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aspire to. Consequently, Sam and I had indulged in childish bickering all the way down the M5, until Geoff told us both to shut up. Still sulking, we arrived in Braunston, hot, tired, angry and certainly out of sorts with each other and life in general.
    This mood was not alleviated by our first sight of Happy; she was as grey as the weather, covered in pigeon poo and listing gently to the left.
    â€˜I told you we were wasting our time,’ I grumped at Geoff, ‘let’s not bother. Can’t we just go home?’ I pulled Sam off the safety railings as he tried to pitch himself into the marina basin, ‘Get down, Sam, for goodness’ sake, this is not a flaming playground.’
    Geoff frowned and, fed up with watching his wife and son indulging in a pulling and screaming match, reasonably suggested, ‘Look, we’ve come all this way, is it really going to kill you to just take ten minutes to get the keys and have a quick look inside?’
    As there was no good answer to that without resorting to outlandish exaggeration, I ignored him and continued my attempt to heave Sam off the railings. He clung on, kicking and screaming, until with one good pull I managed to physically tear him away and set him, with a bit of a thump, back on solid ground.
    We tagged along, arguing hotly about the need for safety and choosing an acceptable place to play. Geoff ignored us and amused himself by having a good look at all the other boats for sale; way out of our league of course, or all of 30 foot long. By the time we got to the office Sam had turned into a ‘wailing child’ who told any passer-by that mummy had tried to break his arms.
    He cheered up slightly as we went into the office which was situated behind a shop, and immediately fell in love with a large, badly coloured, plastic model of the duck from the Rosie and Jim children’s television series. Its head turned and it went ‘quonk’ in a slightly nasal tone.
    While Geoff was sorting out the keys to Happy, Sam and I had another argument about his obsessive need for plastic rubbish, and by the time we left the shop, Sam was in full flood, telling everybody about his horrible, abusive mother, who not only tried to break his arms but never bought him anything!, ever!!!
    Happy was moored between two other boats, under cover, in an open-ended shed type affair. After a sticky two or three minutes spent trying to manhandle a miserable and unhelpful child over the adjacent narrow boat, we finally stepped onto the rear deck.
    Sadly, the smell of unloved and slightly damp boat was, by now, becoming almost welcoming and, sure enough, it wafted out in an effusive greeting as we opened the back doors and fell down a tall step into the gloom. Geoff decided that he was going to start at the bow (or the ‘pointy bit’ as I always called it, much to his disgust) and disappeared down what appeared to be the inside of a large, round coffin lined with doors.
    Sam, finally free of the clutches of his hated, criminally abusive and fiscally restrictive mother, trotted after him, and I was left to wallow in the expected yuckiness of my surroundings.
    The internal decor of Happy Go Lucky was horrible; even if I had been in a good mood it would have been horrible. Unfortunately for the boat, I was in a foul mood and it was the most horrible thing I had ever seen in my life, but at least it seemed to be free of scary fungus.
    As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, the outlines of the kitchen from hell started to appear; it was the type of kitchen that usually sported the headline: ‘Misunderstood mother forced to live in purgatory’. Everything was covered in dusty old grease and had obviously been thrown together by some insane and untalented DIYer with a cheap Formica addiction.
    There was a microwave, which strangely enough looked brand new, a fridge which just as obviously wasn’t and a glass-topped hob. A sad collection of mismatched plates,