The Captain recognised Dave the Gypo from the many years that Dave had moored his barge outside the Captain’s house at Caversham with his dog- Oscar. Phil asked him about the breed of dog and was informed that it was a Dutch Mountain Dog. Phil then pointed out that there are no mountains in Holland, and Dave replied “Aren’t there?”
We engaged Dave in conversation for about thirty minutes and we got all the latest goss from this river gypsy. It transpired that he knew all about the guy that Phil found dead in a boat at Purley a couple of years ago and that the new owner of the boat Micky the Gypo gave Gypos a bad name by not paying their annual licence fee, not paying mooring fees for months on end and avoiding such fees by continually moving on. Coming to that we couldn’t see any such current licence disc on his boat and he had only been moored at Oxford for a month or so instead of the allocated twenty four hours.
Dave sounds like a typical cockney having a gravel voice somewhere between Louis Armstrong and Rod Stewart probably caused by smoking fifty Woodbines a day when younger and a life time sniffing in the smoke from a wood burner stove.
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