Katie asks about narrowboat houses

Granny Buttons is on the far-off English canals.  A young lady wrote to me this week all the way from Australia.  Katie, aged 7, has to do a school project on how people around the world live in different types of houses. 

For some reason, she decided to find out about living in ... narrowboats!   This took her teacher by surprise.  There was nothing to stop Katie choosing narrowboats, but it wasn't what the teacher expected.  And the teacher probably doesn't know much about them, so Katie had to find out about them by herself.  She went on the web, and found Granny Buttons.  And I told her about Rosie & Jim, and their narrowboat home Ragdoll.  And Wild Over Waterways, which has some good project help.

Katie has a few questions (see below).  Here are her questions (in italics), with my answers afterwards. If you have your own answers, please feel free to leave them below in comments, and your email address, and I'm sure she'll send you a thank-you!  She adds:

"The most exciting thing is I must make a model of a narrowboat.  I can't wait and think I will use lolly sticks."

Gosh, Katie, you'll need a lot of lolly sticks!    I would offer to collect some for you, but Granny is a long way away from you, and by the time I'd collected enough, it would probably be too late for your project.  So you'll have to use Australian lolly sticks instead.   Please send me a picture of it when you have finished, and I will be delighted to put it on Granny Buttons.   

Here are Katie's questions:

1:   How has the environment (climate, land type, amount of water etc) affected
the type of house the people live in?   

The English canals are never too hot and never too cold.  We don't need air conditioning, but a canal boat is very easy to heat and not very roomy inside. So Granny has a small diesel stove (many boats have coal fire stoves) that keep me warm in winter.  Sometimes it gets freezing, but not for long.  The canals are not very deep and don't get rough, and so a canal boat doesn't have to be very good at sailing.   But because we live on water, the boat musn't leak, or it will sink.  I bet there aren't many houses like that.

2:  What is the house built of?   

Granny Buttons is made of steel, all over. Most English canal boats are now made of steel.  She has a bottom 10mm thick, sides that are 6mm thick, and a roof of 4mm thick steel.  She is very tough, and I can walk on the roof very easily.  It is painted very colourfully.  At the front and back are 'buttons' made of rope.  When the boat is going along, they act as buffers if Granny Buttons hits anything. But she never goes very fast, so nothing gets hurt.

3.  What sort of people live in the house? (eg farmers, nomadic herdsmen etc).   

English canal boaters used to be very like old fashioned truckers, except that the truckers had their whole families with them - wives and young children included.   The old boats were cargo boats that went from city to city, carrying goods just, like trucks do now.   But nowadays most boaters who live afloat are normal Western-world people, probably just like Katie and her parents, all sorts - factory workers, professional people, all sorts.  There are a lot of people nowadays who are retired.   I once met a couple on a boat who were very old.  The husband was 84 and the wife was 88!  I wrote about it recently.  There are quite a lot of Australians and New Zealanders living on England's canals, incidentally.

I am a public relations executive, which is not a proper job, but it makes me a small income, just about enough to pay my costs of living on Granny Buttons.

4:  Give two good points about living in that style of house.   

It is very cosy on Granny Buttons, and if the weather is cold outside, the small space makes it very easy to heat.  It is also easy to keep clean, because it is very small.   

5:  Give two bad points about living in that style of house.   

It is small (only 7ft wide and 60ft long) so there is not much space to put things.  Sometimes I feel it is like like living in a spaceship!   Another bad thing is that if I do not take care and keep it well maintained, it might leak, and then it might sink!   Another bad point is that the boat rocks a lot when another boat goes past. And it needs regular washing; just like a car, in fact.  I don't enjoy washing it, especially in cold weather.  I'd rather be inside.  But the good bits are much, much better than the bad ones.

Everyday this week I must give answers to these questions and then I get points for my team.  Please would you tell me any other things about your narrowboat?  I read about these boats in a story book by Enid Blyton.  It sounded very exciting.  I think when I come to visit England I would like to live in one.

Do you have special painted things on your boat? I saw a picture of a painted jug that was very pretty.  I will try to paint it on my model.

Yes, Katie, I have lots of painted things on my canal boat.  Many people do.  We like 'roses and castles', which are the traditional types of painting on English canal boats.  From the picture I have here, you can see why it's called that - the flowers look like roses, and the buildings look like  old-fashioned castles from fairy tales.   No one knows why we have roses and castles, but it's been going a long time.  There's a really nice picture of a beautifully decorated water can, here on the Moore2Life blog.  And it says: "All the daisies have a little red mark on them where the fairies have kissed them."

Most roses and castles are on things like jugs and cups, but I think my computer is the first in the world to have roses and castles on it.  The picture here is of my computer cover - this was painted by a lady called Victoria Hignell - she lives on a narrowboat.  It's a good example of roses & castles.  I wrote earlier here about her and her partner David.

I love waking up in the morning and hearing the ducks and other wildlife.  Often the birds come to feed, because they know I have bread aboard.  Sometimes it's great fun to feed the swans.  Here is a picture of a friend feeding the swans and ducks one summer morning from my side window on Granny Buttons.  I bet you can't do that in most houses!  The ducks and swans often tap on the side of the boat in the morning to wake me up so they can get their bread.

Another thing I love is that you can move your house around a lot.  So if you get bored with one place, you can easily move on and have another view from your window instead.  Also, I like the locks, and the long, long, narrow and dark tunnels.  Many people don't like those tunnels, because they can be very spooky, wet and dark, but I love them.    

Here is a picture of Granny Buttons going into a long tunnel. Lots of people like to live on boats for a little while, but most are glad to get back to a normal house.  Someone who didn't like living on a narrowboat once told me "It's like living in a corridor!"  This reminds me of the Monty Python sketch about the rich men remembering their poor childhoods. "Eee, we used to dream of living in a corridor!  Would ha' been a palace to us."

It takes a special person to live on one for a long time. But it is very easy to hire boats for holidays, and for a week or so you will enjoy it a lot.

Comments

[John Barr]

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Thanks John