21-05-2025
What's the most glamorous place to be in London for aristos, city boys and girls and hipsters?
Though I might not include the wharf living bankers in this generalisation, it is hard to find a water-based person who hasn't given a name to at least one of their feathered neighbours. But there is one drawback to the birdlife, and that is that they can sound like intruders. Laura says, 'I was woken up the other night and I just knew there were men on the boat.' It turned out to be a band of heavy waddling geese. But this does speak to one of the drawbacks of boat life: security. Performance artist Mo Buckley, (who paddles everywhere because the engine of the boat she inherited from a guy she met on a towpath was made in 1942), has taken to tying-up alongside other boats after a man clambered aboard earlier in the year. 'I think he was actually trying to get to another boat,' says Mo. 'It was scary though, because although I can lock my door, the ceiling of my bedroom lifts up'. These days her boat, Nemo, is tethered to a woman who owns a wolf.
