I knew we were in for trouble when Roger announced he was paying a visit to the boys from Amsterdam.
I didn’t kid myself that he wanted to confer with them on narrowboat steering techniques – the Dutch boys had practically scraped the paint off our barge trying to moor next to us at Haywood Junction, where we had stopped to fill our water tank. Nor did I think he was going to scold them for their lack of maritime manners, because the old sixties soul in Roger prefers consciousness-raising to confrontation. And clearly the visit wasn’t social – why would he be paying a call on a group of young men who were no older than our sons?
No, I smelled the reason why my brother-in-law, in his charmingly guileless manner, wanted to approach the brightly painted canal boat where sprawled a half dozen bare-chested twenty-somethings sporting beards, bandanas, and pony-tails, looking like some ill-groomed breed of primates taking their postprandial naps.
It had been a long time since I had last caught a whiff of it, but the aroma of marijuana hasn’t changed over the years – it still smells to me like a mixture of patchouli, cigarettes, cloves, male body odor, and beer-mildewed carpet. (Why were all college parties held at male domiciles?)
“Roger,” his wife called out after him, her voice barely veiling both condemnation and panic. “You don’t really want to do this.”
“It’ll be fine, Caroline” he reassured her, without a glance back.
Gregory, my husband, shook his head at his brother. I quaked inwardly. No good was going to come from this transaction.
Read on.
LINKS
Narrowboats
Haywood Junction
