Wednesday 6 October 2010

A strange thing happened......

Well it struck me today that I've gone about this in the wrong way. I should have started at the begining which is always a good thing. Anyway, the boat. I had my first narrowboat sometime ago, and bar a couple of incidents, I have to be honest and say they were happy times. Then I had a 'sensible' thought. I thought ''You're too old for this Paul. Get back on land!'' So I did. What a mistake. I knew the moment I agreed the sale it was the wrong thing to do. Hundreds of hours of work gone in a handshake. So I moved back onto dry land and felt disorientated for the first 6 months. This was put down to the non-movement of the house. Nomatter what anyone says, even narrowboats move gently. On top of that there were the months of shattered sleep. I could not for the life of me get a decent nights sleep on land. See, its the boat movement gently rocking you off to sleep. It's only slight but the effect is there. So after a couple of years I decided I wanted another narrowboat....and here we are,at the begining, where I should of started in the first place.
So I trawled all the usual magazines and sites for ages and ages. I asked people if they knew of any boats for sale, and this side of my search plan was based on that old thing that people say after you aquire something. You know it. ''If only you said. Charlie was trying to sell his for ages and gave it away in the end.'' Well you guessed it. Charlie wasn't in the market to sell anything at the time. So it was auction site time. Evilbay was searched and searched and the watched list grew longer and longer with boats seemingly fetching sums that would embarass a Columbian drug cartel or even a footballer. Eventually I saw one. This little thing had had thousands spent on it. The then owner had run out of time and money so what was effectively a new painted, insulated shell was available for what seemed to be reasonable money. So I watched, and I watched until the last few minutes and a sum of cash the size of a developing country's national debt was bid. I had lost it. Still there would be others. And there were. Boats fitted out with full size sofas and huge domestic fridge freezers were 10-a-penny. I went and looked at boats that were denying the laws of physics just by floating. I kept trawling Evilbay and one day, the boat I had missed was relisted. Wasteing no time I contacted the vendor to arrange a meeting. I travelled to Lichfield to view and wasn't disappointed. The boat was exactly as described. After much haggling a price was agreed and the boat was mine. And that is the start of the saga in some sketchy detail but nonetheless documented.