jellyfish

A stinging spike like a burn in the back of the neck, no, in the back, like an icecream cone of steel in the stick of the spine.

It happened in the sea by the rockcombed beach. We were swimming with the moss tangled around our feet, stars of seaweed blossomed at the bottom of the sea or sky as we swam in circles around the grotesque, inflatable green crocodile. We'd bought it from a dusty shop nearby, selling tat & packed with French families.

I felt the sting in the small of the spine. It bit and the pain held on, like a furious lover's parting shot. I turned my hand to my back in an admonishing slap and found soft mollusc wobble...I screamed; the jellyfish inflated to a suffocating balloon, formed a suction around the patch of skin and pulled...

I shrieked and shoved. The jellyfish lump parted like that jumped-up lover leaving, through the briny ocean of memories. Gone. I swam back to what I knew with a lump in the small of my back, wounded by the whispers of the deep.

The night of Kir = White wine and a town called Cassis

We take a train to Cassis and search for a hostel for three hours, having walked sweaty from the station. We ask a boy about our youth hostel; he leads us to the town square and confidently points out a block of light atop a dark and depressing concrete building.
"C'est la." He disappears down a narrow medieval alley, and we climb the rusting iron railings that form a skeleton staircase in the darkness and walk towards the bright light at the top. There's golden music coming from the doorway, it feels like we're hallucinating heaven...

Then we peer in and it's not a hostel at all; there are a load of old people sitting on school chairs in a circle, singing in harmony. Oh fuck. This is intensely strange... an old lady comes out to tell us that we have reached the Cultural Centre of Cassis. So this is not our youth hostel. We quaff cheap wine until the situation doesn't seem so bad. Everywhere is full, apart from a hotel offering one room for three people at 96 euros... three people take it, the rest of us agree to sleep on the beach.

At the beach we watch the gendarmerie (armed police) patrol the sand, bored and curious about the three guys and a girl perched on the steps, chattering in English and playing cards. Our night is peculiarly peopled: some pretty French women donate us a bottle of wine they don't want, a curious old guy asks us if we are cold while his wife urges him away, muttering "don't talk to those tramps," and the strange boy with a light strapped to his head slopes along the coast for hours in the dark, combing the beach for some long forgotten relic.

4AM: We migrate to the town square. Neils is asleep astride a low wall, Henry is insomniac and wide-eyed, Ipod tucked into his ears. Tom is asleep on the bench, curled up under a couple of towels. It never gets dark exactly, the streetlamps sweat out silver light all night as we sit and make small talk and slip into sleep for one brief hour...
Then morning comes and we have done it: we have slept rough. We slowly evolve from vagrants into civilised tourists, transformed by coffee and pain au chocolat, ready to face the day.

Soundbites from the boat

We have become aggressive hunter-gatherers, snarling at anything that hinders our chance of survival - waiters, mosquitos, pedestrians - and developping the deadly instincts of a Dalek when it comes to stray insects on the boat. "If it flies, it dies," Shaz says grimly, swatting another one away. We all laugh.

Bleak Valleys humour and hysterical laughter are becoming familiar landmarks on the rolling soundscape of the canal, along with a buzzing fan and a stuttering pipe pumping out water. Every time the pipe starts pumping, my father asks, "does that mean the boat is sinking? Should we book into a hotel?" He sounds hopeful.

The boat's new catchphrase has been announced as:

"If you dump, you pump."

This refers to the toilets that only flush if you pump them vigorously. Hysterical laughter again. That's a good sign, isn't it? Maybe one day soon we'll be sitting around a roaring fire telling tales of our inexpert manoeuvrings of this boat. Like Odysseus and his crew. That's right. Maybe this counts as bonding.

"Mum, it's not like being on a car, you have to -"
"Oh just shut up!"
"Now, now..."
" Mum, your sailing's worse than your driving."
"You've been itching to say that, haven't you?"

Well, sort of bonding anyway. Oh family holidays! This one's been peculiarly pleasant, even though we are bitten and sandy and sweaty and unwashed. Waking up to the canal and the green glowing leaves, vivid living limbs of trees that shimmer and rustle with life, crisp against the clear blue sky. Leaves agitating, whispering, telling us to get a move on and enjoy the bright blue day. The solid metal sheen of the bike is winking at me in the sunlight, raring to go...

Oh fuck. Trying to moor up on the bank, we have managed to dent both the side of the boat and a tree. We are not like Odysseus and his crew. Nowhere near. We are more like the green seascum that latched onto the bottom of the boat, lazy and unskilled, hoping for a free ride...!

Mum: "I don't believe in washing up liquid. We're not getting any. We don't need it, all those chemicals."
Me, muttered: "Oh dear god."

Between a loch and a hard place

The soft drip-drop could mean mosquitos or an empty water tank. This noise wakes me, alerts me to the possibility of danger. Am lying on a hard lump of a bed, that feels like frozen custard - same colour too. Lurid pink curtains let in artificially-flavoured strawberry light. I open my eyes again and I'm lying in a tiny cabin on a boat. I'm not sure where I am. I'm not sure who else is on board. I'm not even sure if the boat is moving. Oh fuck - I think it is...

a baby bat

A tiny bat fallen on wooden floorboards, a tangle of sharp black bones and velvety skin that lurks like an inky daddy long legs. Rachel picks up the bat with a piece of cardboard. She pokes its limbs with paper edges until it acquiesces. Scooped up onto the cardboard like a bowl of icecream, its wings are little black creamy drips dangling from the edge. Creeping towards Rachel, the bat becomes a furry little baby, wiggling its black wings on her arm, climbing up her arm like an infant, looking for milk.