A musical weekend

We went to "An audience with John Jonathan Veira" last night. Equal parts operatic superstar and clown. Gave us some material that would have graced Covent Garden, but mixed it up with a lot of fun stuff, accompanying himself on piano and, at one point, country guitar. Told stories from his life and had the audience in stitches. At one point he got a lady off the front row to turn the pages while he sang something fast from The Marriage of Figaro – which of course he had to interrupt to tell her to turn (or not to turn). Hilarious and wonderful. And meanwhile he had seized on the presence of a lady who – get this – does deaf-signing at some really prestigious opera-houses. He got her up to sign during this particular item, which she did brilliantly, joining in the fun. He's on tour round the UK with this show. Before it started, during the interval and afterwards he just mingled and joked with the audience. We loved it.

Then tonight, after our evening meal, we've been listening to Scriabin's Piano Concerto. Whenever I hear this, I'm amazed at how exquisitely beautiful parts of it are – the first part of the second movement is one of my all-time favourite passages. Now I've an hour to recover before the music of Lineker, Hanson and Shearer on Match of the Day.

But up there, competing with all the emotion, was the rendering of the Welsh National Anthem at Twickenham. Tears in the eyes, even for this Englishman.

Waking up

Ran into Mary in the hairdresser's tonight. "Thought you were dead" she said. Not true, actually, as we'd seen each other in church on Sunday. What she meant was: "You haven't posted anything on the blog for a long time".

Well, the blog is a narrowboat adventure, and Erin Mae is hibernating – and the last post was about winterisation, which I assumed would give a clue. Still, it has been seven weeks, while Christmas and New Year have come and gone, and we've got used to 2012. So this bear has yawned, and stuck his snout out of the burrow, and decided it's about time to make a few noises.

A new sort of routine has settled in, with my best beloved at the local leisure centre five times a week to see what a mixture of functional fitness, aqua aerobics and gym work can do for that bikini-beckoning profile and the arty-whatsit joint. The sauna and jacuzzi and tea with other class members are just possibly part of the attraction, too. Meanwhile, I've gone back to the college for 2 days a week and more, doing database development. It's a ball! Loving every minute. All the fun, and none of the pressure of senior management. In fact, I'm doing lots of (probably unpaid) overtime as new solutions suggest themselves at 7 p.m., and the college network is just an internet link away.

All of which is why I've not blogged for a long time. Come to think, I haven't been reading anybody else's blogs either – there will be a zillion posts on Google Reader. But (who knows?) the bear might not go back to sleep now. Thanks for the alarm call, Mary.

Winterisation

It seemed a strange word when we first came across it. Now it's an essential part of the vocabulary. Get ready for the freeze. As Steve in the marina office put it – what you've got is a floating garden shed. Do something about anything you don't want damaged by ice and frost.

We were caught out last year – still in the process of buying Erin Mae when winter struck at the start of December. Even if we'd known what to do, we didn't have the authority. A new calorifier was part of the cost. So I've been up to Engineering to arrange things and learn what I can along the way. Year-round liveaboards may face challenges in the ice, but at least they're keeping the boat warm by living in it.

Getting ready for winter – sounds like a metaphor. Maffi complained at being 61, in spite of the birthday greetings. There's a few on the cut can give him a year or two! But winter doesn't just strike those who've stopped having birthdays. The days can close in on people much younger – I'm thinking of the sad passing of Gary Speed, and Ronnie O'Sullivan's renewed career comments. Even Bones can muse on the darkness (or otherwise) of the soul.

Some have written about "the dark night of the soul" as being something through which you can come to know God more profoundly. It never sounds a particularly attractive way to get better acquainted with the Almighty. But, whatever, learning how to face winter seems a part of wisdom we can't afford to ditch.

Christmas tree

Last Sunday week I held hands with a stranger about my own age and hirsuteness as we sang Christmas songs and walked clockwise and, on the next verse, anti-clockwise, round the newly-lit Christmas tree in front of Oslo university. He said he'd been doing this for forty years. On the steps of the university a fine Salvation Army band played the carols for everyone to join in, a civic representative read the story of Jesus' birth from Luke's gospel, a local primary school choir sang their part, and my youngest grandchild got perilously close to the tuba. The whole of Oslo (it seemed) had gathered to celebrate the official start of the Christmas season and walk back and forth round the tree.

It was the sort of occasion which is becoming much rarer in Britain, I think, where people can be seriously and happily celebratory, without the need to be raucous or cynical or to turn everything into a joke. We had just one joke – from the mayor who, when the lights failed to come on at the right moment, commented that they were of a much greener variety this year!

At the end of a year in which Norway had to cope with the horrific, tragic events of 22nd July, it was good to see something profound surfacing, and people coming together to sing the older story.

Promises

Yesterday, in the morning service at a nearby church, two friends of ours renewed their marriage vows. We'd been at this sort of thing before, where after 25/30/40 years of life together, a couple wanted to re-affirm what they had said at the start. But this was different. The last four years have been difficult. Various issues surfaced and led to a separation. The house was sold, finances were difficult, times were tough. But, crucially, both of them had the right sort of support from people who walked with them through the difficulties, without taking sides, being honest without being judgmental.

At first there seemed little hope of a reconciliation. Where trust had been challenged, time for reflection was needed. For them to come to yesterday required courage. Courage to admit wrongdoing, faith to build again. But they got there. For those of us who had been close, it was very moving to listen to the promises they made to each other, before God. These were not standard promises from a prayer book, wonderful as those are. They had written them specially for the occasion, in the light of the past and looking with renewed joy and hope to the future.

Most marriages face challenges at some point and so many, sadly, succumb. To see our friends rebuilding was a thrilling experience of the preciousness of contrition, forgiveness and restoration.

Night visitation

Up on the embankment in the dark it looked like something from Close Encounters. Great Haywood marina, by and large, is very peaceful. A railway runs along one side and, every hour or so, a Virgin train tears past. Apart from that it's pretty quiet. Last night the idyll was shattered in the middle of the night, for the second time in a fortnight, by a Network Rail maintenance team. The loco, its accompanying wagons and their floodlights created a strange amalgam of shapes and silhouettes criss-crossed by figures in working gear. Just far away for them not to keep their voices down, just near enough for us to hear everything, and for the regularly sounded horn to keep us from sleep. My best beloved gave up, went off to read in front of the fire. I'd just be drifting off, when the horn would jolt me awake again. There must be something singularly wrong with the track by the marina – they stayed there for ages. "Beep-beep, beep-beep" it went. Bye-bye to an early morning rise for a productive day.

We're obviously out of condition. In Brazil we slept through all-night parties next door. Today we're having a quiet day recovering with the help of home-made soup, home-made bread and home-made Dutch apple cake!

Underneath the mattress

What's under yours? All those savings you can't entrust to the bank? It was never very likely that we ourselves would have much to stash away – serving with a mission agency in Brazil for the central part of your working life is not exactly a smart career move if your principal aim is to accumulate a decent pension. But perhaps there's more to life than that...

Erin Mae came with a very nice 8" mattress, interior sprung, 4' wide (this paragraph apologises to those unfamiliar with imperial measurement abbreviations). There was also a further 6" wide, custom made piece, interior sprung and carefully crafted, together with some plywood panels underneath, that slide out to make a 4' 6" bed. Trouble was that when you took into account the depth of those panels and added a 2" memory foam topper, our heads were getting perilously close to the overhead cupboards. Makes it hard to relax in the night in case you get up without thinking and bash your bonce, crash your cranium, knacker your noddle – you get the idea. Also, because the 6" bit was made by a different person to the main mattress and, being mostly under the gunwale, less lain upon, it stuck up and created a ridge. In the end we bought a 6" deep, 4' wide memory foam mattress (3" of that wonderful foam) and persuaded the company to sell us a 6" wide piece of the same stuff to go down the side at night. Works a treat. We're 4" further removed vertically from the risk to life and looks, and the comfort is unsurpassed. The old memory foam topper now lies folded underneath the dinette seating, waiting to provide superior luxury for our first overnight guests (or us, if those guests merit the bedroom).

Problem – the slide-out panels were getting harder to slide out. Today I tried silicone lubricant, to no effect. So out came the new cordless drill and off came parts of the construction under the mattress, to be shaved down to give an extra mm or so of clearance at the side (see, I can do metric). While down there we had a look below. As with many narrowboats, what sits under the bed is the poo tank. Its proper name is "black tank", but ours is a nice sort of polypropylene, and if the contents are actually black then we're in trouble! Everything looked in order and sealed tight. The only issue is that, being over to one side of the boat, when it gets full it has the same effect as a couple of front-row prop forwards standing on the gunwale. I'm thinking of patenting a device to tell you how near you are to needing a pump-out by the amount of left-list on the boat.

Meanwhile, it just doesn't do to think too much, as you drift away with the sandman, about what lies just beneath the mattress. Even if it's all those savings, worrying about them could keep you awake at night.