One of the more vivid memories of my childhood—apart from the time my mother tried to pass off a steamed sponge pudding as a birthday cake—is Bob-a-Job Week. It was a fixture of my existence as a Cub Scout, along with short trousers in winter and an unconvincing ability to tie knots.
For those unfamiliar, a bob was a shilling (or twelve old pence, which, to anyone under forty, will sound like the sort of currency that required a wheelbarrow to transport). A job was exactly that—a task, a chore, an activity that adults could have quite easily done themselves but were instead willing to delegate to small boys in woggles for a negligible fee.
The setup was simple: for one week in the school holidays, our Cub Pack would be set loose upon the village, clutching work cards, a sheaf of yellow stickers, and an earnest little speech from Akela about the virtues of public service. The aim was to secure as many Bob-a-Jobs as possible—anything from sweeping a garden path to washing a car or, in one particularly exploitative case, painting an entire garage, which even at the time I suspected was worth rather more than twelve pence.
On completion of a job, the householder would fill out our card, hand over the agreed sum, and be issued with a yellow sticker declaring: “I’ve Been Bob-a-Jobbed!” This was both a badge of civic pride and a form of immunity, ensuring that no further Scouts would come knocking and interrupt Coronation Street with offers to trim the privet.
Looking back, the whole thing seems strangely quaint, the idea that a child would voluntarily knock on doors asking for work, rather than barricade themselves in their room with an iPad and pretend they didn’t exist.
Now, the reason this has come to mind is that living on a boat is, in many ways, one long Bob-a-Job Week—albeit without the yellow stickers and the vague promise of a merit badge.
Sadly, the odds of a passing Cub Scout offering to fill the water tank or chop kindling are slim to none, so we must fend for ourselves. There is coal to bring in, electricity meters to feed, and a stove that demands near-religious devotion. Boat life, in short, is a life of constant upkeep, with the added challenge that if anything goes wrong, you might actually sink.
We tend to set aside weekend mornings for chores, tackling them with the grim determination of prisoners on laundry duty. Recently, after three unseasonably mild days—the sort that lull you into a false sense of spring—we decided to clean the stove, restock the coal bunker, and brush down the back deck. Soon, boat-washing season will begin in earnest, and we’ll be out there in shorts and t-shirts, scrubbing the decks like cabin boys on a doomed whaling vessel.
There are, of course, more civilised chores—ones that require less brute force and fewer blisters. For example, sorting out the wardrobe, ensuring that the Miyake doesn’t rub shoulders with the M&S multipacks, and that the Balenciaga doesn’t fraternise with the Primark (though, for the record, we don’t actually own any Balenciaga. But then again, we don’t own any Primark either. You see my point).
One of the great joys of a shared life is delegating the unpleasant jobs to someone else, provided you can do so without them noticing.
There are two tasks, however, that neither of us actively volunteers for. The first is emptying the latrines—a chore that involves lugging three toilet cassettes across the marina on a trolley, before presenting them to the harbour master’s office with as much grace and dignity as one can muster while holding three plastic boxes of human waste.
The other task is doing the laundry, or rather not doing the laundry, which is why we take it to Charlie in Sydenham, a woman of saintly patience who returns our shirts clean, pressed, and folded, as though some form of domestic alchemy has taken place. This is, strictly speaking, a luxury rather than a chore, but given the alternative—an afternoon spent in a cramped boat ironing shirts on a surface no bigger than a chopping board—I refuse to feel guilty.
Technically, we do have an iron. And a washing machine. But I have always felt that if one can pay someone else to do the ironing, one should.
Despite the grumbling, these little jobs serve a purpose. As a freelancer, there are days when I wake up with absolutely nothing to do, and those are often the hardest. No deadlines, no structure—just an expanse of time waiting to be filled.
A chore, however mundane, provides a semblance of order, a reason to get up and get moving. It is, in its own way, a form of resistance against inertia.
That said, today is not my turn for the latrines—for which I am profoundly grateful—but it is my day for the ironing.
I must press on.
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