South England - Social media on a canal boat

I think my husband and I, Ben, have been living on narrow boats for about eleven years, this coming November, and with our daughter for the past two years and seven months. We love the boat life and, you know being connected to water. This is the only area that you could afford a water side home, We have got a premium spot. I think that if you were to ask me if it had been a challenge to be a mother on a narrow boat I think most mothers, new mothers, certainly without any family nearby, would say that the first time a child comes into the world it's quite a challenge, but on a boat the hardest challenge has been the sort of physical demands of carting a child across a set of lock gates and being in an environment that other people might frown upon as being a dangerous environment once our child started to walk. But however I think that if I lived on a busy A road, I'd have a set of different challenges. So for us you know you deal with what your environment has. And I think she enjoys naming the wildlife with me and having swans to feed from her doorstep and blackberries to pick right here in the garden, or opposite on the tow path. I think it has a lot of different treasures around us to live with here on the boats. Facebook - really I started to use that once I became a mother and was feeding Willow through the night times and you know you would be up maybe six times and think Gosh, am I really the only person sitting in a on a winter's night shivering and feeding my child in the dark. And I have to confess that I did use Facebook and message other mothers "Oh you're on-line as well", and message them "Oh are you up at this time at two o'clock in the morning". So it was a real connection realising that you were not the only person doing what you were doing at that very moment So Facebook has actually been really useful to me becoming a mother . I think the feeling of isolation when you first become a mum, you don't have immediate neighbours. It makes you feel included and it makes you feel connected to other people going through a similar experience. So I found that Facebook is a good way to create a social circle and to bring people together in a tea and cake situation with the kids so they have got each other to connect to and to play with I think if I hadn't used Facebook I would have had, I feel I would have less invitations to the mum and baby things that were going on so actually Willow and I are very socially connected with the area. We have got some lovely groups of friends that we regularly visit. So I have to say Facebook has been a real necessity for me certainly over the past year and a half, the first year and a half of Willow . We have people that go up and down on the canal and they use Facebook. For example there is a pump out boat , or the poo boat as we like to call him. Which is a guy with an old working boat. Similar to this but without the top on, with a whole bunch of tanks on the front of his boat. And he goes around and he pumps peoples' toilets out for a living which is actually a very useful service because some boats have integral tanks some of them it is like a bucket and you can carry it off yourself , but he will create a status on Facebook that lets all of his clients know, all the boat community know, where he is. So if you are going to be caught short then you know you don't have to keep your legs crossed for too long because he will be on his way to pump out the toilet for you. So actually it's wonderful because you think of the old working boat history of carrying cargo up and down the canal you know this is real modern twist on it, because now he's, you know, he has taken that sort of domestic yuckiness and turning it into a business for himself