We have sold our house, visited our sons, sorted the packing. And now we are back at the boat. The plan was to be back on the move by now. So why are we still moored in Lyme View Marina?
It is all about Ziggy. We have two dogs – Lulu and Ziggy. Last week we took them to the vets to get their teeth cleaned. Lulu was fine but when the vets checked Ziggy’s blood, she was found to have really low sugar levels. Since then she has undergone a number of tests and the vets have ruled out the most common diseases. We have left Scotland because we no longer have a house, but the vet there has called us to say the most likely problem is an insulinoma, a growth on the pancreas.
So rather than setting off on our journeys we have registered with a local vet near Manchester and are waiting for a an ultrasound scan to see what is going on. Ziggy seems fine in herself so hopefully it is not too serious, although the prognosis for insulinoma is not great.
In all honesty I am finding it a little frustrating. I want to be back on “the cut”, cruising the canals. But Ziggy is family and family comes first.
At least this gives us time to do some house hunting and have some adventures. It was not my plan, but sometimes plans have to change. Apparently.
By the time this blog is published, we will be houseless. After nearly two years on the market our house in Scotland should complete its sale today and will have new owners – a lovely family who will get to enjoy the history of this nineteenth century farmhouse which became swallowed by a new town in the shale oil revolution around 1900.
I deliberately use the word “houseless” not “homeless” because we still have a home on our narrowboat. Dictionaries define “home” as simply the house where you live, but I think it means more. You know you are home when you sit down with a happy sigh. It is the place where you feel most comfortable and most safe. So much more than a house.
And when we arrived back at the boat last night we immediately felt at home. It just feels so right to be here. Putting all our stuff into storage this week has been pretty stressful. It has also reminded me how over the years we have collected things that we really don’t need. We are no happier in a house surrounded by chattels than we are in the boat where we have very little.
We do still want a house as a base for winters, and for the future when we can no longer operate locks or moveable bridges. Next week we will be staying with our eldest son and his fiancée near Brighton. We are looking forward to seeing them and their new home. And when we then return to the boat, we will properly start our house hunt.
But for now it is great to be home on Narrowboat Thuis. Entirely appropriately “Thuis” is Dutch for “home”.
I have written before that one of my hobbies is researching my family tree. This week I received a pack of old photographs from one of my Mum’s cousins. He has been tidying his house and knew that I am interested in the family, so sent them to me. He kindly annotated the backs of the pictures when he knew who they were, but this photograph was blank.
Most of the pictures are from the family of a man called John Davies, a distant cousin who was a chaplain serving in the Royal Navy, I knew the navy had chaplains but did not realise that they sailed on the ships for many months, just like ordinary sailors. John also served on submarines where he said that the confined space led to depression and need of a chaplain.
There were also photographs and newspaper articles about John’s relations. His father and grandfather were also priests, working in a small area of Wales. His grandmother was a very posh looking woman called Dorothy Jebb. She is my great great aunt and came from a very wealthy family.
But I am still stuck on this photograph. He looks a very smart soldier, I am guessing from the First World War. With three crosses on his wrist, perhaps he was a captain? John and his father both had low eyebrows, so it is not them.
In future times perhaps AI will allow me to search this photograph and find who it was, but for now I think it is sad that such a photograph, maybe made for a mother or sweetheart, cannot be identified. I will raise a glass to him.
Mandy and I have moved house twelve times since we have been together. It has become a joke amongst some of our friends who say they never know where to send the Christmas card. I often claimed that it had just become normal for us. People would ask me why I never wanted to put down roots. I would say that we are just good at setting up a new home anywhere we go.
But this time feels more stressful.
As you know we are retired and spend more than half the year on our narrowboat. That certainly feels like home when we are there. But we want to keep a house for the winter, when it is muddy. We want to keep a house for when we get bored of the boat or are too infirm to open locks. We want to keep a house so we have somewhere with a little more space for our stuff.
And this time, instead of moving for my work, we are moving closer to Mandy’s family and friends, from Scotland to Lancashire. This week we have been spending time in both as we look to sell and buy.
The sale process has been fraught. We have been “on the market” for two years and twice we have thought the sale was happening. The first time the buyer turned out not to have the money after several months. The second time, the chain of buyers fell apart at the last moment. We have waited and we hope that in two weeks we will be moved out. It has been stressful, and the solicitors are still throwing out last minute complications such as whether we can find some paperwork the council signed off when we did work on the house seven years ago. But the removal company is booked and we have begun things like cancelling utilities. We have not enjoyed selling the house at all.
We have tried to keep buying a house less stressful but we have failed. The idea was not to look at houses until we were sure the sale was happening. Our plan instead is to live on the boat while we look. But last time we were confident and found a lovely house. Of course that has gone after the failed sale, so this week we have been looking again, with our fingers crossed on the sale. This weekend we are driving round Lancashire viewing our shortlist of houses. This should be an enjoyable time. It should be exciting to find our new home. But for some reason we are not feeling excited. Perhaps it is the worry that the sale could still fail. Perhaps it is the worry that we will make a bad choice. We are not enjoying buying the house at all.
I am naturally a very positive person. I am confident it will all work out for the best. But I don’t this stress. Maybe it is because I no longer have the stress of work, so this seems like a bigger deal. Maybes it is because it is summer, and we would rather be back on the canals. But we just want to hide in our narrowboat.
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