Start a revolution

Do you feel helpless in the face of terrorism? Do you wish our nation was less full of fear and hatred? Do you wish for a friendlier neighbourhood? Well we are not helpless. We can make a difference!

Let's start a smile revolution! I have noticed increasingly that people don't look at each other any more. We don't meet each other's eyes. We don't smile. We walk along in our individualistic little boxes with our ears blocked by music and our hearts blocked by fear. Oh and the newest one, our eyes blocked by Pokemon Go! If we can block people out this way then it is much easier to fear and then hate the stranger. If it is easier to hate or fear then it is easier to imagine killing them.

But there is another way. Lift up your chins and walk tall. When you pass someone in the street, smile at them. If they smile back, perhaps say 'Good Morning' or 'Nice day, isn't it.' If they look away and don't respond then don't feel rejected and think to yourself 'Well, sod that, I won't smile at them again'. Just think gosh, they are still trapped in fear of the stranger, fear of human contact, poor them.

If you are wasting time in a queue or perhaps on public transport, smile at the person next to you. It might be you can actually have a conversation. It might be they look at you as if you are barking and nervously move away. That doesn't matter. If enough of us start a smile revolution then I am convinced it will spread. If it spreads then we will start to see strangers as people again and people as part of our community. And if we don't choose who to smile at but just include everybody then I am convinced that barriers of sex, of race, of class will start to be broken down.

We are all human beings facing the same issues, the same hopes and dreams, the same fears. Come on, let's smile at our common humanity.

Let us start a smile revolution!

Good to be home

Things I love about being back on my mooring:
1. Watching the queues on the Fradley lock flight, knowing I don't have to join them.
2. Knowing where I am going to be moored tomorrow, and where the nearest water, rubbish point and shops are.
3. Using my car to go to the laundry and shops and so no humping heavy loads about.
4. Getting my garden mooring back into shape by strimming, mowing and clipping.
5. Having a big empty space behind me as the next two boats have given up the mooring.
6. Catching up with friends here and further afield.
7. Watching Bonny, happy and relaxed at home and mooching around the mooring with no lead on!
8. Getting her, my boat, my car and myself serviced.
9. Being reminded how beautiful and peaceful it is here.

I am still considering my options as far as future moorings are concerned but my feeling at present is that I'd be very lucky to find another mooring as lovely as this one.

Almost Back

My home mooring

I am only a day away from my home mooring at Fradley. I don't expect it to look as neat as in the above picture as I haven't been there for four months!

I am experiencing a mix of emotions. I have loved the cruise. I love mooring in new places and finding unexpectedly brilliant walks. I have loved seeing Bonny transform from an anxious, disobedient dog to a pretty chilled and happy one who is (mostly) very obedient. I have loved feeling my confidence grow as I tackled new cruising challenges. Most of all I have loved the freedom of it all. I can choose when to move, how far to go and where to moor up. I can choose to stop for a week or move on the next day. I am free of a timetable, free of 'shoulds' and 'oughts', free of other people's expectations.

But I am also happy to be heading home. It is nearly August and the cut is getting really crowded. It will be a relief to be moored up and not have to move on every few days. It will be good to get my car back and not to have to carry my shopping for miles. It will be good to see friends I left behind on the mooring and also friends further afield.

I will be visiting my friends Graham and Jan Finch who went from boat to land based living in April. Also living in Yorkshire are my friends Brian and Cynthia so I will be killing two birds with one stone. Then I will be house sitting for Roger and Shirleyann while they are in Canada. Such a hardship, staying in a lovely house in Devon and catching up with friends I made when I used to live there. Bonny loves it there too, even though she gets bossed about a bit by Maisie the cat!

Before that I need to give my tough little boat a well deserved service. There is also a list of jobs on her that I will need paid help with. Then there is Bonny's service at the vets and the car to MOT. Between all that I shall be deciding what to do next!

Meanwhile I am moored near Handsacre where there is a terrific circular walk. In the morning I'll pop into Kings Bromley Marina for the first time since I worked there, for a pump out and diesel up.

Then I shall either have one more night moored in the woods or just go straight down my last lock flight in a while. I have been totting up and in my four month cruise I have worked 311 locks, various lift and swing bridges and cruised 422 miles. Time for a rest methinks!

Proud of our boxes?

During this morning's cruise I passed by a small, prefab type bungalow with the biggest, most imposing entrance I have ever seen. Massive wrought iron gates with stone lions on either side, leading to a sweeping gravel driveway, leading to what was essentially a box and a pretty ugly one at that.

It set me to thinking about how proud most of us are with the boxes we live in and how much debt we are prepared to get into in order to be able to buy a box of our own. Some boxes are tiny and attached to other boxes. Some are beautifully decorated or very old. Some boxes are massive and incredibly expensive. Some are little bigger than a shoe box but because of their location they cost a fortune. But they are all basically the same; four walls and a roof that we live in.

Of course I also live in a box but mine has a huge advantage over the most imposing, expensive mansion of a box you can think of: my box isn't fastened to the ground and so I can see the world in it. So, whilst quietly sneering at the value other people place on their boxes, I am just as proud of my own!

Everybody needs somewhere to call home. Everybody needs a box of some sort. But it seems to me that the world is out of kilter when you can't buy even the smallest box without being in debt for the best part of 30 years. Worse still some people own more than one box and leave the spare empty for most of the year while there are people out there whose only box is made of cardboard. There must be a better way?

Almost home?

This is the view from my loo near Deptmore Lock on the Staffs and Worcester Canal. Tomorrow we will stop at Great Haywood for a few days and then, after a stop in at Kings Bromley Marina to pump and diesel, we will be home for the first time since 3rd April.

You will note the ? in the title of this post. That is because I am no longer sure what home means. If it is somewhere I spend most of my time then it is now the boat. And yet, returning to Fradley still feels like going home. But in another sense it doesn't, because Fradley no longer feels permanent to me.

It has been a wonderful place to live and work for nearly 7 years but whilst out on my travels I have seen other places and other choices regarding mooring. Being in new places with new walks and new people has made me wonder whether I will be content to settle back down in familiar surroundings.

My options currently are: a) stay on the mooring at Fradley for the winter and cruise the rest of the time. b) Let go of the mooring and continuously cruise all year round. c) Cruise during the season and go into a marina for the winter. d) Find another permanent mooring.

This cruising season has taught me that I am not yet ready for option b. Option c felt good for a while but I really do feel very claustrophobic in marinas, plus there are issues over what to do with my car while I am cruising. Option d has suddenly leapt to the top of the list as I have seen a mooring on the Shropshire Union which, I think, would suit me very well. It is more peaceful than Fradley but still has a large number of boats moored there, so there would be people around. It is around £100 cheaper a year and yet has a water supply actually on the mooring  and you can take your car all the way to your boat, two things Fradley doesn't offer. It would satisfy my need for change and novelty on a canal that I really love.

No decision yet though. I am planning to have a chat with the farmer who owns the mooring and a look round next month when I have my car back. I also want to spend time back at Fradley to see how that feels. Either of these options mean I still retain a base that I can call 'home' and for practical reasons are the easiest options. I rather hope that eventually I could let go of the need to have a base at all and be brave enough to be a continuous cruiser, but I'm not there yet.

How to defeat evil

Like everybody I have been shocked and deeply saddened by yet another example of man's brutality to man. The inevitable question is raised: what can we do in the face of such evil?

Some people have posted prayers, asking for their god to intervene. Others have pointed fingers at a particular group of people to say 'Its their fault'. Most I think just feel helpless and some perhaps don't think about it at all as it hasn't happened to them or theirs.

My own answer is that I think it starts with every single one of us. It starts when we think of ourselves as 'us' and another human being as 'them'. They might be people of a different religion, or no religion. They may be people who support different politics. They may have voted leave... or remain. They may have been born in this country or they aspire to come here to live the good life. They might have a posh house and aristocratic ancestors, they might be begging in the street or burgling your home. They might be black, white, female or male. They may call themselves freedom fighters while we call them terrorists. They might just be people who piss us off. We all, myself included, have people or groups of people we think of as 'them'.

But as soon as a person becomes 'them' to us, they become smaller. They are less important, less worthy of respect or even human rights. It gives us someone to blame when things go wrong or when we don't get our own way. It gives us someone to hate, or at least to feel superior to. In short, 'they' become the enemy. And the more people who agree with 'us' and gang up against 'them', the safer and more right we feel.

So I have decided today to do my very best to root out 'them' from my life and to see all people as 'us'. It is going to be hard as I am a very judgemental person. It is going to be hard because it bolsters my ego to be agreed with and to be part of 'us'. It will be particularly hard if I meet someone like the human being who used a lorry to mow down children. But I believe that, until we do this, evil will triumph and we will keep experiencing events like that which happened in France.

I know people will say that by taking this approach you condone evil people and evil acts. They may be right. But I think to confront evil at its source, we need to look into our own hearts, rather than others. Anyway, it's worth a try.

Turning back

Bonny enjoying the natural cover on an embankment!

I have been cruising since April 3rd and have only turned back on myself twice. Once when I reached Thrupp on the South Oxford in May and again just the other day as I start back up the Shroppie, heading back to my home mooring at Fradley. Travelling at my usual pace, I should get there at the beginning of August.

I have absolutely no idea where the time has gone. I am in my fourth month of cruising and yet it feels like I've only been out a few weeks! The cruising and mooring, walking and sitting, intense activity followed by inaction all feels so natural to me. Yes there have been challenges, both physical and mental. There have been days (especially on yet another rainy day) where I have felt quite low and other days where I want to bellow out the Michael Buble song 'Feeling good'.

I can't tell yet what changes, if any, have been wrought in me by my solitary journey. I see more clearly the changes in Bonny. She is so much more relaxed and at peace with herself and with me. She is happy mostly to stay near the boat rather than constantly looking to be somewhere else and she is more trustworthy and trusting. Having said that, she disappeared out of the above embankment this afternoon. I went to look where she had gone, only to hear a pathetic little whimper. She had been hunting by the reeds for mice and had fallen in the water. There was so much silt she could stand up, but she couldn't jump back onto the bank. That will teach her!