Amsterdam Continues – Living on a barge, Making friends and Fitting Into Our Dutch Lives

So, we had sold Mjojo, bought the Water Rat and solved Jake's sleeping problems satisfactorily, so felt no further need to get divorced. Basically all was well in our lives at this point, except that poor old Jake required regular hospital visits and endless tests to ensure all was well with his health.

This carried on for a number of years, and was painful and tedious, and somewhat worrying as well obviously. However, after some years of this it was suddenly declared that the whole thing was something of a mistake and in fact Jake was a perfectly healthy little boy, and had no further need of endless tests and medicine.

My Mother with Jake

Whilst we were of course somewhat pissed off that we had been forced to go through what was certainly a worrying time with him, we were also vastly relieved to know that Jake was as he should be, and would no longer be the plaything of all manner of medical specialists, and could settle down to becoming a perfectly normal little Dutch soul. Which he did with a will.

During this time we had been living happily on our unconverted barge, but owing to the politics of moorings in Amsterdam at that time, rather like a visa for a foreign country, we were only allowed to be moored in Amsterdam for two months at a time, so we settled down to a sort of pendulum life. Two months in Amsterdam, followed by a month in Purmerend (north of Amsterdam, followed by two months in Amsterdam, and then off to Weesp to the south east of Amsterdam for a while, and then back to Amsterdam yet again. This we kept up for several years.

Two views of the inside of the Water Rat

However, by living like this, we became well known to the guys from the Harbour Service in Amsterdam, and in due time (being Dutch bureaucrats, and thus able to use their brains rather than slavishly following the absolute letter of the law), they started allowing us to remain in Amsterdam for up to 6 months between leaving to renew our Amsterdam “visas” again.

And after a bit of this, they sort of decided “What the hell” and allowed us to remain in Amsterdam as long as we wished.... I like the way dutch bureaucrats go about their work (or at least how it was back then). They know the rules, but are perfectly willing to bend them if it seems sensible and appropriate. An approach to their work we would experience again later on several occasions – Definitely none of that hateful “More than my job is worth” from those guys.

During all this chugging back and forth, we had also made several trips on Water Rat, which has to be the best way to explore a country such as the Netherlands with its wealth of canals. These canals go through some beautiful country, and tend to go through the nicer looking parts of towns as well for some reason. And whilst she was (in our eyes) a huge vessel, all 28 meters (100 feet) of her, she was small enough to go up the narrowest of canals, which enabled us to really explore areas such as Friesland, and other less developed parts of the Netherlands. Also, as her comfortable cruising speed was about 12 kph, so we could, as it were, watch the flowers blooming on the canal banks as we slowly chugged along – in fact, old men cycling on the tow paths went faster than we did.

Paul Penning (Now my cousin Paddy's husband), He was great with Jake

The Water Rat tied up outside the Ship Museum, Amsterdam

Even so, at times that can go wrong, as for example on one trip in Friesland we went up a bendy and very narrow canal, and at a certain point came to a low bridge, and discovered that it wouldn’t open again for several months.. Problem.. it wasn’t realistic to try and reverse the several kilometers to the bigger canal and find another way around. We simply had to turn the Water Rat around.. How to do that in a vessel that is 28 meters long, in a canal that is only about 15 meters wide?

Simple enough. As the WaterRat was empty, her bows were actually just above the water, so I simply rammed the canal bank, forced her bows right up onto the field (to the considerable alarm of a lot of sheep there), and once enough of the barge was in the field, I simply swung the stern around, pivoting on the canal bank... backed off (to the relief of those sheep) and chugged happily back the way we had come.

An idyllic way to get to know a country, no way could be better, and each night we simply tied up where ever we wanted, and settled down inside (or on deck) to relax.

Unlike a caravan, we were totally self contained and thus had no need of electrical supplies, toilets, and all the other things that make caravan dwellers need camp sites.

While all this was going on, we were slowly, extremely slowly, converting the hold into our home and generally making our lives in and on Water Rat as comfortable as we needed and wanted. This carried on right up to about a week before we sold her, some 20 years later when we set off to live in France.

So Jake grew up on board the Water Rat, and many of his playmates were the children of bargees we met along the way, or other people who lived on one sort of boat or another. 

Margot and Obbe - Still very small

Obviously as we were boat people, the great majority of the people we lived among were also boat dwellers of one sort or another. Several of them were what was known as Alternative Skippers, a group of professional bargees, mostly working with a type of barge called a Spits (about 450 tons capacity, and 38 meters long). Typical of these was a great friend called Gerard, who owned a Spits called De Raaf (The Raven). He mostly traded from the Netherlands down to the south of France, carrying all manner of cargo back and forth between those two places, with occasional side trips to Germany.

Me on De Raaf

There was an English guy who worked in those days as crew for Gerard, this was Roger Bowman, who became a life long friend, as did his splendid wife, Laura. And their kid Oscar, who we met when he was about 1 day old, and of course are still good friends with. They all now live in Fontenoy le Chateau in the Vosges region of France (more about that lovely place and them later).

Roger Bowman and I in Amsterdam 

Oscar and Jake playing on Roger's Tanker

 Obbe and Jake being nautical

Aaron and Jake

Roger and Laura later took to living on the water themselves, but at that point lived in a small house in Amsterdam, which was notable for the fact that he had several pre-war MG sports cars in pieces in his attic... He planned to restore them in due time, which is what happened.

As Jake grew older, we looked around for a creche where he could spend good time with kids his age, but we discovered that not only were they very expensive, but all the ones in our part of Amsterdam were full up for the next 456 years.. (Basically before you set about conceiving a child you had to inscribe him/her in a creche).

Lotty in her garden on the roof of my modelmakking deckschuit workshop...  The pooch is Soul

Happily though, someone told us about a private “experimental “creche being run by a small group of very hands-on parents in Amsterdam Noord (where we were tied up).

So we contacted them, and they were very happy for us to join them, so we did, and for Jake and us as well, several life long friendships were born by that happy decision.

For Jake it was Obbe, who is still a close friend of his, and ours too, of course.. .A splendid young man, who now has a family of kids and a great wife too. - Lilian.. Obbe now earns his living as a film editor, and seems very successful at it too, I am happy to say.

Jake contemplating a tank

His mother, Margot, was a woman of amazing qualities, someone I am more pleased to have known than I can possibly say. Sadly she died in a silly accident whilst on a walking holiday. A very real loss to all of us who had been fortunate enough to have known her. A warm, caring, spectacular looking woman, who painted very powerful paintings (several of which I have), and who was certainly our best friend in those years, in so many ways. She is greatly missed by Lotty, myself and Jake... And we will never forget her.

Margot with us mainly on board the Water Rat

Among the boat people we also made truly good friends, who are still all these years later good friends, people such as Ed Godri, (father of Hein, also still a friend) and Sophia (mother of our favourite Japanese speaker, Jet) and a whole heap of others, who between them made our lives in our Amsterdam period a pleasure and a joy.

Ed and I working on the boat he built, Argo. He sailed her to Surinam and has lived on her there with Sophia for years.  They have just sold her and returned to live in Amsterdam

Putting the finishing touches to a model on the deck of the Water Rat

For the greater part of this period in our lives we mostly tied Water Rat up in that mooring in Amsterdam Noord, on the Nieuwendammerdijk, and Jake spent most of his free time on the other side of the road playing with Teun,the son of Ivo de Wijs, who was the same age as him. The De Wijs family became friends as well, and I am happy to say, still are good friends of ours.

Ivo and Elleke being happy

Ivo, Lotty and Jake, The good soul in the background was Ivo's mother with Teun.  Back in the earlier days when Ivo wore his hair long

 Jake and Teun camping

Ivo, not surprisingly for those who know his work in Cabaret and radio was very keen on language and words, so both Jake and Teun had a fantastic introduction to the creative use of language, both Dutch and English, through all manner of word games, something that Ivo excelled at... Also the correct and accurate use of language as well. But all in a fun and entertaining way, Ivo being Ivo, that was inevitable.

The friendship that grew up between us and Ivo and Elleke his wife is one of those important friendships that only come along every so often in anyone's life

During all of this I continued to make models for all and sundry, and Lotty managed to get work at the International School of Amsterdam, first as a secretary, later she moved over to teaching, and remained there very successfully for the remaining years we lived in Amsterdam, teaching first in the Upper School, later in the Elementary section, and then finally in the Middle School, and became very involved in the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program as well... Including being part of groups who wrote some of the curriculum for the MYP.

More about our Amsterdam lives still to come..... Watch this space......