So, I’m moving on. Do you fancy living here?

If I’ve not put you off too much here’s the advert.

I haven’t been on board much the past week or so: I have been away a few times and after a weekend visit from a goth who enjoyed the futon and the local hostelries, have spend a lot of time round at the part-time shipmate’s house.

That I enjoy being with her and the part-time dog is one reason, the other is the cold, rain and flooding that Oxford along with the rest of the UK has been facing. Luckily this canal, or canals in general I don’t know, isn’t prone to rise too much. The nearby rivers have broken their banks and roads around town have been closed, and travel has been some sort of carbon generating lottery. So, unlike boaters on the thames that have had to batten down the hatches, my place has been okay.

The temperature is more of a problem, it’s really not easy to keep a fire going all night and that it’s so far from the bed means waking up is like having slept a bit rough. I either need to get better at this or invest in some cardboard. The leaks continue too, it’s not altogether homely.

An unexpected result of the cold is this that I found on my return tonight:

It seems olive oil, and washing up liquid go all thick. Oo-er.

Days at sea: 50

Rations: Veggie sausages.

Stowed: Skimmed milk powder, after what happened to the olive oil and the washing up liquid.

It turns out the Internet’s flakiness here probably wasn’t the router, although that’s still up and down. I came back earlier in the week from being away at a Halloween party, to  a cold boat that had sporadic connection. Sporadic within seconds rather than minutes, which was the unexpected bit,

Picking up the ‘house phone’ I got not that low oooo, but something that might be fitting before the Radio 4 morning signal of Sailing Away—a wooshing wind sound but no phoning ability. I left a message—via mobile obviously—with PlusNet and they said they’d look into it.

I persisted in turning it off and on again. Then I thought about testing the extension—which is a basic lead from Maplins—which extends in this case from the bank over open water and through a crack in the door. So to test I unhooked the phone and went to plug it on on the bank. Except the plug is in a utility pole, outside like, and it’s night and I’m in my furry pyjamas—it also opens with a screw.

Upshot is I’m dressed like a fleece Wild Thing  with a stubby screwdriver and eventually look like I’m making a phonecall in the old west—handset cupped under chin while holding tight to a pole.

It isn’t working.

Still isn’t

Days at sea: 45

Rations: Marmite on brown toast

Stowed: The new Danny Baker autobiog. Fantastic. And some coal. It’s cold, did I mention that?

I now have the internet, and supposedly a new pump that won’t be noisy. The pump is lovely and quiet so far—it kicks in when the taps are on but is silent when not. The Internet was very flaky at first but a router firmware update seems to have sorted that out. If you’re in the Oxford Canal area, see if you can spot my network:

Days at sea: 38

Rations: Red pepper soup.

Stowed: A telly, but don’t get excited there’s no ariel or freeview. I might get round to hooking up the computer to play DVDs at some point.

I had visitors, and lots of them, over the weekend. The part-time shipmate is away and I think people knew me well enough to know that I’d be lonely. First old mate Adam arrived on Saturday: he’s a bit of experience with narrowboats as his parents owned one some years back. I’m expecting booze, practical advice and good company.

I also got physical comedy as he fell through the door, down the surprisingly large step onto the floor. I also got freezing cold, as I’d forgotten to remind him to bring a sleeping bag and ended up giving up my duvet and trusting thermals and my coat. A successful visit, and he wasn’t that disgusted by the toilet either.

Cutting through my hangover on the Sunday morning came a phone call from my mum: should she come to visit? Of course she should, she hadn’t been to see the boat and I know that she was a little worried about the water-borne state of my living accommodation.

I’m not sure it put her mind at rest too much, she wanted to make sure it was clean—and I think it was as much as it can be—and warm (it was, Adam had done good fire-building on Saturday night and it was still okay). She was rather worried by the gang plank, which is just that—a plank, balanced from ship to shore. I assured her that I was having no problems; and then nearly slipped down it this morning.

I think I was flushed with the success of discovering ‘the knack’ with the front door key—if you press it down a little, it locks easily.

Days at sea: 27

Rations: Apples, cottage pie.

Stowed: A sort of hanging LED light thing, so I can sit up the dark end of the boat to write and save my back on the stool. And i newspaper, which was the cheapest alternative to the firelighters I couldn’t find in Tesco.

Last night I got down and got filthy, with the assistance of nice Josh on his knees. After a while it got hot.

Yes, although I’ve had the boat for just over a month it hadn’t really been cold enough to light the stove, and it certainly hadn’t been cold enough in Crete where the landlord was and he insisted that he needed to show me how it worked.

I can light a fire as well as the next person who can sort of light a fire, but I was a bit confused as to how this burner fuelled the radiators along the starboard side. Something to do with heating the water was all I got told, but I did learn that there’s a complex relationship between waggling the grate thing and turning the knob at the front that lets in amounts of air. And that it’s simply impossible to take a photo of a fire.

Still, it’s given me a new morning routine: making sure the coal scuttle is full, as hauling coal in the dark is not a fun thing to do.

It made the place pretty toasty warm if truth be told.

Days at sea: 23

Rations: Stone’s Ginger Wine (it was on offer at the Tescos)

Stowed: Coal.

I don’t think there are any sharks in the Hythe Bridge Arm of the Oxford canal, there are ducks and the odd floating crisp packet, it’s just that I’ve had the Gruff Rhys song of the name in my head for most of the afternoon after seeing him support Dexys on Tuesday.

I’ve not been back to the boat since, a snuffling cold led me to run for the promise of strong chilli and warm arms a few miles down the Thames. This evening I was expecting to meet nice Josh on board. He promised to show me in detail how the coal burner works—it not only heats the centre of the boat but warms two radiators, and it is apparently the best way to make sure it’s not too cold in the morning. That would be nice.

I’d written a little list of things to ask him, nothing major but a few niggly bits that I’d quite keen to sort out. I couldn’t get the boiler to fire on Tuesday morning, I was wondering if the gas bottle was empty but the oven still seemed to work. I’ve shaken it and await my shower in the morning. The main thing is a bit odd: it’s just very hard to get the front door locked.

It seems that the lock is a bit lopsided—the boat doesn’t have a vale lock but a normal key-both-sides job. It opens fine, it locks—from the inside—without a problem, but from outside it requires a good spray of WD40 to shut up shop. When I’m in a rush that’s really irritating, and I’ve sprayed my shirt through the keyhole a couple of times. Still, that’s on the list to get sorted.

Living on a boat hits your brain in more subtle ways that I first thought it might, I’ve become incurably sanguine about different sorts of irritation (I’d have called a locksmith out to a house straight away). Because there’s an expectation that it’s a little more handmade it is just okay.

Also I’ve just been thinking that it changes your attittude to other things—with a no flush, cramped, toilet there’s just no ‘retiring to the bathroom’ with a book. All my reading is getting done on the bus at the moment.

Days at sea: 19

Rations: A pizza, when the oven pings.

Stowed: A new pump for the water tank (the one that was under the bed and makes a noise). This one is under the bed and also makes a noise, I’ll see if the noise is lessened enough so that reconnecting the water pump isn’t the first job every morning.

And not of the “discretely tip into the canal”* kind either. I returned on board at about five pm yesterday to see a little splash here and there. As I’ve mentioned before, there’s not much way that water can come up—it has to come down.

Sitting down to a cuppa there was definitely a dripping sound. So I followed the darkened wood and discovered not exactly where water was coming in but where it was gathering. But I couldn’t really do anything to stop it. Before long it was pretty dark and with the rain I didn’t really fancy checking the top of the boat. Nice Josh, landlord, suggested that gathering leaves could block what passes for guttering and develop puddles around weak points. Or that the vents to let the humidity out could leak if not shut well (that seemed to be the case over the bath, but a leak into there didn’t bother me too much).

So I left a pan, it had only about 3-4mm of water in it this evening despite a day of pretty much torrential rain.

All good, I suspect. I’ll see if there’s an obvious problem on the roof when it’s next light and dry simultaneously. March, then.

Days at sea: 18

Rations: Jam on toast, again. I like jam on toast.

Stowed: A silver St. Christopher medal given to me on my 18th by my nan and granddad. I wore it for some years, but it’s heavy and I’m not much of a jewellery person, and—truth be told—I wasn’t ever much of a traveller. It’s now hanging from an artistically bent fork—was Uri a previous captain?—providing me with all the superstitious protection that it can.

*I’m not.

The boat was advertised as being in a ‘quiet city centre location’. And it is, despite the canals here being a little bit of a short cut from the end of town by the train station to trendy Jericho. Or at least it has been so far. On a Friday and Saturday night I can hear the rumble of a disco somewhere, it’s not loud enough to keep me awake nor for me to hear what records are being played and to be made sleepless by the taste displayed by the DJ.

This last weekend, however, was the first since I’ve been on board where Oxford was playing host to freshers. Not new students going up to the proper Uni, but those attending the ‘other place’—and my work—Oxford Brookes. A much more conventional student experience I would expect and what I think lead to the behaviour we witnessed aurally.

“Craig got his cock out!” called the young voice.

Giggling but no response.

“Craig, got. His cock. out.” confirmation.

Despite it waking us at around 3am on a Sunday morning, I held my tongue and didn’t enquire more. I also slept through a droning and ernest conversation about the meaning of life that the part-time shipmate told be that she’d been listening to in the hour before.

I await the return of the Bullingdon Club to see what they get up to in the wee small hours.

Days at sea: 17

Rations: Jam on toast

Stowed: The King, pictured above, late of my wrote-off car and a present (some ten years ago) from the part-time shipmate.

Just got back on board tonight and was rooting through the cupboards for something. I didn’t find what I was looking for but I did come across something interesting. A couple of booklets that sort of explain what I should be doing. One is from the Environment Agency and has a handy glossary of boaty terms and diagrams.

The equipment checklist shows up a goodly lot of deficiencies in this as a cruising vessel. At least it contains terms I’m not sure that match up to anything I’ve seen so far on the boat. It does have a handy set of knot diagrams, something I’ve not studied so intently since the day I forgot my book on the bus in the 80s and sat opposite an old lady with them on her tote bag (wither now that one, or the ‘Big Shop’?).

When you’re tying your house down to prevent it floating off I guess you’re up for more that just keeping wrapping it round in the hope it holds.

Despite being told how friendly the canal community is, I’ve not seen anyone here for the last few days. Just a few joggers and a few street (towpath) drinkers up by the end of the arm. I’m not entirely sure there aren’t a couple of regular rough sleepers in the bushes out by the road. The tell tale signs of, er, people sleeping in the bushes out by the road are there.

I wonder if they too awake at about 4am every morning wondering where the hell they are.

The other booklet is a map of the local waterways, the Oxford and Grand Union canals and the Thames. I’m not about to push off and travel just yet (I haven’t read the whole of the guide on ‘stopping’—mooring?—so best not start). But it does confirm my suspicions that I would have to have a trip up the Duke’s Cut (also the name of a pub down the road) to get onto the Thames. Now there’s a Carry On film just itching to be made. David Essex would do a good Sid James.

Both really useful documents. That they’re a little damp is disconcerting. But still, a good find.

So, here on the map, is where I am. I’m listening to Liege and Lief and pondering if I’ve slipped into one of the songs. Maybe Matty Groves. Bury my lady at the top.

Days at sea: 10

Rations: Quorn burgers.

Stowed: A cheap desk lamp from Maplin’s as the light in the bed end is too dark to read by. Half an hour walk back from the retail park out by Botley to discover it doesn’t come with a bulb. None on board, so writing this by tea light.