Last week I enjoyed a narrowboat holiday with my parents along the Kennet and Avon Canal.

I have to admit that it wasn’t a prospect I relished – I’m always more fond of a holiday which involves a plane and suncream, although the ecological concerns of zipping around the globe on planes are starting to nag, so we three decided that a short jaunt along the canal from Reading to Kintbury, all within a stone’s throw of Oxford, was a great solution to my needing a few days away but being able to return should the need arise.

One night on our travels we spotted a small narrowboat which seemed ever so cute – it’s rather rare to see a boat only 40ft long which doesn’t look dumpy, but Nina, as she’s called, looks ever so pretty. What I may come to regret is that there was a For Sale notice in the cabin window. So what started as rather a harmless week on the canals took on a rather more sinister turn – the romantic, if rather remiss, idea of buying and living on a boat starting to take form within my head.

The faintly dull backdrop to all of this is that I’ve been in the process of looking for a mortgage, but my quirky situation is that I’ve been self-employed for 10 years, with a year’s gap last year when I decided to take a pre-retirement. I enjoyed a month in Fiji, a month in Vegas and a month or so working for the London Olympics, along with a scattering of other things I’ve always wanted to enjoy. However, the long and the short of this meant that I am now unable to find anyone who’d trust me with their Wendy House, let alone a mortgage. The solution slowly dawned on me.

For less than a tenth of what you’d be paying for a house, a boat allows you to have a waterfront property, allows you to move if you’ve upset the neighbours too much and teaches you skills, patience and self-sufficiency in a way that being a shorebound resident never really can. It also allows you a celebration of nature that living in a box next to another box among a strip of similar boxes can never earn you – I’m rather enthusiastic about the whole prospect.

Each time in my life, that I’ve splashed out a silly amount of money I’ve had pangs of guilt and a realisation that it wasn’t the most sensible course of action, and buying and deciding to live on a house boat has to be one of my more stupid ideas, and yet I’m struggling to regret the move.

I have adequate heating for the chilliest of winter months, I have enough whisky in my cupboards to keep me company through the dark nights and I’ve a natty kitchen set-up, which means I’ll be able to dine like a gourmet. I even have a power shower and one of the most comfortable mattresses I’ve ever slept on, with twinkling fairy lights strung around it (which I’m slightly less fond of). Thanks to modern technology I have wifi, I have cable television and I’m able to be in contact the whole time, should I need to be. However, as I arrived on Nina last night, in the process of bringing her home to Oxford, my mobile phone completely died.

It means that I have three or four days in total isolation from the outside world, and I think it’s meant to be, because it’s utter bliss. My intention is to head into Reading tomorrow or the day after to get a replacement, but I’m starting to question whether it’s a good idea – a couple more days out of reach may well be just what the doctor ordered, and if anything happens that would normally require my input, then my handsomely paid staff may just have to work a wee bit harder to earn their cash.

And so, it means that I have a whole new string of things to write about – my semi-Bohemian life aboard the good ship Nina. Next week, if I’ve survived the journey to Oxford, I’ll tell you all about it.

 

I hope I'll be as cool as my parents

My 38th birthday last week, and I’m delighted to admit that not much of the associated fanfare really bothered me… Although even writing this seems like a later chapter that Sue Townsend would have written about Adrian Mole, “aged thirty seven and three quarters”.

I couldn’t help but wonder what I’d fear most when the day came – that dreaded first grey chest hair, or worse, the sprouting ear foliage, the bad back getting out of bed each morning, replacing the hangover of earlier years. Or worst of all, having to stoop seemingly lower than ever to slide into the previously manageable sporty car (I’m wondering if it is becoming a little too young for me).

I suppose I have to say that if anything came a little too close for comfort, it was the warm smile of appreciation that I shared with the folks tending their allotments on the Abingdon Road one afternoon, as the summer evening’s rays bathed them in soft light and they bustled around their sheds and sunflowers, but even that seems to have become a domain that both young and old can enjoy together, so I didn’t fear the desire to join them.

Happily, none of it really ruffled me in the slightest. Spending time with my mother and father meant that I was able to celebrate another year. Nearing 70 years on the clock, they are both way cooler than I’ll ever hope to be. They were telling me that, as most retired couples do, they occasionally get bored with one another, so when she’s utterly fed up, Mum is cool enough to leap into the camper van and head off to the beaches around the coastline surrounding the Pembrokeshire coastline, where they live. She turns her phone off, sleeps in the van at night and happily spends a couple of days surfing the waves in her 40 millimetre thick, Stannah Stairlift-equivalent wetsuit. Meanwhile Dad will stock up on baked beans and raid the freezer to defrost anything that she’s been careless enough to leave with a label on it. My father seems to have a similar resolution, involving windsurfers or fast bicycles.

It showed me that getting older just allows you to accumulate more style if you approach it the right way. I don’t think either of them have ever tried to be cool, and yet with an individualistic approach to how they go about their lives with one another, they manage to be cooler than any other people I know. So, as the 38-year mark arrived, I topped up a glass of whiskey for my father and I, toasted another year of knowhow acquired and looked forward to seeing what it holds in store.