‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’ is the newsletter of signed artist and traveller Catrin Vincent, formerly the front-woman of the band Another Sky. Subscribe for news about my first solo record, touring dates and reflections on life in a van and a boat.

Subscribe now

I wasn’t going to write anything this week. I can sense a need to return to silence.

Something I say to myself a lot at the moment is,

‘the world is my country’.

Especially as I drive through rows of England flags on poles in streets, to then walk past very different flags gracing the windows of boats.

There was a point in my life where I had to find home in the rest of the world, where the structures safely containing ‘me’ collapsed and I couldn’t find home anywhere; so home became long hikes in forests, or lying in my favourite park for hours, hiding in the trees, or living in a van and going to the Lake District…to then live on a boat that moves every two weeks. In my head, I turned a housing crisis into an adventure in order to cope. And when I said I was thrown into nature, a good friend said, ‘you were thrown back into yourself’.

Last night, I walked along the towpath in Cheshunt listening to Hana Stretton’s new album, saw bleached, dead lavender, as well as scorched blackberry leaves, and I just stood and cried. I have always felt interpersonal grief echoes systemic grief - that our grief for nature reflects our grief for ourselves. Although we live in a world that seems largely unable to hold it, I still believe grief is a profound opening, an utter willingness to be alive, and ultimately a gateway to change.

I spent new years at this same good friend’s house up in Scotland two years ago and she had the word ‘whānau’ in her living room. I asked what it meant. My understanding is that it means ‘found family’. And I’ve thought about that word ever since, and how much it resonated with me. I have always wondered why it hurts so much when others see me as more transitory than I see them, and I guess it’s because I am trying to find my family.

I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that the only person I’ll ever know forever, in my own existence, is myself - that relationships with people haven’t failed just because they’re transitory, that this is actually just the very nature of existence. We don’t know who we will lose, or when. And loss doesn’t change how beautiful it was to have.

For the past few years now, I’ve thought a lot about two psychological concepts - ‘scapegoating’ and ‘splitting’. Both collapse complexity and don’t allow people our full humanhood. With scapegoating, a group organises itself around blaming one person for group dynamics, then excludes them in a misguided attempt to fix things. With splitting, an individual decides someone is ‘all good’ or ‘all bad’ in order to cope with stressful situations and find a simple solution to something complex. We can even split on ourselves.

I’ve also delved into the world of Carl Jung, and I’m particularly fascinated by how we project onto others; an unconscious process where we see our own hidden, unacknowledged, or repressed traits, both good and bad, in other people or the world around us. What we find difficult in others may be what we are repressing or not allowing in ourselves. I’ve always loved the James Baldwin quote -

‘everyone you’re looking at is also you’.

In the past few years, I’ve had to accept the end of key relationships in my life. Some have ebbed and flowed with the tide, and repair has been possible with enough time. I went two years no contact with someone important to me for that friendship to be restored. It’s important to stay open and not lose hope.

More connections ended this year - a typical breakup, an important friend. It’s hard to put into words how exceptionally painful I’ve found this to come to terms with, and grieving these people has become an ongoing process. I think I’m okay, then I struggle with the loss all over again. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact it might always hurt, and remember what my therapist once said - that grief stays the same size, and life grows around it.

A comforting psychological term I’ve discovered, however, is ‘continuing bonds’, and how it is healthy to maintain an ongoing, internal relationship with a loved one regardless of physical separation or time or the process of grieving them, because it integrates their influence in your life.

You don’t actually have to let go to grieve, which is what I’ve been trying to achieve. That’s a relief, to me. We might never see each other again, but I don’t need to pretend I no longer care about them just because I lost them. They instead become part of my story.

As a traveller on a boat, we have to move in a ‘continuous line’. I’ve made beautiful friendships at coffee vans to wave goodbye knowing we likely won’t see each other again. Each destination has been temporary. I’ve moved further and further north out of London until I’ve landed in a paradise in nature, but an isolated one. I had to become very self-reliant and resilient. This experience of travelling has taught me about the transitory nature of existence. We can enjoy and celebrate people without those relationships lasting forever.

We can’t predict suffering, or prevent it. There is no way to protect ourselves from pain without stopping ourselves from living or having relationships with people at all.

And as I get older and accumulate more losses, and wins, and failures, and mirrors, and connections, and endings (and great enduring and long lasting friendships, too) - I am noticing a pattern more and more; a system fails, and one person is blamed. Then another. Then another. When perhaps the real failure is the systems we live in.

The more life I live, the more people I meet, the more I try to be a bridge person and not take sides, the more I try and look at people’s humanity, the more I think about how everyone’s behaviour (including my own) is just all of us trying to get to safety - even when in the process, some of our behaviours harm each other - the more I reject this idea of heroes or villains, the more I move away from black and white into endless grey; the more I realise that I don’t think tragedy has a face. We like to try and find one, but it doesn’t.

I’ve always thought about Michaela Coel’s Emmy speech - stepping into the silence in order to hear yourself. Art is a profound humanness, something that belongs to all of us, something that is us. And art always gets me through, and out. So I’m going to pause substack subscriptions for now, and take some time to step into it.

Thank you to anyone who has taken the time to read this, and my boat tales. There will be more adventures, if I allow myself some time for silence and rest.

‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’ is the newsletter of signed artist and traveller Catrin Vincent, formerly the front-woman of the band Another Sky. Subscribe for news about my first solo record, touring dates and reflections on life in a van and a boat.

Subscribe now

Negar said something beautiful the other night;

‘We are searching for permanence because we know we are not permanent ourselves’.

I don’t have many words this week. I think I’m in burnout, on the precipice of another big change. My time on the boat is coming to an end. I am dancing in the complexity of both relief and sorrow, neither and or.

I’ve been doing a lot of shadow work, or self-flagellation (I can’t tell sometimes, there’s a very fine line). But it’s been transformative, whichever one it is. Once again, maybe both. Complexity.

Friends gifted me beautiful books this week - woolgathering, lifting off (about an air hostess), how to write one song, the poetry pharmacy. I have very good friends.

Maybe I’ll live on a plane, next.

Album soon.

Blue Bucket Finds:

This Substack is named after Sufjan Steven’s ‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’, a song about the Blue Bucket myth. Kids wandered off from a mining camp in Oregon and came back with their blue bucket filled with gold, but nobody could figure out where they had found the gold, or find it again. So let me indulge you in some things from my blue bucket.

Reading:

The Poetry Pharmacy - William Sieghart

Listening:

‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’ is the newsletter of signed artist and traveller Catrin Vincent, formerly the front-woman of the band Another Sky. Subscribe for news about my first solo record, touring dates and reflections on life in a van and a boat.

Subscribe now

This weeks iPhone notes reflections:

I’m not going to get through this with more punishment. I’m going to get through this with more empathy

Make the album you need to hear

Go outside, it’ll change everything

Moving day, to Cheshunt. Everyone has told me this is the absolute goldmine of the boating world. I wiggle the mooring pins free and get myself through a lock. A beautiful boat with a bustling garden gracing its roof sails through next to me - Peter and Yanka. Yanka is trailing alongside the boat on the towpath, cup of tea in hand.

We enter the second lock, and suddenly my throttle has lost total power. Peter decides to tie my boat to theirs, and they tow me to a suitable mooring spot, holding my midline as I hammer in mooring pins. I keep saying thank you, and they respond with,

‘The boating community helps each other’.

If they hadn’t have been there with me, in that lock, I’d have had to use my punting stick to get to the side, or pulled the boat along the towpath by the midline, potentially clunking into other boats. And this week? I have just not had the strength.

Being a solo woman boater has meant the world to me, because never before in my life have I relied solely on myself. I didn’t know I could do it. And it has had its really difficult moments, and lots of tears. Maybe life would be easier and I’d be a better musician if I just had a safety net. But it has also shown me I can be completely self-sufficient, I can rely on myself and the whole world doesn’t totally collapse if I go through hardship.

I made the choice to do this because I didn’t really have another choice. I haven’t dreamt of living on the water my whole life. I never once gave narrowboats a second thought until now, and had no idea how they worked, or how hard boat life would be.

But my options were to stay in the midlands as a face to face fundraiser, or come to London and live on a boat.

I knew I’d have to make it work. And make it work, I did. I’ve learned so much, seen so much, grown so much.

The journey has been very short, today, but I am grateful for kind strangers. I need to believe that I am held - that I’m never truly as alone as I believe. That there is always kindness. Always.

There is wild-swimming here, and endless, endless leaves. A group of men getting wrecked in a forest. A big statue of sticks, and the family of Canadian geese Yanka warned me about who swim up to the boats, expecting to be fed.

Blue Bucket Finds:

This Substack is named after Sufjan Steven’s ‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’, a song about the Blue Bucket myth. Kids wandered off from a mining camp in Oregon and came back with their blue bucket filled with gold, but nobody could figure out where they had found the gold, or find it again. So let me indulge you in some things from my blue bucket.

Reading

The Myth of Normal - Gabor Mate

Listening

‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’ is the newsletter of signed artist and traveller Catrin Vincent, formerly the front-woman of the band Another Sky. Subscribe for news about my first solo record, touring dates and reflections on life in a van and a boat.

Subscribe now

Writing club at Iiris’s.

Someone spoke about music existing because it’s devotional, about grief having a colour. Wanting to win in a way no one loses. Iiris spoke about a WWF fighter not liking the ‘way he was winning’, so he changed tactic and lost.

I thought about how to memorialise everything we’ve ever loved in riddles, metaphors or fiction. Abstraction, allegories and mystery.

A saltwater fish saw an eagle, one day. The eagle was from another world, and the open air had always looked inviting. The eagle circled like a kite in the sky. But the saltwater fish, as much as it tried, couldn’t fly.

Oh, it tried to learn. Why not? Life is all about adventure. It strapped bits of seaweed to its fins, made fake wings. If it pushed itself upwards, it could fly for a second. Soar out of the water. And it was beautiful. To soar.

But the fish couldn’t reach the eagle.

The eagle had always wanted to live underwater. It looked so peaceful, compared to the world above it. The eagle tried to dip into the water, and this worked for a while. It could spend longer than a second underwater. But the lower it travelled, the more it gasped for air. It wasn’t close enough to the surface to take a breath.

So it skimmed the top of water, then dipped its body in, watching the fish submerge from the darkness below. They could meet in the shallow water. The shallow water was their hiding place, a liminal space, one only they could occupy. And the eagle and the fish danced like this, for a while.

It started to hurt, though, that neither could go deeper into each others’ worlds. So one day, the fish didn’t come. The eagle waited. The next day, the fish didn’t come. The eagle tried to remember how they’d said goodbye. If it had known it was going to be the last time, the eagle would have said more.

And in that breaking lied an opening. The fish realised how the river is its home, and how water can feel like flying, too. How water, while slower, and lower, and darker, can feel just as free and weightless and translucent as air.

The eagle returned to the air, flying solo. The deep water remained an untouched world, better to think of as a fantasy place, with castles and kingdoms and mermaids and magic. No longer the reality of a black abyss, where the eagle would simply drown.

Every heartbreak cracks us open a little more, helps us understand ourselves in a way that wouldn’t happen had we marched on in denial. None of us are heroes.

But the beauty of this is that it means none of us are ever truly villains.

Blue Bucket Finds:

This Substack is named after Sufjan Steven’s ‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’, a song about the Blue Bucket myth. Kids wandered off from a mining camp in Oregon and came back with their blue bucket filled with gold, but nobody could figure out where they had found the gold, or find it again. So let me indulge you in some things from my blue bucket.

Reading:

My diary lol

Listening:

I asked for hip hop reccs on insta, and someone sent me this album, which I’ve become absolutely obsessed with:

‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’ is the newsletter of signed artist and traveller Catrin Vincent, formerly the front-woman of the band Another Sky. Subscribe for news about my first solo record, touring dates and reflections on life in a van and a boat.

Subscribe now

Moving day again. Again? Wow. I buy a medical syringe from the pharmacy, explain I live on the boat. It’s one pound. The cheapest thing I’ve purchased in a while. The woman at the counter says she watches the boat man on telly, wishes me luck.

I sail into tomb-raider Enfield lock. It’s half-mechanical, half-manual. A woman called Helen asks me loads of questions about boats as I try to watch the ropes, the lock, the water level. I say,

‘it’s hard’.

And that’s honest. A wide beam has sailed through every lock in the opposite direction, so they’re all set at my level - gates wide open for me. Fate. But I nearly get stuck on a fallen tree, reversing to navigate around it. A stranger on the towpath shouts,

‘I’ve reported it to the CRT’.

Another lock - half-mechanical, half-manual again. A man in a truck laughs when I jump on the boat roof to get up to the top, then silently helps me with the gate. I want to ask what his name is, but I don’t. Sense not to.

It’s peaceful, up here. Far from everything. My commute is now horrendous. But the greenery reminds me of the countryside I grew up in, and feels closer to home than the inner bustling of the city.

I sail through weeds, then suddenly lose my steering power. Shit! I’m luckily angled towards a man’s boat. I can double moor to it! I do get his name - ‘Ryan’. I’m trying to tie to his boat but my ropes have knots in. When things go wrong with boats, this is when you can’t have things like knots in the ropes. That’s what Lorena told me at Ponder’s End.

I use the punting stick to get all the weeds off the propeller. I can steer again, but I swear something is wrong with the engine throttle. I’m paranoid, though. It’s just the cross-wind.

I get to the water point, but a long hose snakes to a boat moored nearby. I knock on the boat’s door to ask how long its inhabitants think it’ll take, and a fluffy old cocker-spaniel barks at me, emerging to guard his home. I assuage the dog, who takes a liking to me. He can sense I’m safe. I speak to the man.

He’s got lung disease and has been boating for 15 years. He says he gets past one lock, then has to lie down. He talks about how the CRT are trying to make the canals full of rich boaters with permanent moorings. They’re trying to end the idea of travellers. From everything I’ve seen, I agree. I ask his name. Dell. His dog? Brian.

I’m struck by how many people in boats are in these situations, struggling. I think about my own. I think about how this is a ‘poor man’s game’, but also people’s way of life, one they grow accustomed to and fond of…one people become proud of.

I think about how isolated I felt when I got on the boat, how ‘other’ and out of the ordinary I felt. I hadn’t prepared myself for how much boating is a way of life; something that becomes your identity, not something you just do.

And I think about how much I treasure being alone, now. How it strangely feels much safer. There’s no one to disappoint or hurt you if you’re this self-sufficient. But life no longer feels lonely…life feels like freedom. I wonder what’s changed. Me?

I think about sovereignty. How to be on a boat is to be self-governed. And I think about how everything we don’t understand comes for us, eventually. How every conflict we have, we will one day experience from the other side. I think about whose experience and life I might be trying to understand.

I think about when I told my therapist a memory of placing a plant pot over snails, trying to keep them safe. And they just crawled out the hole in the top. They fled. They already had a home - the shell that was their body.

I fill up my water tank. The tank is so empty, I can hear each drop echo around the water chamber. I last filled it up just over a month ago. It’s good to know the water can last that long, though. I wasn’t being that conservative.

As the water fills up, I decide I’m going to see what this weed hatch is all about, just incase there are more weeds I couldn’t reach. I use a wrench to open it. This is mad! A doorway into the canal. I can’t find any weeds. I must have caught them all with my punting stick.

I think about why so many metaphors came from boating. Learning the ropes. Jumping ship. Whatever floats your boat. Missed the boat. Making leeway. On an even keel. The bitter end. Chock-a-block. A clean slate. No room to swing a cat. Under the weather.

All nautical sayings. I wonder why humans have such an affinity with water. Well, boating was the first bridge across oceans.

And…the water tank is full! I catch it just as it overflows, like I have a sixth sense. I worry about the engine, but it seems okay again. The wind is gone. I move a bit, then pull out my mooring pins, not daring to use the CRT bollards. I also tie my boat to a railing, a risky move so close to a CRT centre. But if I get told off, I’ll just whack out another mooring pin.

Blue Bucket Finds:

This substack is named after Sufjan Steven’s ‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’, a song about the Blue Bucket myth. Kids wandered off from a mining camp in Oregon and came back with their blue bucket filled with gold, but nobody could figure out where they had found the gold, or find it again. So let me indulge you in some things from my blue bucket.

Reading:

Honestly? SP404SX and nord keyboard manuals.

Listening:

Someone sent me this album on here. Thank you, Simon. It’s gorgeous:

‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’ is the newsletter of signed artist and traveller Catrin Vincent, formerly the front-woman of the band Another Sky. Subscribe for news about my first solo record, touring dates and reflections on life in a van and a boat.

Subscribe now

This part of town gets its own title. Enfield, perhaps my favourite place so far, besides Hackney Marshes. Meridian Water had a place in my heart too, but a ‘The Last of Us’ kind of place - long dystopian walks across motorways with dust billowing in my face, carrying heavy tesco bags across the North Circular, the most heartbroken I’ve ever been.

Gunpowder country park. Horse riding, fencing, a creature screeching in the distance. Osier Marsh - grass snakes, and ‘teal’, Britain’s smallest ducks. Silver birch and willow trees everywhere. And Enfield lock looks like something out of tomb raider. It’s waiting for me.

A dead willow tree lies fallen on its side, gnarly roots like fingers reaching with their last breath. A cuckoo sounds for hours in the distance - hours. I want to follow it, but it starts raining.

When I was eighteen, I don’t think I saw this for myself, at all. Didn’t feel capable. But here I am, a studio in a crypt, living on a narrowboat on the outskirts of London. I have done eighteen miles in the past eight months. Lived everywhere, or nowhere, rather. ‘No fixed address’.

At eighteen years old, I probably thought I’d be married and have kids by now. No, I think I didn’t see myself getting this far.

At the Crypt, I open up the song I wrote when Covid hit and I recorded everyone banging pots outside of their window ‘for the NHS’. I can hear so much pain in that song. And I feel so much gratitude that I could leave that pain behind me, in that song.

On the wall behind the speakers, there’s a book of James Taylor songs. A memorial photo of an uncle. Laura Cannell’s pendants, the monkey-toy from the kebab shop we used to lovingly called ‘Dad’s’…the ever-shifting ‘we’, the amalgamations of musicians and bands that grace the Crypt with group-think and music that could only be made with connection. And there is always more.

And there’s the Chinese charm Lilly brought back once, blessing the studio. A true-tone harmonica. I can’t remember whose. A costume plague-mask hanging next to the big yellow fisherman’s coat that looks like it belongs on the movie set of It.

Everyone has left parts of themselves here. The Crypt has become a living museum, it’s true. But life has grown around it.

I listen to a playlist, ‘Brave Catrin’, and remember when I wrote the lyrics to Brave Face, not living by my own words at all back then. I think I was trying to write myself into it. It took seven years to truly live by them, but I finally did.

I think about the word ‘traveller’, and think about how humans evolved to travel long stretches on foot. I think about how this way of living is in my blood, probably in everyone’s. And I think about the music I’m making now, and every time I thought it would be best to stop making it, which has been most of the time.

And I think about what it took to shut that voice up. Years of therapy, probably. Or I’ll always be fighting it. Everything is both infinite and complex, either and or.

In the past eight months, I think about every time I had to move the boat in the pouring rain and try and steer it against the wind, all by myself. I think about all the tricky locks I could probably map out for someone else’s benefit, now. I think about London Bridge, and train stations. I think about Storytime, and the train sounds above Enid Street Tavern.

And I think about standing on nature reserves in the midlands in the pouring rain, too, my little gazebo with David Attenborough’s face on. I think about how I had to take a leap of faith to leave that, and how it paid off. I could have let my world get so much smaller. Instead, I stepped into another.

And I think of Maya Angelou’s words -

‘have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.'

Blue Bucket Finds:

This Substack is named after Sufjan Steven’s ‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’, a song about the Blue Bucket myth. Kids wandered off from a mining camp in Oregon and came back with their blue bucket filled with gold, but nobody could figure out where they had found the gold, or find it again. So let me indulge you in some things from my blue bucket.

Reading

Still ‘Love Is A Mixtape’.

Listening to

‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’ is the newsletter of signed artist and traveller Catrin Vincent, formerly the front-woman of the band Another Sky. Subscribe for news about my first solo record, touring dates and reflections on life in a van and a boat.

Subscribe now

The day is hot like coals. Someone has taken my plants I left on the tow-path - I guess they thought they were free. The CRT have sent an email. I’ve overstayed!

It’s midday. I was meant to set off at 8am but I’ve been freaking out over the coolant, I’m hungover, and I’ve forgotten to grab my water bottle before steering the boat. But hey, I’m leaping all over it today - on the roof and everything - call me Lara Croft.

The lock is so, so stiff. I have to get a man in another boat called Slava to help me. I’m so used to knocking on strangers’ doors, now. My legs are melting in the cocoon of my waterproof trousers. The sun is pouring down over the world like lava.

I see wild horses. I see baby swans. I see myself in the water, and think, hey, she’s beautiful and animal, just like them.

The sides of the canal are so shallow up here. I have to keep my eyes on the horizon if I don’t want to get beached again. I haven’t seen another boat for a while, and I really need to moor up. Do I moor up alone? My gut instinct tells me ‘absolutely not’.

Everything about being in nature and boating relies on gut instinct. You have to use common sense and intuition over any sort of handbook, or easy way through. You learn to trust your body. It always knows.

I see a lock on the open canal map, and sigh with relief. Why are boats always grouped together at locks? I guess for the facilities. I laugh at the thought of mooring further back, not another boat in sight. Boats are packs of animals, really. We’re always safer together.

I find mooring rings and catapult myself up the ledge to tie the ropes, cleat-hitch on the bow. I have a shower, cook lunch then run for the train. It’s an hourly train. I’m far out, now.

Later, on my laptop, I use google-maps walking-route and drag the white dots to the canal. Paddington to Enfield. I calculate 18.4 miles. 18.4 miles since the end of November! What an adventure. I’ve lived all over London.

What adventure will even come close to this, next?

Blue Bucket Finds:

This Substack is named after Sufjan Steven’s ‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’, a song about the Blue Bucket myth. Kids wandered off from a mining camp in Oregon and came back with their blue bucket filled with gold, but nobody could figure out where they had found the gold, or find it again. So let me indulge you in some things from my blue bucket.

Reading:

I’m going to cheat this week, and do a substack. Writer Lisa Olivera’s substack has always been so soothing and wise to me:

Human Stuff

Summoning into being

Human Stuff is a free weekly-ish newsletter. You’re welcome to share parts of this letter that connect with you on social media, or send to someone you love. Thank you for reading, ‘heart’ing, commenting, sharing, for helping this newsletter continue by being here. It truly means something…

Read more

4 months ago · 88 likes · 15 comments · Lisa Olivera

Listening:

I didn’t know Baths remastered Cerulean!

‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’ is the newsletter of signed artist and traveller Catrin Vincent, formerly the front-woman of the band Another Sky. Subscribe for news about my first solo record, touring dates and reflections on life in a van and a boat.

Subscribe now

There are lily-pads, up here. A boat called Bircherswood is half-sunken in the water, its front windows smashed in. The sun beats down like light is punishing.

We see FOUR herons. One wears its big, protruding feathers like a coat. Another is slender and pointing like an arrow, hiding in pentacle-shaped tree leaves. We see cormorants, and finally, baby coots. They look a bit like baby swans.

At the lock, there is a garden table of retirees, one called Chris who springs to help me. The water tap is inside the lock! A party boat parks up after I do, a wide-beam. Apparently it can take 8 hours to fill that water tank. I praise the Lord I got there first.

At Ponders End, my iphone autocorrects the name to ‘ponder my end’, which makes me chuckle a bit. I’ve always poked fun at the times in my life where I’ve felt low. Humour always helps, and anyway - I am starting to feel the light.

A woman called Lorena shows me how to hammer in my mooring pins properly, using an angle facing away from the canal, and tells me to slacken the lines enough so the weir next to me doesn’t tip the boat over. Apparently water levels change here. Another man called Chris tells me he doesn’t work, so he’ll look out for my boat. I take his number.

At night, security dogs bark at the opaque gates of a concrete castle, and smoke billows from a factory. Fairy lights on each boat points the way home. And it’s quiet on the canal, here, endlessly quiet.

I did a writer’s club this week, and the most beautiful things were said; about how therapy in another language is easier because it becomes a barrier, about how everyone in Iran knows Rumi but people in England don’t know Shakespeare, about how we find human faces in things we don’t understand - God, ghosts, the grim reaper.

I’ll be leaving this vessel soon, with no real plan over what’s next. But I trust that every time I’ve taken a leap of faith and walked forwards into blurry unknowns, the path somehow reveals itself. That my body is the real home.

Blue Bucket Finds:

This Substack is named after Sufjan Steven’s ‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’, a song about the Blue Bucket myth. Kids wandered off from a mining camp in Oregon and came back with their blue bucket filled with gold, but nobody could figure out where they had found the gold, or find it again. So let me indulge you in some things from my blue bucket.

Reading:

‘Love is a mix tape’ by Rob Sheffield. A very good friend gave me this back in February in my dark night of the soul. It’s about a music journalist’s courtship between himself and his late wife through mix-tapes of 90s music, Nirvana, Pavement etc.

Listening:

Max Cooper released another album! Sh guys, my favourite show is on!

‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’ is the newsletter of signed artist and traveller Catrin Vincent, formerly the front-woman of the band Another Sky. Subscribe for news about my first solo record, touring dates and reflections on life in a van and a boat.

Subscribe now

Descended into the Crypt. Came back up for light.

I can’t get this song right. Maybe that means I leave it as it is, like an artefact in a museum.

I end up at Harri’s studio, instead. Windows. I have a riff in mixolydian and dorian, an exercise I set for a student that I’m trying myself.

Sometimes you need a break. Sometimes songs come like clouds, or seasons. I stumble on the lyric, ‘I did everything but die’ and leave the song as a sketch, waiting for when I have the energy to turn it into a canvas painting.

Here are some film shots I got from Imogen Heap:

Blue Bucket Finds:

This Substack is named after Sufjan Steven’s ‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’, a song about the Blue Bucket myth. Kids wandered off from a mining camp in Oregon and came back with their blue bucket filled with gold, but nobody could figure out where they had found the gold, or find it again. So let me indulge you in some things from my blue bucket.

Reading:

The towpath, the newspaper that comes with circular revolution (a collection service for compost toilets!), and ‘The Courage To Be Disliked’. Here’s a quote: ‘if you are disliked by someone, it is proof that you are exercising your freedom and living in freedom, and a sign that you are living in accordance with your own principles.’

Listening to:

Thought I’d bring back this playlist from early substack days - music that inspired the solo record x

‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’ is the newsletter of signed artist and traveller Catrin Vincent, formerly the front-woman of the band Another Sky. Subscribe for news about my first solo record, touring dates and reflections on life in a van and a boat.

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Hello new subscribers from Brighton :)

Welcome to my substack. I write stories about living on a narrowboat, tour diaries and info about my solo album, coming out this year.

Tuesday 21st April:

Whole Foods 17. I want to speak to Nomuna, but she’s not in today. Interactions with strangers have acquired a new weight, and in Tottenham, I’ve been talking to a woman called Nomuna every morning. I’ve also ran around Walthamstow Wetlands, watching coots splash in the sun, the river a playground.

I’ll miss this borough. It’s been my favourite place to stay so far.

My stern rope is stuck in the barrier, and two kind women hold the midline for me so the boat doesn’t swing out into the giant ship moored opposite. I ask them their names, and thank them.

I pass an unpainted wide-beam called ‘Dirty Angel’, moored far away from the towpath and silt, in the middle of the canal, with a plank on its roof to get to shore. Later, I’ll wish I had one. I’ve read in whatsapp groups about boats getting beached, assuming I’d be smart and steer clear from the sides.

Suddenly, the boat comes to a total stop. What is going on? I look into the water next to me, and see sand. The boat is not moving. I repeat, the boat is not moving. I’m beached!

I ring boat-man Nick - no reply, he’s on the other side of the world. I suddenly realise that the only person I can ring to ask for help is on the other side of the world.

I actually just cry. Stand there for a few minutes, sobbing.

No one is coming to save me. I grab the punting stuck and run to the bow of the boat, pushing the boat out, then run back to the stern and push full throttle. The boat moves inches. Gets stuck again. So I run back to the bow, push, run back to the stern, full throttle. Boat moves inches again. Stops again. So I run back, push, run back, full throttle. And reader - I get myself out.

There is something about this adventure that is showing me I am capable, and that in the absence of a home all these years just gone, my body is one.

Friday 24th April:

I am stuck in four hours of traffic! But I make it, just in time for Platonica Erotica. Her compositions are so interesting, and I love the dissonance, and the depth of her voice. I follow her on the gram.

My turn. I stand and wait for the audience to stop talking, just like I do with the kids I teach in schools. It works. I talk about the boat. Getting stuck in sand. A woman says,

‘you are wicked!’.

And I say back,

‘I’m cool’.

And I do feel it.

‘Did you have flares?’, she asks.

Later in the set, I talk about I Never Had Control. Say I used to be in a band.

‘Where are they?’, one man asks.

‘On the boat’, another answers.

‘I gave them flares’, I say.

I meet my new booking agents, and hope they like it.

Sunday 26th April:

Another studio day. I’ve written a song called Stormbird, and I’d really like to make it less bitchy, and find the grief underneath. But what are songs if they can’t convey the times we are deeply human and flawed? If they can’t serve as catharsis and permission for people to access those parts of themselves?

My best ones have always been honest, and told secrets. But as a songwriter, you always pay a price. Florence Welch once spoke about ‘sacrificing your life at the altar’. But I’m more careful, this time. Because if you truly love people, you have to let go of the altar. Create narratives in fiction, or use abstractions.

As soon as I let down my defences and access the pain and vulnerability, the song becomes a three-dimensional shape; a living, breathing entity. The song is a triumphant mix of ego, rage and pure sadness. Anger always protects us until it is safe enough to feel the grief.

I know I can’t be too personal on here, I do know that. But I want to communicate that I am so devastated, right now, despite the way I’m writing on here about gigs and songs and the boat. It’s this really deep devastation that is just so pervasive, and it has, some days, felt so hard to be here. I’m not in any danger, and I don’t want people to worry.

I lost a best friend and a person I am deeply in love with. Both happened at the same time. They hit me like a truck. I feel completely devastated and empty, like a huge chunk of my identity is missing.

I’ve been through times in my life of great loss, and I know I can rebuild - I know more joy is ahead. I know that loss is the price of living. But I’m so tired of rebuilding, of having to be resilient.

I used to believe that people always found their way back to each other, or we could support each other like eternal kids, wide-eyed at the beauty of everything. I used to really believe things just always work themselves out. But I now have to contend with a new reality, a quite cold one, where I have to be less trusting of the world if I want to survive and protect myself.

I am trying to remain open, and throw myself back into it. The world, I mean. But what do we do with all this grief? What do we do?

We write.

About being human, what it was like to live as us. We tell the world we were here. We speak.

Blue Bucket Finds:

This Substack is named after Sufjan Steven’s ‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’, a song about the Blue Bucket myth. Kids wandered off from a mining camp in Oregon and came back with their blue bucket filled with gold, but nobody could figure out where they had found the gold, or find it again. So let me indulge you in some things from my blue bucket.

Reads:

Technically not a book, but I’ve been listening to This Jungian Life podcast run by analysts. In this episode, they spoke about chance encounters with animals, eerily right after the boat became overrun with ants.

Listening to:

A man on a boat called Douglas shared with me his album, ‘Songs For Bridge People’. It’s stunning. Thank you Douglas.

‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’ is the newsletter of signed artist and traveller Catrin Vincent, formerly the front-woman of the band Another Sky. Subscribe for news about my first solo record, touring dates and reflections on life in a van and a boat.

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It’s hard to put an experience like last Friday at the Roundhouse with Imogen Heap into words.

She was my utter hero growing up. I remember arguing with people when Jason Derulo sampled her - ‘no, the artist is IM-O-GEN HEAP’ - and dressing up in halloween outfits to go watch her at Warwick Arts Centre at 15 years old.

Singing a twenty minute medley of all her songs over the years felt like watching my life flash before my eyes. Watching Jon Hopkins walk on stage to play piano as we sang with him, as well as Guy Sigsworth (and Leo Abrahams on guitar), was a true pinch-me moment.

Watching her in rehearsal was like watching a genius at play. My mind is well and truly blown.

Onstage, she improvised with her MiMU gloves and fellow experimental electronic musician Irene, dancing on stage as her ‘inner child’. She said that’s where she’s going next - improvisation - that songs are all well and good, but this is what she wants to do.

Singing with the incredible talent that was Ila, Meg, T, Alex, Jax, Maddie and Natalie (London Contemporary Voices) made me rethink so much in terms of my music practice. In warmups, we’d improvise into the room, wishing we’d captured what we composed in the moment. It was such a supportive, safe and caring environment.

Honestly, I just don’t have words. I wish last Friday was every day of my life.

Blue Bucket Finds:

This Substack is named after Sufjan Steven’s ‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’, a song about the Blue Bucket myth. Kids wandered off from a mining camp in Oregon and came back with their blue bucket filled with gold, but nobody could figure out where they had found the gold, or find it again. So let me indulge you in some things from my blue bucket.

Reads: Tasmin On A Boat Called Folk - Tasmin was one of the first people I met in boat-life when she moored her wide beam next to my boat in Victoria Park, and left a kind note on my doorstep. This is a beautiful substack with much more substantial information on boating than mine!

Music: I need to make a hip-hop playlist for some inspiration for a track. Can I have some recommendations?

Otherwise, I have been rinsing Imogen Heap’s discography. It was so fun hearing her tell all the stories of each track onstage. I had no idea Clams Casino sampled her, then ASAP Rocky used it and it became one of her most streamed tracks, or that Island Records released a demo of hers and Guy Sigsworth’s without them even knowing, and it’s also one of her best performing songs. I still think her standout album was the 2009 Ellipse, when all her classical training and musical genius became incredibly apparent:

‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’ is the newsletter of signed artist and traveller Catrin Vincent, formerly the front-woman of the band Another Sky. Subscribe for news about my first solo record, touring dates and reflections on life in a van and a boat.

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Welcome new subscribers from Ipswich :)

I hope you enjoyed the show! This is a weekly newsletter of tour diaries, personal essays on living in a narrow boat and news about my first solo record.

Friday 10th April

Me and Vinz rehearse at the Crypt, my studio, then off we go - stuck in a traffic jam at Dartford Crossing.

Ipswich’s venue is simply called - ‘The Church’. We’re never far from one.

I start the first song of the set in the wrong tuning, and no one laughs at my jokes, but later I’ll meet a man who lived on a canal boat, and another woman who lived on a canal boat, too, ‘before phones’. Bliss.

I meet Tomas from Ukraine who crossed six rivers to get to Ipswich. His friend tells me he had new sets of clothes so he didn’t have to spend a day drying out each time. You know you meet people hardened by the world? I often think I’m hardened by the world. His eyes feel softened by it.

I talk to Andy from Held By Trees. He was the woodwind player on Mark Hollis’ solo record. ‘Back then, you weren’t told what you were playing on - you just turned up’, he says. I feel like I’m in the presence of royalty.

Held By Trees is such a beautiful name, don’t you think? Aren’t we all held by trees? I think back to Hackney marshes, and how synchronous the world is.

Dave, the lead singer, is lovely. All the band are. They start their set with the sound of nature. It does feel like you’re back in time watching Talk Talk; single notes from each instrument so expertly placed, floating and entangling with each other.

A man called Louis tells Vinz Another Sky (my former band) got him through a breakup, and on the way home we talk about music getting us through as we sail past a building aptly called ‘hope’.

Saturday 11th April

In the morning, I run to grab the car from a parking lot and find a pet shop called ‘Viking Aquatics’. I take a quick detour to marvel at little dwarf suckers with mouths like caves against the glass.

Now, it’s time to drive to Camden. Vinz feeds me the Italian biscuits I got him for his birthday as I race along the motorway. We find free parking on Adelaide Street on Saturdays from 1:30pm (musicians take note!).

Camden club has big hoof-like doorknob on the dressing room door, a toilet with artificial turf (and no sink) and a rocking chair that only tips you forward.

This audience laughs! I’m funny again! I ask what I should call my new song, current working title ‘train tracks’.

After we perform, a man asks me to write and sign a setlist, where I name my other new song angel ‘anger’ by accident, and a woman called Stacey suggests ‘narrowing’. Andy from the band says; ‘grand union’.

Sunday 12th April

Vinz and Jack are coming to work on my solo album. Rain filters through sun, mirroring my confused internal emotional state.

We track guitars, and then Vinz strums some nostalgic chords with the same ringing bass note. I start singing about being a sailor.

Jack runs into the room, Nashville-tuned acoustic in hand, and suddenly we’re demoing a song that makes us all cry.

Blue Bucket Finds:

This Substack is named after Sufjan Steven’s ‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’, a song about the Blue Bucket myth. Kids wandered off from a mining camp in Oregon and came back with their blue bucket filled with gold, but nobody could figure out where they had found the gold, or find it again. So let me indulge you in some things from my blue bucket.

Reads: I am currently reading ‘The Second Circle’ by Patsy Rodenburg, which describes a state of being and theorises we have three circles of presence. We want to be in the second circle. I imagine it as an infinity symbol; an equal exchange of energy outwards and in.

Music: I am currently listening to Songs Before Bed by Otto Benson. A soup of tastefully placed DI’d guitars creating this really coherent dreamscape. Sounds like one of those genius records written in a day.

‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’ is the newsletter of signed artist and traveller Catrin Vincent, formerly the front-woman of the band Another Sky. Subscribe for news about my first solo record, touring dates and reflections on life in a van and a boat.

Subscribe now

Life threw me something so, so good this week.

And that thing is…

Performing with Imogen Heap at the Roundhouse, with London Contemporary Voices.

Ticket link here!

I first performed with LCV with my old band, Another Sky:

And it’s been so special to join them on projects like Paris Paloma:

And now…Imogen Heap at the Roundhouse!

I first listened to Imogen Heap as a teen, her music soundtracking my most formative years. I went to see her at Warwick Arts Centre in 2010? I think? and I’ve tried to dig out the photo I got with her and my friend Rach, us wearing cute Halloween outfits. I can’t find it!

To work with her and see her process has honestly been a dream come true.

Big love everyone <3

Also, I know my last post was heavy. Thanks to everyone who reached out, I appreciate you all.

x

‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’ is the newsletter of signed artist and traveller Catrin Vincent, formerly the front-woman of the band Another Sky. Subscribe for news about my first solo record, touring dates and reflections on life in a van and a boat.

Subscribe now

Album to do list:

• hand-make merch (boat tarot cards anyone?)

• super-8 music video

• email old booking agent

• listen to old singing lessons

• practice ‘never enough’ from the greatest showman telling yourself this is important and relevant

• buy sea-shells and a thunder machine

• get your new band together

• get a baby grand piano in the crypt (!!!)

What would you guys like to see around releasing this record?

X

‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’ is the newsletter of signed artist and traveller Catrin Vincent, formerly the front-woman of the band Another Sky. Subscribe for news about my first solo record, touring dates and reflections on life in a van and a boat.

Subscribe now

What I’ve learned about boating:

1. Winters are so, so hard. You are essentially sleeping on a freezing cold bed of water, just a steel hull between you and the polar opposite to a fire. When you go to a swimming pool and think, ‘oh yeah, a hot shower does dramatically improve your mental health’, you know you’re doing something a bit metal. But my life is all about adventure!

   

2. So you build fires! In stoves. Most boats have their fires constantly burning through winter. At first, it’s hard to understand all the little tricks. Kindling (small, dry pieces of wood) needs to be built in a teepee shape, as fire travels upwards, or a criss-cross shape over firelighters…coal takes a while to catch fire, so you need to put a few lumps beneath the fire when you first build it, and if you put too many logs on your kindling, it’ll smother the fire before it has a chance to catch. Building a fire is an art.

   

3. Fuel boats deliver kindling, coal, logs and gas. You either hail them down like a cab, or in this modern day and age, you can WhatsApp them your location. Your coworkers will decide you’re a Victorian with a time machine when you explain the concept.

   

4. You have to keep track of chores and learn a whole new system - leaving ash in the bucket for three days before you throw it out, when to empty your compost toilet (do not forget, I repeat, do not forget and then wee in an overflowing simploo), turning the engine on to heat the water and charge the battery...it is a whole new way of life!

   

5. Waking up to the canal as the weather starts to turn, however, is absolute bliss. My favourite area of London is Hackney Marshes. It’s also such a special feeling waking up to the sound of birds on the water. You feel like you’re back in prehistoric times. People have told me summer is going to beautiful. Mmm. Sunshine on the water.

6. Don’t put ash on blueberry bushes!!

‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’ is the newsletter of signed artist and traveller Catrin Vincent, formerly the front-woman of the band Another Sky. Subscribe for news about my first solo record, touring dates and reflections on life in a van and a boat.

Subscribe now

21st February

Colchester. Ember Sessions. A bartender called Heather says my music is like a warm sun through a window, and I’ve inspired her to write. She’s a jazz singer. A woman called Tina draws my songs ‘just birds’ and ‘glow stars’. The moon looks like a pendant in the sky.

23rd February

I wake up.

The mooring pins are gone. I repeat. The mooring pins are gone. They are lodged under the boat next to me. Damn. I’ve got to get to work.

At work, the woman in the boat next to me frantically messages me telling me to come home from work, that they’re going to have to cut my ropes!

They manage to dislodge my pins. All is well. I knock on their door and apologise.

It is never a dull day.

24th Feb

I use one mooring pin to pull the other out, significantly lacking upper body strength, check the fan belt for its number, then off I go - sailing through a violet sky and three locks. I meet kind strangers who help; one older woman who has had an operation but can still move the gates better than I can.

It feels good to leave Victoria park, where I started in October. Like a new chapter is starting.

I ask a passing boat if there are spaces ahead. She says she doesn’t know,

‘I was looking at the sky’.

I find my spot. It’s peaceful, here. I’m next to woodlands.

I tie the back of the boat to railings…the front, too. I’m not loving the lack of mooring rings round here after my scare with my pins getting lodged around someone else’s propeller.

A man cycles past shouting, ‘sunken ships, sunken ships, all I see are sunken ships and dead people’, which fills me with confidence.

27th Feb

I’m rehearsing my own set and for Pete’s gig. Songs are like puzzles, and I’m trying to find the last piece to one of mine. I don’t know what I’m trying to say yet.

Brain fog is killing me right now. I try to tell myself, it’s okay, it makes sense your body isn’t okay right now, but I’m so frustrated. I’d do anything not to be in this amount of pain all the time.

I don’t even know where to begin to build safety in my body. I’ve been doing shadow work, and I’m back in therapy, and I have far more insight and knowledge than I ever had before. Maybe I’m finally feeling my body for the first time. No distractions.

One night, late after rehearsal, I cry, and visualise my shadow-self, which has become a small, child-sized cloud of grey dust. How did I not see her before?

She is so afraid of exclusion.

So, so afraid. I imagine myself wrapping my arms around her, and telling her it’s okay if she’s ever excluded, because I’ll take care of her now. I say sorry for not taking care of her before. But I’m going to take care of her now.

_____________________

Hello dear reader.

I’m keeping a boating diary. Playing gigs, making music videos, planning my second album before my first is even out (classic).

Hope you’re all keeping well.

Have some pictures of my recent gig with Lily Lyons:

Ticket links here :)

Also, some of you commented some questions 2 substacks ago, and it feels rude not to answer:

“What’s the most rewarding thing about boating life? And what’s the biggest difficulty?”

The most rewarding thing is, I guess, a sense of achievement. I moved on in winter. People warned me. I was still not prepared for how miserable winter can be, and how sometimes, you just want a hot bath…and to not worry about a fire that won’t start. Sometimes when you wake up, it really does feel like you’re camping in a metal tent.

However, there’s something to be said for a sense of adventure. It’s such a steep learning curve that when I can navigate an entire journey myself, such as walking to the front of the boat and tying the stern-line to the towpath while the engine is running unmanned, it does shock me. It’s shown me I really, really can do anything I put my mind to.

The biggest difficulty is that it’s a part time job. I’m struggling to balance a normal working life, AND a music career, AND dealing with when the fan-belt breaks, so the inverter drains the battery, and I have a washing machine full of soaking clothes. There’s a saying, or a nemonic, rather, among boaters; Bring Out Another Thousand.

“My parents used to have narrow boats for a while and we went on trips when we were very young - called Salander - which was a combination of mine and my sister's name. Wondering if your boat has a name (and if any back story)?”

I won’t say the name for privacy reasons, but I’ll talk about some names I’ve seen. I’m currently moored near, ‘Water Music’, which I’ve seen a few times, and I’m currently double-moored to a boat called ‘Dobby’, which I find funny. One of the first boats I noticed the name of was the ‘Ducksmith’, a ‘yoghurt-pot’ as Toby calls them. There are human names like ‘Victoria’, and Welsh names like ‘Brimwylf’, which means ‘Sea Wolf’. God, how beautiful.

I just made a song out of the boat names, ‘name a dream, empire queen, moonraker living on a sunbeam’.

Anyway.

C x

‘

‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’ is the newsletter of signed artist and traveller Catrin Vincent, formerly the front-woman of the band Another Sky. Subscribe for news about my first solo record, touring dates and reflections on life in a van and a boat.

Subscribe now

All gig tickets here!

This week, Sophie came to the boat.

She told a story about a robin. She said sometimes she stops to listen to them, and she’s not sure when she should leave the birdsong. Sometimes, the song ends. Sometimes, she leaves halfway through. Somehow, her body always knows when it’s time to stop listening to the robin, and carry on her journey.

Lily Lyons also came round the boat. I’m supporting her on the 20th February. We filmed a little video with one of her gorgeous, gorgeous songs, and it’ll be in your ears soon. We spoke about her Saturn return, and I thought about how universal our seemingly isolating experiences are.

I’ve been teaching a lot. I remembered you can play a note, and then find another chord with that note like little puzzle pieces; infinite possibilities of where a song can go. I told kids keeping their fingers on the right notes on a keyboard is like holding a compass in a forest. I told a student about microtonal music. I realised I am going to record a second album this year, and I’m very, very lucky I get to do that.

I spoke to Finn, who is worried she’s not being creative enough, and I told her since I finished my album last year, I haven’t been writing many songs. And that’s okay. I had to move onto a boat and face other things. Seasons. Waves. A river to always dip into, never gone. A while back, I wrote about Finn’s poem on here. She’s getting ready to write again. I knew it would come back for her, when she needed it. That river.

I played some music with and caught up with Pete. We played a song together, and it’s just one of my absolute favourite things to do, when you find other people who like the same music as you. He’s got his new project, ‘Preacher’s Son’ and he’s just released the song Cold Water. I’m going to support him, and play with him. Gig - 2nd March, Waiting Room.

Jack showed me his new track, and he’s making music again. That made me happy. My mum sent me a picture of her puzzle, finished, and I realised sometimes I want to be very ordinary and just do a puzzle with my mum, and this whole music thing is just music.

On Saturday, I helped Alice with her really exciting philosophy project, and we ate a hot pot. A hot pot may be my new favourite thing. Alice is a deep thinker with a good grasp on the world, and there may be a video of us including outtakes of me talking about showering in puregym soon.

On Sunday, I ate dinner with Laura and Toby, and we did a cat puzzle and spoke about the world.

Performing with Held By Trees, too, in April, and Soundings with Elanor Moss and Sophie Jamieson has been rescheduled to March.

Life is about people, and that’s why I’ve written about them all here. But also, come to my gigs please.

<3

‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’ is the newsletter of signed artist and traveller Catrin Vincent, formerly the front-woman of the band Another Sky. Subscribe for news about my first solo record, touring dates and reflections on life in a van and a boat.

Subscribe now

As my foot gently pushes the bow of my boat off from ‘Kraken’ at King’s Cross, my leg slips in the canal, and my shoulder judders backwards trying to steady myself. I’ve hurt myself before I’ve even set off. Brilliant.

It’s very slippery and wet, today.

Islington tunnel again. I trust my instinct that a boat might be coming through (my horn doesn’t work), so I moor to the side, careful to miss the geese poo with the ropes on the bollards, and set a timer for 20 minutes. I cook some eggs.

Sure enough, twenty minutes later, a boat’s headlight beams through.

‘Is anyone coming after you?’, I shout, and the man says,

‘No! Go on through!’

As I enter the tunnel, I remember I haven’t got my headlight, and scramble inside to find it before running back out again to retake control of the tiller.

‘Lara Croft’, I think to myself.

This time, I actually read the graffiti on the walls. Apparently there are Halloween parties down here. I wonder how the boats all fit, and how claustrophobic it would feel to go to a party you might quite literally get barricaded in.

I think about how I always leave parties early, sometimes not even to go to bed, but to just be alone with myself, instead.

Other side, daylight. I queue to get water. I slip and land on my bum on the boat, so take my phone from my pocket and throw it inside as a precaution. One of these days, I’m going in that canal.

Sturt’s lock again. My shoulder hurts. Losing daylight again.

A man coming the other way tells me, ‘summer makes it all worth it’.

‘Blue Bucket Of Gold’ is the newsletter of signed artist and traveller Catrin Vincent, formerly the front-woman of the band Another Sky. Subscribe for news about my first solo record, touring dates and reflections on life in a van and a boat.

Subscribe now

A freshly painted persian-blue wide beam takes an hour to fill up water, so I use the time waiting to sweep the chimney. It’s flaking at the top, and soot covers my hands like I’m a Victorian child.

A stream of steady water spills out into the canal from the wide beam’s vent hole, indicating its water tank is full. I calmly knock on their door. I’m used to knocking on people’s doors, now.

I fill up my own water tank, and we’re off, reversing neatly around Little Venice, singing our hearts out under bridges, listening to our voices echo off the huge steel structures.

You always see something novel on boat trips. We see coots nesting in a fallen tree, and through London zoo, we see the monkeys! They’re out! We see African wild dogs, too, and a sign that says,

‘don’t moor here when the alarm is sounding! Escaped animals!’.

At what I now call Camden ‘lock Armageddon’ (three locks in quick succession where you always, always have an audience), a drunk man with a trolley takes one look at my boyfriend, and says something about himself being no Arnold Schwarzenegger, but one of us (?) is Sarah O’ Connor, and then he finishes with;

‘Marry him. Or stay on your boat!’,

Before he thankfully leaves us alone to shout a drunken song at the people on Camden bridge. Once again, there is a huge audience at Camden. People stop to watch the whole thing. I wonder how many times I’ve been filmed or photographed.

By the fifth lock, it is dark, and we’re back at King’s Cross. I remember the men with caps from last time who opened the lock for me, and wish they were here now. My waterways key doesn’t work in the big gate, so I can’t go and check if there is a mooring spot.

We make it! And there is a spot! A woman with long, jet black hair leans out of her window and says,

‘Yeah, you’ve got enough room.’

‘Is this two weeks?’ I ask.

‘Yeah. Welcome to the club’.

As the fire lights for the evening, I realise I now instinctively know the sounds; the fan whirring at a low heat, the flu pipe clicking as the flames lick the edges of the logs…everything on a boat becomes a muscle memory - a rite of passage, almost.