Bridging the years

These past few days have really got my early Vereeniging memories going. The cold spell here has had me gasping on my bike as I've pedalled across the Van Brienenoord bridge to work every day.  Yesterday, I'll swear my toes dropped off on route. I was truly amazed to find they were still attached to my feet when I arrived at the uni. Most days, I take a breather as I reach the flat part at the top of the bridge where it crosses the open water. I like to stretch my eyes over to the east and watch the light come up over the horizon and spread a pearly wash over the water. Sometimes, it's so captivating, I just want to stand there and wait till it reaches me, but work always calls so I hoist myself up on my old bone shaker and pedal on.

The something around eight kilometres to work gives me plenty of time to think. I'm not one that likes ear plugs and music as I go. I prefer to listen to the natural sounds. Okay, I live in Rotterdam, so natural has a slightly different slant on it - cars honking, brakes squealing, trucks revving to get up the rise onto the bridge. Perhaps I should rather say real sound as opposed to digital. It isn't natural at all! Now and then, though, I can hear the birds. Just occasionally.

This time to think has recently been much taken up with my first year on the Vereeniging and I believe the cold has had something to do with this resurgence of memories. Maybe it is also because it was ten years ago this year that I spent my first winter on board. I don't have many photos of those days, which is a shame, but it was before digital photography really took off, and I didn't have a camera. I can picture it in my mind, though. I have a thousand mental images of what it was like that first year.

The Vereeniging evolved. it wasn't really planned. It was an empty shell when I bought the barge, so it just grew with me. All I knew when first had it was that I wanted a proper bathroom, but it wasn't until mid 2003 that I finally got one, and in the end, I had to build it and do all the plumbing myself. That's another story though. Over the first winter, I did what I'd been doing on the Hoop (the barge I lived on for the first 18 months of my stay in NL). I used the showers in the ship yard, and I had a Porta Potti camping toilet for the necessaries. It was okay. I managed, but going up to the showers when it was freezing outside and the water was low was always an exercise in resolve. I had to climb a very icy and slippery wooden ganglank, then walk around 100 metres to the shipyard office where the showers are still. The temptation to give it a miss, just do it tomorrow, was frequently irresistible. I did, however, manage to rig myself up a sink on board even though there was no plumbing, so if it came to it, a strip wash was always possible.

I was a bit proud of my sink. Koos had donated it to me, and in fact, it is still in use on the Vereeniging although it is all fully plumbed-in these days with a cupboard beneath it and shelves for pots. When I first got it, it stood forlornly in the hold with nowhere to go. It was mounted in a homemade table unit, which consisted of a top and two sides. But it had no tap. I found a very handy electric tap-cum pump at the camping shop, which I mounted on the top next to the sink. Underneath, the pump was immersed in a large 20 litre cannister of water and it had an electric plug for the mains. The whole unit found a home against one side of the barge and I made a brightly coloured curtain to cover the front and disguise the cannister. I have to say it worked like a charm. When I turned the handle on the tap it switched the pump on and hey presto! Out came the water. I just loved it. Eventually, when I got my plumbing system in place and dispensed with my little electric tap, I missed it. I tried to find other uses for it and couldn't, which saddened me. It was just so neat.

That first winter, it was cold. Very cold. I had quite a number of strip washes. The Vereeniging was pretty basic, primitive even if you consider what normal living consists of, but I was happier than I had been for years. The Vereeniging represented my independence, my freedom. I remember this when I stop on the bridge and gaze at the ships passing beneath me.