The meanness of cleanness

I know, I know. I mutter more than somewhat about cleaning the barges, but when you have one and a half boats to care for (don't ask), it can become a tad tedious. As I said elsewhere on social media, people who have boats and barges know that we do more scrubbing and scouring than a Victorian housemaid, and that's just for one.

Well to cut my mitherings short, since I posted last week about the new meaning of greening on the Vereeniging, I thought I'd tell you about the meanness of cleanness on the Hennie H this week. To clarify any confusion (if that's not a contradiction), my own barge is the Vereeniging in Rotterdam; it's where I live during the week when I'm at work. The Hennie H (pronounced Ha), which I share with Koos, is in a harbour at Sas van Gent on the Zeeuws Vlaanderen border with Belgium. Sas van Gent is about three and something kilometres from the crumbly cottage that I escape to at weekends. This is the holiday barge, the one that took us to France last year and will hopefully bear us east to Poland this year - although if we get that far remains to be seen. I only have three months, which is the absolute maximum time I can (not) afford not to work. That said, the Hennie H has been sitting twiddling its fenders since November, which was the last time we went out for a spuddle.

Our harbour at Sas

It will come as no surprise, then, that after such a long period of idle rest and despite a few wash downs throughout the colder months, the little barge was in much need of a spring clean. I started a couple of days ago, but I was dog-sitting and couldn't spend the time that I really needed as said pooch insisted on sitting on the hottest part of the deck. Not a good move for a small furry being. So since he went home, I've been able to spend more time on it and attack with some good Val verve and vigour. Fortunately, I don't have to climb any masts or hang myself over any precipitous sides with this one; it has those wonderful things called gunwales which allow me to walk with some dignity along the barge and mop down the sides rather than doing a fair impression of a vertically challenged spider as I do on the Vereeniging.

Factory backdrop

No the meanness of the cleanness on this barge is that everything visible is either white or cream. Add to that, the mooring is close to a number of factories that emit all sorts of noxious substances (well I might be exaggerating that a bit) that all end up as grime on my lovely gleaming roof (that part's true). And even worse, the fire brigade use the water next to us to clean out their tanks now and then. What I suspect strongly is that they also take gleeful pleasure in spraying all the surrounding boats and the Hennie H in particular with water dredged from the bottom of the canal when no one's there to catch them at it. The result is that now and then we arrive to find the barge covered in gritty black mud. Wonderful, isn't it? On a white barge. You can imagine how mean that makes me!

It's no wonder that barge skippers of yore always had brown sails and tarpaulins. It was probably in anticipation of this kind of meanness.

A nice clean HH

Anyway, after many hours graft today, this is how her roof looks! Doesn't that cleaning make it look gleaming ?

And just for fun, I've added a few extra photos of the surrounding countryside too. Have a great week everyone.

Looking over the fields on my walk

A fine old brick barn

Paddocks for the horses - there are a lot of them here

Spring in the trees