how off-grid are we talking?

boats, bad mental health and besties

It was the summer of 2021 and in the space between deciding I was going to buy a houseboat and actually moving onto it were a couple months of delirious anticipation (wot am I doing), a great freeing from the shackles of consumerism (giving away some of my clothes) and intense study (reading boater discourse in facebook groups). 

I’m going off-grid, I told my friends. Here, take this, I don’t have space for it anymore coz I’m going off-grid. It became a little joke delivered in the shape of a wink which is also, I suppose, the shape of a boat. It was a shape that said I am frightened of the quiet I seek but more so, I am desperate for change, down to the very textures that might keep me afloat, or not. 

It was a joke because while not being afraid to get on my knees, I am an inner-city prince with little to no practical survival skills beyond flirtation and an uncanny ability to sleep through anything. And in fact, trading land for water was one of the only ways I’d be able to afford living in the parts of North and East London that I know and love and they are actually right in the middle of the grid, so to speak. 

It was a joke because I too am addicted to my phone :( So I was surprised months later, when I looked into the actual definition of off-grid and realized they aren’t talking about instagram. The meaning of off-grid is: not connected to or served by publicly or privately managed utilities (such as electricity, gas, or water). As in, off the power grid, or whatever it’s called. And so, living on a boat within which are contained mechanisms for cooking eggs, and heating yourself as autumn draws in, and having a little shower, and charging your little computers and whatnot without direct input from the systems of engineering that provide these services throughout much of the world, is in fact going off-grid. 

My choice to go off-grid was a product of many things but probably mostly my obsession with houseboats. And while it’s hard to say why or how this obsession started, it does seem, with no early childhood experiences with houseboats or ancestral connection that I can point to within my very limited knowledge of what my ancestors were up to, that all roads lead to Rosie & Jim. The British 1990s children’s show featured an interracial puppet couple, Rosie & Jim (adorable!) who live on a narrowboat called Ragdoll (amazing!!) and have adventures like stopping the boat from flooding, playing their concertina together, feeding the baby chicks and keeping the British public guessing as to where they are now (?). It must also be said that while representation politics are a bit of a snooze, queen of colour Rosie was pretty much all we had in terms of kooky brown musician girl in England with gentle and adoring white boyfriend and for better or worse I really took that and ran with it. 

Beyond loving boats, and having lived on one 10 years before and never quite being able to fully relegate the experience to the past, I had also had a very rough start to the year, and so as I busily made my preparations, my friends thought I might be having some kind of breakdown. One night at Leala’s house I uttered, not for the first time, the phrase, “I’m going off-grid!” round her dinner table to which she replied, “babe, how off-grid are we talking?” And I remember how my cheeks felt and the shape my mouth made as it stretched into a knowing glee, possible only when someone you love has found the most beautiful way alive to ask you if you’re thinking about killing yourself. 

Everyone should have a friend like Leala, though they’re so rare that I know not everyone will. Someone who will go there with you, and for you. Who will wade into the ugly to protect you. Who knows what it’s like to ask questions in an empty room and make answers from nothing or fragments of blue light disguised as hope and who can laugh about having no answers, a raunchy, guttural laugh. A friend for whom friendship comes easy when nothing else is, whose intuition stands tall among beautiful, relentless chaos, collapsing back into it, like a fountain coming up for air. A friend who will scream-sing Kate Bush with you across a kitchen, whose whatsapp thread you can use as a temporary holding place for nonsense you’re trying to move between electronic devices, who you can tell anything to, who will swim with you on their back. 

leala on boat move-in day

How off-grid was I talking? Not that off-grid. I just really love boats. I really wanted to live on my boat! But Leala’s question rang and rang in my ears, as I thought and experienced more and deeper about off-grid as a form of conscious, empowered self-deletion, as queer protest, as a marriage of living on the edges of society, sanity and sexuality. But you’ll have to wait for part 2 for that bit :)