Family Life Afloat

We left our abode in old Cowfair haggled a price for an old shire mare Onto the landlord's canal boat lock stock and barrel for a life afloat farewell to our Buckingham birthplace & its meagre living from old point lace dawdled slow up to Cosgrove taking our meals . . around a blackened stove our moveable house .painted castle& rose not a life we would have chose Eighteen fifties harsh & mean coal cargo so nothing stays clean doff your cap touch your forelock every two mile at the gatekeeper's lock Fresh food scarce except for fish perch & roach a staple dishc clothes dry on a washing line strung out for a timeout the toddlers young their number so soon increased & grew places to sleep all too few family life impossibly hard back we went to a tied cottage in Aylesbury's Anchorage yard