What a treat to be on the boat again, with its bizarre ability to stretch time and slow life.
 
Yesterday evening, as we headed downriver through places as unknown as every other to the students on board, from Spain, Germany and France, I was relishing my backyard from a perspective I rarely get. We pulled up for the night in a village where I worked for six months not so long ago and, once we’d cooked and eaten and washed up, we ambled into the pub by the lock where I fully expected to meet people I know. (Until I realised it was ten minutes off closing time.)
 
There are beautiful, peaceful stretches of the Thames south of Oxford where the trees and bushes crowd thickly to the water, with no sign of human life. It reminds me so much of river trips I took in Cameroon – even the northern European plants don’t really break the illusion of rainforest – that I find myself looking out for water snakes and listening for grey parrots. Then we round a bend and the towers of Didcot power station loom across the fields.
 
I wasn’t here to teach, but I couldn’t really help doing what I usually do between classes on the boat, chatting with the students, talking about word forms and correcting tenses and prepositions and pronunciation. I love it. I will have to be here for a full fortnight next year.
 
But I had to get back to Oxford. I’d thought I’d cycle back but I hadn’t planned it properly and the possible routes weren’t safe on a bike. There were loads of places I could have got off and caught a bus but the bike made that impossible. So I needed to leave within reach of a train station. We thought Goring would work, but we weren’t making fast progress so I checked the map again and it looked like I could get out at a slipway just a mile from Cholsey station. Well, yes, but when we got there it was clear I’d have to slither off the boat into the Thames up to my thighs, have my bike handed to me, then carry it, chain above water, handlebars above head, to the bank. Of course my new friends on the boat videoed me.
 
I dripped onto the train, warped into a bewilderingly fast world and got myself home, boatsick.