the training you have received.  You smile and nod thanks.  However, this does not seem to be enough.  The people seem to want you to bow down and kiss their boots for the wonderful enlightenment they have given across.

We had a Dutchman not even bother to talk to us, but in the middle of us operating a lock simply walk up and take over.  I stepped back trying to stay calm and not say anything.  By dropping the vent (the piece in a lock gate that lets the water in or out) early, he actually made our job harder.  We had people bellowing at us that we were not doing it the 'correct' way, even when we were in fact the right.  One man became indignant when we started to use the barge pole to move the front of the boat away from the bank, though that is its purpose.  He insisted that the 12-year old insert his foot between the side of the boat and the lock wall, even though this risked it becoming crushed.  He would not accept our rebuffs.  We had people trying to race into a lock before we had exited it, making it far harder for the pilot, only a few days into driving anything let alone a 33m boat.  We had people 'speed' (if you can call 8kph speeding) past us, and they scowling at us when their wash meant we were sucked into buffing the stern of their boat. Always we were deemed to be on the 'wrong' side or opening the lock too fast or too slowly.  We were even chided for 'not having come far today' as if there is a set distance you must cover every hour to be deemed an appropriate boater.

Every passage through a lock we made, every peg we hammered into the ground, every knot we tied was judged as having failed and we were told very vocally that that was the case.  I tried to throw one rope aboard the boat, missed and cursed.  This resulted in a woman pursuing us for 1Km down the canal, bringing with her the representative of the boat company we had hired it from to harangue us for ten minutes about appropriate language.  Clearly you are not permitted to 'swear like a bargee' (i.e. someone operating a barge, a commercial version of a canal boat) however, the locals are into 'trad' boating.  To be told off for swearing such distance from the incident made me feel like a child.  I swallowed all the abuse, all the snootiness, all the patronising behaviour, all the haranguing, all the people pushing their way in to take over my task and all of this with the expectation that I would be grateful for their intervention.  I feel utterly debased from my five days on the boat.  I feel as if I have given up all dignity, all initiative and am fit only to be ordered around by people apparently so superior to me.  As you can imagine, I snapped and abandoned the boat.  No-one else would come with me.

I returned to the yard where we had started from.  The woman on duty was surprised to see me leaving.  She has the faith that canal holidays are the very best that anyone could have and was unable to tolerate the fact that someone was having such a humiliating time that they had to go home early.  Of course, I have absolutely no interest in going nowhere near a canal ever again and will be happy if they all fade back into blocked up obscurity where they should have been left.  Dried out they could have provided decent roads between many towns.  The British (plus representatives of the Dutch, German and even Canadian populations) have to bring their egos and their suppression of people around them to everything they do.  You see it constantly when driving; you now see it if you ever dare venture out on a bicycle; I am sure you have long seen it on the golf course or the tennis/squash court.  They cannot be happy unless they are pressing someone else down and not just with a simple cutting remark but with sustained abuse, at best patronising; at worse insulting.  If you are thinking of a canal boat holiday, I would utterly advise against it unless you have skin as thick as a rhino or enjoy being made to feel small on an hour-by-hour basis.  The alternative is to go to another country where you do not speak the language and when treated this way simply plead lack of comprehension.

Spindrift - Short Story

As with 'Beer Mug' followed by 'Out of the Mouths' so with this story, 'Spindrift' following on from 'Insecurity': I took a story which was only semi-fictional and then produced a truly fictional version along the same lines. This story is even more influenced by a kind of nostalgia for tendencies of the 1970s. As I have written before I totally subscribe to the 'Life on Mars' view that the 1970s were very bleak, unpleasant times. However, there were elements from that decade that I somehow held in affection.

A lot of this stems from walks on Autumn Sundays along the canals and navigations where I grew up bisecting with the homespun tendencies of the 1970s. Folk music experienced a huge revival in the 1970s. My parents were into jazz, but the parents of some friends were folkies and though they worked in offices certainly looked like they would be happier at the helm of a narrow boat. One father in particular seemed frozen in 1975 well into the late 1990s (he may still be, I have not seen him since). He bore a striking resemblance to the actor William Squire who appeard in 'Where Eagles Dare'(1968) and played Hunter in the series 'Callan' during its 1970-2 run. Anyway, they would put on folk records when we came round and some of the titles gave me ideas for songs in this story.

Funnily enough because the woman in my house is a smoker she has become irritated by the regular anti-smoking advertisements on commercial radio and so she sought out a BBC station (which are advertisement free). We tried Radio 3, which is the classical channel, but the modern compositions sound terrible and we could not get on with them at all. So we tried Radio 2 which is a strange beast as consecutive records can cover the past 70 years of music, so you get pop stuff but also oddities. They also have specialist music programmes in the evenings (unfortunately no Gothic music specials). On Wednesdays it is folk music and so suddenly I am hearing all this stuff while I do the washing up and a lot of it seems no different to what I heard at my friend's house in the late 1970s.

This folk fad seemed to come along at the same time as self-sufficiency (ironically promoted by a comedy series 'The Good Life' (1975-8)) was popular especially with my parents who grew all their own vegetables and fruit and collected the harvest of wild blackberries, sweet chestnuts and rosehips and produced their own wine and jam and baked their own bread. If I had not been forced labour in these projects I think I might have held them with even more affection. There was also a lot of reconstruction of canals at this time usually by amateurs reopening over 500 miles of canals from 1946 to the present day, with a large upswing of projects launched in the late 1960s and in the 1970s. I suppose all of this was from hippies getting old and looking for things that they could do when they had families and stuff. It was a very respectable British form of hippy culture, of course heavily dented by the greed of the Thatcher era.

Out of this mishmash of cultural influences plus my never-happened relationship with Kate of the narrow boat came this story. Like many of my stories it is about considering options and balancing a life on fixed lines against something more random, certainly frightening but perhaps freer.



Spindrift

Steve strummed the last chord and bowed his head to their applause, that was his encore for the night. He threw back his tied back hair and walked over to the bar, he wanted to make the most of the half hour before closing time.

Sue nodded to Ian behind the bar and he pulled the pint of bitter before Steve had reached it.

Sue watched the musician walking casually but with the spring of a performance well done in his step. She was a plump woman, her face reddened by the heat of the audience. She had dressed in her best pink blouse and her long denim skirt that smoothed out the features of her body.

“Thanks Ian.” Steve said as he sipped the bitter, used to the barman standing him one a night as well as the pay he got.

“Not me.” the lanky man replied turning to serve thirsty customers at the other end of the brown burnished bar. Sue stepped up beside Steve as he wiped froth from his straggly tan beard. She dragged her bar stool with her.

Steve drunk again from the glass and only looked up when she said his name. He said nothing except look into her round blue eyes.

“Long time.” she said, just audible above the noise of the customers.

“Thanks for the beer.” He said.

She just shrugged and smiled, “Good show.”

“It was better with you singing the 'Weaver’s Song' and remember, must’ve been two years back I even got you up on 'Traveller’s Tale'. Do you sing much these days? Down in the town?”

“No, too busy.” She stared past him through the window which looked down to the lights of the estate, but the ones she had left on in her house were obscured by a bush. “Sorry I wasn’t here last year.”

“Or this Spring.” he added calmly.

“Mmm, you must becoming to the end of the season. We only see you on the way out and the way in.”

“That’s what you get for living on a branch canal, move up to the main network and you’d see me all Summer, but would you like all those tourists.”

“Different people to meet.” was her only reply.

“There’s only a couple of pubs between here and the yard, the one at the flight’s really the last.”

“I caught the bus up there once when you were there, nice place.”

“Yeah I remember, the beer’s better here though. I got no-one to buy it for me either.”

Sue sipped her own pint, looking down his battered corduroys to the boots on his feet.

“I paid off the boat, it’s all mine and I made well this Summer, a couple of new pubs, some new material, I got the books last Christmas, you’d like it.”

“I know, you always do the best.”

“Don’t embarrass me.” He said draining the last drops of beer. he nodded to Ian. “So where is he?” Steve said, almost startling Sue.

“Germany.” She said, the suddeness of the question catching her off guard and sweeping through the cautious protection she had woven in her mind. “We got Mum and Dad’s place, they left for Spain, its cheaper out there. I reckon they both ain’t got too long.”

“Hard life and all.” Steve murmured.

Sue pre-empted his next question. “He’s alright, but we don’t get anywhere ’cause we’re not married, and he wants a kid next time he’s home, yeah. And why don’t I come with you, ’cause is it any better on a boat than in the house down there.” She gushed on through the points they both new.

“’Cause it’s your choice not what I say, and we work for ourselves. You wouldn’t have been back four years ago in the Spring and the Autumn and the next. You came to this town six years ago, I’ve been coming twelve, and you’re the only one now whose as regular as me. It was Jon behind the bar two years ago, Bill before that and Geoff probably the first you remember, but it’s been Sue in front of it lunchtimes and evenings for my stay, each year. Where do you want to be the permanent fixture?”

Sue said “It’s getting late, see you tomorrow lunchtime.” She blew a kiss near his cheek and left through the main door onto the towpath. Outside in the light leaking from the pub and the streetlights of the narrow road to the town she could see his boat. He had passed up the red, green and black that made all the boats look like a fleet, some went as far to hate him for it, but she preferred his colours, light and dark blue with brown at the edges. She smiled and turned to the road.


Sue sat there in the thick sweater and pale jeans, her feet in thick knit socks, anticipating it to be colder than it was in this late September sun. She had already arranged the cassettes into ones from the shops and others peddled from back stage, the kitchen was neater and the spilt coffee cleaned away. She wandered back and forth before folding the bedding and pushing the bed back into its day place.

She pushed her bags along with her feet, and slumped down on the long cushion of the bench. From here she could hear the distorted sounds of the music in the pub, and in her trance hardly noticed them dying away. She dozed until the boat rocked and she heard Steve climb aboard. He pushed open the small doors and slid down the wooden steps into the boat. He was silent, but he could see his expression change.

“Well that’s it for this year.” he said, as he had two Autumns past. “Should be up by the flight for fiveish, time for tea before work.” He laid the guitar down on the bench and wandered to the kitchen. “This place is a mess, I should keep it clean, seems no sense when it’s only for yourself.”

Sue smiled. “Sure.” she said.

“Beans on toast.” Steve shouted back. Sue could smell the gas being lit and a wave of warmth sweep down the cool air of the barge.

“Yeah, I think we better get underway cook if you’re going to make five. I’ll drive, you’ve been drinking.” She said jokingly.

She disappeared up on deck and heaved the peg from the front then jogged back to the rear to pull out that one as the front slowly drifted away from the bank. She jumped on board and remembered why Steve had no flesh on him despite the beers. Sue fired the engine and the barge moved away slowly, soon at its top speed.

Sue began to sing the verses of the 'Weaver’s Song', her voice drowned by the sound of the engine. It was hard now, but she was on her way, see what comes when she was back next Spring. Pass through that lock when she reached it.

Insecurity - Short Story

After I left Norwich and struggled in two civil service jobs interspersed with an attempt at becoming a teacher, during which time my writing efforts were spent on producing 'His Majesty's Dictator' I did no more short stories. It was only when, living in Oxford, and well established in my long-hours civil service job (which made me stooped and so stressed that I acquired a facial twitch) that I got to writing this kind of fiction again. I loved living in Oxford, despite the fact that I was witnessing its mundane side rather than simply on golden afternoons of daytrips, but I felt content there. There was lots to do, nice cafes and restaurants, live music, debates and cinemas. I got back into cycling the Oxfordshire countryside in a way that I had not since I was a teenager. Anyway, in many ways life did not change and I continued to fail to have a relationship. I was a bit bolder than I had been but it seemed that as a consequence the knock-backs were harder. One woman rejected me because of the job I did (she was an assertiveness trainer) and another was so offended that I could consider myself worthy of asking her out that she demanded an apology. I had hoped that I had shaken off that situation where I was seen as naive and lacking in world knowledge, but even in the clubs I joined I was seen in this way. Some people would be flattered to be considered younger than their years, but for me it seemed to still exclude me from the truly adult world. I only really realised how far this assumption had gone when a colleague I had worked with for many months said they thought I was 19 and were surprised to hear that I had a degree and was a failed schoolteacher. This was 1993 and I was 26 going on 27 and the bulk of my friends were married; by 1996, 95% of my friends were.

Anyway, aside from the two women who spurned me, the first and strongest focus of my affections in Oxford was on Kate, a colleague. Perhaps I misread her signals, but she took me to lunch on my birthday and we seemed to hit it off. I struggled to find the right occasion to ask her out. I do not know if she was simply being friendly, looking back I guess she was. Knowing she spoke French I sent an anonymous Valentine's card with a French poem, 'L'Amoureuse' (translated as 'Lady Love' or 'The Beloved') by surrealist poet Paul Eluard (1895-1952) a copy of which I found again when seeking out my stories. I found an online translation and am quite chuffed that I translated it pretty well. It runs (Samuel Beckett's translation next to it)

Elle est debour sur mes paupières (She is standing on my lids)
Et ses cheveux sont dans les miens, (And her hair is in my hair,)
Elle a la forme de mes mains, (She has the body of my hand,)
Elle a la couleur de mes yeux, (She has the colour of my eyes,)
Elle s'engloutit dan mon ombre (In my shade she is engulfed)
Comme une pierre sur le ciel. (As a stone against the sky.)

Elle a toujours les yeux ouverts (She will never close her eyes)
Et ne me laisse pas dormir. (And she does not let me sleep.)
Ses rêves en pleine lumière (And her dreams in the bright day)
Font s'évaporer les soleils, (Make the suns evaporate,)
Me font rire, pleurer et rire, (And me laugh, cry and laugh,)
Parler sans avoir rien à dire (Speak when I have nothing to say)


As often happened with anonymous Valentine's cards I sent the woman in question usually (well in fact almost always) assumed it was from someone else, in this case a French client of hers. It did impress the staff of the office where we worked which was some consolation. When I did finally ask her out it was almost a year later and she was despairing of the civil service and probably like those other Oxford women, thought little of the men who worked in it.

Kate lived on a canal boat and with another colleague who was training to be a clinical masseuse, produced hats and bags from left over rags they picked up from some clothing manufacturers'. These sold incredibly well, and just before I left Oxford, Kate designed to resign her post and began travelling Britain's waterways in her canal boar (equipped with an Aga wood burning oven on board) selling her bags and hats. It was a hard decision for her to make, to through in the regularity of the civil service and I knew (as I had explored in earlier stories) that I could never do anything like that even for a woman I loved. Partly this is because I have no skills beyond working in an office, I cannot even teach, so I am shackled to offices however insecure that environment post-1979 has been.

This story was originally entitled '30 Years On' and it envisaged the paths that my and Kate's lives were likely to take from that point onwards. I last saw her in 1994 so thirty years would make this story be set in 2024. However, really it is set in the 1990s, perhaps even earlier. Like a number of my stories of the time, it has a nostalgia for things of the 1970s an era when self-sufficiency was popular along with folk music and the reconstruction of much of Britain's canal network often by volunteers. It also reflected the country fetes I would visit when living in Oxford which showed that some of those 1970s fads had been far more enduring that I had realised and Kate could easily slip into a world that would suit her mode of life.

This story reflects the physical damage I was doing to myself in the post I had in Oxford and fortunately I was able to get away, move to London and earn a better salary for working shorter hours and my health improved. My muscles can still remember how stiff my shoulders got from sitting huddled over a computer for around 9-10 hours per day. When I left the job I still had 86 hours of flexi-time accrued and I had never taken a day of annual leave, we were that overworked. I used to lie on my bed and try to stretch myself as if on a rack to try to get the stiffness out of my shoulders and wished I had someone, anyone, to be able to massage my stiff shoulders. Just a brief mention of the room I rented. It was as wide as the spread of my arms, so 1.86 metres (so narrower than Kate's 'narrow' boat 2.13 metres, the standard UK size), I paid £170 per month to live in it and the lock had been put on the wrong side of the door, so it was as if I was outside the door. It was in a shared house with four other people and a chinchilla. I will have to recount more of it another time. Anyway, on with the story of how I saw my and Kate's different lives turning out.

Re-reading it, the clothing reminds me of what Kate wore especially the waistcoats and the pumps. The other thing I had forgotten is the reference to the television. My salary was such (£8,500 in 1994) that I could not afford a television and I rented one, but was in utter fear that I would fall behind on the payments and get into legal difficulties. I was still renting the television in 2003 when I was earning triple what I had been earning nine years earlier. The rental company must have done very well out of me!



Insecurity

Alan turned from his bicycle and surveyed the fete in the field before him. He wandered through the ranks of parked cars. The grass was lit brightly on this clear afternoon. Only occasionally did a swathe of shadow sweep across the land as a cloud passed in front of the sun. As he walked to the body of the fete, around him Alan could hear the bubble of conversation, little bursts of it distinct as people went by close to him. He wandered idly, not really paying much attention to the stalls. He did pause at one selling second-hand books. He looked down at the creased spines, he bent his stooped body over the rows of paperbacks. His shoulders were hunched and his gaze narrowed by years of staring into a computer screen. He stretched slightly straighter as he moved on, but his heart was not in it, too much damage had accrued for any change now.

He reached the side of the field farthest from the road, where it ran down to the canal. A row of narrow boats was moored along the bank. In this stretch of the fete were clothes stalls, the usual hippy stuff he told himself. The rainbow colours, the floppy velvet hats of purple and red, the patterned waistcoats and the striped baggy trousers contrasted with the faded tweed jacket he wore, already too hot for him on this afternoon.

Alan’s eye was caught by the quick movement of a child at the foot of a stall She sat on the hem of a woven blanket draped over a table holding hats and bags. She was probably three or four. The little girl wore a miniature outfit to match that of many of the stallholders. The black velvet hat had been plonked on her head to protect her from the sun. Her dungarees, striped shirt and canvas shoes had been made for her alone, with love and attention.

Then the helium balloon she was playing with came free. Instinctively Alan snatched at it as the girl watched it helplessly drift up away from her. He caught the end of the string, and then took a firmer grip.

“Thank you.” Alan heard the voice of the stallholder, a woman he had not even noticed. He did not have to recognise her to tell who she was, but the way that she rolled her eyes skyward as she lightly joked about keeping her attention on a child and a business just confirmed his instincts.

Alan crouched down to the girl and handed her back her balloon. He was self-conscious, though he liked children, he always feared coming across as weird. He looked at the woman carefully as he stood up again. He half expected her to have changed, that on the second viewing she would be revealed as no-one he knew, and the first face he had seen would turn out as only an image from his wishful thoughts.

It was her and he felt a constricting excitement well within him. He drunk in the sight of her. Much was the same. Time had lined the enthusiastic face but the round glasses were familiar. The dark hair was tied back in the old way, but now it was tinged with grey. She walked around the edge of the stall to check on the child. As she bent over to pick the girl up, he studied her hard. Her body was slim if fuller: free in a loose white blouse and that old waistcoat, and below that a long patterned skirt fringed with tassels. Her feet wore soft leather pumps.

“Jaynie.” Alan said quietly as she stood up straight, the child in her arms.

The woman looked startled. Her eyes locked on Alan’s.

“Alan.” She said simply.

Alan blushed and looked away. In an instant his feelings thrust deep away within him, but not destroyed, burst into his mind. His memories compressed the years between and he felt that no time had passed since she had hugged him farewell in the bar so many years before.

“Yours?” Alan stuttered indicating the girl.

“No. My daughter’s, her name’s Eleanor.” Jane explained. She bent over to look into her granddaughter’s face. “That’s right isn’t it, Ellie?”

The girl smiled, and snapped back a bold answer. “Yes.”

“So. How is life?” Jane asked warmly as if it had been only a few months since they had last met.

Alan shrugged his tight shoulders. “Much the same.” His mind struggled to say something. He knew from experience that he would mourn a missed opportunity. “I’m here on holiday. I’m staying at the ‘Rose and Castle’.”

“Oh yes. I know it, we passed there yesterday. We come this way every year, well for the past eight years anyway.” Jane spoke almost distractedly. Alan knew that she was dealing with her own memories, though he had never been able to tell what she had truly thought.

“Why don’t you join us for dinner? We’re moored only down there.” Jane said suddenly, she had always been the braver one. She waved an arm in the direction of the river but kept her gaze fixed on Alan.

Alan shuffled awkwardly. “I couldn’t,” was his only reply.

“Nonsense, Helen and Jack would love to meet you. You can see where we all live.”

She had hit on a point that had always attracted Alan to her. The unfettered life on the water. How many times had he wanted to visit that boat, the one that he had never seen but had imagined himself waking up on, with her, a thousand times.

“Jack’s Helen’s man.” Jane answered the unasked question. “The four of us, but there’s room for more.” She let it hang, not wanting to press him too hard. She remembered he never could make a decision on anything.

Alan said nothing in reply. Before the pause lengthened too much, she spoke again.

“I think they’re over at one of the boats. Jack does painting on them.” Jane said, returning to her social tone, yet again concealing what they were thinking. “What about your painting?”

“Don’t get much time for it.” Alan said, his voice sounding wistful.

“It’s a pity.” Jane meant it.

“God, Alan, I can’t keep this up.” She put Ellie down on the stall. “What have you done with your life? Are you still tied up in your little worries, still bound by the fears that one day you might end up broke, so you have to work and save so hard? So timid that you cannot even accept the praise, the affection people show you?” Jane’s voice rose as she lay the charges against him. Alan shuddered and seemed to be trying to fold in on himself to shut out the words.

“You would not throw up some pathetic job for the fear that you couldn't meet the payments on the television. Christ! What the bloody use was a television anyway? There’s so much more you could have done, like sleeping with someone, anyone.”

Alan blushed deeply, Jane was too painfully perceptive. Despite the discomfort, he felt fixed to where he stood.

“I bet you still work for the same people, live in the same small room. It’s not even the low wages that have done it to you, it, it ...” Jane struggled for the right word in her frustration. “It’s that you just let people use you, crush your spirit. I’m not rich but I live the life I want. Things get difficult but I face them when problems appear, not hide from ones that might just turn up. You do not change anything unless you challenge it.” Jane’s voice calmed and she let out a sigh. Alan glanced around nervously but no-one seemed to have noticed what was passing between them.

“Look there’s only an hour or two of this left. Come back here then, come for dinner, come for the week, finish your holiday with us. Live some.” Though her voice was calmer, her tone was almost beseeching.

Alan looked at her tearfully. Jane took him in her arms and rested his head against her warm shoulder.

“How ever much you wanted me, you were tied to something stronger long before we met.” She whispered in his ear. “But it’s never too late to change, take early retirement. Get some decent clothes.”

Jane seemed enthused, excited but depression drowned Alan’s elation at seeing and feeling her again. Her words, her suggestions had stripped away so much of the protection that he had put up over the years. He knew that she was right about his fears, the ones that made his life so constrained, so wedded to the routine that gave him some sense of security. For a second he was glad somehow that he had kept it to himself and had not dragged someone else down with his worrying, his fear of living life. He made his way through it, taking what he saw as the safest option at each turn.

Jane kissed him on the cheek and on the lips as she pulled herself slightly back from him. Alan relished her kisses, for an instant they burned away the discomfort. Her body was firm and reassuring between his arms. He knew that this was a security he had never known and would never do so. For those seconds there was no-one but them, the full extent of his senses, the whole world of his concerns.

“So you’ll come.” Jane said, feeling that she was winning.

“Vegetarian food.” Alan replied, but Jane knew it was without malice.

“Ha, all the better for you.” She laughed.

“Good,” was all Alan said.

“Later.” Jane said cheerfully, believing she had won the first stage on the road to Alan’s redemption.

“Yes, later.” In this instance, Alan preferred the word to goodbye. He looked back for a moment to take in her and a few details around her, like a snapshot. He raised his hand and waved slightly but turned away before she responded.

The shadows were beginning to lengthen and the sun would be soon taking on the golden hue he loved so much. He glanced at his watch and hurried his pace across the field to the gate. He had to hurry if he was to cycle back safely. He bent down to fix his cycle clips around his trousers. As he left the field, he calculated the time it would take him to reach the pub. He reckoned if he was able to eat his dinner in thirty minutes he would be in time to see that documentary on the Roman empire. He fretted. He would have to pedal quickly and be lucky that that fat woman was not in the dining room before him. Alan reached his bicycle, still resting against the fence. He unlocked it, mounted and cycled away, off into his old life.