GDPR and the impact on cloud computing

European Commission adopted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to have stringent data protection laws in the European Union. With GDPR, it gives all the organizations a single set of…

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Utosha

A short story about narrowboats, winter and time.

Utosha was my cherry red home. Sleek and slender and just about enough. Why have more when true happiness is found in being content with what you already have? And so I named her Utosha: enoughness, more or less, in Swahili. Why Swahili is another story from another time.

I found her in a carpark in Cheshire. Or it felt like a carpark. Narrowboats parked side by side; bobbling in the water; kept distant by tyres and knotted fenders. This one I liked, painted independence and passion with enough space and nothing more. And so I bought her, and unleashed her, albeit slowly at four knots. Together we cruised, Utosha and me, her engine humming and spluttering; smoke clouding the sunset.

Over the days and weeks and months, as I disentangled from my previous life, Utosha began to teach me about time. She would tease me as she gently cradled me in bed, watching the shadows of night stars dancing across the plywood ceiling. When we cruised, a minute became a whole hour and a day was but an hour. And as the minutes melted into hours, I took my watch off and placed it in the drawer, never to be seen again.

I learned that the day began and ended with a symphony of song on the edge of chaos, warbling from the reeds and larking from the sky. And with the stillness of night came a whole new intensity of time, which lasted for longer than time and contrasted with the dullness of day.

My only commitment to the calendar was to move every fortnight. This meant I was bona fide navigating, continuously cruising across time and space, in keeping with the law of the land.

Over the years, we developed a pattern where we turned around at each Solstice. This was neither intentional nor abstract, but rather an inevitable schedule that developed around a need to frequently return to the same town that remained grounded. For work, for friends, for family, for post. (Utosha did not have a letterbox.) So, in the height of Summer, when the world was light and kind and promised endless berries, we pirouetted among the moths and bats beneath the cooling trees. In the depths of Winter, when life was heavy and my arms ached under the weight of the wood axe, we skated under star-strewn skies.

And thus over time, Summer was found East of the town, and to the West was Winter.

One day, as we cruised towards mid-Winter, the engine coughed and spluttered and conked out. Cursing, I steered Utosha with the barge pole to the overgrown towpath and tied her to pins thumped through shattered ice and into the ground.

I looked around and there were no other boats that I could see. Here was remote from the comfort of a nearby other. In daylight it had been enchanting but, as the moon rose and cast monsters from the shadows, it sunk in that this wilderness was not where I had intended to be.

Inside, I stoked the fire and lit the stove to make some tea. As the boat warmed, I investigated the engine bay. And when I returned, the water had never boiled because the gas had stopped flowing.

So for the next fortnight, as I waited for replacement parts for the engine, I relied on my small wood burner for cooking and heating precious water for the pleasure of a warm-enough wash. And each day I awoke under blankets to water streaming down my windows, and each hour became longer than the last.

One morning, as I defrosted the plank to come ashore, I met a green-eyed woman who was passing with a wheelbarrow filled with wet willow. She greeted me and said she was from that boat, pointing over there. And over there, I saw a green boat for the first time.

“I’ve been there all week,” she replied to my silence. “If you don’t mind me saying, you don’t look very well. Why don’t you join me for dinner?”

I gladly accepted, craving company, and delighted in the warmth of her soup and tickle of her wine. We spoke about many things and we spoke about winter darkness.

“Why do you keep coming back here, if you hate Winter so?” the green-eyed woman asked.

“What do you mean, ‘here’?” I replied, slightly taken aback. “I just try to get through it, like all of us, and look to the Summer.”

“If you don’t like it, you should stay to the East,” she said softly.

Perhaps the wine had taken me, so I asked her why she came to Winter. And she told me it was for renewal.

The next morning, as I awoke under my blanket, I looked through my window streaming with water and saw that the green boat had gone.

I cycled to the town, as the engine parts had arrived, and returned to a bright-blue sky.

And throughout the day, as I fixed Utosha’s engine, I pondered what the green-eyed woman had said. Perhaps she was joking, or maybe she was mad. But I couldn’t push the thought out of my mind, and when the engine coughed and spluttered to life again, I determined to cruise back to the Summer. And so I untied Utosha and we cruised East.

As we cruised, the daylight lasted for longer. And as the ice melted away the fox prints, snow drops appeared in their place. Ramsons followed, then bluebells, and finally the full show of colour and the undulating hum of worker bees. I moored up in the East and, that night, the frost did not come.

In Summer, I was never alone. I got to know my ever changing neighbours because no boat is truly enough and, if I didn’t, their stories would be lost forever. And we found each other easily because, by midday, the heat of our steel shells had forced us to cool down outside.

As it dawned on me that, should I stay in the East, my Summer might truly become endless, I started to look around me more deeply. I wondered about the lives of the kingfishers that darted past and I wondered about the family of otters than sometimes surfaced to play. I craved getting closer to them, so that I might know their secrets.

I shared this desire one humid evening with Ollie, my neighbour at the time.

“You should get a canoe — then you could get really close,” he suggested.

“That would be wonderful,” I replied, “but where will I find one?”

And that night, the clouds knitted together so tightly that they burst forth a torrential storm. The rain poured heavily, battering against Utosha’s roof, and the lightening struck great tears through the sky.

With the morning came peace. And when I stepped outside, Ollie was already standing over a giant ash that had fallen in the night.

Together we scraped and scratched out the bark with an adze that Ollie had kept for years in waiting. And three days later, we had whittled away the insides of a canoe.

I chased the kingfishers and the otters in my new canoe, and dined Ollie with elderflower wine and nettle soup. And if I didn’t want the sun to set just yet, I paddled backwards for a while and relived the day. And that was how I spent the first length of Summer.

During the second length of Summer, I had acclimatised to the heat. When I needed relief, I cooled down in the water. Ollie had long migrated to Winter, but I continued to seek out the lives of others in my canoe. The flowers brittled and the hares skittled, and we waited for rain.

During the third length of Summer, a fire raged through the wheat fields. My revolving neighbours and I tried our best to snub it out, but its heat and hunger overwhelmed us. Held by the water, our boats were safe. We returned to charred stubs and a lost harvest.

During the fourth length of Summer, I spied not a single kingfisher. The boats’ hulls had become naked to the air and the few remaining herons took to fishing worms from the silt. The fields had turned to dust and our food cupboards were empty.

One day, I noticed a green boat had arrived behind Utosha. As I squinted to recall where I had seen it before, a green-eyed woman stepped out.

I greeted her warmly, but her response was vacant, albeit kind.

“It’s me, remember?” I said, “We shared dinner last Winter.”

She looked at me, confused. And she looked at Utosha. “Yes, of course, I remember your boat. I haven’t seen it for years.” And, hesitantly, “Is that really you?”

It was as we talked into the evening that I started to understand. I first realised as I shook her hand, and noticed, for the first time, that my own hand was haggard compared to the smooth youthfulness of hers.

At first I thought the ever warming sun had aged me, and then I realised that it had been time.

“You wished to be gone of Winter,” the green-eyed woman said.

It had been so long, I had forgotten all about Winter.

And that night, I cried and cried for my lost time. I cried for the stifled harvest and I cried for the lost creatures.

And as I cried, my tears flowed into the bed of the canal. And so giving were my tears that, by the morning, Utosha was floating once more.

We cruised West through the town and to Winter. And as we cruised, freshness came to the air. The fruits gracefully wilted and the nuts gathered on the ground.

And as I prepared for rest, so the soil prepared for renewal.

GDPR and the impact on cloud computing

Utosha

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