In the Cool of the Evening

JOURNAL ENTRY

24th June, Wednesday

“Back from a hot city
 In a hot field
 With a hot dog.

We sit in the scrabble
 Of shade under
 An old ash tree.

The scarlet pimpernels
 Have already begun
 To close.”

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

The heat of the day settles with its dust and clamour. The canal breathes deeply again as dusk deepens. Fry just beneath the surface, disturb the water so that in places it looks as if it is raining. A young male duck glides across the marbled still water as serenely as a swan.  

This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into darkness of a hot June night to you wherever you are.

It is so lovely to see you tonight. Thank you so much for coming. The cabin is cooling and there’s cold drinks aplenty (although the kettle has freshly boiled), come take a seat and make yourself comfortable, the night is ours. So come inside, watch your head on the hatch, and welcome aboard.  

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS and CABIN CHAT

How are you? It’s been a bit hot recently, hasn’t it? I hope you have managed to keep cool. It is partly because of the heat, and partly because of a very busy time at work that I am having to slightly alter things for this podcast. Actually, I did think I wouldn’t be able to do an episode for tonight as we are needing to run our air coolers almost constantly and they are just too noisy to be able to record anything! Fortunately, it is a little cooler tonight, so fingers crossed. I have not really had much time to plan anything, and after a few restless nights  (a hot cabin is not conducive to sleep), I am feeling a bit tired! Therefore, tonight will be a bit of a free-wheel if you don’t mind. I’ll collapse all the sections into just one big one. I’ll probably curse myself when it comes to the mastering and editing, but we’ll see where we end up.

Anyway, it’s lovely to see you and I am so glad that you came. Thank you to our good friend Cap’n Arlo for checking in to see if we were coping with the heat. It was also lovely to hear from AK on Spotify. Thank you so much for leaving a comment and registering your support for podcast focusing on audio rather than video. It is very much appreciated.

Still on the subject of the last episode, hello to Jeff van Booven. Yes, I think you are absolutely right about YouTube and podcasting, but I have certainly not lost heart in the possibilities that remain open to audio.

Thank you, also to Mind Shambles for your thoughts on the podcast. I am very grateful for your kind words. Yes, I agree, clearly something rather weird is going on, but I have no idea why searches such as those should be linked to this podcast in particular. Mind Shambles signed off his comment with another of his wonderful poems and it captures the last week or so really beautifully:

[READING]

Hello also to Tania Yorgey, Chris Knight, Sheri Rauch, and Teasley Weasel on Instagram – an oh gosh, Teasley, you’re absolutely right, one should never enquire about a woman’s age.

Greetings to the narrowboat Dera Rosa with Jason and Karen as they continue their new life afloat. Don’t forget you can watch their progress or follow them on social media under the name Just Two People.  

It was also lovely to hear from Chris Campbell (on the narrowboat The Land of Green Ginger). I think you are so right, our ever-increasing obsession with metrics and statistics and we still don’t seem to learn that really important things cannot be measured. Chris also did add that perhaps people should be asking Vanessa about my age, too! Yes, quite!

Thank you also Chris for including a little description about what is outside your window. I am going to read it later on in this episode tonight. So just to remind everyone, in the last episode, I asked if any listeners wanted to send in a short description of what they can see outside their windows at night, please feel free to send them in by email, or commenting on one of the social media accounts, or even using the voice mail option on the noswpod.com website. It doesn’t have to be profound or poetic, just a quick description – and you don’t have to be living on a boat.

Hello also to Jen from the Mess in a Boat Substack. Thank you, Jen, for all your support. Don’t forget that you can catch up with Jen’s Water Book Club where she chats to authors who have written on water, nature and the canals on her Substack – I’ve put the link in the programme notes below.

A really warm welcome to Nicola Picola, over in New Zealand. Hello, Nicola, thank you so much for your comment and I am so pleased that you found us through Vanessa’s Mindful Narrowboat vlog and are loving the podcast. It is lovely to have you aboard with us. Greetings and chin-chin to our good friend, John McMunn – I get the impression, John, following the Scottish performance in the World Cup, that you might have been in need for the soothing effects of a cuppa tea these last few days!

Finally, a very big thank you to all of our lock-wheelers for supporting this podcast they are:

Ana McKellar
 Susan Baker
 Mind Shambles
 Clare Hollingsworth
 Kevin B
 Fleur and David McLoughlin
 Lois Raphael
 Tania Yorgey
 Andrea Hansen
 Chris Hinds
 Chris and Alan on narrowboat The Land of Green Ginger
Captain Arlo
Rebecca Russell
Allison on the narrowboat Mukka
Derek and Pauline on Silver Fox
Anna V.
Orange Cookie
Mary Keane
Tony Rutherford
Arabella Holzapfel
Rory with MJ and Kayla
Narrowboat Precious Jet
Linda Reynolds Burkins
Richard Noble
Carol Ferguson
Tracie Thomas
Mark and Tricia Stowe
Madeleine Smith

Thank you

IN THE COOL OF THE EVENING

It’s been hot! Now, I appreciate that a sizeable section of our listeners live on the other side of the globe to us and are in the depth of their winter. If that is you, I apologise for being even more UK-centric than normal! It is just that we’ve had a few days of what for us are very hot temperatures – particularly as it is still only June. Although it has been creeping up recently, for most of my life average June temperature’s bob around 18° to 21° (that is 64° to 70 F°). Obviously, it could go much higher than that (and of course lower), but in my head, despite its old sobriquet ‘flaming June’, for me I have always looked upon this month as being the time when temperatures are as near perfect as possible. Miles Hadfield in his An English Almanac bears me out on this:

“Science,” he begins, “justifies the phrase ‘flaming June’ – if indeed averages prove anything. For records establish June as, on the average, the sunniest and possibly driest, but not the warmest month of the year.”

I read somewhere, at some time when I was much younger that the classic June temperature would have been the temperature of the Garden of Eden – I think the point was, that June in England was the ideal temperature. I am not sure how serious the writer was, and it probably said much more about their personal climatic predilections, than anything else. But it has been one of those odd things that have stuck in my head and that I have carried with me for the rest of my life. I am not sure why; as even then I didn’t really agree with it. I was already very familiar with the tale of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden from school. The writer of that strange and ancient story, included a detail which I have always loved. He wrote how the one who made this figure of earth and breath, and his partner, would come down to Eden in the evening cool, to walk with them both and chat with them. Well, the Hebrew text is a little more complicated than that; the word it uses, ‘ruach’, we generally translate as ‘cool’ actually means breath or wind or spirit. For all its apparent simplicity, this is a text that has a lot of things going on in it. The writer of that particular textual layer loved puns and word games, and used them, not so much for humour, but to create a deep and richly textured writing, with images and associations that merged and parted creating a kaleidoscope of meaning that swim and shifted from one level to another. But the picture of Yahweh Elohim walking with the created pair enjoying the balmy cool of the evening is an image I like. Partly because it goes against so many other depictions of divine and semidivine figures that we find in contemporary ancient literature (at least in that region). When I read it, I am still drawn to its intimate and earthy quality. You can almost sense the scent of cooling loamy soil, the perfume of jasmine and night-scented stocks, the river of evening birdsong, the sweep and swirl of gnat dance and dragon flies, and the chorus of frogs and the shadows lengthen over the cut lawn of an English pub, as Venus rises clear in a watercolour sky. Of course, I appreciate that I am making ‘walking in the garden in the wind/spirit/breath/cool do a lot of heavy lifting, but I kind of like that interpretation of it. After all, reading is nothing if not an act of interpretation. But if my fanciful reading is correct, it would suggest that Eden must have been hotter, and perhaps less conducive to a companionable chat, beer mug in hand. 

Maybe, when looking back at the Junes of my past, I am a bit guilty of viewing them through rose-tinted spectacles. For I do remember very hot classrooms, and days when, in assembly we were told we can’t play football on the field and even one Junior school Sports Day being threatened with cancellation due to the heat. And days when, Mum, who hated heat (as much, if not more, than I do), uncharacteristically staying indoors, longing for the crisp November chill. And Wendy, my sister, buying her very first bottle of suntan lotion. Those were the days when we’d buy products to actually give us a tan rather than avoid one. It was an oily amber coloured liquid that came in a glass bottle and smelt of exotic lands, deep blue seas and coconut. She lay outside in the blazing furnace of heat in her school swimming costume (she went to big school by then), while I skulked indoors, ratty and irritably flicking through old comics and counting the days until winter came. And then, of course, there was the infamous summer of 1976 with its devastating drought. It was the summer I was taking my O Levels and CSEs. There was talk that they might be cancelled and we were allowed to take our blazers off when we were outside. Thompo even unloosened his tie and undid the top button of his shirt. But then, Thompo ran at life piratical. He even had a moped (that looked like a little motorbike) which shrilled like a hornet and dripped oil onto the school bike-shed floor from something called the crankcase. In many ways, he had already left us all behind. 1976 was the year of my growing up – and that long hot dry summer its zenith. I could go into pubs, buy cigarettes, I was of the age of consent and could get married, although not yet cast my vote. I was recognised as a man – although I was to remain a boy for many years after.

It’s been a little cooler today. The wind has veered westerly, setting the water into a pattern of ripples. It hits the boat beam on. It’s still warm, but welcome. It feels good on the skin. Flares of red loosestrife and cornflower-blue chicory windmills wave in the wind as if in celebration. The steep off=side bank above the canal billows with pillowed creamy clouds of common bedstraw and lower, as if leaning over to daintily sip the water below, the soft yellow of lady’s bedstraw. Even so, the temperature peaked at 29° (84°F). And this week, following the one at the beginning of the month, we have experienced another short hot spell. The temperature climbed locally to 39° (102°F) for a couple of days running. Humidity levels increasing the heat index by a good couple of degrees. I realise that I have talked about the challenges of keeping a boat cool before, in fact, I think the subject arose again a couple of episodes ago. So, I won’t bore you by going on about it again. But it can real struggle to carry on the normal routine – perhaps that’s the point, we shouldn’t try to. Although that is difficult when you are trying to merge boat-life with work-life.

Our main concern is regulating the temperature. We have a couple of sturdy air coolers and numerous fans which we try to position and use strategically. However, even then, the temperature inside the boat has regularly peaked at 38-39°, once peaking at 41° (about 106̄°F). I should point out that the thermometer is high and so the floor temperature would be a little cooler. The major concern is Maggie. We’re lucky as a neighbouring boater, whom Maggie loves, has a portable air-conditioning unit and has offered to take her if we think she is becoming distressed. We also brought a paddling pool for her, but she doesn’t really like going in it no matter how much we coax her. Fortunately, she loves swimming the canal and we have just found a good place where she can do it that is close to the boat, where the lady’s bedstraw grows thick and the trefoil blooms tall. The problem with the little bay that I normally take her to, is that it is quite a long walk along the towpath (or over fields). And this is not feasible in this heat. So, we are really relieved to have been told about this spot (which I had completely overlooked). As soon as Maggie appears to be getting hot, we just nip out to let her go for a swim. So, that is a relief and one less thing to worry about. I have also found really effective, putting my shirt under the cold tap – although bear in mind that because the water is coming from our tank, it is generally quite tepid – and then wearing it while I work. I saw that Steve Tyrell, from the Narrowboat Precious Jet – hello Steve – places his feet in a bowl of cold water and says that works well. I sometimes sit on the stern and dangle my feet in the canal, but it really only works when things are a little cooler. The metalwork can get so hot you can feel the burn even through a cushion, and we have to constantly put towels down so that Maggie can walk over it. The water is also quite warm now. I also appreciate that there are some places along the navigation that you simply would not want to put bare feet, or bare anything, in!  

But, for now, for the next few days, this heat seems to be over. The weather is breaking. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Good old Miles Hadfield, carpet-slippered, with pipe in hand, assures us that we are heading for another of Buchan’s (now debunked) ‘Cold Spells.’ “Buchan’s fourth cold spell,” he writes, “starts on the 29th June and lasts into July.” Well, we’ll see, but looking outside, the weather does seem to agree with him!

All this being said, all the heat is a small price to pay for being here. Being so early in the summer still has meant that the grass, although beginning to dry, is still in the main, rich and lush. This alone, gives the fields adjacent to the towpath a really cooling and welcoming feel. Maggie loves to lie down in the long grass, and so do I. The horizon of the world contracting down to just a few feet – jewelled with flowers and insects. Tall grass fronds wave and nod above eye level. Clouds, when they appear, somnambulantly traverse the dome of Wedgewood blue, telling stories of their own to whomever has the eyes to hear them. The skies are generally quiet in the heat. Birds conserve their energy. Flight stops. Their songs cease. Keeping the shade of hedgerow and tree canopy. They wait out the sun’s journey in their avian siestas. Along the canal, coot, moorhen and duck, bury themselves within the green oases of rush, and iris, sedge and reed. And so, for a while, above us nestled deep within the long grasses, only the clouds fill the sky with movement and story. Flâneurs of space, the strolling minstrels with a song and wink for a coin; this great theatrical carnival of tales played out above us. It can be quite intoxicating, lying among the long grass watching clouds pass overhead.

The sky is the colour of the cornflowers that have just burst into flower beside the water sparkle below us. Mallows nod their large pink heads in the warm gusts that write cryptic signs upon the crop fields, creating sweeping tides of green seas. But among the grasses, it is the small, diminutive, easily lost and overlooked flowers that catch the eye. Violet/purple cranesbill flung broadcast among the green. The burnt red smoulder of scarlet pimpernel, keeping open an eye on the weather. In inclement weather, blink and its vanished. Yellow stars of chickweed and black medic. I had to look up black medic in Mum’s old copy of Keble Martin’s classic A Concise British Flora, because how can you describe the tiny yellow flower head of black medic? Not because it is exotic or different, but because it is precisely none of those things, and yet how can the distinctiveness, the special unique beauty of something that is intrinsically submerged into the ‘normal’ be properly captured and celebrated. There it is opposite plate 21: “Procumbent; flower 1/8th inch, yellow, in small oval spikes.; pods very small, netted circular, becoming black. In pastures, etc., very common. Flowers May-Aug.” I look down at this star-scape of floral gold. Okay. Good effort, William. I guess it does the job you set out to do – and with such splendid brevity. But for me, right now, it doesn’t quite cover it; not even to begin with. There’s a beauty in this minute cluster of butter-yellow petals. But it evades words. I am glad that I live in a world where a tiny common flower cannot be reduced to or be contained in words. There is poetry here that only the silent birds and minstrel clouds begin to reveal.   

And this evening was the first evening for a while, I could actually sit out in the stern to watch the evening colour the sky and paint the water with its gentle fire. One of the hardest things about the recent heat has been how it continued to build even into the evening. Lately, it has been in the 30s at 8.00pm and it has just been too hot to sit. I’ve missed that special cool of the evening times. The fleeting Edenic moment of calm and quiet, when the footprints of the heavenly can be heard on the dry dusty road of a hot day’s end. But tonight, there is ruach once again, whether that be breath, or spirit, or just plain old wind or cool. I guess, the point of Eden – or one of them – is that you only know you've been in Eden once you leave. Maybe that is the same with ruach too. It’s only once you close the door on the day that you realise that you might just have been touched by something a bit more than merely a dusk-time breeze or the evening cool.    

As I sign off for the night. Outside my window, three silhouettes of mature ash trees are etched ink black against a sky line soft with the afterglow of evenfall. A mother and her seven nearly fully-grown ducklings silently, splinter the silver path laid by the moon on the water. 

Chris Campbell writes from her boat The Land of Green Ginger and says: "outside our windows in Hungerford are mainly the shady branches of sycamore fully loaded with those little helicopter seeds." 

Thank you, Chris. The promise of autumn fun in the Land of Green Ginger. 

SIGNING OFF 

This is the narrowboat Erica signing off for the night and wishing you a very restful and peaceful and cool night. Good night.

WEATHER LOG