Jo May

A Narrowboat at Large Jo May

Updated February 2021So why did we take to the water? My wife can't swim, the dog hates it and I prefer beer. Financially we were afloat and we lived in a perfectly decent house until my wife came up with the zany idea of living on a boat. I'd just got home from work, via the pub, when Jan asked me to watch a video while she prepared our frugal meal. I watched a pair of old fogies trundling along a canal in the rain on a narrowboat. You can imagine my reply when she asked if I fancied emulating the sodden wrinklies and taking to the water. She's a lady of vision and determination (she married me after all) but this was elevating madness to a whole new level. Jan's oncologist had her a few years previously that she probably wouldn't see the new millennium, so she had a different perspective about the future than many people. Despite lots of huffing and head-shaking, twelve months later we had sold a perfectly respectable house, given up a job that kept us in cornflakes and moved onto a metal hole less than a tenth the size of our house - excluding garden. It was the 4th July 2003 - independence day. We knew nothing about narrowboats - their workings, waterways lore and how we would cope being cooped up together - particularly when it's minus five and the nearest shop is miles away. We had a mountain to climb - which you can only do by using locks, and we'd never done a lock. A more accurate analogy is shooting the rapids because our venture took on a life of it's own and we were washed down stream on a tide of enthusiasm and ignorance. We had to make it work or the people who had laughed and scoffed would be proved right - we really were mad. Well, make it work we did, and we're still boating twelve years on. It's marvelous and it possibly saved Jan's life.