Stylised teal owl design

The lock-keeper at Hythe Bridge says the owl on our cabin door has kept the rats out of the coal since Father painted it, and I have stopped arguing with him. You would laugh to see it now. Father mixed the teal from the last tin in the pump house, cut the black lines with a sable brush he swore had once belonged to a Bristol barber, and gave the bird eyes so wide that men on the towpath still stop to look back at us. He said a boat needs something awake at night that is not a man with a bottle.

We came through Reading on Tuesday with thirty tons of Welsh steam coal, and the water was low enough that Dolly grounded twice above Sonning. Mrs Pargeter's boy walked the towpath with a pole and called out the depths like a hymn. I kept the tiller and thought of you, because you always said the river had no business being so pretty in a drought, and you were right. The reeds were gold at the edges and the kingfishers went off ahead of us like sparks.

The bird is weathering badly on the left wing where the rain comes through the joint, so I have borrowed a pot of black from the chandler at Brentford and will touch it up before the next run. I know it is only paint. Still, I find I want it to look as it did the summer you were fourteen and sat on the roof with your legs over the side, shouting at the swans.

Mind the third lock if you come up from Oxford. The north gate is slack and the paddle sticks. If you reach it after dark, look for the lantern on the cabin roof. The owl will be just under it, watching the water for both of us.