If I had been asked, I don’t think I would have known that London had a canal system—I don’t associate it with canals. Dale says it’s how goods used to be transported all over the country, and you can still travel on the canals from London up to places as far away as Birmingham and Manchester.
Our friend Keaton, a singer, has lived on a houseboat at Stonebridge Lock since last year (she said it was a little rough in the winter when the heater packed up and there was frost on the inside of the windows), and we got to go see it for the first time. She had a barbecue for a few people, but we managed to get her all to ourselves for an hour before the next people turned up. We had burgers and sausages, chips and salsa, and beer sitting outside in the sunshine next to the water—absolutely heavenly. We truly felt like we were on holiday.
About 5:45 p.m. we pulled ourselves away to head back to Billericay (this time instead of taking a bus we walked back to the train station at Totteham Hale and then had two trains to take to get back to Billericay). Upon our return the house was still empty (Joy & Brian had taken the children all day to the yearly village fete at Ingatestone and then to Lee & Ali’s for tea afterwards), so we trekked up to Waitrose to get some dinner. No one came home until 9 p.m., and then it was a job to get Kayleigh to finish painting her flower pots and go to bed. (She had started painting them in the morning with Grandad as her assistant; while Joy, Irene, and I were at the craft shops in the morning, Brian held the flower pot for her while she painted it—when we came back he was eating his sandwiches with one hand and the flower pot with the other.)
But in bed we managed to bundle them, and Jonathan went to sleep quite well for someone who was having a birthday the next day.
Posted by elizabeth at July 20, 2008 05:42 AM