Messing About in Boats
One of my husband’s favorite passages in all of literature is this from Kenneth Grahame’s children’s classic The Wind in the Willows:
“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing about in boats — or with boats. In or out of ’em, it doesn’t matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you’ve done it there’s always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you’d much better not.”
The traditional houseboat, called a “dounga.”
We spent yesterday messing about on the lake. To be specific, we helped our landlord move his houseboat to a new mooring. His boat is a smallish, traditional-style houseboat of the type that many families in past generations called home. The houseboat was his home until two years ago, when he moved with his family to the village house where we now rent the upstairs. My husband is always eager to be on the water, so we went down to help him with the move.
It was a long and complicated process, involving lots of problem-solving, as well as messing about. The electricity and plumbing had to be detached, along with the mooring lines. The wooden gangplank from the shore had to be taken apart and its supporting posts pulled up from the lake bed. A “professional” houseboat-mover named Mahmoud used his large canoe to tow us to the new site. As we approached the mooring, it became frustratingly clear that our houseboat couldn’t quite squeeze through the gap between two larger houseboats. One of the large boats had to be pulled in toward shore before we could pass. It was almost sunset by the time we got tied up at the new spot.
From the front deck, I watched Mahmoud (on the right) at work.
What I will remember most about the whole process was watching Mahmoud the boatman at work. He showed up with his big canoe and knew what to do to prepare the houseboat and get it moving. He must have been at least 65, but stepped back and forth along the edge of his canoe with perfect balance, using a long, heavy pole to move us forward through the water. He seemed to have the strength and agility of someone half his age, although he had to take several breaks to smoke the hookah he kept on his boat! He’s obviously spent his whole life on the water, and has a kind of cheerful and intimate knowledge of the ways of the lake. What’s “messing about” for us is his livelihood, but it doesn’t seem to have lost its charm.
Posted in Uncategorized and tagged houseboat by Lisa