What is in a name?

Canal boats and kingfishers

Often I only have ten minutes by the canal. Often it seems it might not be worth it, that I can get only so far, so why bother at all? Today I feel this way, tired in the early morning, before the busy day begins, but still I walk along the rough path that edges the water.

This first bit feels the most civilised, the water edged by a man made wall, the floating homes of canal boats tied up here, with their rooftop gardens and carefully hung washing. One boat, I notice, has a small golden pig on the curved handle that controls the steering. What is this called? I have no idea. This is a life so far from my own that it is thick with romance and mystery and I think, for now, I prefer to keep it that way. This golden pig is only small, so easy to ignore, but once noticed it seems to be steering the craft. It says something about the person who makes this boat their home. Further down, in a triangular window at the front of another boat, there is a mannequin head with a bobble hat on, two bloody fangs glued either side of its smiling mouth. Another boat, rocking with the weight of its pink and purple hanging baskets, has a carved stone elephant perched above the doorway.

I collect the names of these boats, a strange poetry in the things people choose as the barrier, the announcement between them and the rest of the world. The name is the way they brush up against the edges, the line between mine and yours, the invitation to understand a hidden essence of a person, yet at the same time a way of being apart, of taking space, staking a claim on a name. Some are funny, some are silly, some are named like people. I gather these names as I walk on the canal path, struggling over loose rocks in my thin soled summer sandals. I repeat them to myself quietly, as the thick green rustles overhead and a seagull wings by.

Joyce

Serenity

Felucca

Betty

Alchemy

Boaty McFloaty

Lavage de Mer

I keep them only for a moment. I do not remember them, I let them go. There is too much for a brain to hold sometimes.

Further down, before the boats run out, I see a red picnic table and two metal chairs, set out facing the brambles, backs to the water. Last night someone ate a meal here. A thin cushion on one chair, flattened on one side from a person’s weight, a bowl beneath the chipped table, a ball of screwed up foil, an ashtray, empty, to one side of the scarred surface.

I leave the boats behind and go further, quick, aware of the time, down to stand on the bank below the lock, where the edges are wild and the water reflects impossible trees. I stand, still for a moment, breathing in the green scent of it all. Then, sudden, a call I don’t know, a flash, bright, unbearable blue, darting and vivid and gone as fast as it came. A kingfisher, bolting by, a moment of grace in my ten minute wander by the water.