Part 5 - Noises and biting in the dark

I remember in 1981 when Marian and I bought our first house, a little terraced house in a Derbyshire village. We were happy and excited but it never occurred to me that whilst living at my parent's home I had to worry about house things. Now we were responsible for the home and I'd get up to check the gas thinking it might be on, check the doors were locked, again, and hear every creak of the floorboards. Had someone got in? Oh the joys of nervousness and adulthood.

It was a bit like that starting out life on the boat. Sudden awareness of sounds not usual to our ears. So early in the morning, darkness wrapping its arms still around the canal, came this tapping-banging noise. That got me awake. I worried in case someone was on the boat. The tapping moved along the hull and I quickly grabbed my dressing gown and approached the galley. Light on and nothing out of place. It was definitely outside.

Grabbing a torch I opened a side window and there were a pair of swans tapping for food. I shooed them off, unsuccessfully, but did have words with them over the next couple of days when I saw them. Marian looked at me with a sad expression. After 38 years I knew that look. It was he's a little bit bonkers look.

Now I can't offer scientific evidence that shows the swans and I understood each other but they only did it twice more. Marian said it was because we hadn't fed them. But I knew she just wanted to keep me grounded.

Whilst we moored at the Gallows Inn area another boat moored for a day or two. We were sitting in the bow on a warm summer evening enjoying a glass of wine. The other owner, a friendly chap came over to chat. I soon started to scratch and realised that I had become attractive to a band of merciless mosquitoes which were happily helping themselves to my blood without permission.

The conversation was curtailed and we bid him goodnight to scratch and put some fluid on to reduce the itching. But the wretched insects were on board the boat. We were paranoid for a few days and nights particularly when you could hear them flying past your ears. For three consecutive mornings we awoke and Marian said "there's one," pointing to the panelling on her side of the bed. I had my slipper in hand and whacked it. Perfect shot. Only to find age plays cruel tricks on this poor soul.

The vision is not as acute these days and when I found and put on my spectacles it emerged from being a squashed insect to a mere blemish on the wood. On the third morning we decided that this blemish didn't need to highlighted again in conversation.

Interestingly after those few days word had got around in the mosquito community that they were not invited and we weren't visited again in 2016.