Things are moving forward slowly but surely on the boat front. We've got all the cash together, which is sitting in my bank account. Unfortunately when I tried to transfer the money to the Seller yesterday, I was informed that suspicious foreigners like me need to show their passports before being allowed to spend that much money at once. I know that this has some nominal justification to do with money laundering, but it's a pain in the ass nonetheless - how seeing my dog-eared passport is going to prevent money laundering, I really don't know. And then of course in my rush for the train this morning I completely forgot my passport, so it will have to wait until tomorrow anyway.
Tomorrow is a big day - we sign our mooring lease (or, I'll sign for both of us as Triton has a parents' evening at school), and pay our first month's mooring fee, pooled utilities fees and the 3% commission to the pier. They tried to characterize this as a "re-registration" charge for the lease but since we are signing a new lease (and it's not for a lease of property on land) there's no registration needed at the Land Registry, which is what a fee like that would usually go towards. From what the Seller has told me the pier might need some extra ready cash to finish up a few construction projects - here's hoping they don't involve more ugly floating blocks of flats like the one that has ruined our view from the stern of the Charles William (we've dubbed it the Death Star). It's a shame as it really lowers the tone of the pier to have an ugly thing like that wallowing off the end, but there's nothing we can do about it so we might as well learn to live with it (for now). I'll put a picture up if there's enough light tomorrow evening.
23.9.09
21.8.09
News at last!
Just received the long-awaited call from the current owners of the boat - they have found a place to live. We complete on the 25th of September and get the keys the next day.
Depending on how flexible our letting agent is with breaking our lease, we may have a full month of overlap, which I don't think is a bad thing - we have big plans:
- sand, stain and refinish the floorboards
- paint the walls any other colour than their current pink and yellow
- more bookshelves
- decluttering and otherwise downsizing our current possessions to about half their volume
Oh so excited. This is the beginning of our life on the briny (actually, brackish, for verisimilitude).
28.7.09
Introduction
This blog will document the adventures of Triton and Telesto on the Thames, the silver streaming Themmes, as it sweats oil and tar, the brown and sluggish waters, the glittering Thames.
We walked on the boat, expecting nothing - other boats had been diesel-scented, damp and dark and dingy. She wallowed on the mud, tide out, canted over slightly. The huge sky overhead, the drama of the English summer, the flaked white towers of Battersea Power Station falling back and back as the clouds rushed past. We sat on the afterdeck drinking sancerre and talking of bilge pumps, overplating, epoxy and portholes. Cormorants' necks like snakes, seabirds calling overhead, sandpipers on the mud below the stern, and the owner talking of eels and flounder that eat the scraps of food they throw overboard.
Our offer was made, accepted, documents negotiated. We will move on board as soon as the owners find a place of their own on land.
We walked on the boat, expecting nothing - other boats had been diesel-scented, damp and dark and dingy. She wallowed on the mud, tide out, canted over slightly. The huge sky overhead, the drama of the English summer, the flaked white towers of Battersea Power Station falling back and back as the clouds rushed past. We sat on the afterdeck drinking sancerre and talking of bilge pumps, overplating, epoxy and portholes. Cormorants' necks like snakes, seabirds calling overhead, sandpipers on the mud below the stern, and the owner talking of eels and flounder that eat the scraps of food they throw overboard.
Our offer was made, accepted, documents negotiated. We will move on board as soon as the owners find a place of their own on land.
The River's Tale
Twenty bridges from Tower to Kew--
(Twenty bridges or twenty-two)--
Wanted to know what the River knew,
For they were young and the Thames was old,
And this is the tale that the River told:--
"I WALK my beat before London Town,
Five hour up and seven down.
Up I go till I end my run
At Tide-end-town, which is Teddington.
Down I come with the mud in my hands
And plaster it over the Maplin Sands.
But I'd have you know that these waters of mine
Were once a branch of the River Rhine,
When hundreds of miles to the East I went
And England was joined to the Continent.
"I remember the bat-winged lizard-birds,
The Age of Ice and the mammoth herds,
And the giant tigers that stalked them down
Through Regent's Park into Camden Town.
And I remember like yesterday
The earliest Cockney who came my way,
When he pushed through the forest that lined the Strand,
With paint on his face and a club in his hand.
He was death to feather and fin and fur.
He trapped my beavers at Westminster.
He netted my salmon, he hunted my deer,
He killed my heron off Lambeth Pier.
He fought his neighbour with axes and swords,
Flint or bronze, at my upper fords,
While down at Greenwich, for slaves and tin,
The tall Phoenician ships stole in.
And North Sea war-boats, painted and gay,
Flashed like dragon-flies, Erith way;
And Norseman and Negro and Gaul and Greek
Drank with the Britons in Barking Creek,
And life was gay, and the world was new,
And I was a mile across at Kew!
But the Roman came with a heavy hand,
And bridged and roaded and ruled the land,
And the Roman left and the Danes blew in--
And that's where your history-books begin!"
- Rudyard Kipling
(Twenty bridges or twenty-two)--
Wanted to know what the River knew,
For they were young and the Thames was old,
And this is the tale that the River told:--
"I WALK my beat before London Town,
Five hour up and seven down.
Up I go till I end my run
At Tide-end-town, which is Teddington.
Down I come with the mud in my hands
And plaster it over the Maplin Sands.
But I'd have you know that these waters of mine
Were once a branch of the River Rhine,
When hundreds of miles to the East I went
And England was joined to the Continent.
"I remember the bat-winged lizard-birds,
The Age of Ice and the mammoth herds,
And the giant tigers that stalked them down
Through Regent's Park into Camden Town.
And I remember like yesterday
The earliest Cockney who came my way,
When he pushed through the forest that lined the Strand,
With paint on his face and a club in his hand.
He was death to feather and fin and fur.
He trapped my beavers at Westminster.
He netted my salmon, he hunted my deer,
He killed my heron off Lambeth Pier.
He fought his neighbour with axes and swords,
Flint or bronze, at my upper fords,
While down at Greenwich, for slaves and tin,
The tall Phoenician ships stole in.
And North Sea war-boats, painted and gay,
Flashed like dragon-flies, Erith way;
And Norseman and Negro and Gaul and Greek
Drank with the Britons in Barking Creek,
And life was gay, and the world was new,
And I was a mile across at Kew!
But the Roman came with a heavy hand,
And bridged and roaded and ruled the land,
And the Roman left and the Danes blew in--
And that's where your history-books begin!"
- Rudyard Kipling
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