Afloat with Daphne Randall

Transcribed from hand-written notes made last Friday...

I'm in a narrowboat, but there's a jellyfish in the water right in front of our bows.  It's definitely a jellyfish rather than a plastic bag - we've seen hundreds of the latter, floating, semi-submerged or wrapped around the propeller shaft - and it's too big to be the discarded aftermath of a moment of passion and family planning either, even an 'oh my!' sized one.  It's moving against the wind and current too: plastic bags and used condoms can't generally do that.

It's unusual to find yourself bobbing about in salt water in a narrowboat, but we've been on a journey via Manchester and the Rochdale Canal into West Yorkshire, along river navigations to Leeds and, via its entire length, along the Leeds and Liverpool Canal to Liverpool, and we're now moored in Salterhouse Dock, facing the famous Albert Dock. 

This trip has provided much thinking time but little writing time.  Long hours of summer daylight tend to encourage a long day's boating and with an average of almost one lock every mile there have been few useful spells of quiet time without a windlass or the tiller in my hand.  Also, being a self-confessed (indeed proud) Luddite, the boat lacks the electrics capable of keeping a laptop happily charged, so when I do write aboard, it's with old-fashioned pen and paper, leaving me at the end of a journey with a notepad of scribbled ideas for new stories, odd scenes to stitch together or amendments to work in progress. 

Progress with the new Solent Welfare Rights Project-based story has therefore been sluggish - if anything, there have been a few steps back as I rethink the opening scenes and reshuffle events.  However, there is one character whose voice grows stronger and character clearer in the course of these journeys and, unsurprisingly, that's boat-dwelling Daphne Randall.  Originally conceived only as a walk-on part from Hilary Carrington's rather bleak back-story, Daphne is quietly establishing herself as the potential heroine of at least one tale which I might loosely describe as a 'political thriller', if in the same low-budget, domestic sense as Severe Discomfort et al are 'legal dramas', and possibly a series of waterways-based short(ish) stories picking up some of the time between meeting her in Pots and Locks (see And the winner isn't... a couple of posts back) and our reunion with her in Severe Discomfort.  

Without casting too many spoilers about, I've learnt a lot about Daphne on this journey.  Standing at the tiller of our narrowboat (a cabin shorter than Daphne's Lady Eowyn, so I haven't needed to learn all of her skippering skills) with the drizzle in my face or the sun in my eyes, I've allowed myself to ponder how she might perceive the sights, sounds and smells along the way, as well as who she might travel with, to or from.  I've noted odd things that my camera doesn't see well - like this jellyfish under water dimpled by the rain that I can't get into focus.  I've an idea that while she often speaks somewhat bluntly, Daphne has quite a poetic soul.  She isn't a closet romantic (unlike her friend Hilary), but has an eye for beauty nonetheless, plus some considerable knowledge of both natural and industrial history.  The boating life suits her too, enabling her to balance conflicting tendencies in her nature.  She's been something of a restless Bohemian in her past and the hankering for novelty has never quite left her, though she also craves a snug and familiar home.

So perhaps one day there will be a scene in a story with Daphne Randall looking out across the Albert Dock, watching the coaches depositing flurries of tourists by day and the taxis dropping off their stiletto-heeled hen parties by night.  She might even be moored alongside a little ship called 'Dignity' with a Saltaire emblazoned on the side.

But for now, the story has little more structure or substance than that elusive jellyfish...