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About half an hour later he came back into the kitchen complaining that his face hurt. Looking at him closely I could see that he was covered in little pin-prick blisters that were rapidly turning an interesting shade of puce. This got worse as the day progressed so that by the time we reached the Ditchford Radial Lock we were quite worried about him and didn't really have the inclination to marvel as much as we should have at this fantastic piece of Heath Robinson-like engineering with its huge curved gate that, when lifted, curved over the boat. It still dripped horribly, and covered us all in mud and weed, so quite frankly I wasn't that impressed.

Reaching our destination – the moorings at Rushden and Diamonds Football Club – Sam resembled a pink hamster and I rushed about trying to find the antihistamines. Luckily we had decided that an early start the next morning was not on the schedule. There was a Doc Marten's factory shop on the grounds of the football club that I particularly wanted to visit and it looked as though we would have to find a doctor as well. Sam slept badly that night and really looked quite unwell the next morning; still swollen and itching, he was understandably in a foul mood. Seeing the time moving on, I was just about to go and poke Geoff and berate him for being a lazy good-for-nothing, when a groan from the bedroom arrested my progress.

‘Argh! Ooo! Ow!' I rushed down the boat and found Geoff holding his left arm and looking seriously worried.

‘What's up?' I tried to pass him a cup of tea but he wouldn't take it and just kept holding his arm.

‘I think I'm having a heart attack,' he muttered, grimacing.

Strange, in all other areas he looked fine; his colour was good, his lips were OK, and he wasn't sweating,

‘Why do you think you're having a heart attack?' I asked, putting his tea on the shelf.

‘I can't move this arm, my chest really hurts and so does my other arm.'

Hmmm, not at all sure about this. I've seen someone having a heart attack, and it didn't look like this. ‘Where is the pain in your arms?' I asked.

‘All over,' Geoff rubbed his arm.

I had a sudden epiphany.

‘You don't think this is anything to do with the ten manual guillotine locks that you did yesterday then?'

‘Maybe,' Geoff grinned, ‘but I don't get as much sympathy for just being out of shape as I do for a possible heart attack.'

I was as sympathetic as I could be – I slapped him and then took his tea away so that he had to come and get it.

We wandered down to the little town of Irthlingborough and dragged Sam in to see the pharmacist. She took one look at him and asked if he had any allergies. Unfortunately the answer was yes, lots. Starting with hideous hay fever, to maniacal behaviour if he so much as tasted aspartame or acesulfame, we kept him away from colours and additives and anything containing caffeine. It was only recently that supermarkets had started selling sweets with all natural colourings and flavourings which was excellent, as Sam would be a sad and deprived child without them.

Back on the boat I dosed him with the stronger antihistamine that the pharmacy had provided and covered him in calamine lotion. Going back through everything he had eaten the day before, I tried to trace the culprit. I finally tracked down offensive scotch eggs with a colorant in the breadcrumbs and immediately binned them. Sam was much happier knowing that it was just an allergy, even if it was a severe one. Having had these problems from birth, he took each new allergy philosophically. His first teacher was a little bemused that he could recognise the words ‘aspartame' and ‘acesulfame' but couldn't read ‘dog' and ‘cat', and now that he can read, he religiously checks every ingredient on any new food. At six years old, he knows what he can eat and what he can't have and is quite rabid about the whole thing.

I often have to smile, watching an adult's face as my son switches to an excellent imitation of his father's ‘lecture voice' and tells people at length and in great detail of the damage they are doing to themselves by eating this muck and the damage they are attempting to do him by offering it to him. He hasn't quite accused anybody of nutritional child abuse yet, but I can see it may only be a matter of time.

So with him assured that all the itching would soon stop and sitting happily in his nest with a new Beano annual, he looked a strange little figure. He was so covered in calamine lotion that he resembled the victim of a drive-by custard pie fight, and was unusually content to have a hummus and salad pitta for lunch.

Chapter Eleven
I'm Really Sorry, I'm an Idiot

A
S WE HIT THE
first lock of the day, we discovered that we had caught up with another boat, a perfectly nice couple who invited us to double lock with them to save water. Their boat was so new and shiny it made poor Happy look like the ‘wreck of the Hesperus', and they handled it perfectly.

The wind had picked up and, as usual, it made Happy frisky. I was having more than a little trouble bringing her into moor and getting her into the lock. Mr and Mrs Smile of course had no problems at all. Dave, from the training company, had told us that, if possible, you should always go through locks with another boat. What he hadn't specified was the etiquette. If there is another boat on the pre-lock mooring do you bring yours alongside? If you do, do you have to ask permission first? I decided to play it safe and elected to hold Happy in mid-stream while waiting for the lock to open.

To enter the lock you had to make a fairly sharp left-hand turn, so I positioned Happy with her bum by the far bank and her nose pointing toward the lock doors. She was having some problems with the wind and kept trying to edge sideways toward a weir that was roped off at the right-hand side of the lock. I was starting to get a little worried about this, when there was a gentle bump and she finally stayed in one place. ‘Oh good,' I thought, we must have just run aground on the very back of the boat, so with her back on the bank – or so I thought – and her nose just resting gently on the far moorings all I had to do was put on the power and bring her backside around and we would enter the lock with stately grace.

The lock doors opened and John, in the other boat, gave me a big grin and pulled away from the mooring at my wave and entered the lock. ‘OK, here we go,' I thought, and moved the throttle forward. Sure enough the prop churned the water at the back but Happy didn't move at all.

Hmm, not what I had hoped for – try again. Nothing ... what on earth was going on? We certainly weren't grounded because if I jumped up and down on the back Happy swayed gently in response. ‘Oh well, try again.' Lots of foamy water and thrashing from the back. Forward movement? Not a bit. By this time Geoff, Sarah and John (still smiling) were waving me into the lock. I waved back at them and, putting Happy into neutral, got down on my hands and knees and peered over the back.

‘Aha!' I could see what had happened. As I had bumped into the far bank the rudder had just managed to edge a tree root up and over itself; this root was now holding Happy as fast as a well-tied rope. I moved the tiller backward and forward and watched as the big lump of steel just slid along the underside of the root. OK, now there were shouts from the lock.

‘Come on,' Geoff bellowed. ‘What are you up to?'

I waved at him. ‘Oh well, nothing for it but to break all the rules again,' I thought and looping one arm around the base of the tiller I held on fast, leaned out over the water, grabbed the root and heaved it back over the rudder, thinking all the time that if Geoff or Dave knew what I was doing, fishing around down by the prop with the engine still running, they would have forty fits. As Happy's stern came free she resumed her slow, inevitable swing toward the weir again. Leaping up to grab the throttle, I received a smart smack across the head from the forgotten tiller which was swinging about unattended and the blow nearly knocked me into the water. I pushed the tiller out of the way and jumped up, waving at Geoff who was now wandering toward me.

John and Sarah were deep in conversation, their smiles had thinned out, and I was pretty positive they were asking each other how long they were going to have to stick with these numpties.

As we exited the lock, I explained to Geoff what had happened and sure enough, got grouched at, but in the end he laughed and said,

‘Oh well, you've still got all your fingers so you're OK.'

By the next lock, it had started to rain. The lock was against us once more and, being the second to the moorings, I again attempted to hold Happy in mid-stream. This time there was no weir but the wind was still fairly strong and, by the time the lock was filled and opened on our side, Happy was being held diagonally across the river. I could see John looking at me and frowning as he watched me put her first in reverse and then in forward to try and hold her in one place. Again the lock doors opened and he pulled forward, neatly and efficiently positioning their boat against the far side of the lock.

Waiting for him to enter, Happy had almost turned herself right round and was facing the opposite direction, so to enter the lock I now had to manoeuvre sharp right and she didn't want to play at all, but even with Happy sulking and the wind egging her on, I managed to get her nose somewhere in the vicinity of the lock doors. I only managed to get her fully into the lock by running our crappy old boat down the length of their beautiful shiny paintwork. I apologised profusely, blaming the wind, and luckily they were too nice to grouch very hard, but their big smiles had disappeared completely. I hadn't done very much damage, but just like the weather, I could see that John and Sarah's mood with us continued to deteriorate. Rapidly!

At the third lock I decided to steal the mooring and maybe, just maybe, I stood a chance of entering with some sort of grace. ‘Ha, let's see how
he
fares, trying to hold his boat in mid-stream,' I chortled uncharitably to myself, although I had a sneaking suspicion that he would do it perfectly well. I was beginning to suspect that they had a very quiet bow thruster, which would explain why they were so efficient at manoeuvres.

I moored Happy up and then sighed as John just came alongside and handed me a rope. I stood there open-mouthed and just looked at it.

‘Would you mind just tying that on one of your T studs,' his renewed smile evolved into a rather quizzical expression.

‘Oh, right, um OK.' I took the rope and wrapped it around the nearest T stud, again forgetting to push the tiller out of the way and smacking myself over the shoulders as I stood up. By this time, we were pretty much out of conversation; within three locks, I had bashed into two walls, scraped his paintwork, turned the boat around and just generally looked like I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I had a mental image of Dave with his head in his hands, crying gently.

At the fourth lock, John and Sarah had a hurried conversation before she left the boat to set the lock with Geoff and, watching them agree on a plan of some kind, I turned to Geoff and moaned, ‘I can't believe I've done this so badly, we look like a real couple of hicks.'

Geoff, who just laughs off embarrassment, looked surprised. ‘What do you expect?' he said, ‘I was talking to Sarah, they've had their boat for over a year and have been travelling all that time, although she did say they had stopped for a week at Christmas. Their boat is 15 foot shorter than ours with a bigger prop, a newer engine and they have a bow thruster (I knew it!) – of course theirs handles better than ours.'

‘Humph, you know all that, I now know all that,' I grimaced, ‘but I'm fairly sure they think I am the most incompetent boater in the whole of the east Midlands.'

Geoff just laughed and jumped off to help Sarah set the lock; luckily this mooring was so large I was saved from any more embarrassing incidents and the necessity of conversation by being able to moor behind them. As the lock gates opened, John looked back and waved me forward. This one had another sharp right to enter the gates, and I had to first pull out around him and then swing the nose into the lock, hoping her backside would follow. It did but I misjudged the swing and our back end clouted his nose with a good solid
thwack
– oh dear.

This was definitely the final straw for John. Over the roar of the water, and when he could get my attention in between running Happy backwards and forwards to keep her back end away from the sill and her nose out of the gates, he informed me with a strained smile that this would be the last lock of the day for them. They had decided to moor up just a little further on and get an early stop for the day.

Really? What a surprise! Being fully aware of their motives, I agreed that this was indeed an excellent idea and expressed regret that we weren't able to do the same but, being on a tight schedule, we had another three locks to get through before we could stop for the night.

As the lock gates opened, John again motioned us to go ahead. I gave Geoff just enough time to step onto the boat before I had the throttle down hard, punctuating our get-away with lots of waves and shouting ‘Good luck' etc. We were both heartily glad to be away from each other, though for very different reasons I am sure.

Lock number five of the day was a complete doddle. We moored up, Geoff opened the gates, I pulled her in as though she was on rails, she stayed rock steady as the water level changed and then pulled gracefully away on the other side: a textbook lock manoeuvre. I was beginning to think that our boat is possessed by an embarrassment spirit.

As I looked up at the underside of the A14, just outside Oundle, it struck me as odd to think that we had often travelled that road and each time had looked down at the river wondering where it went after it disappeared beneath the viaduct. This time we were looking up at the road, and we still didn't know where the river went; the only thing I knew for sure was that travelling above – on the A14 – we would have made our destination in around 40 minutes, travelling beneath it would take at least a week.

Being the type of person who does everything in a rush, I examined how I felt about this, expecting to find myself disgruntled that everything moved so slowly. It was quite an epiphany to realise that I didn't actually care one little bit. With Geoff driving, Sam and I sat on top of the boat and watched the A14 very slowly disappearing behind us into the distance. After 40 minutes we were still well in sight of the road. It was a very odd but strangely enjoyable feeling.

Just past Thrapston Lock we decided to moor for the night at the Nene Sailing Club moorings. We arrived at about five o'clock and had time to go for a nice long walk before tea. It was a beautiful evening; the wind had dropped to a whisper and, with no lights for miles around, the stars were incredible. We spent about an hour after tea just lying on the grass, once again trying to identify constellations, until Sam stated that looking up into the nothingness was making him feel sick. I fully understood the way he felt, the sky seemed infinite, and against that even a 70-foot narrow boat feels very, very small.