Warning! This post mentions toilets!

...and here I was waiting for an Indian summer. Instead, it's raining so hard that there are drips coming in through previously impregnable areas, and a man on a boat up the canal just told me that he'd seen a picture of a boat near York that had taken on so much water it had sunk. Sinking in the rain just adds insult to injury.

At least I'm not sitting here and thinking that if only the sun was out my handmade solar panels would be raking in the power. Because I haven't made them yet. Back in the balmy depths of August, I went down to the wilds of Buckinghamshire and made this:

Me with my solar panel in the sun :-)

...which is a mini solar panel made from damaged solar cells. The course, down with the lovely people from Lili (or Low Impact Living Initiative, if you want to get technical), was run by Norman who used to live on a boat. With a lot of solar panels. Result!

I uncovered an innate talent for soldering, which is what you have to do to link those squares together, and have a grand plan to make some really big ones to go on the roof of the boat and charge my batteries and save on my diesel bill. And save the planet, natch. Unfortunately, the only progress I have made so far towards this goal is to build some big boxes (out of reclaimed timber, I might add) on the roof to keep my wood store in, which will then be the the base for the solar panels to sit on. Watch this space.

In the meantime, I am thinking about toilets. Not such a stretch as it seems. Norman was useful in soooo many ways! I mentioned to him that, at some point in the distant future when I had £700 or so to spare, I was going to invest in an economy compost loo. Note that. An ECONOMY compost loo costs £700. Unless, that is, you're up for a spot of DIY...

I'm going to get a bit specific here, on the basis that if you want to know about compost toilets on boats you'll want to know it all, and if you don't you'll stop reading. You know which you are.

Anyway, toilets are a big deal on a boat. They'd be a big deal in a house as well, if you didn't have the main sewer doing all the dirty work. We started off on our boat with a pumpout and a macerator loo, which means everything gets chewed up and stored in a tank, which you have to go and pump out. Here is a picture of me in front of the very best pumpout ever:

The Pooh truck in Stone

This was on the Trent and Mersey, taken whilst I was assisting in the Epic Voyage of Tinker from Macclesfield to Wiltshire (see @boatpoet for more). Unfortunately, we have no such service on our bit of the Leeds/Liverpool, and had to take the best part of two days to go up canal to pump out, always a nasty job. Raw sewage smells a bit like mouldy, pureed cauliflower. The final straw, however, was the freezing in of the boat in the winter, when we couldn't move the boat at all and therefore had no means of pumping out anything. I shall leave that to your imaginations. So, with a interim period with a Portaloo, I aimed for a compost arrangement. And here I must add the comment made by @muckyboatlady, who told me hers was, 'the most basic compost loo possible ie a bucket with sawdust, but infinitely preferable to fishing other people tampons out of macerator, or dealing with yucky elsan, had it about 6 months def been least bad option for us :)' 

Can't disagree with that...

Sorry about all this. It's an occupational habit. Get two boaters in a room (or on Twitter) and they'll be talking about toilets in seconds.

So it was that I ended up reading reports entitled 'Urine Diversion: One Step Towards Sustainable Sanitation'. Which, in case you're wondering, is 'the current state of the art of urine-diverting systems, with focus on Swedish experiences of urine diversion.' They are really into this in Sweden. They have whole apartment blocks where the poo goes down a tube and is stored in vats in the basement for compost, and the wee is collected and sprayed over the communal gardens. It's the way we're going to save the world!

Or, for me, the way I get to avoid taking the removeable bit of the Portaloo down to the village every week.

You see, if you keep the wet away from the solid, the solid doesn't smell. And then you can put it in a compost bin every so often, where it will turn into humanure. Don't worry, my mum didn't get the concept either. But to do this, you need a urine diverter. Either you can spend £700 and get this:

Airhead Compact

...or, as Norman pointed out, find the separating bit and build your own. Which I am going to do. Rather than go into the (somewhat boring and geeky) details, I'll just show you some pictures.





My newly acquired (from the rather super Little House Company) separator looks like this:

Add some surround and a bucket, and we're in business.

I would like my new toilet to look like this:

...which, as well as being named the Duchamp du Loo, is on a barge in New York. That's a cool loo. You can go and read about it yourself here: http://www.appropedia.org/WaterPod_Composting_Toilet#Duchamp_de_Loo

Enough, enough! My tea is ready and I want to sit back and watch some iPlayer. If the rain calms down enough for the broadband signal to get through.

I will post more pictures once my toilet is done. THAT'S A PROMISE! ;-) Although I am aware, as my daughters point out on a regular basis, that not everyone shares my enthusiasm. Funny, that...

Water leaks and dirty nails

The kids don’t like it when I have to get down into the engine room. Not only does it open up a hole in the back deck so they can’t get out, but it really gets in the way of mealtimes. They bring me cups of tea and listen to me swear and, sometimes, weep with frustration, and probably wonder why we don’t live in a house. Maybe not that. Maybe just that someone else would come and fix the engine.

I got dressed the other day in whatever came to hand first. Gabe looked up at me and said, ‘Is there something wrong with the engine?’ His voice had an edge of hollow acceptance. ‘It’s just,’ he explained, ‘that you’re wearing your engine T-shirt.’ I wasn’t planning on engine work that day. I couldn’t, actually, because the parts that I needed to fix the leak hadn’t arrived.

Water leaks on a boat are Not Good News. This leak had been going for a while, at a constant slightly-more-than-steady-dripping rate. The bilge pump is automatic, so in theory would clear out the water before it got to critical levels. Sometimes, though, it forgets to turn itself off, and going on pumping and pumping. This usually wakes me up, making me stagger out of bed to flick the switch on and off before the motor burns itself out, letting the water rise without opposition and the boat sink. The cats think that I am getting up early just to give them some early breakfast. Or a midnight feast. They should be so lucky.

I realised some three weeks or so after it started that the leak wasn’t coming from where I thought it was. That the extra layers of silicone I’d been layering on to that gasket were making no difference to the worn seal at the back of the pump. It turned out to be an easy refit, however. Ged next door knew exactly what it needed, and all I had to do was undo four nuts and release two pipes. And then reverse the above once the pump had been given new seals and bearings and camshaft. It wasn’t even that hard to get at. No leak now.

These jobs, though, are never welcome. They take up time. They make your nails black and your skin oily. They usually mean you have to twist your body into an unnatural shape for minutes at a time whilst you try to edge a spanner into place. And they usually come at exactly the wrong time. I felt for @muckyboatlady when she tweeted recently, ‘Water pump is making a funny noise. But I am wearing a big floaty dress and don’t want to go into the engine room.’ Because it doesn’t matter how much you want to ignore the funny noise. It will gradually overwhelm every diversionary tactic until you are forced to stick your head into the darkness. And get your nails dirty.

I’m going to have a nice cup of tea, and enjoy the hiatus whilst the boat makes up its mind what will go wrong next. Manicure, anyone?

On Adventures in Hampstead, Serendipity & Richard Tyrone Jones and his Big Heart

You know what it’s like. You’re in London for a long weekend and you think you’ll go and see some of the stuff that you’re always hearing and reading about. Something cultural. Literary. Something you can write about on your blog. So you think you’ll have a look at the culture guide in the Guardian over breakfast, but when you get to the cafe you realise it’s only Friday, and the guide comes with the Saturday paper.

So you walk across Hampstead Heath instead, admiring the variety and happiness of all the walking dogs. After you're caught in a downpour, you’re forced to fight your way past the baby buggies and get into a cafe and order a latte. And you hear that A House Where Keats Lived is just down the hill so you go and have a look, but it costs a fiver to go in so you just peer in through the window and then go to the library next door. The Keats Community Library, which has a beautiful stained glass dome in the ceiling and a lot of books you’d like to read. 

The papers you sit down with all have listings in the back of things to go to, but you don’t know where anywhere is in London. How far is it to Chalk Farm? Would Holland Park entail a lot of tube changes? And you want it to be good, whatever you choose. You’re going to be investing time and money and expectation to get there, a heavy burden for an exhibition that might well turn out to be two prints and a video installation of a cat. Maybe you should just stick to the Tate.

Then you pick up a copy of Time Out. An entry catches your eye, and you turn to your boyfriend to say, this looks interesting, it’s poetry about heart failure. And to pre-empt a momentary expression of doubt from crossing his face, you offer a get-out clause. It’s at the Royal Free Hospital, is that too far? But instead he leans over, says, that’s just down the road. Five minutes, max. Shall we go?

You reach for your phone to look at the time and see that you have a couple of hours to spare. Not long enough to go far and, after all, there’s no need to factor in travel time. More coffee? Beer, even? But somewhere you’ve seen a signpost for a National Trust house. You think you remember where, so you go up the wrong road, stop at a pub with cushions on the chairs that are too big and push you off the seat. There are more babies, more quietly filled buggies pushed by young women with long hair. Au pairs? What are they giving the babies to keep them so quiet? Intravenous Mozart?

You find the signpost but not the road it is pointing to, so you make a diversion into an antiquarian bookshop where the gaps between the shelves are so full of crap that you can’t get past, and you lean at a ridiculous angle to try and see the titles, but you can’t, so you make a polite excuse and go back to the signpost.

And this time, you go the right way, and end up back where you started. And the National Trust house is there, a poured concrete Modernist block of flats designed by, and for, Ernö Goldfinger. And your boyfriend tells you that the Goldfinger in James Bond is named after this Goldfinger, because Ian Fleming met him and they didn’t hit it off, or Ian Fleming met Goldfinger's cousin and didn’t like what he heard. And Goldfinger is a great name, after all. You admire the house and the paintings and the view over Hampstead and wish that you lived there, and all the paintings were yours. But you’re glad that you don’t have the name of an Ian Fleming character. Pussy Galore. Mary Goodnight. Tracy.

And so to the hospital, where there are sandwiches laid out in the Atrium for those who have come to watch the performance, but food in a hospital feels a bit icky, so you just sit down and drink some water. And Richard Tyrone Jones, six foot of ginger charm, wanders out and begins the show.

He is active, engaging. We cycle with him on his way to poetry performances, wonder why we are so tired, struggle with breathlessness, and marvel at the colour, viscosity and quantity of our phlegm. Richard Tyrone Jones and his Big Heart. A heart that swelled and failed and landed him in the intensive care ward of the hospital. Animations flicker around him as he explains what it was like. Much fun is made of bodily functions going awry, of heart-stopping nurses and the fear of ending up back in Dudley. And we know he got better, because here he is in front of us, but still we hold our breath as the treatments fail to work, as his steps get slower, his prospects darker.

In between are poems. Poems from his hospital bed, from his hopeless seat on a featureless street in Dudley, from the moments when it looks as if it’s all getting better and times when it appears that never will. Because, when you’re a writer, all experience is copy, and life-threatening and messy illnesses are better copy than most. Especially when you end up back on your feet, even if you do need an implant next to your heart which will shock you back to existence if your pulse gets too slow.

The bravura end is a declamation of the genetic baddies who are lurking in our collective DNA, mostly without answers, seeming to come from nowhere. You hope you never have to hear too much about them. We can’t stay for the Q&A session which is, after all, perhaps aimed more at the patients who are here because they have heart disease, because they are being treated in this very hospital. Just like Richard himself.

Richard Tyrone Jones's Big Heart has already been a success in Buxton. This summer, it will be happening again at the Edinburgh Fringe, and then touring the UK. You should go and see it. You really should.

Details about Richard Tyrone Jones's Big Heart can be found on his website here. A book and ebook, Big Heart (& other sickness) will be coming out later in 2012.

Photograph or memory?

I've been thinking about memory lately, about how and what we remember, about what is real and what just a construct from long-heard stories and family pictures.

Memory is not trustworthy. I remember a time when I thought that everything I remembered was true, but then my brother said, do you remember the time I dared you to pull your pants down at your bedroom window? And I didn’t. I know I didn’t.

Then there are photographs. Do I remember sitting on the top of Beachy Head with the calor gas stove boiling water for tea, or is it just because I’ve seen the photograph in the album so many times, my brother and I smiling up at the camera and my Dad reaching out towards the boot of the car? My memory of Beachy Head is wrapped around with a strong wind, though, bending us double so that we run back from the edge and crouch behind the car so that the flame from the stove doesn’t go out, so that must be another time. We went to Eastbourne every year for my whole life, I once thought, but now I realise that it can only have been for two, or maybe three, years in a row. I know that one of them was in 1976, because it was a family joke that we went on holiday for the only week of that summer when it rained.

I remember standing on the school field that year, the unaccustomed heat of the air keeping me in one place, Stephanie Yates running up and announcing a new temperature high. It seemed very significant, and a bit scary.

Is it only because of photographs that I remember certain things, though? Not necessarily the action in the photograph, but what was happening close around. There’s one of my brother and I sitting on a ladder which is leaning up against a wall, a small wooden ladder with six rungs that was as familiar as the apple tree and the garage door. It is only me, however, that can remember that, before the photo was taken, I sat on the bottom rung and looked up at my brother, a four year old hero, sitting all the way up on the dizzying heights of the top rung, level with the top of the garden wall.

My first ever memories are bracketed with photographs. My Dad holding me on his hip, his hair still dark. I am wearing a blue-checked dress and my blondeish hair is blowing across my eyes. What you wouldn’t know is that we drove down to Newquay in our Morris Traveller. No seatbelts in those days, and the back seat had a flat back which opened into the boot. I think we played the game all of the way down. I would close my eyes, and my brother would lean over and hide a tissue in amongst the suitcases. Then I would lean over in my turn to find it. And then we’d exchange roles. And when we got to Newquay, we could see the hotel, but couldn’t reach it through the one way system.

I know from later information that the hotel was owned by friends of my parents, but who they were I don’t know. If it was just memory I was going on, I’d have to say that we never went inside the hotel, ate any meals, or slept. A faceless girl - bigger than me, a daughter of the hotel, I think - sits behind me on a miniature railway, and I cry every time we go past my parents and the train takes me away.

Going home from a holiday is not something that leaves an imprint. Maybe we had run out of film.

I don’t see my brother a lot these days. He puts some photos up on Facebook, old slides which he has digitally transferred. They open up doors into the past, not always the obvious ones. My cousins comment, we feel nostalgic. I even buy a Formica table when I see it at a vintage fair.

One day, my brother may be the only other person to have a window on these moments, one that is open and not just for viewing through. When I think of this, I want to call him, give him a hug. My children look through photographs as well. They say, do you remember when we did this? Sometimes they are remembering things that happened before they were born, travelling on the back of a family tale. But there will always be times when they will look back and, beyond the edges of the photographs, they will remember more than is shown and they will laugh and hug each other. 

Secrets...

This week, I'm up at Moniack Mhor. The incredibly hot weather has deserted us, but it's still beautiful. And peaceful. And we're even getting some writing done.


I've been hoping to post some of the work from this week, and today's exercise, serendipitously, involved getting a secret from one of the others and writing a story based on it. Sound familiar? No gorillas today, though.


I can't tell you whose secret it was, because I don't know myself. 



Secrets...

You could get through at the bottom of the garden, down where they have their compost pile. It wasn’t the first time I’d gone over. Last summer, when they were on holiday, I went through every day, climbing up the cherry tree and sitting there, looking at the windows with their drawn over curtains. I liked how it felt, the hiddenness, the quiet space. I could sit there and hear my mum calling to me.

Today I’m here again, sitting in the tree, invisible behind the spread of blossom, and they’re here as well. The mother is planting something, and walks past every so often so that I can see her arm holding a fork or a watering can. We haven’t got anything like that in our garden, although I like the dandelions. I try and catch the moment when the yellow bits turn into the fluffy white stuff, but it always happens when I’m not there.

‘Can we put the swing up?’

It’s her. I can’t see her, but I recognise her voice. Today it sounds a bit cross. The ends of the branches of the cherry tree hang down nearly to the ground, making a sort of cave, and she sticks her head through. If she looks up, maybe she will climb up and join me, and then we can make a house up here, and I can come over every day.

‘No, love, not today. You’ll have to wait until Daddy has some time.’

‘But I’m bored!’ She drags the word out like chewing gum. I can’t do that.

The mother stands up and bends back a little bit. I know she’s doing this because she does it every time she stands up when she’s gardening and I see her from my window.

‘Why don’t you see if the girl next door wants to play?’

I hold my breath. We can make a little shelf and put teacups on it made out of bark like the teacher was telling us about.

‘But I don’t want to play with her.’ The branches sway as she tugs on a handful. ‘She wet her pants at school, and she smells funny.’

‘Not everyone is as lucky as you.’ I love the mother. I want her to be my mother.

‘I hate her. I’d rather die.’ The branches swing again. I dig my fingers into the bark.

Next door I can hear my mum shouting. I want to pee. It takes forever until they go back indoors.

The next time I climb up the tree, the swing is up. I don’t have a go because someone might be looking out of the window. I take out the knife and start to saw at the ropes that are wound around the biggest branch. I have to be careful. The rope springs apart and I cut more slowly. This was in a story too. Our teacher read it in a low voice, how the broken rope makes the girl fall off the swing. I will watch it from my window, watch the petals fall down from the tree and watch her lying on the ground.  

           

            

Gorilla

Having started this blog with flash fiction, it seemed like a plan to carry on with another piece. This one started life as a writing exercise done with Gabe (10), Hatty (13) and Graeme (44). We had to tell each other secrets, and use one as a base for a story. I had Gabe's secret, which was that (shhh) 'Hatty is a gorilla...' 

Gorilla

The suit was hot and itchy, her breath pooling into a swampy puddle behind the plastic nose and mouth. She tried to pull it away from her face, but the hairy paws were too big. A swell of panic rose up in her chest and she tore at the head until it fell off.

‘Hey, get that back on!’ A face appeared around the door, hair stuck in a plastered wave across a forehead speckled with red. ‘You’re on in a minute.’ The wink made her feel a bit better.

Dressing up as a gorilla wasn’t quite what she’d had in mind. The leaflet in the shop window had shown a girl in a short skirt jumping out of a cake, hair moulded into kiss curls on her cheeks, hands positioned above her head to say, look at me! Not like her, not hiding at the back and avoiding notice. Something made her take down the number.

‘You’re a bit small.’ The interview took place in a dirty office, the windows grimy enough to filter out the sun. The woman sat behind a desk cluttered with empty mugs, ash from a cigarette dropping down onto the No Smoking sign. ‘But we’ve had someone drop out. Birthday party this evening. Ted’ll meet you there with the outfit.’

As she took the slip of paper, she wondered what sort of cake she’d be too small for.

Ted’s face came back through the door.

‘Come on, time’s up.’

She caught at the loose fabric of the legs with her claws as she shuffled towards him. Her head was wedged at an angle so she could see through the gap in the mouth. From down the corridor came a swell of voices and a tinny blast of music. This was it. She didn’t think she could do it. She had no choice.

‘Rrrrooooaarrrrrrhhh!’

 

The voices stopped for a split second before rising up again in catcalls of derision. Her mask had slipped again, so she couldn’t tell if it was aimed at her or the birthday target. What was it Ted had whispered as he’d thrust her through the door? Lifting her arms, she jumped from side to side, and then made a run for the loudest voices. Howls of appreciation surrounded her as she grabbed at the nearest body, and she was pushed and turned and passed along in a wild parody of a children’s game.

Until she came out at the end of the line, balancing for a moment in a space of dizzy uncertainty. Where was the music? Ted had said, wait for the music and leave while they’re singing. She felt rather than heard the shift in the group. One voice started, the rest joining in a rising wave.

‘Ooh, ooh, ooh!’

She turned towards the door, then back to the pulsing sound. Where was the music?

‘Ooh, ooh, ooh!’

The darkness pressed in like a blindfold, though the rest of her felt stripped bare. In desperation she took a step, made gorilla movements with her arms. The chanting rose up a level. Encouraged, she leaped and postured, chasing after the sound of feet, of squealed protests and imagined prey. She was the gorilla.

It was the feet that did it. One of them had twisted round, catching her mid-stride: she felt herself falling, grabbed out at nothing and landed. Heavily. Right on top of the birthday cake.

The head came off, and there was Ted. Behind him, a confusion of faces, red and looming; to one side, a woman wailing over the remains of the cake. They all span, rising and falling like an upside-down carousel; if she didn’t get out of the suit soon, she might be sick.

‘Come on, get up.’ She could feel Ted grabbing at a handful of the black fur. He gave a sharp tug, trying not to laugh. ‘Shit, you’re so gonna to get the sack for this.’

The animal force was draining away. A bit of herself was going with it, looking back with contempt at the figure left behind, swamped in cheap nylon fur, smeared with cake, hair plastered with sweat to the sides of her face. She didn’t want it to end like this. One hand moved, sliding a little in the slick of buttercream. Her body heaved itself over, her second hand pressing knuckle-down on the floor, lifting her shoulders in a powerful arch. For a brief moment, she squatted, letting her eyes take in the bare room with its thin festoons of foil-backed streamers, the table crammed with bottles, the edging bodies regarding her with apprehension. And she sprang, a scream of defiance echoing around the ceiling, her fists pounding the muscles of her chest. A moment of silence balanced in the air as the sound of her challenge faded.

‘Ted, get me out of here!’ She couldn’t be sure that she’d spoken it out loud, but there was an answering squawk of feedback from the speakers.

‘Happy birthday to you...’ Ted’s voice was a little off-key, but gaining in volume. A few more voices picked it up, then more, until the ragged chorus set the bunched balloons in movement.

Back in the stuffy room, she and Ted looked at the cake-encrusted costume.

‘I don’t think they need to fire me.’ Her legs were trembling with reaction. ‘I might just disappear.’

A head came in from the corridor, followed by a hand holding an envelope. She and Ted both shrank back.

‘Here y’are, love.’ The hand came towards her, the man still chuckling. ‘We ordered a stripper but, by ‘eck, you livened things up.’ He nodded towards the envelope. ‘Don’t give up the day job now,’ and he was gone.

She had a quick look in the envelope, then back up at Ted.

‘Do you fancy a drink? On me.’ She was a gorilla, she could do anything.

He gave a low whistle and held open the door.

They left the gorilla skin behind, lying in a heap on the floor.

Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time, she sat in the confines of the tower chamber, watching in her mirror as the colours of the setting sun gave back to her hair the illusion of body and colour. The moment always passed too soon: as the last golden strand faded and disappeared, she reached up a thickened fingernail to scratch at her scalp. The young man’s face on the far side of the tower registered a look of disgust. She was past disgust. The gentle flakes hovered in the air: she liked to see them dance.

             

‘If you marry me, you will gain riches beyond your wildest dreams.’

             

His chin tilted as he rejected the offer with silence, his eyes fixed on the distant horizon.

             

‘If you marry me, your power will stretch to the mountains and beyond.’

            

 Again, silence.

Her voice she disliked, the weakness, the wavering lack of cadence. At first, she had tried to exercise, to sing the phrases taught to her by the court musicians, but still her vocal chords had twisted and hardened like the roots of a petrified forest. 

The line of the boy’s jaw was visible in the encroaching dusk, taut, smooth, the beautiful line sweeping down from his perfectly formed ear before curving upwards towards the dimple in his princely chin. Was there, perhaps, the hint of a tremble in his rigid mouth?

             

‘You dream of conquest, of mighty deeds of valour. Look beyond what you think you know, and it shall all be yours.’

             

The tiniest shake of the head gave his response.

No matter. She herself would age no more. She could sit and watch as his hair, too, became thin and leached of colour, his joints thick and his eyes misty. In the end, he would agree. And in the meantime, the evening glow would continue to bring its moment of illusory youth, whilst the early rays of the morning sun would daily strike the mirror and reveal, for the briefest moment, the shadow of the beautiful girl within, awaiting her release.