An Advent on the Canal

JOURNAL ENTRY

8th December, Monday

“A ragged river of rooks
 Stream across
 A watery sky
 On purposeful wings.

They rise and circle
 Around the One Oak.
 The fire of their
 Jubilant chatter
 Warms the day.”

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

The wind is blowing chill through the rushes where the moorhens lie low, and fallen leaves glisten and lie slick on the towpath mud. The night is dank and heavy with cloud, and the moon has several more hours yet before it is to rise. Tonight, we float on dark waters, starless and moonless.  

This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into the darkness of a mid-advent night to you wherever you are.

Greetings! I was hoping you’d be able to make it. How are you? It is so good to see you. Let’s get into the warm. The stove is glowing cherry red, the kettle is just coming to the boil and there is a seat waiting especially for you. So, step aboard and come inside and welcome aboard.  

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS

As the days tilt towards the solstice and the shortest day, the canal takes on that sleepy aspect once more. Most boats, locally at least, have now either returned to their home moorings or have reached their winter moorings and are snuggling down for the break. I wonder whether the ducks notice their absence? Possibly not. In colder weather, they appear to gravitate in large groups to those places where boats are around, like the moorings. Possibly they’re drawn by the prospect of a sympathetic handful of oats or duck food. Maybe, they can also detect the slight warmth of the hull of a liveaboard boat. However, it has generally remained too mild for that. Most of my meetings with them occur on my meanderings along the towpath. Clustering in groups of around 10 or so strung out up and down the canal. When I come across them, there’s usually a pair that seems to keep themselves to themselves. Happy to potter around together at the edges of the main group. Slipping away to forage and feed, chuckling and chuntering to each other softly, and then returning to keep a distant orbit. It’s not that they’re not welcome or have been rejected by the rest of the group. As I watch, sometimes they join the group fully or paddle their way together through the throng without so much a ruffled feather from the rest of the group. It is just that they seem to prefer their own company. It is not that they’re antisocial, they’re just not ‘joiners.’ When I come across couples like these, I can relate to them entirely. They’re like Donna and me, and actually, like quite a lot of boaters. Not anti-social, just happy to live a little bit apart, on the periphery of things. The more I see of duck communities, the more I realise their complexity and nuance. And, after all, it has been known for a long time that in each bird species, there is a range of different personalities. In fact, it has been argued by some ornithologists and ethologists, that a mix of introvert and extroverts, the reckless and the timid, within a flock is actually necessary for its survival.

It is easy to mistakenly think of December as a time of dormancy, when very little happens and any signs of life is hunkering down until spring. But it is not really true. Even now, new growth can be seen – and I am not referring to the worrying examples of plants mistaking the mildness for late autumn or spring. Along the towpath and hedgerows, the lime greens and emeralds of new growth can be spotted alongside the older, darker greens of ivy, mistletoe, and bramble. Cleavers or goosegrass are feeling their way along the ground, making the first claims to territory given up by this year’s spring and summer growth. Dead nettle too. I have also spotted tiny shoots of cow-parsley springing up. And above us, the rooks are busy with their nests, revisiting the towering rookeries, inspecting their old nests abandoned this spring, making repairs, squabbling over sitting rights, perhaps making a new one. Herons too are nest building. Like the rook, they lay their eggs early – usually January time. Like rooks, their nests can last for decades, being rebuilt, repaired and reused year after year. It explains why I haven’t seen the local heron for a while. Perhaps he has gone north, up water, to the big heronry just passed the Five Poplars. I can’t help wondering what it must be like for these famously solitary birds to suddenly be forced into close proximity. It is not uncommon for heronries to include forty or so nests. For most of their lives, the lead such apparently unsocial lives and now, for these few months to be thrust into such close communal proximity with one another must take some adjustment. I can’t even really imagine how the pairs manage to get on. Are the days around the nest filled with long awkward silences, little sighs and ‘well this is all very nice”, and muttered tuts with side-glances when one eats too noisily or keeps laying a twig the wrong way round?     

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]

AN ADVENT ON THE CANAL

The advent candle is burning passed the halfway point, and thoughts turn naturally to Christmas. I have to admit that we’re both really looking forward to the rest. To being able to settle down beside the fire with small pile of books and just escape for a while. Personally, the year has not been quite so tumultuous than it was last year, however, even so, we both feel in need of a rest and it has nevertheless, felt, to me at least, tumultuous. I suspect it is partly because it is this year that I have begun to properly process Dad’s death and – although it might sound strange – Mum’s too.

Work has been full on and without let-up recently, too. Like most places, despite the attempts to suggest otherwise with rather corporate nods to festive jollities, work-life these days doesn’t really seem to follow our human calendars. Even now, all talk, and emails are lining up the next hurdles, deadlines, and obstacles to be negotiated at the dawn of the new year. Although, this is nothing particularly new even way back when, the pressure of assessment grading through Christmas has always been there, somehow, this year it seems to be far more pronounced. Even while gigantic inflatable Father Christmases and snowmen flail in the winter gales, and the social areas ring out Christmas muzak carolling that this really is a very merry time of the year, it is difficult to really think of Christmas and slowing down.

There are little glimpses though. Seated around a table a large group of female Muslim students giggle and chat over a pile of books and laptops. All at once, they break out in a spontaneous and gleeful rendition of Mariah Carey’s ‘All I want for Christmas.’ A couple of students passing grin and half-heartedly join in. Later in one of my classes, one of my students hands out Christmas packs of chocolate to everyone. I turn around, and on the AV lectern, is a packet for me. I am staggered by the generosity of this small action. I know that she is spending her spare time working to pay her fees. I know she can’t really afford it. Her friend, good naturedly, tells her off. Her friend, although barely out of school, is determinedly working towards becoming ordained as a vicar or a chaplain. I think she’d make a good one, one with enough fire and heart to give her bishop some grey hairs. They both laugh. I still feel slightly awkward as I place the chocolates next to my bag. Then I am reminded that this is Christmas after all, and perhaps she – they – both understand Christmas better than their theology lecturer. 

But taking time off, now more than ever before, seems like a luxury. However, we’re now so close, that I feel I can take my eye off the work ball, for a second or two at least, and enjoy the approach of Christmas.

Christmas is coming and advent – however you celebrate it, and in whatever way it means to you – is advent, I we’re now getting close enough for the deeper realities of life around the Erica to break through the mist.

Mind Shambles wrote:

“December has come so quickly. Already the houses are lit up by strung LEDs, with miniature Santa Claus' climbing ladders and White Reindeer slowly nodding, reminiscent of old clockwork automatons but without sound. Are you already bedecking Erica and brightening the towpath?”

Yes, as customary, we have strung fairy lights down the cabin roof and over the bow that twinkle with a warm white light. They are quite dim and understated compared with some of our neighbours, but they suit us perfectly. Coming home from work in the dark, they provide a lovely and warm welcoming light. I have to say – and this might just be locally – but although some boats have gone all out this year with flashing lights and illuminated animals, etc., there’s not been quite the amount as in the previous couple of years. There is still just over a week to go and so things might change, but quite a few boats still have no decorations (outside, at least).

Donna has also put up the holly wreath again and tied to the cratch board – that’s the triangular wooden and glass panel at the front of the boat. However, holly is very sparse around here and so we have had to make do with foraged twines of ivy. Sprigs of rosehip, hawthorn berries and sloe have also been threaded into it. It’s become a bit of a tradition, weaving decorations from the shrubs we live beside. The best bit is watching the berries diminish day by day becoming sparser and sparser as the birds come onto the boat and help themselves to our foraged feast. Perhaps this time is really a little bit about the merging and blurring of boundaries.  

I am not talking here in a religious sense – although, it would work very well there too – after all, how can you understand the theological notion of the incarnation if not as a merging and melding of boundaries? But there seems to be something broader, wider, deeper going on here – with this point in the great swing of the year that find echoes in older, far older, stories and which then rings deeply within us. And how, I think, it is found in the wider world. How in extremis, the type which is more often found in the depths of winter, a cessation of order is required that normally divides and separates groups and species. Here, duck, swan and even timid, flighty, moorhens share the unfrozen pools of water in the ice and join in the communal scavenging and begging from boat to boat.

Perhaps, the in extremis that many of us currently feel, the sense of longing, the breaking down of barriers, can find some kind of voice to give it all expression. The birds feasting on the picked berries of our wreath are doing me more of a favour than ever we are doing them.

....

We took the decision this year not to have a Christmas tree. Having a gaily decorated boat filled with colourful festive decorations sounds great until you try to actually do it. When your room is just under 7ft wide and the ceiling is a couple of inches above your head – the degree to which you can fill it with decorations can be severely limited! When it comes to putting up a tree, it can become a well-nigh impossibility! Of course, it all depends how the interior of your boat is fitted out. And we have found that ours was not really fitted out with Christmas in mind. Consequently, for the first time in our married lives, we have opted not to have a tree. It was a big decision. Each of the 39 years of our married lives, we have brought an ornament to hang on the tree. Each year, decorating the tree has been as much a celebration of our life together as it has been about Christmas. It has been special, and, I think, important. For the last couple of years, whilst we have loved everything about having a tree on board, it has become increasingly difficult to find a place to accommodate it. We even considered, at one point, of placing it in the stern, which had its own problems, but also meant that it would be out of sight when we were together in the evenings. Last year, was the last straw. We had found a rather precarious place to perch it (if that is the right verb for a Christmas tree) and from which it fell over twice, sending decorations spilling everywhere, when the boat suddenly lurched because of someone getting on or off it. So, this year, Donna came up with the idea of fixing up twine along the cabin sides (just under the ceiling) and then with little pegs, pegging up some of our most treasured decorations. It also meant that we could weave greenery foraged from the towpath along it, as well as slices of orange and lemons that Donna had dried over the stove. It’s our first trial, but, so far, it’s working wonderfully. We have our precious space back, but it also looks festive, but in a natural and not synthetic way. 

And so, in the true spirit of advent, we are quietly waiting for Christmas. For us, nothing is really planned, apart from a short list of books I want to enjoy, and some walks from the boat I want to take with Maggie or all three of us. For many years now, Christmas is a low-key affair. Initially, it was just a time when we closed the doors, read and ate scrumptious food we had been carefully squirreling away during the weeks leading up to Christmas. However, even the food has more recently been paired back. Not from any ascetic or abstemious reasons, simply we were finding that a sudden diet of lots and lots of rich food was difficult to digest in a number of ways, and we preferred to keep things simple – tasty and simple. And so, for us Christmas is becoming more and more about the time and space. Enjoying being and the feeling of not having to do anything (other than the normal boaty jobs that always need doing and are no respecters of seasons or cultural festivities). We’ll stoke the fire, put the kettle back on, settle down into a time of rest and slow walks beside the canal. 100% boring or 100% perfect depending on your temperament.     

Christmas on the canals is generally somewhat of a strange time. Perhaps it might conjure images of festive boaters in Christmas jumpers merrily celebrating all together in some rustic and timeless way. That is actually often far from the truth. It is for most QUIET. The majority of liveaboard boaters tend to be older and trying to accommodate extended – or even close family – on board a narrowboat for a big Christmas dinner is pretty much impossible. Therefore, a lot of boaters tend to be away with family. Those that are left tend to be those who have come to the canals for a more solitary life and so aren’t too fussed by (or, in fact, actively embrace) the lack of social activity and shy away from most attempts to organise anything approaching a formal get together. Most Christmas Days (here) consist of shouted cheery greetings as we pass one another on dog walks. Sometimes, if the weather is good, late morning, might see the emergence of small groups for a quick Christmas toast with some gifted champagne or wine. After which, the stern doors are closed once more and the most delightful sense of silence and peace once more descends upon the canal. The dried sedge and rushes nod and bow on the Christmas breeze. Ducks draw lazy circles midstream. The rooks work busy among the ash. The melancholy river of the robin’s winter song. A squirrel peers through a lattice of bare branches and waits for us too to leave. And so, we close the hatch. The Erica gently rocks, as if falling asleep, and, for us at least, Christmas Day will have finally come to the cut.      

SIGNING OFF 

This is the narrowboat Erica signing off for the night and wishing you a very peaceful and restful night. Good night. 

WEATHER LOG