If my younger self heard this question, I’m sure she would laugh at it so hard. At least before a night in early October.
It was the night I celebrated my 23rd birthday with some of my friends at Pembroke College. After a beyond creative DJ session in a friend’s room, a few pints at the Isis Farmhouse, and an unexpectedly deep conversation about weird and unfortunate incidents in life under the starlit sky, we somehow ended up on a random canal boat on the Isis.
I can never forget the moment when anxious me first jumped onto the boat. My jaw dropped when I realised the boat had a furnished living room. Setting foot in the room, I noticed a cozy fireplace with two exotic porcelain lion statues on it, a TV screen, a giant houseplant, a long sofa, a colourful rug, a small kitchen, a cute kitchen table that has a mini mirror with the caption “home is where the heart is” on it, and a pub card on the wall holding Smiths Scampi Fries.
Trying my best to mix pulpy orange juice with some alcohol, I sat down on the long sofa and realised it was ten times softer than the couch in my dorm. Immersing myself in the cozy atmosphere of the boat, I learned about one of its residents, second-year PPE student at Hertford College named Patrick Crump. That was when I realised I needed to turn this incredible experience into a newspaper article.
So, I decided to arrange an in-depth interview with Patrick and his boat “flatmate”, Toby Child, a second-year Human Sciences student, to learn more about living on a canal boat as an Oxford student.
History of the boat
Before delving deeper into what exactly boat life is like for Patrick and Toby, it is important to note that the canal boat that they live on is not like any other. Known as Ghost of a Rose, the boat is one of the oldest specimens of a newer generation of canal boats that not only look more modern but also have better insulation. Not long ago, Ghost of a Rose reportedly sank into a river, but luckily, it was then repaired and refloated. Patrick and Toby are apparently one of the first residents of the boat after its sinking.
Although Ghost of a Rose looks more modern than its older-generation counterparts, it still bears traces of its origin – for instance, the engine room at the back has nonfunctioning pint taps nailed to its walls, decorations that must have come from the boat’s original owner who, according to Patrick and Toby, was likely “a proper bargee”.
Everyday life on a canal boat
It turned out Patrick and Toby actually share this modest boat with a third person: Giuli, a second-year Music student. Besides the friendly living room, the boat also has a proper bathroom with a newly installed toilet, a modern-looking shower with glass doors, and three cozy bedrooms with tiny desks.
Both bedroom desks and the kitchen table seem to be too small to serve as a useful study space for Patrick, Toby, and Giuli, so they leave the boat to do their work.
The television screen, the giant house plant, and the entrance door of the boat. Photo Credit: Canqi Li
The cozy living room of the boat. Photo Credit: Canqi Li
Both Patrick and Toby are happy with studying outside of their home, though. “You want a separation of relaxing home space and workspace,” Patrick – who often walks 15-minutes to campus – told me. Adding to Patrick’s comment, Toby said: “If I study [in] my room, I just don’t get anything done. Being on the bike also forces me out to study somewhere else.” To access his bike, Toby has to go to the roof of the boat every day.
Patrick and Toby are not entirely out of touch with their college accommodation either. “I can still use the laundry in the college accommodation, or go to the reading room,” Patrick remarked. The accommodation also has a ping pong table he and his friends can use to wind down. Also, according to both of them, most second-years live within five minutes away from the boat, which makes their life even more convenient.
Despite its small size, the boat still has some unique leisure activities to offer. Every now and then, some rather huge swans take a sneak peek into the boat through the windows to see if anyone has some bread for them. I was lucky enough to meet two of these swans during my interview, and I have to admit they were way more aggressive than I expected – to either compete for food or flirt – one of them suddenly started biting the other’s neck, successfully pulling out some of its feathers and leaving me speechless for a few minutes.
When the weather gets warmer, they can open the windows more often, sit on the top of the boat, and watch the world go by when the sun sets. But even when the weather is gloomy, they can still observe a different aspect of the world – one full of people’s legs and little dogs – when they sit on the sofa and stare at the windows. “When it’s sunny and busy, it’s just like a parade of people walking past – it’s hours of entertainment for us, and those people can barely see us,” Toby noted.
Although Patrick and Toby are not to drive the boat anywhere else, they could theoretically do so. Toby seems to have some plans: “If we floated down the Thames, we’d eventually get to Margate, and that’s where I’m from. So, maybe in the near future, I’ll take us on a little adventure!”
Although living on a canal boat has given Patrick and Toby many fun experiences, it has also given them many less-than-fun ones. In their first few weeks of boat life, they had to use a rather special toilet.
“When we moved in, the toilet on the boat was broken, so we were using temporary cassette toilets – it was horrible,” Toby said, pointing at some plastic containers sitting outside the room. He explained: “It’s a box you s*** in, and then you close a little trap door to store all your stuff in it.” Interestingly, their landlord – a serial “boatlord” who also leases other boats in the area – then took care of emptying these boxes. “He’s a great man – most landlords wouldn’t do that,” Toby remarked.
Luckily, they have a proper flushing toilet now, similar to train toilets. According to Toby, it is “a convenience that you never think about until you’re deprived of it”. I was also happy to hear that they got money off their rent because of the broken toilets.
The view of the river from a window of the canal boat. Photo Credit: Canqi Li
The challenges of boat life they have had to deal with don’t end here, though. Soon after arriving, they realised the water supply is not ideal on the boat – they have to turn the heating on and wait for a while to access hot water, and they would rather not consume the tap water in their living space. Patrick said: “I had one incident where I was very sick, and we don’t know if it was the tap water that caused it.” To prevent similar incidents from happening, they now fill up their water bottles elsewhere.
Although Patrick and Toby are facing some suboptimal conditions that many of their classmates don’t have to, each of them only has to pay £500 a month – much less than their classmates who still live in college – to live on the boat. While many would think choosing boat life allows them to save a lot of money, this assumption might not be entirely accurate.
“It depends on how much fuel costs,” they said. Toby also explained he found it challenging to save money, as he also has to invest in carpets, dustpans and brushes now. Moreover, as there are no scouts on the boat, they now have to clean everything on their own – but rather than being annoyed by this, they actually feel more liberated. “When you’re living in an accommodation where the kitchen has 15 people using it, you don’t feel any real connection to that kitchen. But here, it’s totally yours,” Toby remarked. “Although it’s a bit of effort to do all the cleaning, it’s quite nice to be able to put in the time – it is self care and a feeling of connection,” he added, light-heartedly pointing at the mirror with the caption “home is where the heart is”.
Besides facing these logistical challenges, Patrick and Toby have also experienced changes in how others label them. “Everyone thinks it’s an interesting question to ask us ‘oh, how’s the boat?’ whenever we’re anywhere. It’s not ‘how are you, Toby?’, it’s ‘how’s the boat?’” Toby noted, adding: “I don’t want us to just be ‘the boat people’; I want us to be people who, incidentally, live on a boat.”
That said, they take pride in boat life being part of their identity. “The fact that we’ll be able to tell an anecdote in later life like ‘oh yeah, I used to live on a boat’ […] is insane,” they said. “Besides the jokes, I think having our own space and feeling the responsibility and ownership is really big for me,” Toby emphasised.
Both Patrick and Toby want to consider living on a boat for a longer time. While Patrick cannot imagine himself living on a boat for the rest of his life, he could definitely see himself spending a few more years on a boat to try to save money and have fun while he is still young. And for Toby, boat life can be an even longer-term plan. “I like the informality of it – I don’t really like the big thing of a house, plus boat life is a big, long, and unbroken tradition in Britain. I could really enjoy this different way of life,” he explained.
As to whether others should also try out boat life, Patrick and Toby said: “A lot of people just have a feeling that living on a boat is just not a thing you do, but there’s no apparent reason why you shouldn’t live on a boat. And living on a boat is freeing because you realise there’s no one way that you should do things – boat life is not for everyone, but you get one life.”
As a final message, they remarked: “Get a weird internship, and do something that you otherwise wouldn’t.”
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