Dwelling - Boats
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Marnie: [00:00:00] Hi, and welcome to Dwelling, a podcast that explores how people find and fight the feelings of home. My name is Marnie, and this week we're taking to the waterways, speaking to the people who find their home afloat to the boat dwellers.

When you think of home, what do you think of?

Paul: It's very in the city that you turn onto a little gravel path leading to the moorings and noticeably drop into a more natural space. And then, yeah, again, depending on the time of year, you have different bird life, which is really obvious. Like sometimes you can hear the kingfish, sometimes the kind of noisy mating ducks, uh, the Reed Warblers.

Um, yeah, quite a lot of bird song when you're down on the. And a lot of the noise of the city tends to drop away,[00:01:00]

although that also comes back as well. Some people randomly fighting in the flat opposite or, yeah, people letting firework .

Marnie: For me home is a battered 48 foot narrowboat called Eddie. The backdrop of Eddie changes in shifts. It's a forest, a muddy toka, a cow fields a skyscraper with a chatter of people.

But when I walk in, it is a consistent cocoon of warmth greeted by the sight of our cozy bed piled high with blankets in the kitchen. We built from nothing. Sometimes when I'm on Eddie, it feels like I've stepped back in time, and maybe that's no surprise. Living on boats and taking to the rivers and canals to find home is a practice that is hundreds of years old, and it was made, it was made by people with, with shovels.

Diana: It was. It was real muscle power that made those, it wasn't just dug out [00:02:00] with a, with a machine. It was a brilliant piece of design. It was so clever. It really were. But now the number of people living aboard exceeds the number during the industrial heyday of canals, and the demographics are shifting towards younger people.

People who 20 years ago might have chosen to stay on solid ground, but what is driving people to the water? And what does it mean for the rivers and canals they choose to call home?

Maddie: I, I think this is the only place I've lived, especially in London, where I've actually felt excited to come home .

Um, because in like, even though though I've like lived with friends or I've lived with like my partner, it's always been a bit like a of a compromise.

This is like the first place I feel like, um, it's. Yeah.

Marnie: Maddie is one of those people who makes you feel immediately at ease. She's warm and is glowing with pride as she takes me around the boat. We exchange stories of renovation being woken at night by rogue birds and sleeping through the [00:03:00] cold. So it's been a year and a half Yeah.

Maddie: Coming up to two years and, um, and it's actually gone so fast. Um, I would've thought I would've taken a bit more getting used to, but immediately feels like, feels okay. Outside. Yes.

So this is Alwen. She is 40 foot long, uh, six foot wide and just six foot tall. But if it was any shorter, I don't think we could live in it. But me and my, at the time, boyfriend, uh, now husband, were living in shepherd's bush in a flat. I wanna be honest about all of our housing situations because, so this was a flat that his parents owned, but that we paid rent for.

Um, and we were in there, uh, during the pandemic and just before our other housemate had moved out. So it was just [00:04:00] the two of us in this three bedroom flat, which obviously we couldn't sustain paying the rent for all three rooms for, there was just two of us and then we needed to move somewhere else. And just looking around London.

Somewhere that two people can live. And we just, we looked at two or three flats and they were unbelievably depressing. And you know, it would cost a thousand, a thousand pounds each minimum. Everything all in one room. And then tiny bedroom, you can hardly put a bed in bathroom. And both of us have got pretty, you know, we're in our late twenties, we've got pretty good jobs.

We were really lucky and we just thought, this is unacceptable. Well, it's too depressing. Matt had known about someone else who lived in this area. And so you just looked on Apollo Duck, which is where you can then find boats to buy. And we found this one, which was, um, completely empty, middle of a renovation project that had gone wrong because the couple that had bought it broken up, [00:05:00] um, they both still live here actually at one end of the River

We're friends with both of them, um, and so we thought we could make it work.

Marnie: I think Maddie's experience resonates with a lot of first time voters, or actually anyone who's looked at alternative form of housing. It doesn't feel like an unreasonable ask to actually like the place you are living, but this does not come without tension.

In 2019, the Guardian ran a series entitled The Canal Revolution, investigating how waterways have changed our cities. Boaters spoke about the abuse they were facing, having stones thrown at them, being called racial slurs. Part of this is because boating has become one of the only cheap ways to live in central London, and there's a huge economic disparity between permanent residents and those floating through in Paddington.

Boats are as cheap as 8,000 pounds and flats easily reach a million, but canals are not exempt from increasing prices and gentrification. As the housing crisis [00:06:00] worsens, more and more young people are trying out alternatives, and this is increased demand and increased prices. Young people like me and Maddy,

Maddie: it is actually embarrassing because I, I know what we look like.

I know that we look, we are too middle class white people who have parents in stable homes and could probably live. A more flat, like I just described, and it would be fine. It's such a cliche. It's such a hipster cliche to live on a boat, but also that's what it looks like from the outside. And actually, I don't know, um, it is a more, more peaceful, like it's an authentic, I feel like it's an authentic thing, even though I know that we fit into that.

Those sorts of couples that do that kind of thing.

Marnie: Yeah. I mean, as someone who also fits into that stereotype. Yeah. Uh, I, I completely agree, but also like at the [00:07:00] time when we were looking at buying a boat, it, it literally felt like we were running out of options of mm-hmm. of ways to live. Um, because it was renting extremely expensive housing, that meant that we would never be able to.

Anything of our own. Yeah.

Maddie: Um, yeah. It is a, it is a conflict cuz you, you believe, I know I'm lucky and I know I've got a good job, but I You are right. There were no options. There literally were no options. We were gonna have to live somewhere and that money wouldn't be, at the moment, our money's going into the boat, which we can sell, but all of our income would be going into a landlord's pocket and.

Yeah. So even though it does look like a cliche, it actually is like an authentic and slightly desperate choice because we didn't have anywhere else to go and this one single boat that we could afford existed. So that's where we live. Like it's, it feels, I actually have this image in my mind of like [00:08:00] a climbing wall and like just to get.

A tiny bit more security. You're like digging your nails into the wall and hoisting yourself up, and then as soon as you've got there, like your muscles are getting tired and you think, I don't know if I can sustain this.

Marnie: I share Maddy's feelings. On the one hand, there are layers of privilege that have led to me living on a boat.

I'm a podcast producer who lives on a boat, like I'm obviously part of some sort of stereotype, but on the other hand, I was totally and completely desperate. It's the factor that's often behind more noble goals such. Better community or more environmentally friendly forms of living. We've seen over and over and over again that the housing system in the UK doesn't work.

It isn't working at best. It's stressful, and at worst it's lethal. We all have stories of mold, landlords rinsing every penny out of your deposit. Staying in jobs, we hate to afford extortionate rent. So if there's an option for housing, that means you could move to a job that you love, that pay. [00:09:00] Or be able to eat out with your friends a few times a month, or just simply be excited to come home.

It finally feels like you have a choice. Even though living on a boat is often driven by necessity, there's an incredible sense of community amongst boaters, a kinship. It's always been something that fascinated me. The idea that suddenly you're on water, so you can say hello to your neighbors or invite them in for.

And what do you think has built up this community? Because like you said, there's so many places in London where people live as close together. Mm-hmm. as people on boats. Yeah. And there's not that sort of sense of community.

Maddie: The fact that most obvious thing that occurs to me is, um, you, like, you do need each other.

It's always like, does anyone know how to fix this? Does anyone have this, you know, piece of equipment? Um, if it rains a lot, sometimes the boats ropes all need loosening. You get tilted at an angle, um, and if people are away, like you look out for each other or if anyone, you know, even if it's like, has anyone got a lemon [00:10:00] or an onion or something.

And there's also this shared awareness that we've all chosen to live in a slightly different way, like in a low impact way. Um, and I guess that's just like a kind of unspoken thing that we're all aware of.

Marnie: Yeah. I think the thing that I. When me and my partner moved onto boats, we move around. Um, continuous cruising was just like, you suddenly have this assumed shared experience.

Mm-hmm. , just because everyone has, everyone has toilet stories. . Yeah. Yeah. And everyone has stories of when they've run out of water and the boat's leaking or whatever.

Maddie: Yeah. But it's stupid, isn't it? Because ev everyone does have shared experience anyway. Like, there's no reason why, oh, the fact that we're all a bit cold, you know, in the first few weeks of autumn or whatever.

Like, why are we able to talk about that here and not, um, be able to talk about that in the flats that I've lived in? [00:11:00] I don't know. It's also, for some reason it just seems embarrassing, like to be keen and to want to get to know your neighbors in a, but here you've already kind of leapfrogged that embarrassment because you're already.

Look, I, I've chosen how to live. I've chosen that. I want to live, you know, in this small cold space full of spiders, , because I'm closer to nature. And all of other electricities come from the sun. And you, you basically have chosen to join a community and therefore it's actually embarrassing if you don't contribute or as it's the other way.

If you are in a block of flats and you knock on the door and say, oh, hello, but we'd get to know you. We are your new neighbors. I don't know why the cringe is kind of reversed.

Marnie: As we spoke about the community, Maddie mentioned something called the safety zones and boaters who'd been mooring in protest.

The safety zones restrict where boaters can moor along the river. Lee. Tensions between the rowing club, the canals and rivers trust and boaters had risen to a point where a rower had used [00:12:00] an angle grinder to remove safety bars from the riverbank to stop boaters more.

Maddie: ' It's a shame.

Like there are too many boats.

There are so many boats, and we can't sustain an amount of growth that there is. I don't think, but it's not about, I don't know how you determine between people who, for whom this is a way of life, and people who are just kind of, I don't know, doing it for fun. , it's, it is really hard. Like, I don't know. We're looking, looking across a boat there that must be worth like 150,000 pounds and was built new.

Um, and in comparison, there's that little boat at the end. , and it's the rule. The rules basically affect the people who are nomadic travelers who've lived this way of life or ages the same way as it affects people with loads of spare money to, you know, build a fun boat for Instagram . And I don't know how you can differentiate between people for whom this is a way of life [00:13:00] and people who have other options.

Today, I just, it feels like they're on the side of. . Well, I'm not on the side of boaters. Basically .

Marnie: I was eager to find out more. So I contacted the National Barges Travelers Association, who had arranged a floatilla protest to stop the restrictions. They put me in touch with Colin, and on one of the last hot days of summer, I cycled my bike, Delilah out to a green and noisy section of the Islington Canal.

Colin is a considered speaker. His demeanor is quietly assure. And as I clamber onto the front of his boat, he bustles about making tea. Okay, thank you. That's all right. Seabag. He's a wealth of knowledge when it comes to canals and boats. In fact, a few weeks after we spoke, he sent me a detailed and instructive email on how to fix a leaky stern gland as I panicked that my boat was sinking.

The boat was fine. Um, but as far as I'm concerned, Colin is a wizard.

Colin: I guess the really [00:14:00] important thing about how this impact, if they remove all these mo. Is this area under Lee is a key area for lots of boaters with specific requirements. So like, uh, family boaters with children is a good example.

There's, um, it's an area where you can stay, you can continuous cruise and you can stay quite close to a school or a nursery for a long period of time. Uh, and so like what family boaters can do is they can, during term. They can cruise around that area and then during the holidays they can zoom away and, and do whatever distance they need to do to maintain that cruise continuous cruising license

Marnie: Continuous cruising is a form of canal living where you move every two weeks. It's what I do. Permanent moorings in London are almost impossible to get, and they often cost almost as much as rent. So when we're talking about restricting continuous cruising, this is undoubtedly the cheaper way of living.

And restrictions on continuous cruising affect the poorest parts of the boating community [00:15:00] alongside those who living nomadically has just always been part of their culture.

Colin: The, the really sad thing about what they're trying to do there is if they remove the those moorings, this is one of the key areas.

Enable families to live on boats, and if you remove those moorings, it's not just the fact that you might make their livelihoods too difficult and potentially push them out of their homes because their livelihood becomes unlivable. It's also to do with the other kind of sad part of it is you remove these moorings and you are restricting who can be a continuous cruiser to a certain extent because you're making it very difficult for people who have a family.

It might be interested in trying out living on a boat to do. because you suddenly make that an unavailable thing to family voters. And I think that's quite sad. The idea that you'll kind of can make a community potentially un suitable for people who don't have children. That's quite sad. And it has other impacts because that area is key.

For instance, [00:16:00] for various, uh, dis. Boaters. I think there's a lot of elderly boaters who are forced into a position where towpath moorings, that mean they can get on and off without clambering over the people's boats and, and falling in and all those kinds of things. That becomes less likely, it will drive people out of their homes because for a lot of people it will make their livelihoods.

Unlivable because one of the things that c r t say about this is fine. They say there's loads of other moorings elsewhere. You can just go to these other moorings like further out of town or wherever it is. And, but the thing about continuous cruising is yes, you are on a journey. Um, but, but it's a journey in steps.

It's kind of like, if you imagine it like a, a ladder with wrongs, so every two weeks you move to that, you know, you reach out, you get that next rung, and that's fine. So long as there is a next rung. But if c r t take that away, if they take a rung out so that you can't. In that area. Yeah, they're right.

There are gonna be some [00:17:00] boaters who perhaps don't have dependence or they're not disabled or whatever, or for whatever reason their livelihoods mean that they can reach up to the next rung up. But there are a lot of people who won't be able to, um, because you know, their lives are already very, their time is already in demand hugely because of family and things like that.

I know have a fair few older boaters who like, To be honest are, you know, just one step away from being homeless. And it's kind of basically they, they've been able to somehow scrape together enough, or sometimes they've been given a fiberglass boat, uh, and they live on it and it means that they're not homeless.

Um, but quite often these are people who perhaps society aren't looking after very well, I guess. I mean, I think even if you look at it, Societal perspective rather than an individual one. Like any policy that drives people who could otherwise be [00:18:00] homeless, you know, outta their homes or makes a lifestyle that enables them to be self-sufficient, unavailable, I think you've really gotta think along and hard about it.

They always kind of have this line where they say that their only response responsibility is as a navigation authority. and that they don't have any responsibility. So like their policy doesn't have to take into account its effect on people who live on boats. The idea that a boat can potentially be a home, that they don't have to take that into account.

Um, and I, I, I saw a question that, because I think, you know, even if you looked historically, They've inherited from British waterways and British waterways have inherited from a, a, a system that historically has always had people living on it. So to imagine that you've inherited this thing that has always had people living on it, and that somehow you have absolutely no responsibility, uh, to manage it in a way that [00:19:00] doesn't have a really negative impact on the people who living it, I think it's kind of burying your head in the sand a little bit.

A lot of these canals are hugely popular. Partly because of how popular they are with boaters, because suddenly these sort of dead areas where there used to be no go spots for, I suppose particularly women walking on their own or going for a run or whatever, um, suddenly they're safe places where people can go and they're full of these communities.

And, um, but it's not just the safety zones, it's also c r t also have started, uh, looking at charging for moorings in central. , uh, Towpath Mowings, which is something they've never done before. Um, and if they do it, it's, it's a pretty dangerous precedent because you suddenly get to a situation where if they can start charging for towpath moorings in central London, it becomes a situation where Central London is only suitable for, you know, wealthy boaters, which I don't think is a really [00:20:00] reasonable use of what is a public asset to, like financially exclude people from it.

It's a bit like, Taking Hyde Park and putting a toll on the front of it before you go through the gate. And then there are all these people

Marnie: I think when Colin speaks about the institutional prejudice of the canal and rivers trust, it speaks to a wider picture. The slogan of the National Barge Travelers Association is boats are homes.

And to me, this is what the continued exclusion of continuous cruises speaks. A refusal to recognize something that looks different from a house as a home. It shows a continued discrimination of nomadic forms of lifestyle. The idea that those on the move are somehow dodging or trying to escape from taxes or life, or insert, whatever you'd like to hear, is one that's constantly being pounded by the media in our culture.

But when I've asked people about what they like about living Nomadically, ah, they've often had a similar answer to Colin.

Colin: I mean, it's like quite an interesting [00:21:00] way of living. Um, and I suppose I've never really been much into, it sounds a bit over the top, but like that sort of slightly sort of empire building mentality where people, um, you know, get a mortgage, get a house, get a bigger house, that kind of like, I much prefer the idea of....

yeah, just kind of passing through. Sounds a bit cheesy, corny maybe, but you know, and, and you get to do that a lot more, um, on the boat. Um, it's not like you are trying to, I dunno, dominate a space or something like that. Really. You're just trying to Yeah. life is a journey. All that cheesiness. .

Marnie: I think for me, boats change the context around what home is and what it can be.

You're both literally un metaphorically not secure or stable. You become part of the landscape. You adjust to the water levels, to your environment, and your back [00:22:00] garden is a whole waterway. But there's another issue at play here. The threat to our waterways doesn't just come from legislation and restriction on who can access the river.

It comes from this:

News Reader 1: England's rivers are filled with a chemical cocktail of sewage, agricultural waste, waste, and plastic. Plastic that not a single river in England is free from pollution releasing

into the rivers

News Reader 2: a mix of rainwater and untreated sewage. That's condoms, sandwich towels, wipes, whites. AMS increment, flood, human waste, mentionable.

If the government allows this over consumption, the plastic to remain unchecked, we'll see a further decline in all our wild habitats.

Citizen Scientist: It's just devoid of, of any, any plant life.

Young woman: From bags to microbeads packaging to straws

Citizen Scientist: is that the, the creatures that live in this harbor are being harmed.

Trying to just photograph the wildlife

Photographer: normally and, and avoid the plastic, but often it's, it's unavoidable,

News Reader 1: shocking and wholesale [00:23:00] disregard for the environment.

Marnie: But I began to hear of a boat dweller who'd taken matters into his own hands, not just being part of the landscape, but a guardian of it. Hi, uh, so I'm in Elford today. I've come to Elford to do a bit of lit picking the mine called Paul, if it takes. Me getting up a heart fate on a Sunday in December. It was cold and rainy to talk to someone about how they're protecting rivers in their floating house then so be it.

Yeah, no, I'm excited because he's got, I mean, he's just doing a lot of really practical, really fucking grimy work to protect a river in London. Been neglected for about 200 years, [00:24:00] and then he's also doing loads of like practical and direct action. He's running a company called Lawyers for Hs. But let's talk a little bit about Ilford, which is where we are today.

Picking with her. It's a pretty roady place. It's quite run down. I'm just walking along and late to my left. I've got a. Big main road. There's rubbish everywhere. Uh, and there's cigarette butts everywhere. Um, I'm pretty frightened about how much less there's gonna be in this list bit. We're standing in an industrial estate, an odd group of people of all ages and abilities.

We're surrounded by foliage that is unmistakably wild stripped of greens and browns in a sea of gray, an outbound. He's dressed in luminous blue ski suit and armed with a pair of choppers, he springs over the edge of the bridge mud already across his face. He stands there with steam, literally rising off him from the effort of clearing a path.

This is a man who takes direct action seriously. We spend the next three [00:25:00] hours cleaning an enormous pile of rubbish with eighties classic hits in the background. So what is home like for you at the moment?

Paul: The key thing about this project and also how I'm living, is the idea of extending home beyond the bounds of like your own house or like small garden fence and seeing the whole river as your home, which is both exhausting and in some ways terrifying, but also very fulfilling. I think there's a very interesting thing where people's gardens are like over manicured, like way too manic.

But like people don't really take much care or regard a lot of the time with spaces outside of it. And when you see the whole roading or the whole river and its tributaries as your home, then actually, yeah, you want to take care of it. And in some ways it's a great privilege, right? Like. . Yeah. Even like, you know, the richest millionaire [00:26:00] doesn't really get to have a house in London with their own private, like lake or river, but I kind of do, you know, like I get to like, that's, that's my back garden is the river, you know?

Mm-hmm. and I can go out and play on it on a robo, look after it, change it into, or, or, or try and change it into something more beautiful. And that's a great privilege as well, but also hard, you know, as we. It's not, not easy.

Marnie: Paul is perhaps one of the most clear cut examples of using your home as a way to fight for a fairer and better system.

Having a safe cocoon is one thing, but if it's located in a world of turmoil and rubbish, how safe can it really be? What does home count for if it's constantly under threat from your environment? We don't just live in four walls. We live on land in a country and the. But the local community based action, the stuff that's literally in your back garden, can feel worlds away from a fight in parliament for systemic change.

I had recently seen Paul on Twitter defending just stop oil as they blocked roads and divided opinions. . [00:27:00] So I asked him why both forms of activism were valuable to him. Why do you think it's so important to have both?

I think

Paul: both is actually too restrictive. We need everything. Um, it's like an ecosystem of activism, I suppose.

Mm-hmm. , um, and different people doing different things. I have immense respect for them. You know, I, some of them are in jail right now, which is a lot harder than just cleaning up some rubbish, you know? Um, but I, I think cycling between the micro and the macro is, I think, quite important for activism. If you.

just do the, the sort of local on the ground stuff. Actually, it's not gonna change things efficiently, but if you try and do things, just the big picture stuff, I think it can become very draining because nothing appears to change, or at least not easily. Mm-hmm. , you know, in fact today is a good example of that.

Right. You know, it's very satisfying to remove that letter and feel like you're having a direct impact. But also we do need to use what's happening there as an example to get national change. Cuz if we don't have a change to the system on packing. [00:28:00] And the amount of waste that we are producing, then that will just keep happening.

Yeah. You know, but equally, you know, it can help to, to, to influence that campaign, to do this kind of stuff. Cuz you know, pupil always be like, well, why are you moaning? Why aren't you go out and do stuff? It's like, well, I fucking have, haven't I? You know, you can't, can't say, can't say I don't try, you know, and it, it, it, it gives you a reason, a platform to speak.

You say, actually I've got out there with my bare hands in the fucking mud and sewage to take that out and I'm don't want to keep. You know, and it gives you a, yeah, it gives you a, a reason to speak, I suppose. Yeah. Um, and that happens on the river more widely as well. You know, some of the more esoteric rights of nature stuff and guardianship.

Some people might kind of poo poo it, but they kind of, it's harder to do that when, you know, you regularly go out on a winter's day and physically clear the river, you know, it creates. Y you are showing your love and care for the river and that gives you a right to speak on it in other context in a sense.

Mm-hmm. Whereas you just parachute it and go, I know what this river needs without [00:29:00] actually like showing your, your work for it. I think maybe the message doesn't come across as clearly. I always have regarded my home as being wider than just my own house. Mm-hmm. As a teenager, I used to go around trying to get local buildings listed to save them and like try and get tpo, tree preservation and local trees and that kind of thing.

Um, I used to go off exploring, getting to know an area. Mm. So I would've done this if I'd had the ability to do it, but I guess you're not really allowed to as a kid, or at least it's not really that possible. not really has to do it as an adult either, to be honest. But yeah, , this hasn't stopped me. Um, yeah, it, it does, it does form a deeper relationship.

And as I said, that's, that's hard sometimes, cuz then if you love something deeper, it gives a greater capacity to feel pain when it's damaged or hurt, right? Mm-hmm. . Um, and it's frustra. I am struggling to deal with the fact that people just keep on throwing in more rubbish and do I just keep coming and cleaning up after them over and over and over again?

I sort of wonder where the end [00:30:00] point is.

Marnie: I could feel Paul's frustration, even though the day had, in many ways been satisfying. It had also been disgusting, and it's part of a wider battle for him that is largely unsupported by widespread. Living with the water isn't just about access, although we should all be able to find home and solace in the waterways if we choose.

It's about how we look after that home, how we're taking care of the place we live, not just within our four walls. We need widespread change on packaging. Water companies need to stop pumping sewage into our waterways, but getting that change is a mammoth task and sometimes it feels like an impossible.

But towards the end of the day, something happened, a symbol of hope in a plastic clogged world. As the last pieces of heavy plastic were lifted out from the bed of the river, the water began to flow again.[00:31:00]

Clear moving water. The river was starting to come back to life.

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