You hear gym people (tossers) saying how they ‘bench twice their body weight’, as they pose their oiled-up ‘roid-ridden bodies in the mirror. Well real men don’t fuck about with pushing a few kilos around. We shlep 20 tons of boat along with a tug-of-war rope! Not saying I won every time, when the currents decide otherwise, who’s gonna argue, but generally I won. I am a human barge!!!

Me and the Boatman sailed from Runnymede to Windsor. From where they sealed the Magna Carta, in 1215, to where they built Windsor Castle, in 1070. So fuck you, Donald Trump, if you think your country has some kind of ‘history’. And because towns always grew up around water, any trip along the Thames, unquestionably the most important river in the world, takes you on a tour of history. You can’t stop in the middle of nowhere to take a piss (flushing the boat’s toilet uses water, so why waste it?) without there being a plaque in the middle of a 975 acre wooded field stating it was exactly where some Lord was ritually disembowelled, or some Queen happened to be born, or there was a famous battle against the French right there. On most fields you watch your step to avoid cow dung. Fields by the River you watch your step to avoid stepping on historical monuments.

We sailed 3.5 miles. It took about 5 hours. Ok, we weren’t rushing. Mainly because you can’t. Even I have to leave my ‘chronically impatient’ gland in the car when I park up and enter the much more relaxed karma of ‘boat-world’.

The boat is 65 feet long. You start to ‘turn’ about 10 minutes before you get there. Its ‘reaction time’ is glacial. Everything is in sort of slow motion, except the tree you’re about to hit, that’s very fast. So parking the thing ain’t easy. It involves at least 2 people, lots of ropes and about 20 minutes of very careful manoeuvring. The parking is very very skilful. But the real skill is the geezer with the ropes. (See above).

Rivers have locks. Roads don’t. If they did, I would travel on different roads. Because to negotiate a lock with big boat takes an hour. But no-one’s in a rush. We’re all happily strolling round, tying big knots in our big ropes, waiting patiently and pleasantly for locks to fill, or empty, and no-one mentions things like ‘HOW LONG DOES THIS HAVE TO TAKE, FFS!!!!’ Because that wouldn’t be a boaty thing to say and you’d get excommunicated from the… errrrr… boat-people. They have protocols. Which are, in fact, really nice and pleasant. And thus pretty much go against every fibre in my Londoner body.

But I love it there, on the river. It’s just beautiful. Peaceful. Who knew there were birds other than pigeons? No, me neither, but there are. Kites and kestrels and… albatrosses (though not necessarily in Windsor) and all manner of flying things. Fabulous trees, incredible houses but most of the way it was just me, ‘im, the river, fields, nay-cha and a fucking great 20 ton boat spewing out diesel fumes. What a fab day we had, on the open waves. Yes, thank you, you’re right, there are no waves on the river.

Happy Monday

A xxxx