An awfully big adventure...

Life's seminal moments (from house to narrow boat)

A question we’re asked many times over is ‘what made you decide to sell your house to live on a narrow boat?’ It’s difficult to answer in a way that doesn’t cause people to glaze over and wish they hadn’t asked but, in hindsight, I can see that my life has been full of seminal moments that determined what came afterwards.

I was a very chubby 11 year old (bear with me, this is going somewhere…) and I remember being in the playground at school and overhearing a girl (I remember her name, but I won’t name and shame) say ‘it’s a shame K is so fat as she’s got such a pretty face’; looking back, I can’t remember feeling particularly upset at being called fat, but quite pleased to be thought of as pretty!

I was rubbish at sport and no one wanted me on their team; fast forward 20+ years, I qualified as an aerobics instructor (this was the early 90s) and exercise and fitness became both my career and a huge part of my social life. After feeling excluded from sport in school, I wanted everyone to feel there was a place for them in my exercise classes; I spent over 25 years gaining many more qualifications and encouraging people to come to classes and enjoy getting fitter and feeling healthier. I felt so strongly that there was an exercise class to suit everyone and no one need feel excluded, whatever their childhood experiences had been.

Anyone who knew me at 11 wouldn’t have predicted that much of my career would be spent in the fitness industry and I wonder how much that throwaway comment in the playground influenced me; looking back, it feels like a seminal moment in my early life.

When I met Rob in 1985, we had 3 children between us; we met on a Saturday and I told my brother the following Tuesday I knew I was going to marry him. I remember my brother marching me around a local park thinking I’d lost my mind, another seminal moment in my life as we’ve now been married for 38 years.

In 2018, my Mum was no longer able to manage the family home on her own and she decided to sell the house; we’d moved into the house in 1967 when I was 10, so there were many memories within those walls. With my 2 sisters, we had to dispose of a lifetime of memories and I remember feeling such a roller coaster of emotions as we broke up furniture and dismantled a whole lifetime of ‘stuff’.

All the big questions about life seemed to be wrapped up in this process; my parents, myself, my 2 sisters and brother had lived here for many years. My brother and Dad had died in 2007 and 2008 and here was Mum, the last woman standing and now she was preparing to leave for the last time. I remember a strong sense of feeling that ‘we’re only passing through’ and that houses and ‘stuff’ were only valuable as long as they were useful; the important things in life were the love and memories we carry in our hearts.

As it turned out, Mum died very suddenly just 6 months later; I completely burned out, had to give up my business and then COVID hit.

Rob had fielded the idea about living on a narrow boat not long after Mum died, but I just couldn’t handle such a massive change at that time. We did visit a boat builder and despite not feeling ready for such a massive change, my stomach did a little flip (in a good way) when I stepped onto the boats they had for sale. I was so conscious that we didn’t appear to be a pair of time wasters, but I just wasn’t ready for such a big life change at that point in my life.

In March 2020, we were all living in an altered world; we’d done endless jobs on the house and I remember thinking ‘is this it, is this how my life is going to be now?’ The thought of spending our retirement doing jobs around the house, maybe volunteering somewhere and having caravan holidays (nothing wrong with all those things btw) felt like a slow road towards death; I wanted/needed an adventure whilst we were fit enough to have one.

As nobody could go anywhere because of the pandemic and for ‘something to do’, Rob bought a set of ‘to scale’ narrow boat plans and started to design our ideal boat; he sent the plans off to 8 boat builders to get quotes on price and build times and the rest is history.

Choosing Ovation Boats to build NB Grace was another seminal moment; although I initially didn’t feel ready to make the change from house to narrow boat after my Mum died, the strong gut reaction I’d had to their boats meant they were always going to be our choice to build our new home. When people ask us why we chose Ovation and I reply ‘oh, it was always going to be them, it was meant to be’, I can sense a little eye roll as it doesn’t seem a very rational way to make such a huge decision, but it just felt right and we couldn’t be happier with our choice.

We weren’t boaters and had only ever had one 3 day break on a narrow boat before, so it wasn’t as though we were experts in the field. We could understand why some people might think we were a bit rash getting rid of everything in the middle of a pandemic, but after clearing the family home and now living in an such an uncertain world, selling our house and literally getting rid of everything somehow held no fear for us.

People asked us how we’d manage when we were older (we were already 63 and 69 respectively!) how would we receive post, what would we do about going to the doctors, wouldn’t it be wiser and safer to rent the house out, what about keeping our furniture in storage in case we wanted to buy another house…the list went on.

But for me, my Mum leaving the family home was a seminal moment; I just didn’t know the result of that moment would be a complete change of lifestyle for us and the start of a later life adventure.

We now live on a beautiful 60’ narrow boat and everything we own is on board; maybe I’ll write about what the process of selling our home and getting rid of all our stuff felt like another time, but I do know my Mum selling our family home was a seminal moment for me. It totally changed the direction of my life in ways I couldn’t have predicted and although it hasn’t all been plain sailing (see what I did there) I’m absolutely convinced this was meant to happen.

You may or may not believe in serendipity, but at 67, I can look back and see more clearly those seminal moments that changed the course of my life, even if I couldn’t make sense of those moments at the time. From being someone who needed to feel in complete control of every aspect of her life, I can see that feeling of control for the illusion it truly is.

Life really is an awfully big adventure…keep an open heart to those seminal moments and see where they take you.

‘There is freedom waiting for you on the breezes of the sky and you ask, what if I fall? Oh but my darling, what if you fly?’ Erin Hanson.