BENNY GREEN
Walking along. Chiswick Mall the other morning, I found myself wondering whether I might not after all be the type of man who could be happy living on a boat, this par- ticular mood being a distinct improvement on that of your average Londoner, who finds himself wondering whether he could be happy living on anything. Certainly the fleet of converted barges looked inviting enough, each with its homely curtains, decks awash with prams and tricycles, and the inevitable terrier nosing around for rats. Indeed, these scenes of watery domesticity affected me so strongly that as I walked I began thinking myself into the situation of a boatdweller, trying hard to form. a mental picture of m myself waking in the morning inside one of these boats and cracking my skull on the bulkhead, which is the technical term river people use when describing a ceiling which has been designed by midgets.
But the images refused to form; least of all the one where I emerge on deck, stride masterfully over the prams and tricycles, and not quite so masterfully over the terriers and rats, dive into the water and take a turn around Chiswick Eyot before breakfast. The failure of my mind's eye to envisage all this May be explained by the fact that in real life I cannot swim, but that does not explain why, each time I step aboard one of these floating homes, I experience a vague feeling of disappointment, even sometimes of be- trayal. On this particular morning, it didn't even help much that the boat I was visiting was aromatic with eggs, bacon and coffee. It was a converted Thames lighter, and as I stepped on board I realised what it was about these river homes which always lets me down. The deck was solid under my feet— too solid by half. You could tell, even if you were a water-fearing, non-swimming land- lubber like me, that here was one boat that was never going to go anywhere.
I find this a very strange contradiction indeed. Judging from the attitude of friends have known who opted for a life on the water, the great attraction is supposed to be the sense of physical freedom. This I believe to be completely illusory. Admittedly in the early days of the riparian life there must be a certain childish satisfaction in calling the kitchen the galley and being obliged to wait till the tide does out before you can clean the windows. But once that sort of thing has worn off, what remains? To a townee, the great thing about this whole business is that a boat is a symbol of liberation, of vagrancy, of escape from the iron cage of the city. If you don't like the view, you simply sail off and find a better one. But a boat which doesn't move is surely only one degree less absurd than a house which does.
To be honest, my researches on Chiswick Mall did reveal certain inestimable advant- ages which river life can offer, and the greatest of these is quiet. If you stood on deck and strained very hard you could just hear the faint hum of the twentieth century pursuing its imbecile course along the Hammersmith Motorway; once inside the saloon there was no hint that the internal combustion engine existed at all, and the only real danger came from two swans which would not stop pecking at one of the southerly portholes until propitiated by chunks of stale bread.
For all the peace and quiet, the amount of life on the river surprised me. Several times during the morning demented men in groups of eight, always harangued by a dwarf in a school cap, rowed past us as though the river police were in hot pursuit, which they may have been for all I know. It was the solo oarsmen who were really impressive, even though one or two of them were set on a course which seemed perilously close to where I was standing at one of the saloon windows. At one point a greying man
rowed into view and then rested on his oars directly in front of my vantage point. After a few moments he spotted me, gave a friendly smile and waved back. I smiled in return. at which for some reason he began laughing hysterically before rowing on his way. I have an idea he may have been employed by the local residents' association to propa- gate the myth that river people are mare friendly than others.
It was not the lone oarsman's laughter I resented, but his mobility. My distaste for boats which don't 'go anywhere welled up once more. It is true that mooring fees are lower than borough rates, and that you can buy a hulk for rather less than it costs to instal central heating in a three-bedroom house. Even so, there is something funda- mentally absurd about a vehicle which re- fuses to move, and I am sure that my feel- ings are rooted in a schoolboy outing of thirty years ago, when an unusually enter- prising schoolmistress took a whole crowd of us on a riverbus from Charing Cross to London Bridge. That was what I called living, and I told my Chiswick host as much. He.disagreed, and, in a last attempt to convince me of the advantages of his chosen path, he said that every spring he invited a hundred guests aboard on Boat Race Day, whether he disliked them or not, so that they could all watch the, two varsity shells streak by. Certainly it sounds a less painful experience than watching the whole race on television.
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