So boat life, at least how we live it, does not call for much style or glamour in the wardrobe department. I have one tiny shelf to call my own which means I pretty much wear the same thing everyday. Wolf rotates 4-5 T-shirts and a couple of pairs of shorts. Despite this we appear to have a never ending bag of dirty laundry. Hmmmmm where on earth could that come from?
Óisin, now 18 months is at the age where he will not eat anything unless he can feed himself. He also of course screams bloody murder if you try to put a bib on him. As a result, at the end of every meal there is usually more all over him and the cockpit floor than went into his mouth. He is stripped down, washed down and his clothes thrown in a bucket of warm water to soak. That continues in a sort of dress and repeat cycle throughout the day.
Cúisle on the other hand is a beautiful and intriguing mix of girly girl, tom boy and feral child. Whilst oft to be seen barefoot and naked with her hair unkept blowing wild around her face (and to be honest I think this is probably her preferred look) she also loves to dress up. The more pink, glitz and sparkle the better. It is not unusual for her to have 4 to 5 wardrobe changes in a day. Irrespective of the outfit however, in one area she is entirely consistent, she plays hard and mucky.
Today for example she emerged from her cabin in a fabulous white party dress complete with bows and ribbon, her hair brushed and tied back with butterfly clips. Why not eh? Sometimes a girl just wants to look pretty for no other reason than because she does, which is reason enough for me! Having twirled and posed a little for us and being satisfied with our enthusiastic oohs and Aahs , she threw on her lifejacket over the dress, jumped barefoot off the boat to the pontoon shouting back that she was off to see what her pals were up to. An hour later she was full of chalk sitting on the pontoon drawing with a gang of boat kids . A little after that I looked up to see her lying on her belly on the filthy pontoon using her fishing net to scoop rubbish and plastic out of the water. Later still, in the self same (now not so white) party dress she was SUP’ing it around the marina with two of her pals hauling more trash out of the water. The next time I saw her the dress was gone, flung somewhere on the floor and she was in her German football strip (whyever?) Later on, she stripped naked, and wearing only her apron baked a cake with me and then another wardrobe change followed. This is a pretty typical day.
As a result I find myself hand washing on a daily basis at the moment. Little and often seems to me the best way to keep on top of it. Normally when we are in a marina, I would wait a week until I had a great big bag of washing and then take it to the laundry room. Here however, for the rather, in my opinion extortionate, price of 8 euro a pop, you can let your clothes slosh around in cold water with a minuscule amount of washing powder (you are not allowed use your own) for a half hour only to take them out as dirty and smelly as they were going in, just now also soaking wet. So I conceded that I would have to wash by hand. I wasn’t at all relishing the prospect but I have come to rather enjoy it. It makes me think a lot about my gorgeous Gran, whom I loved fiercely. She was the oldest of 15 kids at a time when neither washing machines nor dish washers existed. Can you imagine?
There is something quite nice about going back to basics, about things taking a little longer, it gives the impression of a life less rushed. That I have the time to sit in the sunshine and plunge and scrub pleases me somehow. I also enjoy the monotony of the task. It’s rhythmic, plunge and scrub, plunge and scrub. You can sit there with the sun on your face watching the world go by and sort of trance out....plunge and scrub, plunge and scrub. I see all the comings and goings of our neighbours and have a little chat with each as they pass by. How the boat jobs are coming along, what they are up to for the day. It’s kind of effortless productivity. Well perhaps not so effortless. To begin with at least I may have been a little overly enthusiastic with my vigourous plunging and scrubbing such that I ended up with blisters all over my fingers. I imagine my Gran got a great kick out of seeing my pathetic war wounds after washing all of about 5 toddler t-shirts. (In fairness to me they did have a lot of food stains on them!! ) I have since changed my technique. Boat life after all is about nothing if not adaptation and change. Now I do rather less scrubbing and considerably more soaking and plunging with the aid of a not insignificant amount of vanish (a wonder product, by the way) How my Gran ever got anything clean without it I will never know.
This morning I managed to plunge and scrub an entire bag of dirty laundry clean, a very satisfying feeling indeed. We closed out the day with a BBQ on board Saoirse with 3 other family boats from our pontoon. All the kids built a den on deck and had a water fight whilst the parents drank wine and chatted. Once everyone had gone home and I had put my kids to bed I sat down to write and noticed another half full bag of dirty laundry waiting for me to tackle tomorrow morning.
Plunge, scrub and repeat, Ahhhh boat life.......
I thought a pic of the kids playing on deck this evening would be more interesting than me scrubbing my smalls! Plus, as I am the only one on board who ever seems to take any pics I don’t actually have one of me scrubbing my smalls (thank God for that I hear you shout!)
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