CHAPTER 13

Boat full of shit river trip

Toby’s Dad was a salvage diver, he had his own dive boat, it was an old diesel-powered Thames barge Tug, kitted out and modified to suit his salvage requirements and that of his crew.

It was moored at Thames reach, and to get to it he had a big old wooden rowboat that used to be a small shallow water fishing boat that had a small sail and mast.

He used this wooden rowboat with his crew to row out to the Tug moored out in the river Thames. It was tied up at a river wharf that had just one secure road entrance.

On Friday, we were all on the bus coming home from school when Toby said he had a good idea for a day out.

TOBY: Lets go to St Katherines dock moorings pier near tower bridge and have a picnic,

JACK: Why do you think that’s a good idea?

TOBY: Because we can go by boat!

ME: What boat?

TOBY: Dad got a new aluminium dingy boat with an engine, he doesn’t need the old rowboat now, we can use the old boat to row up to Putney, and then have a picnic when we get there, and then come home!

We all think this is an excellent idea, what could go wrong.

We would all bring our own food and drink in plastic supermarket carrier bags and meet up at the top of our street at 9am Saturday morning. We would then walk down to the river Thames to a place called Lovells wharf, then board the moored rowing boat. But when we get there the wharf gates are closed.

JACK: It looks a bit closed Tobes,

TOBY: Its Saturday, it would be closed. Come on, down this secret side alleyway,

We follow Toby to a rusty chain link fence that is across a narrow gap between two buildings, he lifts the fence up from the bottom,

TOBY: Look, its all rusted away and busted,

We get under the fence and Jack looks back and shouts out,

JACK: OH! FUCK! Look, my dogs followed us here, and he’s with that taxi dog “Fudge off”

“Fudge” belonged to a Minicab/Taxicab firm that has an office in Greenwich main road. The Labrador cross dog had a habit of shagging/humping your leg, or whatever part of your body it could reach.

If people were sitting down and waiting in the minicab office for a taxi the dog would try and hump your leg, and the cab company owner would tell the dog to leave the patrons alone and to “Fudge off”.

Jacks dog called “Dam” was a mongrel, and a generally laid-back animal. These two male dogs hung out together and had one very close relationship. These dogs tried to shag each other at almost every opportunity, and they quite literally waited patiently until one had finished and took turns.

JACK: I can’t leave them here, and I don’t want to go home,

TOBY: You reckon they would be alright on the boat? Dogs can swim, can’t they?

JACK: Yeah!

The four of us and the dogs make our way down the alleyway that leads us to a narrow ledge that drops down to the wharf.

We jump down and the dogs follow us onto the wharf loading dock and a short walk to a ramp that goes down to where the tied-up boat is waiting for us.

We all put on some old orange floatation vests on that are in the boat, untie it, and using the oars push the boat out, we sit down and start rowing.

None of us have done any rowing before, and no one owns up to this, as we all think we are doing well until we realise that after ten minutes of frantic rowing that we have beached the boat in the mud on the other side of the river.

This is because we are all facing backwards, and no one was looking where we were going.

As soon as the boat had beached the two dogs that had been right at the front of the boat jumped off because they must had thought that the trip was over, and it was time to get off. So, they both jumped into a foot of mud.

We rescued the dogs and were rewarded by the animals shaking the foul-smelling mud all over us. We were all sprinkled with grey and blackish blobs of Thames river mud.

We pushed our oars into the mud and managed to break free of the muddy bank. We tried to keep the boat straight, but we must have zig-zagged all the way to St Katherines dock that day with two dogs tag team shagging right at the front of the boat like one of those figure heads you at the bow end of those old wooden sailing ships.

When we eventually got to St Katherines dock the big lock gates were closed, so we moored up at the Tower Bridge pier instead. We just had to make sure that we were out of sight of any official looking uniformed people.

We all decided it was time to eat, we arranged the picnic on the boat’s flat wide seats. As we started to get our food and drink out, we noticed a large group of swans and ducks started to accumulate alongside the boat.

As we are eating Jack starts tearing off the crust from his peanut butter sandwich and throws it out of the boat amongst the ducks and swans. As the ducks and swans fight for the food this amuses all of us, so we start throwing food out to the birds as well.

Then we all stop and return to eating. As we do this a duck jumps into the boat and tries to grab at Jacks sandwich. Jack pulls away and laughs, then a swan jumps into the boat and has a go at Toby’s food.

Suddenly there are wings and feathers everywhere as the entire flock of birds exit the river and engulf the boat. As the dogs were doing their usual tag team shagging, they were getting pecked, and so they jumped up onto the pier. We all quickly got out and onto the pier, and the birds went mad for the abandoned food we had left behind.

We stood there for around ten minutes watching our food being consumed.  And as we stood on the pier looking down at the boat full of wildfowl, we heard voices behind us shouting. We looked around and saw some police coming down the pier ramp from a bridge above us. We were trespassing.

The birds had eaten all the sandwiches and were getting back into the water now. We waved our hands around and shouted at the remaining birds and they got off the boat. The trouble now was the boat was absolutely covered in runny birds’ shit.

We all jumped into the boat and slipped and skidded around on the bird shit grabbing the oars and frantically untied the boat and pushed away from the pier and police. The police watched us from the pier as we rowed away into the distance back towards Greenwich.

It had been a nice day until we at noticed that the splashes of water we thought that was coming from our oars was coming from the sky. Then a sudden downpour of rain.

So, there we were, in the middle of the Thames river, soaking wet and cold, hungry, and standing and sitting in fishy smelling bird’s shit, and still covered in blobs of river mud from earlier on, how much worse could it get.

Jack sees a blue flashing light in the distance, and it was coming our way. It couldn’t be a police launch could it? Of course, it was.

Wet and shitty we were all taken to the police station by police launch with the shitty boat being towed behind.

Toby got it worst from his Dad for taking the boat without his permission.

At the police station we were kept in the stations back yard, because we were all wet, dirty, shitty, and smelly.