Thursday 1 January
Today was New Year’s Day. And the tide was in!
Yac liked it best when the tide was in. He knew the tide was in because he could feel his home moving, rising, gently rocking. Home was a Humber keel coaler called Tom Newbound, painted blue and white. He did not know why the boat had been given that name, but it was owned by a woman called Jo, who was a district nurse, and her husband, Howard, who was a carpenter. Yac had driven them home one night in his taxi and they had been kind to him. Subsequently they’d become his best friends. He adored the boat, loved to hang about on it and to help Joe with painting, or varnishing, or generally cleaning her up.
Then one day they told him they were going to live in Goa in India for a while, they did not know how long. Yac was upset at losing his friends and his visits to the boat. But they told him they wanted someone to look after their houseboat, and their cat, for them.
Yac had been here for two years now. Just before Christmas he’d had a phone call from them, telling him they were going to stay for another year at least.
Which meant he could stay here for another year at least, which made him very happy. And he had a prize from last night, a new pair of shoes, which also made him very happy…
Red leather shoes. Beautifully curved with six straps and a buckle and six-inch stilettos.
They lay on the floor beside his bunk. He had learned nautical terms. It was a bed, really, but on a ship it was called a bunk. Just like the way the toilet wasn’t called a toilet, but the heads.
He could navigate from here to any port in the UK – he had memorized all the Admiralty charts. Except the boat had no engine. One day he would like to have a boat of his own, with an engine, and then he would sail to all those places that he had stored inside his head. Uh-huh.
Bosun nuzzled his hand, which was hanging over the side of his bunk. Bosun, the big, slinky ginger tom, was the boss here. The true master of this boat. Yac knew that the cat regarded him as its servant. Yac didn’t mind. The cat had never thrown up in his taxi, like some people had.
The smell of expensive new shoe leather filled Yac’s nostrils. Oh yes. Paradise! To wake up with a new pair of shoes.
On a rising tide!
That was the best thing of all about living on the water. You never heard footsteps. Yac had tried to live in the city, but it had not worked for him. He could not stand the tantalizing sound of all those shoes clacking all around him when he was trying to sleep. There were no shoes here, out on the moorings on the River Adur at Shoreham Beach. Just the slap of water, or the silence of the mudflats. The cry of gulls. Sometimes the cry of the eight-month-old baby on the boat next door.
One day, hopefully, the infant would fall into the mud and drown.
But for now, Yac looked forward to the day ahead. To getting out of bed. To examining his new shoes. Then to cataloguing them. Then perhaps to looking through his collection, which he stored in the secret places he had found and made his own on the boat. It was where he kept, among other things, his collection of electrical wiring diagrams. Then he would go into his little office up in the bow and spend time on his laptop computer, online.
What better way could there be to start a New Year?
But first he had to remember to feed the cat.
But before doing that he had to brush his teeth.
And before that he had to use the heads.
Then he would have to run through all the checks on the boat, ticking them off from the list the owners had given him. First on the list was to check his fishing lines. Then he had to check for leaks. Leaks were not good. Then he needed to check the mooring ropes. It was a long list and working through it made him feel good. It was good to be needed.
He was needed by Mr Raj Dibdoon, who owned the taxi.
He was needed by the nurse and the carpenter, who owned his home.
He was needed by the cat.
And this morning he had a new pair of shoes!
This was a good start to a New Year.
Uh-huh.