Update

Tags

Blogging, Cheap eats in London, cygnets, decorating, Indian veg, Life on a narrowboat, Narrowboat, Narrowboat living, swans, Travel writing, Vegetarian food London, Work, writing

Photo of the whole family- just.  I have the greatest respect for wildlife photographers; trying to take a picture of this family wasn’t easy!  We also have a group of three female Mallard ducks who wait for us each morning and hang out near the boat most of the time.  A moorhen has appeared recently although they are very shy and spend most of the time hidden away on the opposite bank.  Also we have had one visit from a pair of Canada geese and their almost-grown family.

We’ve been painting the outside of the boat, starting with the roof.  The weather needs to be dry, but not too hot or the paint dries too fast on the metal.  So we’ve been getting up early and doing an hour or two in between the overnight dew drying and it getting too hot.  Green is the top coat (coat one of two or three), the red is the red oxide undercoat (two coats) and the white is the original.

It was so hot yesterday it was like being back in Cambodia!  In the end we drove to London, only an hour and a half away from our place, enjoying the breeze/AC in the car and going to eat at the wonderful Indian Veg (92-93 Chapel Market, The Angel, London N1 9EX) an all-you-can-eat Indian vegetarian food buffet for less than £10 per person.  The walls are covered with quotes and facts, you can bring your own alcohol with no extra charge, and they give takeaway food to homeless people.  It’s a wonderful place.

Writing

I’ve almost finished Cambodia then onto Vietnam, the last part of the trip.  Then of course it will be editing and polishing.  I’m also working on two things I have been asked to do; a magazine article and a book review.  Unsurprisingly, the blog has felt a little neglected lately.  While out for a walk today I came up with an idea for a series of posts, easy to produce, inspiring to write and hopefully interesting to read, for whilst I am occupied with other writing and haven’t got a chapter extract ready to post.

Work

I start work a week on Monday, a one week full time 9-5 induction, then after that a few shifts a week depending on what’s available.  I’m half looking forward to engaging with the outside world and doing something valuable (care work with people with brain injuries) but the getting up early will probably take a bit of getting used to…

About the author

Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

 

Update

Tags

Incredible India, India, Life on a narrowboat, Love India, Narrowboat living, Pushkar, Rajasthan, Solo travel, spiritual memoir, Travel memoir, Travel writing, writing

Look who’s back!

We haven’t seen this family for a few weeks so I was very happy to see them this morning.

They do not want to share feeding time with the ducks though…

Life on the boat

It’s wet wet wet here (in the middle of England in ‘the summer’) and so being on a boat feels like the place to be.  No leaks, and we are warm and cosy indoors.

Life outside the boat

We have both got jobs, my husband will probably start in July and me in August.  Both as Bank Health Care Workers, the ‘Bank’ bit means as and when to give flexibilty.

Writing

So I’m still on Step One of ‘How to get an agent and get published’ which is ‘Write a wonderful book.’  I am, however, getting there.  I hope to have the draft finished in around a month and the corrections finished a couple of months after that, around the end of September.

India

I have my tickets to go back!!!  Jan-Feb 2020, a five week solo trip.  Let’s see how I am alone…  I’m planning a fairly straightforward trip, fly to Delhi, night bus to Pushkar same day if I can/want to, if not stay a night in Main Bazar.  Book a week in Pushkar, base myself there for the duration but go off for trips of a few days to Jaipur and Udaipur by train.  That will all probably seem plenty adventurous enough.  I may end up just spending the whole month in Pushkar, if I do, that’s fine too.  But if I spend the whole time holed up in Main Bazar not daring to go out then I will need a telling off.

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house, left job, gave away almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

Messing about on boats

Tags

boaters, canals, ducklings, Greggs, Greggs vegan sausage rolls, Life on a narrowboat, Narrowboat, swans, weight loss

On Good Friday we took the boat out for the first time, intending to just do a short run then turn the boat around ready to paint the windows on the other side.  (And to have a change; having the boat facing the other way livens things up slightly, like sleeping up the other end of the bed, or going a different route to work.)  Anyway, serious live-aboard types generally advise against going out at times such as Summer Bank Holidays and Easter Weekend, due to the amount of traffic on the canals, particularly hire boats.  It was funny that without any planning and without either of us working right now we just kind of naturally ended up having an Easter weekend like everyone else, going on a boat trip Friday-Saturday, and then driving to Norfolk on Easter Sunday to see my son ahead of his trip to New York.

Anyway back to the boat trip.  My husband lived on a narrow boat for five years and so has a lot of experience, me not.  I began the day feeling very anxious and almost panicky.  The steering takes a bit of getting used to, the tiller and rudder are at the back, it’s not like a car, there’s a delay between moving the tiller and the boat nose responding.  It needs constant tiny adjustments to keep it on course and if you lose concentration it can start to drift to one side surprisingly quickly.  Well not quickly, but….  If it is going off course, you have to over-correct and then correct again.  Anyway the only thing to do is do it, and I did begin to get a feel for how the boat moves and how the steering feels.

If you have a very small boat you can turn around anywhere, but for ours we need a turning point, a wide part of the canal designed for this purpose.  With few turning points on that stretch we ended up going much further than we intended.

Just as we approached this marina and diesel point, the engine conked out.  We thought we’d run out of diesel.  We moored up right by the pumps, only to find they had just closed- they closed early as it was Good Friday, and wouldn’t be there until nine o clock the next morning.  There was a cafe, but that was also closed, and there was nothing nearby.  So we resigned ourselves to just chilling out on the boat for the evening, which was absolutely fine, and were waiting at the pumps at nine am.  The boat hadn’t run out of fuel after all, but because it hadn’t been used for ages silt had got in, then settled again overnight and the engine started easily.  We bought some more diesel anyway, plus a new fuel filter, turned around in the marina and headed for home.

Me steering and concentrating hard and my husband looking like the seasoned mariner that he is

By the end of the trip I had steered past moored boats, past moving boats, through a narrow gap, around tight bends, and under bridges.

My husband steered the boat through a narrow course between double moored boats and oncoming boats, with inches to spare, and reversed the boat between moored boats into the marina to turn around.  In the hierarchy of difficulty this ranked even higher due to the moored boats being made of fibreglass.  If you bump into a narrowboat they are made of steel and very strong, it does happen, someone on a windy day bumped into ours when we were moored up, no problem, but if you crashed into a fibreglass boat, well, that would not be so good….  Anyway my husband had lost none of his skills and completed all manoeuvres successfully while I thanked my lucky stars it wasn’t me in charge.

Pulling the boat in is surprisingly easy, it is slow to start moving, then once it starts it comes easily.  You pull in from the centre rope and then tie up with the centre rope and a rope at each end, to rings if they have them, or using one’s mooring pins if not.

We stopped a couple of times for a cup of tea or to stretch our legs.  It was lovely sunny weather, really quite hot. 

Arriving home was again another tricky manoeuvre due to the very tight mooring space between our neighbours and of course not wanting to bump their boats.  And- apparently due to all the boats going past on Friday and Saturday- there was a silt bank and getting the boat in was very hard, needing a bit of engine and a lot of pulling.  Since then there’s been storms and rain so it should have cleared a bit, and the more you go in and out the more it clears it.

Aside from learning to steer, the most fun thing for me was looking at all the other boats.  Like houses, they cover the full range of money, class, styles and tastes.  Hire boats are usually fairly traditionally painted and neat.  Then there are the serious hobby people whose boats are beautifully traditionally painted and lovingly restored.  There’s a kind of hierarchy of authenticity/grit, starting from the bottom with hire boats, then the weekend boater (people who have their own boat but don’t live on it), then people who live on their boat but have a permanent mooring (that’s us) and finally at the top of the cool hierarchy are continuous cruisers who have to keep moving and don’t have a base to moor up at. All boaters have to pay a licence fee to the Canal and River Trust and they provide toilet emptying and water points along the canals.

Continuous cruisers have to move their boats regularly to comply with the regulations of the Canal and River Trust, this can be as often as every two weeks, but they can sometimes stay put for weeks or even months, depending on the area and the frequency of warden patrols.  Continuous cruiser boats will have a wheelbarrow and often a bicycle on the roof as well as firewood and/or sacks of solid fuel.  Wheelbarrows are useful for carrying the toilet cassette, collecting firewood etc, and the bicycle is for cycling back to get your car if you have one.  Often there’s plants and pot plants on the roof and deck.  Some boats are neat and tidy, some look more lived in, some cluttered, one looked like a hoarders’ boat.  We saw one with loads of firewood including a huge log wrapped up that would need chainsawing, and another with loads of sacks of coal on the roof and extra gas bottles and water butts outside.  Fully prepped…  Especially if you don’t have a car, it’s good to be stocked up. There’s also a fuel boat, we met ours the other day, they come every month selling solid fuel, firewood, kindling and gas bottles.  We are fortunate we also have a yard selling fuel and gas over the road- we stocked up via wheelbarrow when we first got home before the car was MOTd and insured.

We saw many boats we coveted, from big wide beam Dutch barges to cute little ones, which would be so easy to steer and move but small to live on.  I liked a smart little shiny burgundy boat, a little dark green boat called Wilson, as well as a grey undercoat punk boat, and an eccentric looking one aptly named The Shed.  We saw one with the roof hand-painted in silver glitter, the doors decorated in mauve glitter.

My husband was a continuous cruiser when I met him, he travelled up and down a stretch of the Grand Union Canal around Watford, Hemel Hempstead and Rickmansworth, within easy reach of his children in North London and his work on the M25.  He had regular mooring points he used, all with their own advantages, one might be nearer to work, another near a shop or launderette, one near a water point, all had to be near somewhere to park the car. One was near a field with horses and in the mornings the horses would come down to the water’s edge and enjoy the water, dipping their heads in it and splashing the water about. Living on a boat is fun enough, taking it out adds a whole other layer of fun.  Knowing you didn’t have a base and just kept moving felt like a romantic prospect on a sunny day, but I am sure it would feel less so in the middle of winter when the ropes are frozen and it’s moving day or you’ve run out of water.

Photo of iced buns consequences

This is the photo where I realised the iced buns* had caught up with me.   Since then, no bread, no pasta, no rice, no noodles, and absolutely no iced buns.  In a week or two I’ll have another photograph taken and hopefully see a slight difference. This random aside is inspired by Bryntin who wrote a very funny post about  how, having written one post about losing weight and tagged it ‘weight loss,’ he suddenly got 10% more followers; albeit ones that may only be interested in weight loss and therefore find that the rest of the blog is not quite what they’re looking for.  If that’s you, Welcome anyway!

*possibly Greggs vegan sausage rolls had something to do with it.  They’ve been in the news again this week, cited as the cause of a fight between two women in a Greggs store (fighting over the last one).  Although this may turn out not to be true after all, who knows

The swan has returned with their mate and eight cygnets!  The family came by for the first time a few days ago and were fed and admired, before continuing on their way.  They passed by again presumably on their way home that evening, most of the cygnets were having a ride inside underneath the wing feathers of one of the adults.  As I was writing this they came by again and were photographed, above.  They have grown a lot already.  Also a new family of ducks with seventeen ducklings has appeared; together with the new born lambs everywhere things feel very Spring like.  Although this being the UK temperatures have randomly plummeted as I write this….

Thank you very much for reading

 

 

 

Keeping the faith

Tags

Anything is possible, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, escape the matrix, family, Greggs vegan sausage rolls, guilt and forgiveness, India, Narrowboat, Netflix, parents, Technology, Travel memoir, writing

Photo:  our boat

So adjusting back, or rather into as we’re in a new life, has felt harder than we anticipated this week.  Especially technology.  E.g. My husband applying for jobs and doing CVs on his phone…

My trusty tablet failed me (Samsung S3) about which I’d kept saying, you just need to last the year, then I’ll get back and set up WiFi and go back to using a laptop.  Well we didn’t set up WiFi straight away, I thought perhaps I’d manage by going down the pub or hot spotting to my husband’s phone, not wanting to get bogged down in lots of contracts etc…. plus I’d got used to working on my tablet and thought I’d just get a keyboard for it…

I only lost a few hours of work- I religiously email everything to myself as often as I get a chance- it was more the shock when it suddenly decided to not recognise my password. I’ll need to factory reset it when I can face doing that.

Anyway now we have WiFi, there was a special offer on and we got a super cheap deal.  Setting it up was hard, then resigning in to everything, computer doing updates, blah blah blah, all was stressful.  But once I had put on all my emailed work, seeing all my chapters laid out on a big screen was nice and I’m sure it will be much easier to work where I can flit between documents easily.

And we watched Netflix (Quicksand, recommended by a friend of my husband, and The Sarah Connor Chronicles from Google Play) on the laptop; it was like being in the cinema!  After a year of watching everything on a phone or at most a tablet, it was amazing, I couldn’t get over how big the writing was!

Boat news:  I am now fully competent at emptying the cassette toilet and filling the water tank. We got a second futon off the secondhand site, and went to collect it one evening, and went out for a curry.

We were excited to chat to Indian people, the place was called Delhi something, but the people were from Bangladesh and hadn’t been to India.  We had a nice chat anyway.  We decided we don’t need to go out to eat after a year of doing it all the time, but I did enjoy putting on earrings, a nice top and a jacket (I have turned into a bit of a slob on the boat); and I did feel really happy:  evidence, see below:

Big walks have continued, I have almost made it into the next village (I go a bit further each time). Greggs vegan sausage rolls have continued.  I have a correction to last week’s post; there were not anti vegan sausage roll protests outside Greggs, everyone just thought there was.  A group of protesters had been hemmed in by police, just happened to be outside a Greggs…

We went to Norfolk and got spoiled with a lovely dinner, use of a luxury shower and luxury smoothies, and went to an event for my son showcasing his work prior to his exhibition in New York.

In the year that I’ve been away he’s bonded with my nephew who is younger.  My son did his CV and my son and his friends all helped prep him for the interview- he just got his first job- as well as providing socialising and fun.  I also got to meet my son’s new girlfriend, his agent and some new friends, who were all lovely people.

My son also sent me a lovely Mother’s Day email filled with memories of good things he remembers me doing when he was a child and teenager, and I think we’ve both put the past behind us (he was a troubled teen and I couldn’t manage his behaviour, or live with him by the time he was eighteen; he is almost thirty now).

So all good there.

I saw my mum, she was restrained in not asking me a lot of questions and I seem to have, for now, created better boundaries. However, my son and nephew told me that she had said (re me going off to India,) that I had had a mental breakdown/mid life crisis, so I’ll probably need to stay strong to ensure that that relationship stays within certain limits.

Has anyone watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer?  Do you remember the episode that fans hate, where she is shown in a mental hospital, having doubts as to whether any of the being a slayer world is real.  It’s never fully explained- she has been spiked with poison and could be just having visions- which is why fans hate it.  ‘What’s more real,’ she says to her best friend Willow, ‘A scared young girl in a mental hospital, or some kind of superhero slayer and vampires?’

In the mental hospital, her mum keeps saying, ‘Believe in yourself, believe in yourself,’ meaning come back to there.  After a lot of conflict, Buffy chooses to say goodbye to her parents and go back into the Buffy world.

Photos:

We have a beautiful location

There is also a caravan and camping area.  See loo emptying point on the right by the bins, a short wheelbarrow walk from our boat!

Sheep opposite our boat

Beyond the caravan area, a pond and trees

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house left job decluttered almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Just arrived back in the UK and now living on a narrowboat.  Writing a book about everything…

For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

Welcome to my world!

Tags

coming home after travelling, Greggs, Greggs vegan sausage rolls, Life on a narrowboat, Narrowboat, Narrowboat living, plant based diet, reverse culture shock, Tags and cats, Travel memoir, Vegan, veganism, writing

photo- where I work

photo- space: the final frontier. We’ve been scouring Gumtree (second hand site) for suitable seating. Furniture has to be multifunctional, narrow, foldable flat to get in, or all three! This is a Futon Company single futon

photo- when we get a second futon that will be our second chair and the folding chairs can just come out when we have visitors, or want to sit in the garden. It’s too hot with the wood burner if it’s a mild day so my husband bought an electric heater from Aldi for when a little heat is needed but not a roaring stove.  And then of course it turned cold again!

Welcome to my world

Right now, my ‘routine’ is as follows: Get up (not very early) (my husband has lit the fire and sometimes brought me tea in bed), do yoga, get dressed, do very minor chores e.g. sweep the floor, fill up drinking water bottles, do a few bits of hand washing, then have breakfast and go for a big walk.

In the afternoon I write for a couple of hours, then cook dinner. Breakfast is sugar free muesli with cacao, maca, linseed, chia seeds, a chopped apple or pear and soya milk. For dinner I cook something plant based from scratch; lentils, chickpeas, beans, vegetables, rice, potatoes, rice noodles, and coconut milk are all staple cupboard ingredients.

(In the interests of full transparency, during the day I often eat two iced buns or a Pot Noodle. I used to chastise my husband for living on Pot Noodles and cereal when he lived on a boat when we first met, but maybe there’s just something about boat life.)

In the evenings we listen to the radio- it’s so funny listening to Radio 4 again, it took a bit of fiddling to get the radio to work in the boat which is all metal, but it does, (as long as nobody moves); share a limited amount of data on my husband’s phone, listen to music, eat oranges, and talk. We have nothing to watch on Netflix, any recommendations please tell us!

Even though there are some nice footpath walks around, I’m currently doing a route along the A5 (a main road but it is quiet), with a good path along the side. I do this on average every other day and every time I go a little further. This is where my OCD tendencies come in handy! I am enjoying wrapping up and going for a walk. In SE Asia it was often too hot and the pavements in very poor condition, so this is a definite plus for the UK. I can already feel the benefit.

I have noticed how unfit I am from not having done anything much for a year. I can feel my arms and wrists working when I chop vegetables (admittedly my knives are rubbish, but still), or wringing out clothes, and I ached after emptying the cassette toilet even though I did it a day earlier than my husband would. (That would be a good fitness programme, empty the toilet after two days, then three, and so on…)

Up until now my husband has been doing the boat chores and DIY, as well as emptying the loo, filling the water tank, changing the gas bottle, chopping wood, fetching coal and lighting the fire, as well as all shopping, errands and all driving, as he wants me to be able to concentrate on writing. (I have a wonderful husband, I know.)

However I am going to make sure I learn how to do everything over the next few weeks. Today I plan to empty the toilet by myself, just as soon as I’ve had that iced bun…

PS My husband just arrived back with Greggs vegan sausage rolls! Greggs (a cheap and cheerful high street bakery) introducing a vegan sausage roll is big news in the UK. Actually we even heard about it when we were in South East Asia. Some meat eaters have been protesting (even though their pork sausage rolls have not been taken away); Piers Morgan, a presenter, spat it out after trying one on national breakfast television (even though according to my husband who can remember eating the meat ones the vegan ones don’t taste any different). So, civil war between vegans and non vegans, leavers and remainers, remind me again why we came back?!

photo- the kitchen, complete with iced buns!  The keys hanging up have a float, everything that can go into the canal, will go into the canal, they say

Thank you very much for reading

About the author

Sold house left job decluttered almost everything else.  With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India.   Here are my India highlights.  Just arrived back in the UK and now living on a narrowboat.  Writing a book about everything…

For more photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

Tales from the riverbank, part one

Tags

escape the matrix, Life on a narrowboat, Narrowboat, Narrowboat living

Tales from the riverbank, part one
For Ms Lockwood at The Lockwood Echo: not a real newspaper, one of my favourite blog names.
Photo: we have made friends with a swan

So re-entry went well, thanks to our forward planning and a touch of magic from the forces of the universe.

We left our hostel in Ho Chi Min, Vietnam at one thirty am local time on Thursday, flew to Bejing, had a few hours there then flew to London. We arrived in London at around six pm local time Thursday, after a journey of around twenty three hours.

We got the underground to Kings Cross. My husband pointed out that there were only four colours of clothes on the train and that I was the most outrageously dressed, in a burnt orange jumper and blue scarf.

We walked to the Travelodge, dumped our bags, had a quick wash, brushed our teeth, dressed as respectably and warmly as we could, and went out to the all you can eat Indian veg in Chapel Market with my husband’s children. They commented that we seemed much more together than they had expected, which we were pleased about. Ooh, but it was bitterly cold walking about that evening!

We went back to the room, watched five minutes of Netflix and fell asleep. The next morning I showered and washed my hair even though I didn’t feel like it, knowing I’d feel like it even less on the boat. I forgot that UK bathrooms are not all wet rooms like in India, so that’s why they have the sign explaining how to use a shower curtain… The toilet seat being cold on one’s bum, was a ‘new’ sensation.

In the spirit of making the most of hotel opportunities I had a big breakfast of Linda McCartney sausages, baked beans, mushrooms and tomatoes before we left for the train station.

A woman almost walked straight into my husband, she was looking at her phone. Everyone seemed to be in their own worlds. It was busy, but so quiet. We saw more homeless people in two minutes than we had in six days in Ho Chi Min.

When we got to Northampton we bought sleeping bags just in case all our bedding on the boat had gone mouldy, then got the bus to our village.

At the village we took photos at the bus stop like we had before we left. See blog post Nothing to lose but our dignity from March last year. We bought a few things from the shop and walked to the boat.

The boat was fine. Everything was dry inside, which felt like a miracle. Our clothes, our bedding, our mattress, everything was fine. It was Friday afternoon. After lighting the fire and eating beans on toast we went to the yard over the road with the wheelbarrow and got coal, logs and kindling. We went back there again Saturday morning and got another bag of coal. The yard is closed Saturday afternoon and Sunday all day, so arriving back Friday afternoon was perfect.

We had a warm welcome from our landlord, and we met some of the other boat people again, which was nice.

We weren’t as tired as we had feared, and it wasn’t as hard as we’d feared. But we were tired. The first night I wondered was it too late to message someone, then looked at the time and saw it was only 8.20!

As well as sleeping, the first few days have been spent unpacking and sorting out where to put things. Rediscovering things in the cupboards and drawers; jeans, natural shampoo, moisturiser, and best of all, Marmite! Enjoying Heinz tomato soup and toast with wholefood peanut butter after a good walk.

The garage came and collected the car on Monday, it passed its MOT easily and we walked to collect it on Tuesday.

We had five days on the boat before we went anywhere. I couldn’t believe it had been five days! We’d hardly done anything, and yet I couldn’t have done any more. It was the best possible place to be post re-entry, on a boat at the edge of a village. It was nice not having a car and just using the village shop and not having to brave a big supermarket.

Walking about, everything seems really clean. A bit plain, but nice and green, with blue skies when they are there. Dogs seem really big!

No street sellers, no plastic tables and chairs on the pavement creating a pop up cafe, with a karaoke set up on a motorbike stopping by to add to the party, like in Vietnam.

We walked 3.7 miles to the garage and aside from our village shop at the start, we didn’t pass a single shop. Not like in India, where there’s always food and drink nearby, someone selling chai, a street vendor selling bananas.

My husband said, it’s the price we pay for law and order, regular rubbish collections and clean drinking water, things are sanitised, and therefore in comparison, a bit boring.

Feeling the matrix now that we are back in the UK but remembering, interface with it on your own terms. Stay in the present, stick to the plan. Finish the book. Maintain the blog. Keep frequency high. Keep fear at bay.

Realising, now is the time to let go my fingertips from the cliff face and trust fall into the universe. Not the trip, now. This is the new life.

Thank you very much for reading

the end and the beginning

Tags

Anything is possible, escape the matrix, Minimalism, Narrowboat, Narrowboat living, Travel, Voluntary simplicity

In April 2017 we asked ourselves, what would we do if we could do anything?  The answer was stop working and go off travelling.
Just less than a year later, in March 2018, we left good jobs, sold our house, gave away most of our possessions and went to South East Asia, mainly India, for a year.  Here are my India highlights.

Getting from April 2017 to March 2018 was scary at times.  B, a fellow blogger and now friend who I met here on WP, sent me the Rilke quote above which is useful now too.

Before we left the UK we bought a narrowboat to live on when we get back.  It is moored in an area that was unfamiliar to either of us, we spent two very happy weeks on it before we left.

It’s natural to feel some anxiety about our return home (in less than a week!) and there have been times when it has tipped into fear.  With regular meditation helping I have recently experienced it as excitement rather than anxiety, and the future being unmapped as seeming expansive and joyful rather than scary.

I’ve channelled my anxiety into getting this week’s and next week’s blog posts prepared and scheduled.  The following week I hope to be back with an update re life back in the UK and on the boat.

I am not full of doom and gloom about returning to the UK, I’m excited about seeing friends and family.  My son has done amazingly well since we’ve been away, as well as facing his fears and getting his teeth done, his career as an artist has taken off, and his work is being exhibited in New York in May, see flier below!

Thank you very much for reading

For photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

What’s next?

Tags

Change your life, escape the matrix, Minimalism, Narrowboat, Narrowboat living, Travel, Voluntary simplicity

Okay so we’ve bought the flights home and have five weeks left of this trip, so I’m allowing myself a look at ‘What happens next?’ whilst otherwise staying in the trip, being open to possibilities, and knowing that we don’t ever really know what’s going to happen…

Our flight arrives in the evening so we will stay a night or two in London then get a morning train to Northampton, then a bus to our village.  That way we have time to get coal, kindling, firelighters, water, food, etc.

Food and smaller items can be got from the local shop which is walking distance, and near the bus stop.  We think we have some coal, but if not there is a yard over the road we can walk to and bring back using a wheelbarrow.  (Must ensure we don’t arrive back on a Sunday when yard will be closed…)

Our clothes and bedding have been left on the boat for a year, so we’re hoping that everything is not mouldy…

We’ll need to get the car MOTd, we will ask our landlord to recommend a garage and book it in in advance.

As soon as the car is MOTd and the boat is basically set up i.e. dusted and warmed and bedding aired/at worst replaced, we will go to London to see my husband’s kids, bring one back who wants to come and stay; go to Norwich to see my son, and see the rest of family and friends.

There’ll be several trips to Norfolk and London and some longer trips over the coming months to visit people further afield.

And amongst all that: job applications/agency sign up; sell India stuff (we sent some stuff back to sell); finish the book, and maintain the blog.

I’m looking forward to being home on the boat and cooking proper meals from scratch in my own kitchen.  In the two weeks that we lived on the boat before we left, I really enjoyed that.

I’d also like to make my own natural cleaning products; and also toothpaste, shampoo, hand/body wash, hand cream, face moisturiser and body lotion, to reduce plastic waste and chemical use.  If I do a couple of products, I’ll be pleased.

There’s some activities/organisations/online movements that can support our lifestyle: meditation; going to classes/getting involved at the local Buddhist centre; LETS schemes; Vegan events; the Buy nothing, Minimalism and Voluntary simplicity movements, should we need/want.

I feel that our return to the UK and our new life on the boat will be a whole new adventure.

Thank you very much for reading

For pictures of our trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

Nothing to lose but our dignity

Tags

India, Minimalism, Stewart Lee

The dear little brown rabbit is to accompany me on my travels and be photographed for Instagram followingthebrownrabbit.  Well that’s the intention, maybe they will just be cuddled a lot and see me through my anxiety.  Anxiety, anxiety, anxiety interspersed with feeling very excited.

The Lovely Bones (a book about a girl who gets murdered and the aftermath for her family), apparently the title has nothing to do with ‘bones’ but about the support structures that spring up around people after a loss.

On Friday night we went out for leaving drinks with my husband’s sister, her daughter and her new boyfriend, and my son.  Seeing everyone was really lovely.  Especially lovely was seeing my sister-in-law getting on really well with my son, taking the time to chat to him one to one and being genuinely interested in and praising his art and his talent.  Nicest of all, she initiated them exchanging phone numbers and talking about meeting up to go round art galleries together.

Today, she said she’d be there for him while we were away.  My husband thanked her for me and she said, I just looked at him and I thought I need to get your phone number, you are Rachel’s son.  I cried then I was so touched.  Another friend of mine, an artist, has called him about collaborating/advice.

So I have learned this week:
1. There’s no such thing as a free lunch (see previous post)
2. There really is light in the darkest of places, as long as one remembers to turn on the light (from Harry Potter)
3. The Lovely Bones, one of my favourite books, is named after a concept that has come true for me this week
4. Don’t leave it until the window goes from green to red to empty the boat toilet (very heavy).  It might not be one of the best jobs of boat life, but little and often is the key.

On our way!  Me and my husband at the bus stop this morning!  We are staying  tonight with a friend in London and flying to Delhi on Monday evening.

This is my empty clothes drawer and the pile in the photo above is all of my clothes that I am leaving.  I realised today that I haven’t worn hardly any of them since being on the boat, but also that I have lots that I love, plenty of warm things as well as summer and going out clothes; a very small amount- that drawer wasn’t even half full- but that I really love.  I have so few clothes compared to a year or two ago, yet I am infinitely more satisfied with my wardrobe (drawer).

I am excited, I am happy and I absolutely can’t wait to get to beautiful, beautiful India!

Lots of love to everyone, and special greetings to readers in India!
xxx

PS on the way home from Norfolk on Friday (while I was in the loo unfortunately) my husband saw Stewart Lee in the garage and was able to shake his hand and tell him how much he loves his stuff.  Then for our party night last night (for our last night on the boat) we spent most of the evening watching Stuart Lee on YouTube.  There is zero chance of him reading this, but if he is, we love you!

 

The Price of Freedom

Tags

family, India, stress

To paraphrase The Rolling Stones, you can ask for what you want, but you can’t control exactly how what you have asked for will be given to you.

So here I am, at last, finally, an independent adult.  Not beholden to my mother.

My mother gave me quite a bit of financial help with buying my house.  She also bought a woodburner for the house.  So I felt bad about wanting to give up my stressful career, sell up, downsize, go travelling, and return to live somewhere smaller, cheaper, simpler and with lower overheads so I could do a less stressful job.  It didn’t feel like it was solely up to me in the way that it would have been had I always been totally financially independent.

So it was with trepidation that I raised it with her and it took me a few conversations before I was able to clearly articulate what it was I wanted to do and stick to it.

The first time I brought up the subject of selling the house, I offered to give her her money back.  She said no, she didn’t want it.  She actually said she didn’t want me selling the house to raise money for travelling, she would give me money instead, as a kind of advance on my inheritance.

I said I didn’t want her to do that, that I had had enough money already, but she was very forceful.  With my mother, large sums of money can be talked about as if they were nothing, and without really talking about it.

So I went off agreeing to consider renting out the house instead, even though that wasn’t what I wanted to do, and she never actually mentioned the idea of giving me travelling money again.

So again I plucked up the courage to say I was selling the house, in order to raise money for travelling, and because I didn’t want to be a landlord for a property in the UK whilst I was in India.

My mother insisted that we could do the trip on the rental income alone, but even if there were no gaps in tenants and no problems like non payment or ruined carpets, I knew we couldn’t.  Plus it was never just about going travelling, it was a whole life re-set that I wanted.

Time went by, the house went on the market in December, and completed early March.  Although I knew she wasn’t happy about me selling the house, I had thought she had accepted it.  I popped in for cups of tea, she asked a few polite questions about our travel plans and gave me a rucksack.

And then at 10:06 on Monday, after I had texted her to let her know we had booked our flights and were leaving for our year long trip to India the following Monday, she called and asked for her money back.

One of the many lessons of all this is to communicate one’s feelings and expectations clearly and openly, especially when it comes to money.  But I am sure I am not the only person who has difficulties in this area, especially when dealing with a very powerful family member.

So here I am, at last, finally, an independent adult.  Not beholden to my mother.  Not living near my mother (India aside, the boat is three hours away). Completely free, even of her influence.

I used to feel boggy, awkward, inauthentic in her company.  Unknown.  Whereas with my husband I feel completely safe and totally accepted. Known.

It shouldn’t be a competition or a choice but my mother has made her disapproval of my husband clear.  He, who has made me so happy, who makes me so happy.  The implication being that he is after my money (when we met I had a small starter home with a mortgage, he had a narrowboat, we both worked full time, both worked really hard, both fulfilled financial responsibilities to our children.  I also very much resent the implication that no one could love me just for myself).

Our friends observe that we make each other very, very happy. We share the same values.  We have supported each other with everything for almost a decade.

In the middle of this bombshell, my friend H, a lovely ray of sunshine, came to stay on the boat for the night.  It was just what we needed, and distracted us through the worst.  After H left, we went into Northampton, found somewhere to eat using the Happy Cow app, over ordered from a delicious range of yummy vegan food and treats, and caught our breath.

In spite of everything, I felt relieved, even happy.  We both began to see it as a potentially positive event in our lives.

Maybe we needed it to be just us, so that we can find out just what we’re capable of.

Sanguine.
I thought it meant unruffled, calm and philosophical.
We looked it up, actually it means optimistic and positive, especially in an apparently bad or difficult situation.  Better, more ‘evolved’ than I realised.  I asked us, can we move from calm and philosophical to cheerful and optimistic?

I regard us as being in the middle of the continuum.  If at one end is me coming back from India and being able to say to my mother, Wow, what was all that about, can we talk about it?

Then at the other end is as my husband said, some people would beg and plead, What have I done, why, why.  Or get angry, refuse to give the money back.  Or cry.  Well that’s good, I said, and laughed, because I am definitely not doing any of those things.

So yes, maybe we are currently somewhere in the middle, and if we can move from my definition to the dictionary definition of sanguine, then I shall be very pleased.

Oh yes and by the way, we are flying to India on Monday!

Mera naam Rachel hai

Aapase milakar khushee huee

Follow me on Instagram followingthebrownrabbit.

Thank you for reading.

PS I have had very limited internet access since moving onto the boat and lots of travel related admin to do when I have, so I haven’t been reading many blogs.  I have still been thinking of you all though, and I wish my fellow bloggers and readers well.  Thank you for all your support xxx