The Boaty Life
On returning to Ireland I became happily obsessed with the idea of living on a boat. First of all I thought about getting a land-boat. I thought that it would be a clever idea to have a boat that could be turned into a tiny house. The ultimate recycling of something into an exciting and frankly rather funky land based home. I could do it up and create a seascape of rocks and plants around it. I had images of feathery white and blue nigella flowers with mounds of pale lambs ears and rippling grasses echoing the sea. For a gardener like me it is a dream landscape. It really was all about the sea garden.
With a sort of slightly luxurious quirky boat-shaped home nestled amongst all the sexy foliage for me to perch on and take excellent photographs. It would be beyond Instagrammable and those folk with mortgages and adulty things like that would be heart-sore.
I then found out that there were lots of boats lurking around in boatyards all over Ireland. Floating on canals and rivers, moldering away unloved and abandoned. There was and still is a housing shortage and I was in no position to buy a home. So here was my own cheap and exciting solution!
I found out about a village in France called Équihen-Plage that had used old fishing boat hulls as roof materials. They are of course now a tourist attraction. The fisher families were terribly poor and had little choice in the materials they had to choose from. They were neither Instagrammable or quaint they were just desperate. I felt inspired by those humble French fishing families living in their interesting homes. I had a dream that I too could live a humble and charmed life. My family were far less enamored. I expounded extravagantly and they nodded grimly and grimaced. There was some eyerolling. And this is from people who build hidden treehouses to keep their axe throwing kits. It’s not like they are suburban pillars of society. Where exactly I was going to install my wondrous and clever ‘landboat’ they enquired.
Ah. The hitch in my clever plan being, of course, being that I do not have any land. And neither does my family. Which isn’t quite true, they have their gardens and my brother even has a bit of mountain but it is riddled with midges, incredibly steep and he wouldn’t let me haul a boat onto it anyway (his hidden axe infested tree house is there already) And their gardens are full of astro-turf and toddlers so no room or soil for my peaceful boat idyll. My landboat plan was scuppered before I even dragged a leaking hull out of the water.
After a summer near family in Wicklow and Dublin I moved to Kinsale. I had never even visited the place but I knew it was a seaside village. We pulled in and it was surprisingly spectacular, there was the bay and estuary, and oodles of history. There were boats, so many boats at the marina, fish and chips, American tourists, incredibly intricate stone walls on steep sloping hills, colourful shops and the bustle of a little gourmet capital in the happy throes of an economic boom time. Living on my meagre stipend, renting a tiny shed high up on Compass Hill and going back to community college for a year seemed like a tenuous decision for a woman who knew absolutely nobody in the place. I also knew it wasn’t the worst decision I had ever made (picture tequila, wild horses and feral humans) so I gritted my teeth and headed into my new life. There were boats and that was a fine start. I knew nothing aboutr the things but I somehow knew that #boatsthatfloataregoodboats
