Narrow Minds

Published by Accent Press Ltd – 2011

ISBN 9781908086969

Copyright © Marie Browne 2011

Marie Browne has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher: Accent Press Ltd, The Old School, Upper High Street, Bedlinog, Mid-Glamorgan CF46 6RY

Cover design by Madamadari

Also by Marie Browne:

This book is dedicated to Geoff, Amelia and Chris, Charlie and Sam:
To Geoff because he puts up with a huge amount from all of us.
To Amelia and Chris because they are making us Grandparents and that's just terrifying.
To Charlie because she keeps me on my toes and makes me laugh.
To Sam because he never fails to surprise me.
I love you all.

Acknowledgements

This is a good place to say thank you to all those people who make our life what it is.
Those in houses: Helen and Dave, Ian, Vikki and Neil, Arwen and Carl and of course Mum and Dad.
Those in boats: Steve for always being a gentleman when I complain about his music, Lewis for not being as grumpy as I make him out to be, Dion and Charlie for being the best neighbours in the world and to Bill and Drew for mechanical insights and for instigating barbecues under adverse conditions.

Thank you.

Chapter One
On Thin Ice

S
HIVERING, STARK NAKED AND
covered in semi-frozen cow poo, I realised that everybody, even members of the stoic, grumblesome English race, have their breaking point and I had just found mine. For the unlucky few, it may be something huge like the loss of a loved one or some other catastrophe that just can't be endured. However, for most of us it is the inevitable trickle of exasperating nonsense that finally forces stressed and hapless souls into out-of-character actions.

It could be that final demand hidden among the Christmas cards or another argument with the boss, bank charges, late buses, riotous rush hours, taxes, rising fuel costs and people cutting into queues (only the English see this as a mortal insult). Only a couple of months previously I had seen a woman scream at an assistant in a supermarket because the little treat that she allowed herself every week had been removed from their stock lists. All these little straws build up and build up and you never know which one will break the camel's back.

Earlier that bitterly cold November afternoon I had decided that winter is never a good time for positive thinking and had spent at least an hour staring glumly out of the lounge window. Enjoying my melancholy, I gazed out at the snow, hypnotised by the whirling eddies created by the wind racing around the buildings. Leaning on the sill, my forehead against the cold glass of the window and my thighs against the hot radiator, I watched our landlord, Kevin, chivvy his cows, slipping, sliding and pooing up the steep incline of the farmyard. He was trying to get them out of the snow and into the wonderful warm and cosy barn. The stupid animals fought him all the way, turning this way and that in an effort to find a way out of the yard.

Honestly, it was ridiculous, the wind howled around the farmyard. With nothing much to stand in its way (one or two irritable Swaledale sheep and some stunted and tenacious bushes at most); it had swept across the fells from the Pennines, carrying snow and sleet to batter the faces of the herd, and anyone else daft enough to be outside. Surely even an animal could see that the barn was better, why were they fighting it? It was good for them to be moved, in their best interests.

However, I just couldn't help myself, every time one broke free and headed back toward the field I cheered it on and booed when the poor thing was rounded up and forced to conform again. I was definitely on the side of the cows.

It seemed bizarre to identify with the antics of panicked bovines but, like them, I didn't want to be told what I could and couldn't do and certainly didn't want what was ‘best for me' or ‘acceptable'. I stared over my shoulder at our new house. Like the barn it was comfortable and warm, the stone walls and thick carpet gave it a homely feel that the cows certainly wouldn't appreciate. Big pictures, way too big to fit on the walls of our last home, had been dragged out of storage in the hope that they would break up the vast expanses of magnolia-painted wall space. The huge leather sofa was just the right size for the whole family to warm its toes in front of the large open fire.

I shook my head and turned back to the window. This was the only area in the room I really liked, an odd little alcove, about seven foot wide, filled with overflowing, floor to ceiling, book shelves that loomed over a small dining room table. Cramped, confused and chaotic, it was definitely my favourite place to sit.

Compared to the narrow-boat we had been living on for the last two years this house felt huge. I suffered slight agoraphobia as I shuffled around the mostly empty rooms trying not to notice that we only had enough possessions to fill a boat and not a house. It was too big, too empty and far too stable. I missed the continual rocking and odd bumps that had been almost unnoticed in the boat, however without them I had almost continual low level nausea. Being forced to sell our house after the downfall of the Rover company, we hadn't always enjoyed our somewhat odd lifestyle. The last three years we'd had to come to terms with some very odd situations, and we had laughed a lot. It had been our choice to buy a narrow boat and it had been our choice to attempt an alternative lifestyle and it had been our choice to embrace all the bizarre changes that went with living on a boat, even if most of our friends described us as ‘mad as a box of frogs'.

There is something about living outside the social norm that really appeals to me. For one thing, it always lowers people's expectations. As soon as they find out that not only do you live on a semi-derelict boat, but you are also trying to raise children on that boat, they tend to scoff. However, as soon as they realise that all your dinner conversation leans towards moaning about nature, the price of diesel and you have a harrowing selection of stories that involve human poo, your average person will glaze over and almost perform circus tricks in the effort to be polite yet get away as quickly as possible.

If I'm entirely honest I think that may have been one of the main reasons I enjoyed it so much. I love to watch friends of friends stumble over their own brains as they try to come to terms with what, to most people, is a completely alien existence.

I sighed and tried to pinpoint that pivotal moment where we had taken our eye off the ball, had been swept away from the margins and stuck back into the herd. In short, I was trying to work out how the hell we had managed to end up in a similar situation to the one we had escaped only three short years ago: this had definitely NOT been the plan. I sighed again and, watching the cow circus vanish beneath the fog of my breath, whispered, ‘Oh Moo!'

I couldn't ignore the nagging feeling that, as we had been sucked back into ‘normality', escaping a second time was going to be much harder. Raising the fortifications after our previous escape, life had doubled the guard and installed CCTV. This time it was going to take a huge amount of planning to get away, I was worried that any possible plan would probably include tunnels and spoons.

With my husband Geoff desperate to retrain and get back into work, selling
Happy Go Lucky,
our old boat, had been our only option. Horrified at the ridiculous cost of courses, we'd sadly opted to sell the boat, put him through all his electrician exams, buy a new fixer upper and start all over again with the money that was left … Simples.

Geoff had indeed taken his exams and, as he usually does, passed with flying colours. Trying to save as much money as possible and with Lillian, Geoff's mother, out of the country we had taken over her house in Cumbria while he qualified and I searched for another boat. By the time he was a fully fledged electrician and had been offered a job across the Pennines in Durham, we still hadn't found anything suitable. So, in desperation, we had elected to take a six-month rent of a cottage over winter then, try again in the spring.

Unfortunately, the two children still at home, Charlotte and Sam, were ecstatic to be in a house again and were thoroughly enjoying all the little luxuries that came with being conventional. The fast computer, the large TV, washing machine that you didn't have to walk half a mile to use and the biggest enticement of all, the deep old bath. (I must admit even I was rather enamoured with that one).

Charlie at thirteen, was completely addicted to MSN, she spent hours on the computer either chatting to friends or enjoying eBay and other sales sites. Built like a small stick, she could still easily get into children's clothes but that was no longer acceptable so she spent days trolling through various sites looking for clothing. Ten-year-old Sam, luckily, couldn't care less what he looked like. He spent most of his life pushing his long mouse-coloured hair out of his strange amber eyes (a legacy from his father) and shouting mild obscenities at a computer game called ‘Space Chickens', and with Geoff enjoying his first proper job for about five years, life slipped relentlessly and inexorably toward ‘normal'. Watching them, I could see that they thought I was mad to want to lose all this and go back to our previous mud-ridden, water-logged and insect-infested existence.

Amelia, the oldest, had left home the day we'd moved out of our last house. Unwilling to give up her lifestyle of college and friends, she had maintained from the outset that she wasn't going to deal well with life afloat, and had gone to live with her boyfriend, Huw.

Strangely enough she was the only one of my children who seemed to have any empathy with my desperate need to return to what I considered to be my normal life. At twenty-one, she was now living in Reading and was working as a letting agent for a well-known estate agency, she really hated the job. Like her mother, she loathed the set hours, the level of dress that was demanded of you and the ridiculous rules and management structure.

Two years in a flat of their own had opened the young couple's eyes to the bills and the struggle of trying to live on a starter income. The more irritated she became with the whole thing and the more her bank account failed to support her monthly expenses, the more she understood my point of view. It was quite refreshing, she would phone every two or three days, listen to me moan and gripe, moan and gripe back at me, then both of us, satisfied that neither of our lives were better than the other's, went on our way until the next support session: I missed having her around.

The small rented cottage that we currently inhabited was attached to a farm in the middle of rural County Durham. It was very pretty but cold, drafty and expensive to heat. The only good thing about the situation was that coffee with my long standing, and ever tolerant, best mate Helen was now much more frequent.

I had actually met up with her the day before. We had been developing a habit of meeting once a week in Barnard Castle. This pretty little market town was almost exactly halfway between my house on the outskirts of Durham and Helen's in Brough in Cumbria. Helen had been my best friend for more years than I cared to think about and her no nonsense attitude to life had given me a moral slapping on several occasions. This slapping, however, never managed to stop me griping and moaning whenever I saw her.

‘Oh God, what's the matter now?' she had snapped as she had walked through the door of the Bowes museum cafe (I obviously had my ‘Oh poor me' face on). ‘You've got a face like a slapped bum.' She wandered past me and over to the counter, polishing her glasses as she went, obviously walking into a warm room from the cold outside had seriously clouded her judgement.

I noticed, with some irritation, that she was only wearing jeans, boots, a shirt and a jumper. The woolly hat pulled over her hair more a nod to good taste than any need to keep warm. Even in the warmth of the cafe I was still snuggled into a huge puffy coat, my feet squashed into three pairs of socks, I had also picked the table directly beneath the big ceiling-mounted heater. I didn't feel the problem was with me but with the cafe. Set in a huge room with high ceilings, huge windows and stone floors, it was no wonder it felt cold.

Returning, she slapped down a cream-covered mocha for me, a plate of choccy thingies for both of us and a cup of Earl Grey for herself (yuck). Waiting until I was nose deep in my coffee she continued. ‘So, come on, what's the problem?'

After I had managed to get the cream out of my nostrils with a napkin, I sighed. There was no point lying, she'd see right through me in an instant. ‘I'm cold, there are too many hills up here and I can't understand a word anybody says. Every time someone speaks it sounds like that voice-over from Big Brother, I keep looking for hidden cameras. Everything smells of cow sh … poo, and I know I'm just being narrow-minded and pathetic. Actually I'm beginning to irritate myself with my miseries I just want to go home.'

Helen stared at me for a moment. ‘Look,' she picked up one of the choccy things and took a big bite. ‘I could say, poor you, I could say that come summer you can go back to the river, go back to being a gypsy, go back to irritating those of us that pay council tax and go back to disappointing your mother. But quite frankly that isn't going to help you at the moment so really,' she paused for another bite, studying me over the top of her glasses while irritably pushing the long strands of dark hair away from her mouth. ‘Get over it.'

Helen and I had originally met when working for an IT company when we both lived in Worcester many years ago. She had moved to Cumbria after giving up her IT management career to become a paramedic. She loved it up here and was always outraged when someone hated her adopted area. Raising an eyebrow at me, she continued, unstoppable in her righteous indignation. ‘You aren't going anywhere so you may as well make the best of it for the next six months, take some time to get to know the people in the village. I'm sure they're lovely.' she paused again then spoke over me as I started to refute everything she said. ‘Just give it a try. You never know you may enjoy it so much you never want to leave.' She pushed the plate of chocolate towards me. ‘Now have one of these and hurry up, I want to show you something that will make you feel more at home.'

I stared out of the window, even washed and blurred by horizontal sleet, the sweeping lawns and elegant terraces of the museum were beautiful. However, I wasn't going to let something as pedestrian as outstanding splendour raise my mood so I resolutely turned my back on it all and stuck my nose, once again, into my coffee cup. It was a good job I hadn't seen it in the sunshine, it may have been hard to resist. ‘There's another small problem,' I grouched.

Helen grinned. ‘What's that?'

‘I don't think the kids are going to want another boat, especially not after the last one we went to see.' I traced coffee rings on the table. ‘I think that pile of rubbish may have killed any enthusiasm they had for a life afloat.'

‘I didn't know you'd been to see a boat.' Helen frowned. ‘Where was it?'

‘Over at Hartlepool.' I shook my head, remembering the terrible mess that had been described as a boat. ‘It was awful and actually reduced Charlie to tears, she was so worried that we were going to make her live on it.'