A recent impulse purchase of mine was a telescope. Except it wasn’t really. There is no such thing as an impulse purchase when you have no address for online orders to be delivered to. Instead, every time I am in need of something, I must research where my nearest shopping centre is in relation to my current mooring, or, if this is too far away (which it usually is), I must instead decide which friend or family member will be plagued by my post. It is very important that if I do order something to someone else’s home, I must tell them. Furthermore, if they miss said delivery window (because they have no idea that it is happening), I must not redirect the parcel to a new address without telling them whilst failing to consider that the delivery person will have put a note through their door telling them from where to collect the parcel, thus sending them on a wild goose chase around the sweet shops of Brighton with no hope of finding the aforementioned parcel (sorry, Auntie Fiona). In summary, every purchase I make requires some level of planning and I am thankful to every person who has acted as my PO Box this year.

A telescope is basically a camera with a telescopic lens, only without the camera. You have to use your eye (singular). Hope that was helpful. It has a small wannabe telescope attached to the top of it called a finderscope. This is basically a less zoomy telescope which is meant to be pointing in the same direction and helps you locate whatever it is that you’re looking for. More on that later. Finally, the telescope sits on top of a massive tripod. It is less flimsy than the tripod one might use for shooting TikTok videos. This is because 80cm lenses weigh more than iPhones and even the slightest wobble will hurtle the image all over the shop when looking at something so close up. I know what you’re thinking – a narrowboat, permanently in a state of rocking motion, is the perfect location to setup and use a telescope. The trick is to avoid windy days and remain quite still.

Tony visited three weeks ago (he also visited on Tuesday, but that is irrelevant for today’s topic). I had ordered a mountain of online purchases and he kindly delivered them to me (the telescope included) along with his company for the day. It was like Christmas. I setup the beasty that evening, but alas, it was stormy and the wind was only a secondary problem in the face of the almighty cloud coverage above. Telescope time had to wait. In fact, it had to wait quite a while because the moon pissed off for about a week or two. This is something it does because of space things (trust me, I have a PhD in gravitational physics).

It is Tuesday evening. I am about to head to bed and I notice a light through the frosted glass of my bathroom window. I remove the pane to take a proper look. It is the moon. Hello, old friend. Clouds quickly scurry in and she is out of sight again. But hope is on the horizon.

Cut to Wednesday night. Having just completed a marathon of lessons and a few Tom Baker episodes of Doctor Who whilst eating my dinner, I notice the moon’s perfect positioning right outside my side hatch. I seize the opportunity. Telescope, it is your time to shine (there is a strong positive correlation between the moon’s shine time and telescope’s shine time). I set myself up by the hatch and locate the moon on the finderscope. There is a good reason why one should start with the moon. The finderscope and the telescope itself may not be calibrated to begin with. Ideally, when an object is at the dead centre of the finderscope, it should be what one sees through the main telescope. If this is not the case, one simply nudges and retightens the bolts on the finderscope until the two are matched. It is good to start with a fairly large target in order to achieve this. Seeing as looking at the sun through a telescope is a completely terrible idea, the moon is your best bet as far as large sky objects go.

After a tiring time of adjusting the finderscope and getting to know the dials on the tripod, I find the moon. The lights on the boat are overwhelming my peripheral vision as I lean against the eye piece, so I zoom around flicking them off in order to improve the image. I even close the laptop and pause Doctor Who (sorry, Tom). In total silence and darkness, I sit back on the floor and shuffle towards the telescope, excited to take my first proper glance. I ease in slowly, allowing time for the boat to stop rocking following my manic movement. I raise a finger to my left eye to secure the lid closed (for some reason I cannot close my left eye on its own). I gently edge in. As I am millimetres away, the silence is broken by an almighty hiss. I jump back startled to discover a pair of swans leaning through the side hatch, somewhat obstructing the view and certainly destroying the atmosphere. To say that swans are evil creatures right to their core would be quite dramatic, but accurate. They are an unwelcome presence in my life. Unlike most birds, they do not keep themselves to themselves. They will endeavour to approach you, no matter what task you’re in the middle of. It is unclear if they want food or just to let you know that they hate you. Then they hiss and it becomes clear it is the latter (probably because you did not give them the food). The swans will not leave the side hatch. I start by ignoring them. This achieves nothing. If anything, being in this close proximity has encouraged them to stick their entire necks in to try to reach me. They are leaning right over the gas hob. I suppose I could turn it on. No. They might tell their dad (their dad is the King I think). I get up and try hiding out of sight. I wait a few minutes and when I think the coast is clear, I return and go to close the side hatch. Shit, they’re back. Well, they never left. I keep trying to close the hatch right from its top, but as I make my moves, they block me by raising their evil swan heads as high as my arm forcing me to retreat. Curse these narrowboats for sitting so low in the water. And curse swans for having such ridiculous necks. Alright, plan B – get them near the propeller and start the engine (this is of course a joke, but the thought did cross my mind). Instead, I head out the back door and announce my presence by tapping the hull. Intrigued, they glide over. I linger for about 10 seconds then head back inside. It doesn’t occur to the pair of idiots that I have just gone back to where I was before. They continue their evening patrol and go on to harass the next boat along. Good riddance.

I return to the telescope to find the moon no longer in sight. During these antics, she has continued her trot along the night sky. Disappointed, but not defeated, I realign the telescope and there she is. The moon.

In the nights to follow, I endeavour to develop fluency in my use of the dials and continue my tracking of the moon as she grows fuller and brighter. I even had the good fortune of stumbling across Jupiter last night by total accident. This delightful quest, regrettably, has not been without further swan encounters, but I have learned that if I hide from them before they see me, they will knock against my hull for a time to see if anyone is in (for real, they do this) and then kindly piss off following the lack of response. Until the next time, swans.