The Carrier Pigeon Post

Tonight I’ve been on the loose in Cambodia’s capital with my camera, and just had to share some snaps…the mood lighting and activity on the streets is really quite spellbinding.

Tonight I had dinner at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club with the lovely Polly, a Thai tour guide with Gap Adventures. She taught me a heap about Pol Pot’s penchant for butchering Cambodia’s thinkers, and the current brouhaha between Cambodia and Thailand over an 11th century temple.

She also talked a bit about her fascinating family; her Dad was a special operations policeman who would disappear with heavy weapons for months at at time, and now coordinates a kind of camp near the Thai border with Burma and Laos designed to cultivate healthy relationships with remote area villagers and hill tribes. It’s been a great night of seeing, listening, and learning about completely different lives and worlds.

On my Friday morning walk to work I came across this ex-Christmas tree, stripped of all its finery and chucked on the footpath for all the world to see.  

Continuing down Queensdale Road I found another one rotting in the rain, then another, until an entire scene of undignified decay surrounded me.

This made me sad.

Not so much because my Christmas is over, but because for the first time I was alerted to the spectacular fall from grace these Christmas trees experience.    

I mean think about it. They grow up in special forests geared for rapid growth, and their single purpose in life is to be selected for the job. Those displaying the greenest hue are handpicked, invited into family homes and all done up in lights. A glittering star is placed atop its canopy They become guardians of gifts, and take centre stage on the most celebrated day of our calendar year. They feel truly special, like they’ve really made it in life.

And for what?

After presents are opened and bellies are filled, they’re tossed naked into the street and forgotten about. Consider this chap:

He’s in danger of being slammed by a 4WD Volvo during the school run. And this guy here:

His adopted family has left some of the shiny bits on as a cruel reminder of how things once were.  

The worst part about this whole stinking caper is that it appears the residents of Queensdale Road acted in unison. I can just picture them the night before, nibbling their barn-reared turkey leftovers together and plotting the overthrow:

“What do you say everyone, let’s grab the things in the dead of the night when they least suspect it,  and drag them swiftly to the footpath.”

“Quite.”

Should there be a home for abandoned trees? A place where they can reminisce about their tinsel days, and decompose together in privacy and peace?

Just a thought.

I’ve been a bad carrier pigeon. I haven’t posted anything for a really long time. Longer than the predicted December mail delays anyway.

I could blame it all on being snowed in, but the truth is I’ve started a fantastic – and fantastically busy – new job, and I haven’t had time to scratch myself. The stories have taken a bit of a back seat.

Readers (if any of you are still out there), the Carrier Pigeon Post will live on in the New Year. Most of the time I love writing it, and I LOVE that you read it.

In the meantime, check out London! Here we are with Thea and JV on Marylebone High Street, following a lovely Saturday brunch at Providores. I’m so excited to live in a place that snows, that I don’t even mind the cold. It had better not snow tonight though, because Sammy and I have a plane to catch!

Merry Christmas everyone.

Many moons ago – when the Murray River was still a mighty serpent – my family did the holiday on a houseboat thing. For a week we plied the muddy waters pretending to be pioneers, and tying up to giant River Red Gums to rest along the way. I remember this childhood river-living trip as one of the all-time greats, so naturally I’ve been looking forward to this latest Carrier Pigeon Does London challenge, to interview a family living permanently aboard one of those lovely ‘narrowboats’ built specifically to slip through the slender canals of England and Wales.

My brief was to find this family at Little Venice, a pretty labyrinth of waterways near Regents Park that harbours London’s largest floating community. But I got embarrassingly lost and it was frightfully freezing, so instead I approached the only person hanging around a bunch of boats moored at Camden. Andy Waterworth seemed like a nice young fellow – the kind who wouldn’t chop me up and store me in his freezer if I dared to step aboard his very homely 17 metre Emily Jo – so I accepted his kind offer of a cuppa and a river-living education.

How did you come to live on a narrowboat?

It’s always been my ambition to live on a boat; I worked in the merchant navy for five years, then I went on to study yacht surveying at Southampton. Years after that I came across a boat for sale on the mooring in Surrey, so I bought that, spent two years doing it up, made a few grand and put the money towards this one. It used to be owned by an elderly couple and I think it has a really nice character to it.

So how does the canal life actually work?

Well you’ve got the marina moorings, which are for people who don’t want the hassle of moving around all the time, and then you’ve got continuous cruising, which is cheaper but riskier as you don’t know where the available mooring spots are. I kept this boat at the marina in Hampton for 12 months within a small community of boats where everyone knew each other and everyone worked, then this summer I decided to try cruising around. It’s definitely harder, but this boat has a good engine and there are quite a few places to stop even within the M25.

What kinds of characters live on boats in England?

You get a lot of elderly couples who have retired and bought boats to cruise around in. You get quite a few typical English eccentrics with strange styles of boats, then you get people like me who live permanently on boats and work full-time in London (Andy is a ship surveyor), and then you get lots of families that hire boats in the summer.

Is it a sociable life or a solitary one?

It could be both, depending on where you are. There are places around the Oxford Canal where you can really hide out, but people on the canals and rivers are generally really friendly. Sometimes when you’re going through the locks you can have another boat alongside you the whole day, so you chat with them and then you might see them at the pub later on. I’ve met groups of guys who have invited me on board for some beers, that sort of thing.

How much does river living cost?

Well you can pick up a boat that’s habitable for about £20,000. Marina moorings can cost between £200 and £500 a month, depending on where you are; the Thames being the most expensive. An annual cruising license costs about £600.

What do you do to relax in here?

The same things that people with homes do really; I read a lot, I practice my guitar and watch a bit of TV if I feel like it. I also enjoy DIY projects, like basic carpentry and bits of plumbing. I’m currently building some shelving to house all my books.

In your opinion, why don’t more people live on boats?

It’s the space I think. My girlfriend says she could never live on a boat because of the space. We’ll take the boat up to Oxford for a week and she really enjoys it, but she’s ready to get back into her house.

What’s the best thing about your chosen lifestyle?

Summertime in the evenings; the fact you can actually take your home and go cruising somewhere really quite scenic. Living within nature, and having all of this on my doorstep for limited costs is really special. For me, this is my home, my holiday and my hobby.

Thanks Andy for inviting me on board the Emily Jo, and thanks to Sarah and Bert Calman for issuing the challenge!

It’s been a busy old time in London town these past two months, what with setting up house, finding new jobs and seeing all the metropolitan musts, like Buckingham Palace, Borough Market and the Tate Modern. Sammy and I have lately been pining for some tree time, so on this sunny Saturday morning we jump in the car with friends – me in shotgun – and hurtle an hour west to Berkshire County, the wooded land immortalised in Kenneth Grahame’s classic tale of Mole, Ratty and Mr Toad.

Our pommy friends Simon and Matt grew up in a tranquil village called Cookham Dean, and they want us to roam the surrounding wild forests, drink lager in the old thatched-roof inns, and help celebrate the anniversary of Guy Fawkes’ failed gunpowder plot in the old English way, with fireworks, home-baked delights and steaming cups of spicy mulled wine. Frankly, it would be rude not to.

We arrive in ‘The Dean’, recently voted by the Sunday Times as one of the country’s poshest villages, and we take a look around. This must be the most spectacular time in the village, with all the falling golden leaves, and the majestic red kite birds that circle silently above.  Two girls clip-clop by on their ponies bound for the old bridle paths that crisscross the area, but otherwise there’s nobody around. We decide they all must be taking tea by the fire in their cottages. And wearing tweed.

We wander over to the apple orchard owned by Simon’s family and three other families, and build a giant bonfire out of twigs, fence palings and a broken old row-boat for Sunday night. They’ve been putting on little bonfire nights with fireworks in the orchard for twenty-odd years, so it’s a real treat to be part of the preparation.

With bellies full of windfall apples we check out the bigger bonfire night for all the villagers. Rugged-up kids are releasing blazing lanterns into the night sky, and the fireworks are doing their job to wow the crowd. Then, following a lovely dinner with Simon’s parents, we could easily retire to our comfortable country beds and dream of Mole and Ratty messing about in boats, as they loved to do. Instead we stumble to the nearest watering hole and continue to down a lion’s share of liquor…

On Sunday we make for a meadowy stretch of land where the Thames gently curves and the furry cows roam free. Whoever pegged Cookham Dean as posh must have come to this part; it’s proper Hunter wellington and hound territory. However they all seem friendly enough.

Back at Simon’s place, Penny and I make a life-size model Guy Fawkes by stuffing old clothes with newspaper, rename him ‘Creepy Steve’ and sit him inside the bonfire boat. By 7pm Creepy Steve is a flaming mess, the boys are letting off Meteorite Rockets and I’m three homemade sausage rolls in. The locals hand out sparklers to ‘the visiting Aussies’, and serve up cups of mulled wine. I could stay here all night surrounded by this wholesome country cheer, but alas, it’s time to head on back to the big smoke.