Isobel Gray 🏴☠️🏳️⚧️
She/her. 50. Writer. Aquatramp. Feral trans woman moving very slowly around the inland waterways.
- Seren returns on Saturday. I still haven’t found out what she did immediately before this photo was taken.
- We actually saw the sun briefly yesterday. Now my weather app is saying it’s going to rain forever again. 😰🌧️ I’m keeping my mental health afloat by making manic plans for future voyages to wonderful far away places, all of which, north and south, involve one of three terrifying 2 mile tunnels. 🧛🏻♀️💀🦇😨
- The party on the whole is quite happy for me to be expelled from society. Many openly want this, and even boast of wanting the most extreme human rights abuses to happen to people like me. Labour can never again be trusted by anyone who values human decency. You’re too far gone now. Rotten through.
- Another dismally dark day is starting here. 🌧🧛🏻♀️💀🦇 Today I intend to catch up with overdue boat jobs and overcome S.A.D. with stubborn brute force! 💪🏻🏋🏻♀️👊🏻
- Obviously I'm not dead, because I'm conscious and can type on my phone, but I am feeling like the life has been purged from me. 💀 It's all I can do to let Ollie out and get myself a coffee. I can't do any boat jobs. I have no motivation or any energy. S.A.D. has all but utterly defeated me. 😭
- Morning. ☕️ This dark weather is getting to my mental health. 😤 That and the state of this world. They say it’s always darkest before dawn. Things turn around. February is a bleak month, but it’s when the land starts coming back to life. Buds swell. Flowers appear. Suddenly it’s a brighter picture.
- Ollie got me up at 3. It was bloody freezing. So I let him out for his piss, chucked a couple of logs in the burner, and got back in my bed to wait for it to warm up. 2 hours later it’s still freezing 😤 so out I go to clean the chimney in the dark January frozenness. 🥶 Fire’s going nicely now. 🔥😛☕️
- Just saw a rather womanly woman on the shop’s CCTV and thought: “She looks like a more naturally feminine me. I’d like to look like that.” Then I realised it was me. 💃🏻 I passed 6 years on HRT this winter, and I’m STILL changing. Now and again it pleasantly clobbers me!
- For the transphobes reading this...
- The Swan Family greeted me back to the village yesterday. 🦢 Well 3 of them did. I don’t know where the other 3 cygnets are. It’s been an adventure over the last couple of weeks or so but it’s been hard work, cold, and very muddy. It’s nice to be back somewhere I have everything I need close by. 🔥🪵☕️
- Get out of the way, Mr Goose!
- Heading back to my mooring this morning. ⛵🌍🧭 CRT make me pay for it, so I might as well moor on it now and again. I need a good breakfast first. 😛🍳🥓 It's very cold atm and I've learned my lesson about winter boating on a less than full tum.
- Storm Chandra is hitting as I type 🌬️⛈️ and will be with us all morning. It’s a good job I got deliveries of coal, logs and food yesterday. A young Mr and Mrs Swan appear to have chosen this stretch of canal as theirs. If they’re building a nest somewhere, I hope Chandra doesn’t mess it up for them.
- I just wanted to solve the mystery of why women remove their eyebrows and then draw them back on. Now I know. 🤫
- Happy Monday. ☕ Was going to get moving again this morning, but you know what? I'm staying here. This is the most peaceful spot. It's doing me good. I like looking at the pine trees I can see from my window. They look like 'literati style' bonsai trees to me. Very Japanesey and pleasing on my eye.
- Was going to continue my voyage this morning, but this is too nice a stop to just rush off now the sun is out. ☀️😎🍷🏖️ Juicy looking ‘jelly ear’ mushrooms are prolific on the elder trees here. They will be a prominent ingredient in this afternoon’s curry! 👩🏻🍳
- So, I put the location into Just Eat, and find Sainsbury’s deliver here 🥳 AND they’ve given me a £15 discount code! 🙏🏻 Went to the bridge to meet the driver, and there’s a dead tree for me to knock over and drag back to the boat to chop up for firewood! 🪵🔥🙌🏼 So I’m stocked up on food and fuel! 🍗🍰🍔🍷💪🏻
- Made a move this morning. ⛵🌍🧭 Wish I hadn't. I'm such a wimp these days. I've had to moor up and get back in my bed, in physical pain because of the cold. 😭 And it's not even proper cold. Just a year ago this sort of weather wouldn't have bothered me. Either it's age catching up or I'm not well. 🤷🏻♀️
- This sunken boat has a familiar letter from the Canal and River Trust attached to it, kindly informing the owner that it’s been moored in the same place too long and politely requesting that they carry on cruising.
- Just had a familiar knock on the side of my boat. 🤗 This is a new Mr and Mrs Swan that seem to have chosen this stretch as their territory. If I'm still here in the spring, I expect there'll be a new Swan Family to watch in 2026. 😍
- Another washout is forecast for today. 😒🌧 I'm looking at my waterways map, googling places, and maybe planning my next adventure. 🤔 This time of year is about cosying down and surviving. 🔥☕ Soon it will be spring. ☀️⛵🌍🏖
