Blacking with Bluey

It's two weeks since I last posted here and I'm not quite sure why I haven't. It's been busy, of course, but that's normal. The education year has started again and I've been making some extra efforts to find work, something which is in slightly short supply at the moment for me as a freelancer, so I've been writing emails and updating my CV and generally putting the word out for my availability. Doing all that has definitely taken up some time.

People often ask me when I intend to retire fully and the honest answer is that I don't know. For one thing, I enjoy what I do very much. I love the contact I have with students and researchers as I find it stimulating to learn about their studies, their subjects and their opinions. The discussions are lively and it does me good to be challenged by these younger, eager minds. I might not agree with them; I sometimes don't, but being part of the debate stops me from stagnating and vegetating. That has to be a plus, doesn't it?

The other aspect is financial. Without going into detail, I came to the Netherlands too late to receive a full pension and because of the time I've been away from the UK, I am not entitled to any money from when I worked there. As for South Africa, there was (maybe still is) no reciprocal pension arrangement with Europe, and anyway, I've been away from there too long as well. Had I been financially savvy, I'd have organised myself much earlier, but I wasn't, so I just have to live with the situation. Working fills the gap and so I'll carry on teaching as long as I keep on enjoying it. After that? Well, we'll see.

So what about writing more, you might ask. It's a good question. I love writing, but it's my hobby and I've never wanted to make it my job. Okay, I worked in marketing and communications for many years, but then I was writing to order for a company. I loved that too, but it's very different from writing books and trying to market them yourself. I've never wanted my books to be 'products' and I'm hopeless at self promotion, so that wouldn't work for me. Besides, to write professionally would mean spending hours at my computer and I'm far too fidgety for that. Everyone in my sphere knows I can't sit still for more than fifteen minutes. That aside, I have a barge (make that two) to look after, which brings me to the title of this blog...see, you knew I'd get there eventually, didn't you?

A few blogs ago, I mentioned that the weather had been very harsh on Vereeniging's hull this past year. She was out of the water for three weeks in 2025 and looked beautiful when we brought her back to the harbour at Sas van Gent. However, the hard winds, storms and extreme heat of this summer reduced the shiny top coat on the hull to a cracked and flaking mess. It was horribly disappointing.

So I had an idea that I cooked up with daughter #1. If we bought another little rowing boat, we could both repaint the hull down to the waterline within a day. Enter Blue (or Bluey as he is now called), the little boat I wrote about in my last post. A couple of days after Bluey's arrival, we descended on Vereeniging with a five-litre pot of hull paint, pulled both Bluey and Grey (the little boat we already had) into the water and took a side each. We had already scraped and sanded all the flaking paint off, so now it was a matter of very carefully rolling new hull paint on to avoid any drips into the water. 

I can report that Bluey is not quite as spotless as he was on arrival and Grey is also well spattered with black, but we did it and Vereeniging has a bit more protection now against the winter furies. She may not be shiny, but at least her hull is painted again. Daughter #1 and I, however, were splattered in black and exhausted at the end of the day. It took us both some time to recover. The muscles needed to keep the boats in place while painting in a harbour with busy water were worth a fortune in workouts.

As you can see, then, this is one reason why I could not sit and write fulltime for a living. The other reason is in the photos below. Well, not really, but Zoe needs walks despite her own conviction that she doesn't. A lazier and more reluctant dog I have yet to meet. She much prefers to snooze in this corner of the sofa. 😄

Tomorrow and every day that the weather allows and work permits this month, we'll be doing more paintwork on both Vereeniging and Hennie H, but for now, I'll wish you all a great week, allemaal and hope to have more updates on life here in the flatlands soon.