Then in winter, we hibernated. Returning in the evening
gloom, even before you reached the canal, you’d catch the homely smell of
smoking coal. The towpath would be still, and on every boat, doors and curtains
would be closed against the cold, chimneys puffing cheerily away. While summer
was a buzz of conversation, hailed hellos and clinking bottles, the sound of
winter was the stolid rattle of a coal scuttle being filled. We still visited
each other, enjoying wine and warmth and admiring our neighbours’ stove-lighting
technique, perhaps exchanging views on the best type of coal to use. But this
was an altogether more internal time, drowsy days spent deep within the boat,
and, as winter peaked, in contemplation of the view outside. Almost every year
the slow-moving canal would freeze grey-white, startling, beautiful, and so
close at hand it felt as if your boat had moved overnight to another planet.
This virgin layer of ice would gradually get more battle-scarred as the kids
from the local estate attempted to smash the surface with increasingly
oversized objects, graduating from stones to bricks, until with inevitable
surrealism, you’d wake to find a shopping trolley embedded in the ice.
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