A fragment I found written many months ago about our very first night on Hawisia.

We bought our narrowboat Hawisia on the 11^th July 2013. It was moored in Egham Marina, west of London, near Staines in a small boat-yard that was destined to be the location of the hand-over.

You can get to the town quite easily via Waterloo, from central London, but at that time both Gideon and I were working full-time and the earliest we could reach the boatyard were Hawisia was stationed was 8 o’ clock at night. It was a long commute from the Bethnal Green Road in East London, where we both used to live and work.

The former owner was in a rush to leave when I arrived. He and his two boys had been waiting for some time. I felt a little like a thief in the presence of the two small, curly-haired boys, and could imagine myself maligned forever afterwards by them as ‘the one’ who took away their boat. The varnished furniture and freshly-painted cream interior added to the impression that I had just acquired a rich man’s toy – something fun and precious, but with little practical value, like an antique rocking horse. But to my surprise the two boys seemed very indifferent to the brokerage, that ancient exchange of money for property that was going on before their eyes, and instead performed the few tasks delegated to them by their father, with a slight air of sulky reluctance. I realised that I had probably caught them on the school run and they were impatient to get home for tea. So when I asked them if they would miss the boat, they just shrugged their shoulders. I suppose at that age it is difficult to be sentimental and nostalgic about change – that comes later.

Their stoicism also amused me a little. They appeared to me to be already comically small embodiments of their confident father, who spoke and walked with the practised ease and gait of one who had done well in life, and had everything to show for it: the chestnut-haired boys, the Jeep, the thriving restaurant business in the West End. His insouciant manner and reassuring love of the boat, was a master-stroke of salesmanship, and of course, we snapped it up straight away.

As we paced her up and down, he kept on letting slip alluring details about his family’s life on the boat, telling stories of their weekend trips away – the eagerly awaited fruits of happy and idle summer afternoons in the school holidays. So they had used the boat mainly for recreational reasons – taking it off down the Thames to go swimming or find good climbs on long weekends. And so emotive images were conjured irresistibly to mind: of piping hot chicken pie, gingham tablecloths, tree-climbing, hearty luncheons washed down with bracing dips in the Thames. This was the legacy of enjoyment that we were inheriting.

After Mr P took the last of the odd spaghetti sauces lying around in the kitchen cupboards and unscrewed the lingering family albums from the walls, he gave me a quick tour of the boat’s control systems.  But he left my life as rapidly as he had entered it, and following real or imagined pressure from his wife at home, drove off swiftly with the boys, leaving the keys dangling portentously from my hands.

It was a good hour later that Gideon arrived to meet me.

Ownership is profound and strange for young people or anyone who has never experienced it before. The world over, the same universal feelings must be experienced by those who ‘come into’ their first real property.  I felt proud and exhilarated but also suddenly intimidated, and a little frightened by this lode of responsibility.  I later realised that it is a mistake to think of a boat as though it were a machine, like a car. Boats are like children or demanding pets, they are alive. You need to look after them, and they give you back what you put into them. But these convictions grew and strengthened within me as the weeks passed by. The only thing I could be sure of as I felt the cool, flat metal of the keys in my palm, was that my life would never be the same again. There is a wonderful Thomas Mann quote that springs to mind: he said responsibility is the other face of freedom. So I realised that warm evening on the boat, while I was alone and a pale sickle moon signalled day’s end was near, that I had bought myself a type of freedom but I had also acquired a vast new responsibility.

When Gideon arrived it was already night time. I met him by the meadow outside the Egham marina where we were moored. It is a lovely piece of common land with one straight bridleway crossing through it. The moon lit up the pathway and the thatched field of corn around with soft silver light. As Gideon cycled towards me I felt like it was destiny that was bearing him closer to me and our first home together, and the thought of it made me tingle all over with fear and excitement.

That night we slept together under an old towel on an unmade bed. We had brought only a small rucksack each of possessions as we were both cycling. Loading the boat up with our possessions was to be a slow, laborious and cumulative process that is still not complete. But I suppose that is all in the nature of home-making. Each space makes new demands, and requires an organic generation of objects.

The mysterious process whereby a space becomes a place and then, eventually a home, has been something that I have watched and guarded over for many days now. Every new spoon, fork, plate, every pillow-case and kitchen cloth, every mundane object and pair of tweezers has brought us closer to that undefined end-point of homeliness.

Hawisia became ours on Thursday night. We decided to move the boat on Saturday when Gideon’s parents came down. As the date of departure loomed closer, our apprehension grew. Though we barely admitted it to ourselves let alone our fellow boatyard dwellers, neither of us had driven a boat before, let alone a 60 ft narrowboat. We didn’t know the first thing about it, or about locks, tides and currents – the common currency of life on the water.

Because of the unique placement of the boat when we bought it, we knew that we had a challenging journey ahead of us. We had to navigate the Thames down to Teddington – a long day of boating, perhaps 8 hours or so – and from there to Brentford Lock. The section between Teddington and Brentford was tidal, but the next day of navigation, from Brentford to West London was going to be plain sailing on the Grand Union Canal. We estimated that all together the journey would take us three days.

Youthful optimism! As it turned out, the journey has taken almost two weeks and we are still not arrived at our avowed endpoint – the River Lea.