When we were contemplating living on a marina on the Thames for the summer, I never gave a thought to the other boat-dwellers who’d be there too – let alone that they’d become our friends.

 

“It’s like a village,” explained our neighbour Duncan over his customary pint at the Boater’s Bar, our local at the Thames & Kennet Marina. “I’m from a village in Scotland with a population of 1,200, where everyone knew my father, my brother and me, and I knew everyone too. Here, when you walk down the pontoon, everyone says ‘hello’, ‘how are you’, ‘how are you doing’ – I like that.”

This is not the norm in England, he agrees, especially the south. “But we think it is normal,” says Duncan. Whatever the reasons that brought us here, he explains, we share a commonality in our boats – “we have a similar interest and we all have similar issues”. That’s true – but I think there’s more to it than that.

Though he can be fairly charming when he feels like it, my husband Roy has always been of the “good fences make good neighbours” persuasion. Worse still, he can instantly assume a faintly hostile mien to discourage chit-chat in a lift, while accusing me of being able to extract a fellow-passenger’s life history between ground and the 22nd floor.

Life on a marina

This is very different from life in Singapore. For starters, there are no condos and there are no lifts. Instead of traffic noise from the East Coast Parkway, we wake up to the calls of swans, ducks and moorhens.

And we made friends with our neighbours on our very first day on D Pontoon. It didn’t hurt that our berth is directly opposite to that of Morag and “London” John’s barge, Alchemist, and that Morag runs the extremely popular Boater’s Bar, the social hub of the marina.

Though it’s farthest away from the facilities (bar, pump-out, rubbish bins, marina office, ablutions, parking lot), the denizens of D Pontoon declare it the best spot on the marina. They should know. I just can’t believe how lucky we’ve been to end up here, surrounded by this group of warm, generous and instantly accepting people.

To our left are Duncan and the gorgeous Fairy on Big Baloo; on Tranen, Heather and Kenny, party animals whose broad Scots accents I’m finally penetrating. On the other side is ex-army colonel David Watson on Elysian. His neighbours, tree-surgeon Doug and his wife Sue, live on heritage vessel Tedders, a 19th-century houseboat (with shutters!) that I’d love to find out more about. Moored closest to the marina entrance from the Thames, Tony and Ann on Initio are always ready on a windy day to offer incoming neighbours a hand with the ropes.

The circle of friends includes a number of women who live alone; generally, it seems, on huge boats. Bubbly blonde art teacher Sarah says she spent the children’s inheritance on Sadie, a 70-tonne, 120-year-old barge built of iron. (No, they didn’t mind.) On the barge next to hers is recently widowed Aussie swim teacher Stella; and Pam throws famous parties on big old Locksley.

Several people have warned us – only half-jokingly – that T&K Marina is like Hotel California: you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. After our first month here, I already believe them.