Narrow Margins Read Online Free

fallen over backwards, emptying the contents of the bucket over himself.
    Geoff heaved himself, dripping, out of the hole, took one look at a wailing, equally dripping, Sam whose screams had now turned to loud complaints about the smell and just sighed. ‘Fancy some lunch?’
    I don’t know how many people remember the television show It’s a Knockout but descending a swaying rope ladder onto slippery mud with a wriggling child covered in oil should have been made into an international game. It is far, far more difficult than it has any right to be. After an incredibly slow and careful descent, we reached the ground relatively unscathed and, except for slightly elevated heart rates all round, all in one piece.
    Bringing up the rear as we began our second game of hopscotch back toward the car, I was (very quietly) amused that I was the only one of the three of us who was still clean. As Geoff put Sam on to his shoulders to forestall any more ‘incidents’, the oil was transferred from Sam’s legs onto Geoff’s hair, face and shirt. Being more ‘sure-footed’ than I, they strode off to open the car and find something to clean themselves up with, leaving me to pick my way carefully along behind.
    I very nearly made it; about ten feet from the steps up to the road, I took a single wrong step and my right leg disappeared up to the thigh into what could only be described as a miniature wadi. There was an unpleasant squelching sound as I tried to heave myself out, but I was stuck, well and truly stuck. Geoff had to come back and pull me out.
    Charlie, more sensible than the rest of us, had been watching our progress from a clean, dry, warm vantage point up on the rocks and was now laughing so hard she could barely stand.
    I suppose it could be described as a ‘Kodak moment’, but fortunately no one around had a camera: Geoff, soaked and muddy from the feet up, oily and sticky from the head down, Sam just plain oily and myself completely pristine except for one leg, covered from foot to thigh in thick, black mud; Charlie was almost hyperventilating, she was laughing so hard.
    As our mucky group stood around the car, futilely trying to get ourselves at least part-way respectable again, an elderly gent walking his dog wandered past us. Staring unashamedly at the bustle going on, his curiosity finally got the better of him and he meandered over, smiling.
    â€˜Wot ’appened to ’ee then?’
    We explained that we had been out to look around the barge and the series of events that had led us to this state. He listened quietly, nodding every now and then. When we had finished narrating our sad tale, he looked us all up and down and nodded again.
    â€˜A lot of folk coom aut tay see that barge,’ he informed us, still nodding sagely.
    â€˜Do they all end up looking like this?’ I quipped, grinning.
    â€˜No, lass – you lot are the first daft enough to go aboard,’ he said, ‘you’d better get that mud off, it smells terrible when it be drying.’ He smiled and, nodding one last time, carried on up the road, dragging his dog behind him.
    Four hours later we arrived home, stinking, miserable, hungry, depressed and more than a little ‘crispy’ where the mud had dried. My niggling little doubts had started to grow like Topsy.
    â€˜Are you sure about this?’ I asked Geoff after we had managed to give Sam an oil change and get him and Charlie fed and into bed. Clean and warm, we were lazing about in big fluffy bath robes, I hanging on to a glass of red wine and Geoff with his usual cup of tea. ‘Every boat is just hideous; it’s either falling apart or it’s tiny or just plain horrible. I can’t see us living on any of the rotting tubs we’ve seen so far. Do you really think you can take one of these things apart and put it back together again in a liveable form?’
    â€˜Actually, yes,’ Geoff grinned and blew into