It’s raining hard. In fact, it has rained for some part of almost every day since a drought was officially declared last week in most of southern England and Wales. (Scotland is, as usual, drenched.)

The Orders are typically British: complicated, detailed and humane. For example, under Drought Orders you are not allowed to use a hosepipe to fill a garden pond or water feature, unless your water feature features fish.

Do not go out and buy goldfish just to beat the ban! pleaded the water company spokesman, interviewed days before the Orders came into force. The BBC journalist asked more probing questions, and we learned that any living creature you introduce into your pond triggers an exemption, while one that wanders in accidentally — a frog, say — does not.

Everyone knows the Brits are obsessed with weather. Never mind however many words Eskimos have for snow, I reckon Brits could give them a run for their money with rain. An early favourite of mine was “merged showers” but I have more recently been won over by “wetting rain”.

They teach this weather obsession in school, and they start early. When he was two and a bit, I enrolled my first born son in a playgroup run by one of the Oxford colleges. For most of the three hours, five mornings the kids raced around on tricycles. There were a few puzzles and the odd doll, but preschool was mostly about wheels; there was no structure, or even a nod at educational content, except at mid-morning juice and biscuits. Then everyone sat in a circle, and, raising her Dixie cup, the teacher solemnly asked, Now children, what is the weather like?

Later in the curriculum, I guess, the kids learn to be judgmental about weather. The “wrong kind of snow” is a well-rehearsed British Rail excuse for late trains, recently revived to explain water shortages: though apparently any kind of snow is the wrong kind of stuff to prevent a drought. What we want is the right kind of rain.

Rain is divided into “useful” rain and “not useful” rain and the weather forecasters always tell us which we are getting: very heavy rain is not useful (because it runs away too quickly); very light rain (though it might be “wetting”) is also not useful.  Basically, to prevent a drought, it needs to rain three times a fortnight, all year round, not too hard and not too soft.

Otherwise it is every frog for himself.

Saturday
Long delayed winter has finally come, and the fire is the one chore I cannot neglect. Every few days I heave a 25 kg bag of coal from the roof, carry it the 62 ft length of the boat and drag it onto the covered section of the bow. From there I shovel up several scuttlefuls of coal a day, and, kneeling in front of the stove, pull the riddling arm, fast in and out, in and out. When the grate is clear I swap new black nuggets for the dusty, grey ash.

It is my third winter on the boat and the bags feel heavier than they used to. I’m older than most of the people I know living on board, and much older than any solo woman. I hug the coal bags close to my chest, puff out, and count the steps until I drop my load. One day I will remember to ask Dusty to deliver the bags nearer to the front.

Last thing before bed I bank the fire and turn the vents until they are almost closed. The trick is to keep the fire only just alive through the night, so as neither to waste fuel nor to start again from a stony cold stove and a frigid shell. Pangolin, like most narrowboats, is made of steel. The winter is a fight against the frost, and the summer would be intolerable if it ever really arrived.

Sunday
I was very cold in the night and slept badly. Last winter I piled the bed with two duvets; it’s time to get the second one out.

In the morning the temperature inside, near the fire, is 5 degrees celsius (41 fahrenheit). At the back, where I sleep and dress, it is much, much colder. Outside there is a thin layer of ice on the canal, and the grass and hedges that line the towpath are white with a frost as thick as snow.

While the kettle boils I am back to riddling, now with the stove air vents wide open. By the time my tea brews the indoor temperature has risen to 8.

The forecast is for a few more days of very cold nights, and while it lasts I am rationing water even more closely than coal. At my old mooring I had to move my boat to fill the tanks, but here in Wolvercote we each have our own water tap, and all I need to do is run a hose from the tap to the bow. Lured into carelessness by such ease and the long, warm autumn, I let the tank run low. Now the tap is frozen and I must wait for a thaw. Usually I am an ant sort of person, but this time I was a grasshopper.

Monday
A worse grasshopper than I, paddling a canoe from a narrowboat above the lock crunched through the ice. It looked, and sounded, like hard work. From the half dozen empty plastic water butts he carried I knew where he was headed.

The canoe returned not long after with the water bottles full, so I know that the communal tap below the lift bridge is still running. Meanwhile I am not yet desperate, and I excuse the dishes piling up in my sink.

Far away, the English cricket team falters, and a letter is leaked to a newspaper: the Secretary of State for Education thinks the nation should buy Her Majesty a new yacht to mark her Diamond Jubilee.

The sun shines. It’s our north Atlantic tradeoff — we can have it wet and mild or dry and cold.

I run the engine most nights, but because the domestic battery monitor shows good charge, forgetting that the dodgy starter battery will hate the deep freeze, I decide to save on diesel.

Tuesday
I should have known that in the morning the engine wouldn’t turn over.

I am impressed by how calm I am, since if the engine won’t start I will soon have no electricity at all. I decide to rest the battery for a few hours and then try again, making sure to give it plenty of glow plug (I guess it warms the diesel, but I think of it like the choke we used to give cars).

The barometer is falling and the wind is changing direction.

The outside water tap was still frozen in the morning, but by afternoon I get a dribble from it. I unroll the hose and chunks of ice fall off the coils. An hour later the drip becomes full flow.

As the tank fills, I fetch my jumper cables from the car; I watched the young archaeologist connect the domestic batteries to the starter and jump the engine after new year, and I am ready to manage it myself, without help, but when I try the starter battery one last time it reluctantly springs to life.

I leave the jumper cable stored in the engine room. The battery won’t hold out much longer.

Meanwhile, I notice that the elsan — the toilet emptying point just past the lift bridge to the south — is looking sluggish again (I think it cannot be the frost, because it is already noticeably warmer), so I race to empty my shit suitcase before the elsan is totally blocked.

Now, besides rationing diesel, electricity, water, and coal, I consider my bodily motions. Toilet paper, I decide, is strictly two squares per visit, until the elsan flows freely.

The Prime Minister announces that in these days of austerity it would be inappropriate for the nation to buy the queen a yacht.

Wednesday
In the night I threw off the second duvet, and by morning I hear the soft tap of rain on the roof. The west wind is back, and we have exchanged our sunny, continental frost for the more usual Atlantic, temperate gloom.

I eke the coal out one more day and night. In the morning it will be time to drag another bag from the roof.

I arrived back on Pangolin on New Year’s Eve. I had only intended to be away for two or three days, but in the end I was gone a full week. Whenever I started to say it was time for me to go home, someone asked what was for dinner, and all eyes turned to me.

It was alarmingly easy to slide back into jobs I thought I had long ago shed, and once again I found myself in charge of the total nutrition for three overgrown children and an ex husband, along with his mother and uncle, who at the last minute made the almost unheard of announcement that they were joining us for the holidays.

The rules of engagement were particularly complex with the latter two, because they have officially not spoken to me for more than ten years (since I divorced son and nephew) and we exchanged neither gifts nor cards.

Nevertheless, when Uncle Bob stumbled and tore his nonogenarian skin I was elected (by acclaim) to clean and dress the wound.

The cooking, cleaning and nursing fest were over just before the old year was out. My Ex drove his mother and uncle back north. My younger son drove himself south. Five thousand miles away his brother (my eldest) was holding a new baby daughter, born two weeks early, trailing extra festive, tax deductible cheer. My own Baby, still a teenager (just), had already gone back to work in London, which left only my elder daughter.

My car complained of neglect, and barely started, but it cheered up, even if I did not, on the run to Cowley, on the dodgy side of Oxford, where I dropped her for a New Year’s Eve party. Then, all alone for the first time in days, I drove back to Wolvercote, the northest of north Oxford, where my boat is now moored.

It was a remarkably warm night for the dead of winter, and I slid on mud, not ice, along the dark bridleway, over the lift bridge, and past the line of deserted boats to Pangolin. I ducked inside the engine room (too low to stand up with the hatch closed) and stooped to try the ignition key. The engine coughed weakly but refused to turn over. After two or three more tries, I resigned myself to darkness.

Without an engine to recharge the domestic battery bank I couldn’t afford to waste any power. I had already turned off the fridge some weeks before (I keep the milk on the gunnels outside the kitchen window and other chilled provisions in a cool box on the front deck), but no power also meant no indoor water:  drawing water from the tanks requires electricity.

With enough charge left in the domestics I might be able to jump start the engine in the morning. Otherwise, only a borrowed generator or the charge from a passing boat could do the job.

Attentive readers might remember the Young Archaeologists from my old mooring. I had always thought of archaeology as a rather exotic, academic, and mostly foreign profession. Years ago I knew a pushy mother who demanded that her daughter become an archaeologist. At the time I thought the mother was simply insane, but I now know that in the UK planning regulations require that archaeologists give the all-clear to every major building project and many minor ones. It turns out archaeology is a pretty secure job prospect.

Nevertheless, the Young Lady Archaeologist of my boaty acquaintance decided she had quite enough of not finding Roman remains under potential multi-storey carparks and is re-training as a publican. To that end she has a barmaid job about a fifteen minute walk from my new moorings, and she and the Young Gentleman Archaeologist brought the boat south to Oxford, convenient for her holiday hours. I happened to see them as they cruised by. They’re nice kids, young enough to be my children, and he is very handy with electrics.

After I lit the fire and found my head torch, I scrambled in the dark for some more festive clothing, shut up the dog, and strode off down the towpath toward the centre of Wolvercote to a pub I had never visited.

The Young Lady Archaeologist Barmaid was very busy serving drinks and only just had time to promise, while she poured me a glass of wine, to let her boyfriend know my engine wouldn’t start.

It was nearly midnight, and the bar was getting louder. I took my glass and found myself next to the only other person I recognised, a woman who twice each day walked her large German Shepherd dogs along the towpath. At first she had seemed unfriendly: she scowled, and I scowled back, daring her to let her dogs take a shit in front of my boat.

After a month or two, when they didn’t shit and I didn’t shout, we moved on to nodding. Because once or twice recently we had even managed a smile with the nod, I pulled up a chair next to her and her fellow in the pub on New Year’s Eve.

We shook hands and introduced ourselves.

“How are you enjoying Wolvercote?” Jan asked. “Wolvercote is certainly enjoying you,” she added generously. “We love your towpath garden!”

A few minutes later midnight sounded, and I was kissing these people I had only just met.

On New Year’s Day the Young Archaeologist came and and jump-started my boat, and the Scary Dog People waved and grinned extravagantly as they went by.  All is well.

Since it is only just past the first half of January, I hope it is not too late to wish you a happy new year. Apparently we need good wishes, this day of all days. According to the BBC, the middle Monday in January is officially the most depressing day of the year. Apparently we are sorry that Christmas is over (hands up anyone?) while all but winter seems a distant prospect.

Like Shelley, I choose to be more sanguine:

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Way back last summer I started to blog about how I had a new mooring.

“These days,” I wrote, “when the British Waterways inspector strides down the towpath in formal dark trousers and white short-sleeved shirt with navy epaulettes (which I guess someone in HR thought made their employees look proper nautical), I neither duck out of sight nor race out to offer him coffee and biscuits, my former alternating strategies for dealing with Pangolin’s semi-legal mooring status.  Now I don’t care when I see him tapping my license number into his hand-held electronic thingy.  He can whistle for a biscuit.”

It seemed a promising enough start, though a little unkind, and not, in fact, even true, strictly speaking.  I wouldn’t have denied the BW guy a biscuit, if I had expected him.

I’ve seen Richard (we are on a first name basis now I know how many sugars he takes) only once since I moved the boat nine miles south to just inside the Oxford city limits.  It was one of the few hot days of the summer, and I was trying to turn the clumps of nettles, brambles and ivy that line the towpath into a garden.  Every time I stuck my spade in the ground it hit rubble.

I was resting on my shovel and surveying the mound of rocks I had uncovered when Richard appeared with his epaulettes and electronics.  I glanced nervously at the rocks.  The BW rules say that I am not to alter the mooring in any way, and my biscuit tin was empty.

“I do 15 miles,” Richard replied, in response to my surprise at seeing him this far south – I thought it would be someone else’s patch — then, nodding at my boat, “I heard you moved down to Agenda 21.”  He glanced at the mound of rocks and added reassuringly, “You’ve got to make the environment friendly, don’t you?  Well, friendly to yourself, at the end of the day.”  Then he looked only half expectant before he said cheerio and headed down the towpath.  Three more miles to Oxford centre and the end of his shift.

That’s a simple enough story to relate, but I got exhausted thinking I had to explain the Byzantine rules of how British Waterways allocates moorings (in theory and in practice), how I went from squatter to semi-legal to legal, and what on earth is Agenda 21.

My exhaustion lasted all summer and well into the fall, but now I think I can explain it just one, two, three:

1. In the Old Days, when we were all Socialists, there were waiting lists.  I came to England in 1979; there were waiting lists for a telephone, for a cooker, for a car.  Thirty-some years later waiting lists were long since abandoned for almost everything, except moorings and medicine.  I think they just forgot about moorings.

2. As soon as Pangolin changed hands, her moorings were forfeit. I went on the waiting list and squatted sanguinely; it probably would have been my turn eventually if some wise guy civil servant hadn’t spent too much time on eBay getting bright ideas: as we are all Capitalists now, why shouldn’t the government throw out the lists and auction moorings on the internet instead?

3.  Meanwhile, I made a deal with Purple-Haired Emma to sublet her mooring while she went off cruising.  Subletting is not allowed, but “berth sitting for short periods” is, which Emma and I decided was much the same thing. I was well into my second year of the “short period” when the Agenda 21 mooring came up for auction. I probably could have carried on for another decade or two plying inspectors with biscuits, but I never knew when Emma would want her spot back, and anyway, I am mostly naturally law-abiding.  After four and a half years, I really wanted my own space. As is the way with auctions, I bid a little more than my absolute top price.

Which just leaves me to explain Agenda 21, an action plan that came out of the 1992 UN Earth Summit in Rio.  Right around the time of the summit, some developers wanted to buy the Oxford boat yards, throw out all the boaters, fill in the basin and build flats.  There was a great big fight that went on for almost a decade.

In the end the boat yards did close and the flats got built, but the boaters weren’t evicted: a long stretch of residential moorings was allowed along the canal, from the centre of Oxford to the Ring Road on the edge of the city.  The moorings were designated Agenda 21, in honour of the summit’s by then nearly forgotten plan for sustainable living. Ever after, anyone joining these moorings had to agree to “respect and take up” 10 “aspirations” and “abide by” another 6 “guidelines”.  (I’ve copied them below.)

Despite a lamentable failure to embrace the subjunctive, the original drafters of these aspirations and guidelines meant well, though I am not sure they were a lot more careful of their science than they were of their grammar.  Diesel engines and coal fires, almost universal fittings on canal boats, are not environmentally friendly.

Another ten years on, a good crop of nettles growing up the side of the boat and a clandestine electricity feed seem the most obvious mark of an Agenda 21 boater.

Pangolin has neither! (though I plead guilty to the whopping great diesel engine and the coal fire).  Nevertheless, I am willing to do my best toward the aspirations and the guidelines:  I haven’t recently threatened anyone with violence or persecution, or ever thrown ashes in the canal, and I stand ready to respect any vole or Interested Scientist who should happen by.

In the meantime I grow flowers and feed the birds.  As the BW guy said, You’ve got to make the environment friendly to yourself, at the end of the day.
 
The Aspirations:

Energy and natural resources are used efficiently.
Pollution is limited to levels which a natural system can cope with.
Waste is minimised.
The diversity of nature is valued and protected.
Local distinctiveness and diversity are valued and protected.
Health is promoted by clean, safe and pleasant environments.
People live without fear of personal violence and persecution.
All sections of the community are empowered to participate in decision-making.
A wide range of living styles is accepted.
The existence of environmentally sensitive areas such as vole habitats and the Sites of Special Scientific Interest are respected.

The Guidelines:

There are no site-specific services (e.g. mains electricity, water, phone lines, post boxes
There is no towpath lighting.
Be aware of generator use.  We adhere to the British Waterways regulations and in addition prefer to use solar and wind power where appropriate.
We undertake not to put harmful waste in the canal (i.e. engine oil, ashes).  All waste is disposed of appropriately.
We endeavour to share knowledge and skills for environmentally conscious living (i.e. awareness of waste disposal, biodegradable detergent, etc).
We will continue to meet and discuss relevant issues for our community in an open forum.

I have been away — that is, I have been away from England, from my boaty home, and from my own four foot wide, lumpy, boaty bed.

I left in late March, when the crocuses had already almost gone by, the daffodils were in glorious bloom, and even the odd tulip had risked opening to the young sun. I flew across the Atlantic and a few months backwards into a late winter that still lingered when it was almost May and time to think about heading home again.

In five weeks I slept in seven beds.

In Washington DC I was promoted to the guest bedroom.  My father, 86 and frail, insisted on carrying my suitcase up the stairs to a part of his home I suspect he rarely visits. The room was full of ailing houseplants and a large sealed box labelled “Open Immediately”, an unfulfilled spring bulb best intention of my stepmother (too young to be my biological mother) who breezed in after work a couple of hours later. The next morning when I awoke and scanned myopically the back garden, I thought, I must ask Cynthia about that lovely white ground cover that has bloomed overnight.

A few days later I moved on to New York where I slept in a newly designated guest suite, the former teenage occupant, now college graduate, having been finally, firmly ousted, but not soon enough that his mattress could be left on the street with the rest of his garbage. His mother apologised as we squeezed past the old mattress propped up against the wall outside his room: the city’s bed bug epidemic means that getting rid of any old bedding, however innocent it might be, is almost impossible.

But I wasn’t there to discuss infestations. My friend was celebrating the launch of her third book of poetry, The Kangaroo Girl. 

After the book party, where I air-kissed a slew of people I had barely seen in thirty years, and then a glorious afternoon at MOMA, I flew out of New York in a snow storm that made me miss my connecting flight to Seattle.  Eating shrimp in an airport bar in Philadelphia, I watched a chilly opening game of the baseball season, and couldn’t help noting, on all my accompanying electronics, the lovely UK weather.

When I finally got to Seattle I crashed on a blow up bed in my grandbaby’s room (my timing was bad and the baby had gone to Las Vegas). Every 20 minutes or so, there was a loud electronic beep. I prowled around all night long, disconnecting every possible device, but the beep was relentless. When I asked my son in the morning he said he thought it had something to do with their former cable TV and internet providers, but since they were former, they had no interest in fixing it. He shrugged as he added that it didn’t seem to bother the baby.

It’s my opinion that they have doomed my grandson to a lifetime of unemployment, since he has been conditioned to sleep through electronic alarms. I, on the other hand, woke every time the wretched thing went off.

The next times I slept in Seattle I had the sofa in the living room I shared with their dog. His noises weren’t electronic, but nonetheless effective. Apparently a West Highland Terrier can murder sleep as effectively as any of his countrymen.

Otherwise, to see my grandson, I travelled back and forth by car and ferry from Whidbey Island, where I slept in the barely converted garage of the Lawyer Sis. I like the soft bed and the cold room. I like the door opening on to spongy grass and brambles, the brackish lake, the beach houses and the Sound beyond.  The night I arrived the septic tank backed up and, since all flushes were in vain, just after dawn I squatted naked by the door and hoped I was startling only the local rabbits.

Almost a hundred miles, and another ferry, north is the island house my mother shares with her husband Jerry. There I can choose between a bed in a sleeping loft or a bed in the rental apartment. I usually choose the rental, though the walls are thin and my bed is painfully close to the shower in the main house and I wake every morning to ardent squeegeeing.

My seventh bed was unexpected.  Mother and Jerry bought a condo on the mainland, and the Lawyer Sis and I drove from Whidbey to celebrate the closing. After dinner, the Oldies went home to the island, and the Lawyer Sis and I stayed over at the condo. The packaging of the brand new queen size memory foam mattress, purchased earlier that evening, promised the “ultimate sleep experience”.  As ever I was grateful for the subtlety of English grammar, and hoped that it would not be quite the same as experiencing the ultimate sleep.

Whatever (as the children and the optimists say), the Lawyer Sis, seven years my junior, risked the mattress.  She’s got a chronic bad back and needed the foam.  I occupied the less comfortable, but potentially safer, single bed in the condo’s guestroom and office.   We both survived the night.

A couple of days later I was on a plane again, and my eighth bed was an economy seat home. 

Other than being away for the whole of the warmest UK April on record, and present for the coldest Seattle one, I think I timed my trip rather well.  I got a cheap ticket because I flew back in the middle of a Bank Holiday weekend, and missed the Royal Wedding (though British Airways at Seatac flew, as it were, the patriotic flag).  

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge

In Seattle they have the new nude-y scanners (the ones where the security guy gets to see under your clothes).  Just to make it extra fun (and presumably so your breasts look extra pert) you have to put your elbows in the air and your thumbs on top of your head.

I mentioned that I recently had had a flare up of a shoulder problem, and would they mind diagnosing it while they were checking me out for weapons of mass destruction, because an MRI is jolly hard to get on the National Health Service?  But they only looked puzzled and said I could have a PAT DOWN if I preferred.

I was tucked up safely, my first night back in my boaty bed when, jetlagged and sleepless, in the early hours I turned on the BBC World Service to hear that the USA’s most wanted man had been “killed and captured” (though I was awake enough to wonder if there was any irony in the BBC’s inversion of the more conventional phrase ”captured and killed”).

Then, though it was not my first thought, sometime as the day dawned, I admit I was glad that I had flown in hours earlier.  You think a middle-aged lady might find it inconvenient to pose for a naked scan with her thumbs on her head?

I’m betting you ain’t seen nothing yet.

My third child, who invariably begins all our phone conversations with the words, Mother!  It’s your favourite son! called a couple of weeks ago to congratulate me on my new mooring (of which more later) and to prepare me for his appearance as the Chevalier Danceny in the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

My son is finishing his final year in drama school, a time when all young aspiring actors hope to find an agent.  To that end the school puts on a series of public performances to give its actors exposure.

Just a Parental Advisory Warning about the performance, said my son, On account of nudity.

My nudity, he added, just so I was clear.

I hesitated a moment and then asked, Are you (pause) decent?

I have a cushion, he replied, his voice rising cheerfully to confirm the helpfulness of soft furnishings.

His father and I debated as we booked our seats.  The website wanted to put us in the front row. Eventually, however, we managed to get tickets for a discreet half dozen or so rows back.

My son did not have the leading role – most of the characters are women – but his was the second most important male part, with a critical plot element, since he kills the leading man in a sword fight.   I thought, well, any agents around will remember him – he’s the bare bottomed one, handy with his épée.

Before the sword fight, he makes love to the leading man’s lover.

In the end, for reasons of artistic integrity (and public decency, no doubt) the director abandoned the cushion idea in favour of breeches, and since his parents were going to be in the audience, my son had permission to hitch his breeches higher than usual as he rose from his lady love.

Nevertheless, even from row i we had a pretty good view of his bare bottom.

His father and younger sister disliked the play, but I found it interesting and disturbing, despite clumsy anachronisms.  Even a weak 20th century adaptation didn’t obscure the point of the original text:  sex was all about tactics and power.  Love mostly interfered with sex, and no one lived happily ever after.

On the drive home we watched the moon rise above the horizon, wonderfully large and glowing red.  I remarked to my daughter in the back seat that I had heard this was the closest to the earth the moon had visited in 19 years – exactly her whole life.  I guess I was too distracted with my new baby in March 1992 to notice the last perigee.

The Crow reminded me of that grown up word (and I instantly mentally replied with apogee).  Brits are astonishingly ignorant about the most basic science, and though BBC radio did tell me the moon would be nearest, the p word never crossed their lips.

Our swan news, three months on, has wrangled its way into the local press (and into that dodgiest of all media, local radio) so, since I promised not to take three months (and did exactly that), I guess I had better, finally, tell the story.

First I should warn you that one of the many things my ex-husband held against me was my discursive story-telling style. He was always looking at his watch, fidgeting, and finally demanding, Get on with it.

You might feel the same, but I’ll just say to you what I told him: I can’t help it; it’s the way I tell stories, even when it’s about swans.

A dead cygnet hangs in the trees sixty feet high on the side of Bunkers Hill, just where the road bends sharply and crosses first the Cherwell River and then the South Oxford Canal. I can just see the cygnet from my boat, though only with my binoculars, and because I know what I am looking for.

What surprised me most from the beginning was how white he looked in death, so close, after all, to growing up. On the water I saw him mostly grey, the ugly duckling from the fairy tale, his swan future barely promised in those new and extravagantly white feathers. I guess human teenagers are the same – you don’t quite notice when they’ve grown up either.

This cygnet came late and unexpected into the world.

Last year I wrote about our local swan wars – how our long standing resident Bugsy and his Missus had been ousted by Brutus, and how Brutus finally departed, leaving Mrs Bugsy calling mournfully for her mate, night after night, until finally the pair were reunited, amidst much rejoicing down the pub.

If we celebrated with a little too much of the Rock of Gibraltar’s best beer who could blame us? We – and the swans – had lost a whole brood of cygnets to marauding minks the year before.

But it was not long until Bugsy, in his dotage, had a new challenger, and after a while we stopped seeing Bugsy at all, and saw instead, Scar Face, a skittish young swan with a deep wound in his beak. More and more often he arrived with the perfidious Mrs Bugsy by his side.

At first we boycotted Scar Face as we had Brutus, but when he and Mrs Bugsy banged on our windows together, and together begged for bread, we were not sure what to do.

Down the pub it was finally agreed that if Mrs Bugsy accepted him, so should we.

When I saw them necking – that elegant swan intertwining that precedes mating – I meant to write a post about Mrs Bugsy and her new toy boy. I was going to call it, If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.

(I am not, by the way, responsible for any of these swan names; and I am not really sure who is — sometimes rival names are used until one comes to be agreed — in an attempt to rehabilitate Scar Face one boat insisted on calling him Beaky, but the rest of us were not fooled.)

For months Scar Face built elaborate nests for Mrs Bugsy. They begged together at boat windows, Mrs Bugsy graciously expecting bounty and throwing back her neck to receive it, Scar Face hissing and darting and gobbling the bread, then lifting his neck to hiss again.

You can’t blame him! said the Grumpy Mechanic, certain that Scar Face’s injuries were sinister. It’s a human who cut his beak. Probably an axe attack! He hates humans! Why wouldn’t he?

April passed and then May. The swans sat for hours on their nests, but we knew the nests were empty, because at night the swans still swam together. A swan pair with eggs never leaves the nest unattended.

At the pub someone said someone else had called the Swan Authorities to ask how come Scar Face and Mrs Bugs kept making nests but never made babies. Given all the hankypanky on the canal, it was not an unreasonable question.

A month or two later all the men in the pub agreed that the Swan Authorities’ assessment was probably right: Scar Face was firing blanks.

“Firing blanks” is the pub report. I don’t have a clear idea about what the Swan Authorities actually said. In fact, I would doubt entirely the existence of Swan Authorities, except that they apparently added that his beak injury was not on their database, and they would need to look into it. And since it really is true that all swans in the UK belong to the queen, no doubt a large number of very deserving young scientists are employed on my taxes to keep track of the Her Majesty’s birds, and perhaps those scientists might be willing, on a casual basis and when more than usually pressed, to cast judgment on the sexual prowess of their charges.

Whatever (as my children, and all of the rest of you, may be inclined to say), Mrs Bugsy and Scar Face were unexpectedly (to us, at least) delivered of a single chick, in July last year, when most swan babies were already if not coming into adolescence, at least pretty big kids.

I was unreasonably delighted, but also unreasonably anxious. Our cygnet was such a late baby, and an only child too. I watched him grow, and worried. If either Scar Face or Mrs Bugsy appeared at my window without their baby I shouted at them. You’ve left him? What are you thinking? I had not forgotten the mink who ate all the babies the year before, even if they had.

Day by day he grew. When he was a big gangly teenager I thought he was safe.

I watched the flying lessons. I always thought the suggestion of flying lessons was anthropomorphic rubbish. Birds fly, right? That’s what they do. What’s to learn? But really, this teenage swan had flying lessons, just the way you might teach your child to drive. The two grown up swans ran along the canal, making a great racket, pumping their feet and flapping their wings and finally rising up into the air.

The cygnet followed behind them, also racing along the canal, pumping his feet and flapping his wings, and then crying, because he didn’t know how to get in the air, and he was left behind. With unflagging patience his mother and father circled back, rejoined him on the canal and showed him once more.

Over and over the cygnet ran and flapped and couldn’t get into the air, and cried, until finally, one day he rose above the canal and flew, just a few feet at first, and then higher and higher.

Was it because he was born so late, and learned so late what could hurt him? By the end of November, when he finally flew, the trees were bare and treacherous with no leaves to wave him away. Didn’t Nature warn him about the change of seasons? Or maybe our sweet cygnet was just stupid. Almost as soon as he was in the air he flew straight into a leafless branch and broke his neck.

And so the cygnet has hung these three months until the Mystery of the Hanging Swan appeared on the news. Radio Oxford despatched its team to the canal and interviewed the Grumpy Mechanic, among others.

Tell us what these swans mean to you, urged Phil, the breakfast radio presenter. They are very much a part of the local community, aren’t they? How does it feel seeing the dead swan hang fron the tree, every day?

I didn’t take a picture of our cygnet dead in the tree, because it seemed too much like prying, but if you want to see it it is on the BBC website here.

Last week I spent the evening at a dinner party in the village where I used to live. When I first saw it almost 28 years ago one Saturday afternoon in early April, I thought it must be the prettiest village in England. My husband and I, with toddler and infant in tow, were house hunting.

We knocked on a door with a For Sale sign outside.

A middle aged woman answered and hesitated a moment when we asked to look around. Hearing the television in the background, we offered to come back another time. Worse than arriving with no appointment, we had forgotten it was Grand National Saturday.

Never mind! My father always said it was a cruel race, the woman declared, opening the door wide enough for us to come in. Turn off the tele! she shouted. The noise stopped suddenly, young people scattered, and we were led into the house.

My main impression of Hedges was of a home full of laundry. Our guide heaved baskets from every surface as we were led from room to room. She apologised as she went.

I’ve got seven children, she announced, tossing away another basket of clothes so that we could inspect the cooker. Never mind! Sorry!

Bill wanted a son, she explained. She shifted another load of laundry. Sorry! But we kept having daughters, one after another. Five girls. Never mind! Then, when Daniel came, we thought we’d have one more try, to see if Daniel could have a brother.

And as she moved one last basket, she introduced us to her youngest daughter. Sorry!

I suspect I bought Hedges mainly because of the laundry and the seven children. It did not seem possible that their house could be insufficient for my needs.

My dinner companions last week were some of my first friends in the village. We reminisced a bit, traded stories about the disgraced headmaster of the village school, the disgraced landlord of the village pub, the disgraced vicar of the parish church – amongst us we could vouch for the downfall of almost every British institution.

And then, though three quarters of my audience long knew the story, for the benefit of the relative newcomers I was urged to tell again about how the village shop and post office was stormed by armed robbers, such a thing never having been heard of before or since.

It happened only a fortnight after I moved into Hedges, and the very next morning I was described in the Oxford Times as a “sharp-eyed Buckland villager”. I thought it sounded a lot like being called an Alert Peasant.

The headline was, Have-a-Go Hero Foils Armed Robbers. The sharp-eyed villager was, of course, a mere bit player; the hero who had a go was my neighbour, the shopkeeper.

My story was this:

Earlier in the century Hedges had been a draper’s shop; behind it was the bake house, next door on one side was the brewery and on the other side Summerside Stores, which sold general provisions, fresh bread and local milk, but got most of its revenue – and held most of its ready cash – from serving as the village post office. Like Hedges, the other shops were now private homes, and by the time I arrived, Summerside Stores was all that was left of the commercial centre.

My kitchen window looked straight at the shop door. I watched as a car pulled up in front and several young men got out. I idly noticed that they didn’t really look like village people (from my 14 days’ experience) and when they emerged in more than an ordinary hurry, jumped into their car, and drove away, I memorised their number plate.

A moment later my neighbour, the shopkeeper, appeared at his door with blood dripping from his forehead. Instead of handing over the cash, he fought the robbers for their gun (only an air gun – this is a Cotswold village, not NYC) and because it was frankly more useful as a blunt instrument, they hit him over the head with it and ran away.

My neighbour followed them to the door, turned the key in the lock, and had the presence of mind to switch the Open sign to Closed.

I ran out of my house and pounded on the shop window. From inside he indicated with urgent gestures that he was busy, they were closed, and I should go away. In return I shouted and gestured that I had the baddies’ number plate. Eventually, still dripping blood, he opened the door and let me in.

My dinner party host interrupted to remind me that his wife had arrived only a few minutes later.

Please might I have a pint of milk? She asked formally. Brits are always formal in the face of obvious mayhem.

No! We’re shut! snarled the bloody shopkeeper.

Now, Peter, his wife demurred, We can’t stay shut forever, can we?

The dinner party host roared with laughter. He didn’t want me to forget his favourite part of the story. She sold the pint! She sold the pint! He laughed again and then looked to me to continue.

The next day, I said, the police came and took my evidence. They were obviously sceptical of both my methods and motives, and repeatedly questioned me, asking very carefully, Did you write down the number? Evidence not on paper, it seemed, was barely evidence at all; nevertheless, the car, abandoned in the next village, was confirmed to be the one used in the raid.

What puzzled the police almost as much as my extraordinary ability to recall 3 letters and 4 digits was why I had memorised them at all. I admitted that I hadn’t seen anything except three men going into the shop and then going out again, quickly.

Finally I said, I’m an American. I am a very irritable and suspicious person. I memorize number plates all the time. The police wrote that down solemnly, showed me their notes, and asked me to sign them.

Their inquiries ground on. I don’t think anyone was ever arrested or charged. The car turned out to be stolen.

Some months later, my neighbours attended the annual ceremony in London for Postmasters and Mistresses who had been robbed during the year. They proudly showed off their medals and certificates of commendation.

As for me, I settled into village life and was never again called on to exercise my sharp villager eyes

The following year a man knocked at my door, showed me an ID, and intimated that he understood that I had done the Royal Mail a service some time ago and therefore the Royal Mail would like to show its appreciation. He apologised that it had taken so long, but as he thought I could appreciate, the Royal Mail were quite busy delivering post. Would it be convenient if he returned the following Wednesday afternoon?

At the appointed hour a large Rover car arrived to pick me up. There was a sheet of blue paper towel in the wheel well on the passenger’s side – the sort of thing you find on doctors’ examination tables – so that my shoes never had to touch any bit of floor that other shoes had touched.

The man drove me in silence to Swindon, where I received a private tour of the local sorting office, and then was offered tea, two bourbon cream biscuits, and a cheque for £30.

British readers will easily imagine the elegant pretensions of a chauffeur driven Rover car in the early 80s, and they will smile ironically at its Swindon destination (because everyone always does smile in just that way when they think of Swindon). They will also, of course, be quite clear that bourbon cream biscuits contain neither bourbon nor cream.

I always meant to buy a letter opener with the money, but I haven’t yet got around to it.

The intense cold that descended mid November let up a week or so ago, and the layer of ice on the canal thinned enough to make navigation possible. The towpath rumour that Narrowboat Helene of Troy would be barging through on Sunday turned out to be true, though the temperature still hovered around freezing: shards of ice, cut and scattered in the narrowboat’s wake, were gently frozen in place by last Monday morning, and the canal had a sharp, dangerous look.

Nevertheless, the temperature was gradually rising, and Dusty, the fuel boat, announced he was on his way. He reached me on Wednesday morning, topped up my diesel, and tossed 200kg of coal onto my roof. He apologised for being out of propane, but didn’t think he would get any more before mid January.

I said now I had diesel, I was thinking of making a run for water – which meant driving the boat forward about a quarter of a mile, filling up, and reversing back to the mooring. Dusty advised me to go for it. The Met Office was predicting the thaw would be short-lived.

I rarely move the boat on my own, but there was no one I could ask for help on a bitterly cold mid-week December day. My boaty neighbours were all at work; I had offers of help for the next weekend, but the forecasters promised more hard frost by then. My water tanks were nearly drained, and I didn’t think I could take a chance on moving later.

So all by myself I drove up to the water point (which just between you and me and the internet is not exactly a legal water point), tapped my hose into the (not exactly legal) supply, and tanked up. On this short journey I was surprised by how much bother just a little ice could be. Hitting the propeller, icy chunks sent me in quite the wrong direction, and at one point I had to kill the engine, undress to my shirt sleeves and plunge my arm into canal water almost to the shoulder to clear ice from the propeller blades.

When the tanks were full, I untied the ropes and set the boat in reverse. The whole business took about three hours, and just after lunch time I was back on my mooring, without having crashed into anyone’s boat – no small feat, since I have almost no steering in reverse, and there is a sharp bend to negotiate.

By the next morning three of my neighbours – all of whom had been out when I moved the boat – remarked, I hear you got water yesterday. If I had crashed any boats, everyone would have known.

The canal stayed navigable for another day or two. One boat moved north and two more headed south, following Dusty. The swan pair visited, begging for bread, but by Friday a new layer of ice meant they could no longer swim to my kitchen window.

It started snowing early Saturday morning and didn’t stop until after dark. In the evening, with snow higher than my mid-calf boots, I trudged up to the pub where many of my neighbours had already gathered. The Landlord said, I hear you got water the other day.

The three divorced men from the marina, each living on their separate boats, were all there. I hadn’t seen the saddest one for months; his only son died in a car crash a year or so ago, and then he and his wife didn’t feel the same about things any more, at least not about each other, and finally he thought he would just get a boat. He cried when he told me the story, and then, because I cried too, he bought me a drink. I’m sorry, he said, wiping his eyes.

The butcher who delivers meat to the pub got his van stuck heading out of the car park and came in to order dinner. Scanning the menu on the blackboard, and negotiating rescue over his phone, he confessed he fancied something vegetarian.

The young archaeologists from the squatting boat by the bridge arrived, brushing off snow, and told the story of how they’d helped push a stranded ambulance back onto the road.

Two Polish young women driving a mini wandered in. They had been hired to cater a wedding nearby, but their car got stuck on the hill by the pub. Oh, the wedding’s off, the girls replied to our muttered concern. We just want to get back to Oxford.

The conversation turned to the Morris Dancing troupe who phoned to cancel their appearance because of the snow. One of the locals tore down their grainy, home-printed poster advertising the gig.

She pointed out one of the key dancers pictured on the left of the poster. She is a big girl, fair enough, my boating friend said. Not been well. For months she thought she had some kind of stomach problem.

Irritable Bowel What’s It, another boater offered.

That’s it, my friend said. So she kept drinking and dancing, dancing and drinking, pints and pints, because she didn’t know. After a while, the doctors said it must be gallstones. And one night she went to the Emergency Room with really bad gall stones and came home with a baby boy.

She was a big girl, fair enough, everyone in the pub agreed. She didn’t know.

After I left, just as the pub was about to close, I’m told a child of about 10 or 11 wandered in and asked the Landlord if he did rooms; her father was waiting in a car in the snow outside. The Landlord refused.

Anyway, shrugged Mrs Landlord the next day, they weren’t still there on Sunday morning.

Our familiar wind, which usually blows west, damp and mild, across the Atlantic, has swung to the north and east and brings instead arctic cold and Siberian snow. My boat makes odd creaking noises as the gusts rock it against the ice. The canal is frozen.

It is ten days since any boat moved through the lock. Along the towpath we trade weather forecasts and calculations of how long our supplies will last: the man on the squatting boat behind me says he reckons his water and diesel won’t last past tomorrow, and I say my coal supplies will run out next week and I am worried about my water. I think I have another 20 days at least of diesel (to generate electricity), but others are running low already. We are all wondering whether Dusty, the fuel and coal boat, will be able to get through before Christmas.

The days slip away while much of my energy is taken up with keeping the birds fed and myself warm: before breakfast I throw a coat over my PJs and refill the feeders each morning. The birds eat constantly until half past three when the light is already fading. In the spring they wantonly toss the seed about, but now they leave nothing even for the rats that come out at dusk. I’m lonely when the birds are gone.

Every third day I haul a 20kg bag of coal from the roof of the boat to the bow. I fill the scuttle, shovel coal into the fire, riddle the ashes, empty the pan, begin again, many times each day. I don’t, whatever else I neglect, let the fire go out overnight.

The weather turned cold a few days before Thanksgiving and my potential guests began phoning me: Did you really mean to invite us to your boat? And, Just how cold is it on that boat?

I promised them they wouldn’t be cold, and they were not – before dinner I had to throw open the windows – the combination of cooking, the coal fire, and five people on board sent us way beyond cosy.

My cooking facilities are limited and the menu was simple. For the first time in years I didn’t make pumpkin pie, which is always challenging anyway. There used to be a deli in Oxford that stocked Libby’s tinned pumpkin, in strictly limited quantities, a few weeks before Thanksgiving. They kept it behind the counter, and when you asked for it a suspicious sales clerk would inquire, Have you booked? Only if your name was on her list would she hand over the tin. It cost a small fortune.

This year, I made pecan pie instead, which Brits, with their sweet teeth, prefer anyway. Cornbread is another challenge, but after no success at any supermarket within 10 miles of Oxford, I thought of checking a health food store where I found a packet labelled “maize meal”, and duly baked it into something passable, if a little dry.

I cooked the turkey on the barbeque. While I was planning my menu I idly wondered if you could spatchcock a turkey, typed the thought into Google, and found the internet full of advice. My guests were impressed when I told them I had done the spatchcocking (removing the backbone and breaking the rib cage) all by myself. Nevertheless, they (and I) were unconvinced that the turkey (4 and a bit kilograms) could be done in only an hour, so I cooked it another thirty minutes. It was overdone, but at least we all felt confident we wouldn’t wake up with salmonella.

Besides turkey, cornbread, and pecan pie I served sausage and bread stuffing, mashed potatoes, brussel sprouts and grated sweet potatoes with sage and garlic butter. With gravy from stock and drippings to cover it all, of course. I forgot to put the turkey liver in the gravy, so I enjoyed that all by myself, panfried in olive oil, a few days later.

With Thanksgiving over, I lurch, already overfed, toward Christmas. The festivities began Saturday with the Boaters’ Christmas Dinner at the pub, a jolly event overshadowed by sad swan news, of which more in a future post (not 3 months from now, I promise!).