Bring Me The Hydro Spanners

It has been the most beautiful day today. One of those days that was made for lounging around on boats; hazy autumn sunshine cutting through the slow thermometer slide into winter, the clatter of gull cries and a warming stillness, almost as if the land is yawning, getting ready to take a little afternoon nap for a few months. So what better day to go crawling around Chuffy's hatches, doing a little sealing, a little cleaning and tidying and getting covered in grease and oil and general unidentifiable ooze.

I'll probably regret saying this because it's an uber geek admission, but you know how guys of a certain generation have this thing for Princess Leia in the bronze bikini? Well, it's not that I don't, but I always went for the: "My hands are dirty", "My hands are dirty too..." moment.

Today my hands got very dirty.

So I washed them.


Tunes: Secret Machines: Girl From The North Country

Happy Hampers

It's been a weird old day. This morning I sat in a room listening to two people talk about being physically and sexually abused as children, wondering what fucked up gene it is that makes us act more like people and less like human beings and why someone can't give someone else a grant to find it and stamp it out. Then hours later I was creased up with uncontrollable laughter, eyes streaming, gut aching, rocking back and forth consumed by that self feeding, almost primal, loss of control. It's such a wonderfully contradictory feeling to be so helpless and yet feeling so good at the same time; the ultimate expression being 'I laughed so hard I pissed myself', something I've come close to but never yet reached that damp patch plateau of hysteria. I talked to someone down here once who said they'd never laughed like that. How can a world where someone can say that they've never laughed till it hurt call itself in any way a decent place to live? To me that's just seriously fucked up. I won't bother you with the story of why I ended up like that, it's all complete lack of social graces, period pain, the search for ibruprofen, some to die for expressions and a bagful of horse-tranquilizer strength pain-killers. Wouldn't come across well at all.

This has been one of those weeks where I've felt like I'm in a Simms game being played by some particularly mischievous Greek Gods. Here I am trying to live this peaceful life by the river and nothing is really going quite to plan. It's like having a micro-managed head-fuck. At the end of it all I was expecting to wake up this morning feeling, if I may purloin the phrase please 'a little basket case'. And all day I'm walking around like the Dalai Lama. Right there in the eye of the storm I found the calm I'd been looking to get back all summer. I've just been pondering what to say next, so you could put a long pause in there if you wanted for extra realism, and I think that what it boils down to is that for a whole ton of reasons, some of which may seem to the more rational of you, completely insane, I'm just feeling totally at peace with myself. Just wanted to share that with you really.

And the plan sucked.

Tunes: Eels: Blinking Lights And Other Revelations

Pram Devoid Of Toys

The last thing I wanted to do on a day I was off sick (even though I made it as far as Waterloo before biology got the better of me) looking and feeling as grey as my t-shirt was to spend the evening hand-pumping the back bilges again (for reasons as yet to be ascertained although likely to be related to the huge volume of water that's currently flowing past at speed). So the last thing I did on a day I was off sick (even though I made it as far as Waterloo before biology got the better of me) looking and feeling as grey as my t-shirt was to spend the evening hand-pumping the back bilges again (for reasons as yet to be ascertained although likely to be related to the huge volume of water that's currently flowing past at speed).

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

At least I have all those wonderful delays after the Waterloo derailment to look forward to. I need to beat this morning's personal best of a 1hr 15 train journey on a 40 minute route.

Tip of the day: If you have one of those window scrapers that takes a Stanley blade, don't put a new blade in by pushing it down into the holder using the end of your finger.




Tunes: Elbow: Cast Of Thousands

The Booze And The Drugs

Various things I've missed mentioning recently (in no particular order):

• Watching Rog extract a fish hook from a somewhat indignant swan's beak (and not getting too wet in the process).
• Having payroll screw up my pay this month.
• The sale sign in a Kingston shoe shop that said 'buy one, get one free'.
• Things calming down on the home battlefront.
• Not getting rained on.
• Wondering when to start the fire up.
• Awesome fog rolling down the river.
  
• The episode of Everybody Loves Raymond where Peter Boyle refers to a German Shepherd that used to terrorise him as a child as Ilsa the She Wolf. No possible reference to the somewhat notorious movie: Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS then. Not on a US family prime time sitcom surely?
• Listening to an ex member of Bucks Fizz sing blues standards on the pontoon outside accompanied by the sax player from Spandau Ballet on acoustic guitar. Actually, that was really fucking weird. Had to put my headphones on to watch telly though.
• Recommending The Proposition if you haven't seen it.
• Getting half a team back and still being too busy to blink.
• Finding out that two of the men who died when their yacht was hit by a P&O ferry were at school with me. One of them even lived in Tooting the same time I did.
  
• Being played what purported to be a phone call from the second of the Twin Towers just as it fell - probably the single most terrifying and upsetting thing I've yet heard.
• The best album review I've ever seen
  
• Getting out to a couple of great gigs again and really enjoying the company.

I'm sure I've forgotten loads more but there's probably a good reason for that...

Tunes: The Broken Family Band: Balls

Nighty Night Campers

Anyone who's spent any time curled up on Chuffy's big sofa will know that it has strange and wonderful relaxing powers. Nothing, I hasten to add, to do with my company I'm sure! Those of you who are fans of snoozing on my sofa will be glad to know that it now has a spanking new cut to fit matress and seat covers; courtesy of my most excellent folks. How comfortable is it now? Well it took some gargantuan effort to climb off it and write this.

I like to watch how people negotiate the sofa. There's no earthly way you can really sit on it properly. You sit down, lean back slightly and realise that the back's about a foot and a half away. So if you try and sit properly you're forced to perch rather straight backed and uncomfortably on the edge. The only way to do it is to kick your shoes off, and curl up in one of the corners with your legs tucked under you. But that's not what you get taught to do when you visit someone's place, at least not until you've been round a few times and sampled their cooking. But there are some who seem to imperceptibly understand the way it's meant to be and just curl up anyway without waiting for an official nod. I don't get offended either way, I just find it kind of fascinating. Oh, and by the way. Next time I see you down my way, I expect instant slobbery. And I won't be offended if you fall asleep. Chuffy just does that to people. And you wonder why I never get out much...

They Say That Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention

Well, that and poverty. Do you like my nice new shiny rain cowl. That's the silver dome thing in the foreground. The chimney stack is behind. The idea is that underneath each of those cowls is an air vent. Now some of them are a little broken. So what happens is that the rain falls through the holes that let the air through and gradually seeps down through the broken bits, through the roof and on to me! So I thought it might be a good idea to find some cowls to sit over them. What I ended up with, and what you see there is a 99p mixing bowl from Wilkos scilicone sealed to a block of 4x2 and then sealed again to the top of the vent.

It works...


What you see above is not an air vent. It's the inside of the boat, between the curve of the roof and the ceiling, specifically here, in the back bedroom. Those red, white and black things are, as you've probably guessed electric cables. That dark watery looking mess underneath them is indeed water. By now you've all got that water / wires = bad thing going on. The reason I knew this was there because the water carried on past the wires, through the ceiling and down on to the bed below. And it did this at various points along the walls.

The great thing about the kind of heavy rain we had on Saturday, i.e. the kind of rain that's so heavy it wakes you up with a start at 6am, is that it does tend to point out where the leaks are. 6 in total. Suddenly Chuffy had become some bizarre, warming Kafkaesque instrument of Chinese water torture. I'll admit to a bit of swearing and shouting and strop throwing but why not, it's what you do when it rains on the inside.

Probably foolish of me to think that I might get a weekend off. So instead I'm jumping between rain burst with a roll of kitchen towel and a tube of scilicone sealant and if you think that sounds rude, you should have been there. In between the dry bits I was unscrewing bits of ceiling to chase the drips. Do I have them all? Almost, there's one in the bathroom I haven't located yet but that could just be the taps. Shit, that's not good either. Have I been successful? No idea, I'm still at work. I'll know in about an hour and a half when I get home.


Tunes: Mercury Rev: Stillness Breathes (1991 - 2006)