Soon after I’d retired to the water I was skippering a plastic trip boat running a scheduled waterbus service and also doing day trips for the London Waterbus Company. This particular plastic boat (Water Buffalo) was moored in the pool of Little Venice behind an old working narrow boat butty called Nebulae. I’d never met the owner but was getting concerned that her hull was rubbing away on the coping stones. I installed a tyre fender. After a storm I had to rearrange her canvasses. One day I pulled in on the plastic boat and saw a rather large man pacing up and down by Nebulae. He was looking worriedly at the boat. I went to introduce myself. His name was Michael. He shook my hand, but after the regulation two up and three downs, wouldn’t then let my hand go. I told him about the fender. He said he’d noticed. I told him about the canvasses. He said he’d noticed. He wanted to buy me a pint. I said I’d noticed, but asked if we could not walk in to the pub looking like senior and junior jewellery designers from Putney that were very much in love. He let my hand go. We went to the Bridge House and we were soon with ale.
Nebulae had been converted inside and was a marvel. From the outside she looked much as she would have done in her working days. But under the canvass covered hard shell, she was a tribute to oak, brass and ingenious design. Not only could she comfortably sleep eight strangers or fourteen friends, she had a ten seater solid oak dining table and every conceivable gadget and accoutrement for a serious dinner party. Her traditional boatman’s cabin had been restored to the last detail and she was truly a one off. There was no escaping the fact that the restoration and conversion of Nebulae had cost industrial quantities of money. Michael was in the film business and money wasn’t an issue.
That meeting marked the start of several years of friendship and countless wonderful hilarious times. Michaels first love was for his four children. His second love was for Nebulae. That day I’d first seen him pacing up and down, he’d very nearly reached a decision to sell his beloved boat. She was simply too much to handle, both from a boating point of view and the setting up for a dinner party. And Michael loved to (dinner) party. Now I was to be his boatman. This involved basic maintenance, cleaning, setting up ready for a dinner party, steering the boat down into Regents Park, moor up under Michaels favourite tree, join dinner party (if Michael hadn’t over booked, in which case I ate in the cosy back cabin) and then back to the mooring in the wee small hours. There was also the added bonus of his complete blessing to use his boat as my own.
To my shame I have to admit that she never got the attention she truly deserved, Michael lost a few bottles of wine and I was sometimes perilously close to being rude to his guests (I once suggested to a son of the Queen that they were talking rather a lot of Bravo Oscar Lemur Lemur Oscar X-ray), but I was always made to feel that I had ‘given Michael his boat back’. The combination of the business he was in, coupled with his considerable charity works, meant that he knew everybody. From the Royal family, down through all the knobs in between, to me. I welcomed the guests on board, steered the boat down to the park while Michael did his warm up routine. This entailed an interesting chat about canals, boatmen, history etc, and by the time I joined the table everybody would hush reverently until I’d sat down and been handed a humungous glass of wine. Typically Michael had built me up to a position I could never live up to, one of the gnarled old working boatman I simply never was. But, hey, this was showbiz. Hollywood superstars, politicians, rock stars etc, had all been levelled to the extent whereby if he’d suggested they do the washing up they would have felt honoured.
We then ate. The food was always simple in a posh sort of way, and was presided over by the real boss, Beatrice. Beatrice was Michael’s Portuguese housekeeper and sabre toothed guardian over his life, from clean socks to potential assassination attempt. There was more ‘beavering away behind the scenes’ in Beatrice than a girl’s public school trip to the ski slopes of Andorra. I learned a great truth about showbiz, stardom, and celebrity status. With one or two exceptions, the bigger they were, the more they understood about Michaels inverted snobbery, and enjoyed the relief of enforced humility, subsequently having a great time. The smaller they were, well, they just didn’t get it, and if I couldn’t get there with the deflating one line-er, then Michael would. With one set of Royals, we actually had so much more of a laugh with the body guards, we (meaning Michael) invited them and some of their colleagues and wives for dinner and had a wail of a time. In 1996 we took Nebulae down to Bristol for something called the Festival of the Sea. We were moored up amongst seven hundred boats and ships in Bristol harbour. Our berth was opposite a Royal Navy minesweeper (Cottishall?) Modestly, Michael happened to mention that the last time he’d seen that ship was when he’d dined on it with Lord Louis Mountbatten. Bloody typical.
And then there were the extended trips. We would take the boat all over the country, Michael coming and going as his business allowed. I always had to periodically return to work on the trip boats in order to keep the wolf from the door. Guests great and small joined us for sumptuous meals cooked by Michael. Sometimes we would cruise into the evening after everybody had gone home. We’d bring all the leftovers out and have a candle lit binge on the roof of the back cabin.
Michael died of a brain tumour in 1998. His coffin was put onto Nebulae and carried up to Kensal Rise Cemetery. His memorial service was held in The Odeon, Leicester Square. I remember having a hug with Michael shortly before he died. He already had two first class sons and two first class daughters, making me the son he never needed. I already had a first class father making him the father I never needed. We laughed about that, a lot. A few days later Ben (Michael’s son) was delivering Michaels ashes back to the boat in order for us to set up a little shrine in the boatman’s cabin. He phoned me to say that he was on his way, but that the box he was carrying didn’t feel like his father. Before I could stop myself I suggested that Michael had lost weight. At first I thought I’d really blown it. Then, typically as one would expect from a son of Michael, the long silence became punctuated by guffaws of laughter.
We created a little shrine in the boatman’s cabin and let it be known that anybody could come and spend a while reflecting with him. When this happened, I would greet the guests, pace up and down the towpath, and see them off afterwards. Very soon afterwards I honoured a previous engagement and hosted a dinner party for one of our friends, Rhod. After all the guests had gone home, Rhod and I were chatting. Caroline (Rhods other half) had gone off to the rear toilet for a wee. The washing up was waiting patiently to be turned back into to neat piles of cleanliness. Suddenly, a lot of plates, cups, cutlery etc, flew across the cabin, strangely nothing was broken. Caroline came rushing back from the little room, expecting to find Rhod and I with knives drawn, only to actually find us sitting a few yards away and looking a bit non plussed. Michael was making his presence felt. On another occasion my lovely New Zealand friend, Katie Jane, was washing up after another meal, when all the kitchen bits (spatulas, wooden spoons etc) flew out of their wooden containers above her head. She nonchalantly told Michael to stop mucking about and calmly put them all back again. One night, my friend and I, Charlie (Charlotte), were telling Michael stories over a bottle of whisky. We cried a bit, but laughed a lot. Brass decorations started flying about. Something wasn’t quite right. A few days later, the final guest was having a bit of a reflect with Michael in the back cabin, and did what I never could or would ever have done. She opened the box. Inside was a piece of paper with a name on it. It should have said Michael E W Samuelson. Instead, it said, Herbert L Miles. They’d given Ben the wrong box. That’s what Michael was trying to tell us. Two tearful employees from the crematorium met me to do the swap. I promised never to tell the family, a bit of a porky as it turned out.
Nebulae is moored up at Hanham Lock as I write.
