Crochet by Lantern Light (The 'Kathy' Chronicles - pt 2)

WELCOME

It’s summertime and, as the song goes, the living is easy, and it’s time for a slightly different summer readings as we continue with The Kathy Chronicles. Although tonight the rain is sweeping across the valley below us. We are on a rather uncharacteristic part of the canal at the moment. Usually, canals follow fairly rigid channels, often following river valleys. You get used to looking up to things. But here, we are on a high embankment. To our left, the ground drops sharply away to a broad glacial valley of old woodland and fields. Prosperous looking farmhouses are scattered along the valley floor, their roofs shining in the rain. From time to time a distant dog barks. The rain flicks and patters on the canal. To our right the ground drops away giddily, almost vertically to acres of tree plantations. Conifers. A bird’s eye view of military rows of Christmas trees.  

This year’s summer readings are a bit different, so come inside out of the wet. It’s warm and dry. The coffee pot is still hot, the biscuit barrel is full. So come inside and welcome aboard.

INTRODUCTION TO THE KATHY CHRONICLES - PT 2

A couple of weeks ago in episode 124 (‘A little clinker-built boat’) I read a couple of chapters from Mum’s unpublished autobiography, Life and Erica, in which she explained the reasons behind their decision to live on board a boat on the canal at the tail end of the 1950s – a period of her life that she always looked back upon with great fondness. Even when, in later life, her memories were fading she would often happily chat about life on the boat and at the moorings. There are probably many reasons for this. Having fairly recently arrived back (almost penniless) from Canada, she and Dad (Mick) were once more starting out on their life together. The stress and tribulations of what, reading between the lines, was clearly not an altogether easy time abroad had clearly cemented their relationship together and made it rock solid. They were both still young and finding their way in a world that was filled with possibilities – these were the post-war years when rationing was now, slowly, ending, and everyone’s thoughts were to the future. Wendy, my sister, had just been born and was soon to be on the way. The boat, therefore, formed a cradle in more ways than one. Literally for both Wendy and myself, but also for the formation of us as a family – that challenging transition from a couple (and their cat) to a family. Arguably, the Kathy constituted the cradle for us as a family. It is therefore, perhaps, not surprising that this was the time, along with her childhood, that, for Mum, became the golden period of her life and to which her mind and her thoughts would naturally settle.

The response to that episode was one of greatest I have received for any podcast episode with so many people asking to hear for more. Therefore, over the next couple of weeks, I will read her entire account of when we all lived on a boat.  

In part 1 we heard how Mum and Dad, with an 18-month-old Wendy and cat Kismus, decided to move out of their rented accommodation at the Plough pub in Chesham and live on a boat. After a bit of a search, they eventually found a possible boat, the Kathy. She was a 30-foot, wooden, clinker-built, ex-ship’s lifeboat that had been converted, by adding an engine and a cabin, into a holiday cruiser. She cost the princely sum of £180.

Mum and Dad had already secured moorings for their new home (once they had found it) at Hampton Hall Farm, near Batchworth lock in Rickmansworth. It was essentially a stretch of off-side mooring alongside grazing pasture that was owned by the farmer, Frank Chapman.

We then heard about how they brought the Kathy up the Thames and onto the Grand Union canal and up to their home mooring in Rickmansworth. An undertaking that was more challenging and adventurous than they had initially planned.

We now take up Mum’s story….       

[READING]