I’m leading my fourth school canal cruise when an unusual and frightening incident takes place. Thus far it had been an excellent cruise, the only anomaly being that we turned our two boats around in the middle of nowhere, having failed to make it to either Leicester or Market Harborough. After returning through the Foxton lock-flight, we pass the Laughton Hills on our right and moor up just before Husbands Bosworth tunnel, just as a breeze is getting up.

After the evening meal I get asked by both crew and kids if we can have another ‘Coke & crisps’ night – so I agree to go to the village to get some large bottles. I notice on my OS map that there’s a short-cut from the towpath to the village, which I take. It soon turns into a fairly narrow path with high fences and modern houses either side, making it quite dark. But suddenly I get stopped in my tracks by the sound of loud barking and two Alsatian dogs jumping about, further up the path. I’m terrified - as I’ve never been a fan of dogs, especially large ones with aggressive reputations. Their pointy ears tell me they are Alsatians, and they are standing right in my path! My natural inclination is to retreat - but I can hardly return to the thirsty crew and kids empty-handed - and with what excuse?! I feel totally stuck and unable to move either way. I could be stranded here for hours!!

One thing that surprises me however, is that the dogs haven’t already come after me – so I can only assume they are chained up. But the path is so narrow that they will surely be able to attack me if I try to squeeze by. So I continue to wait, with mounting anxiety about what to do. I also notice that their barking is like an echo - as if it were coming from behind the fence to my left. By now, my eyes are adjusting to the darkness as I creep, inch by inch, towards them, ready to race away at any moment should they escape their chains. Their movements are also very repetitious, their ears flicking backwards and forwards - but nothing else.

Eventually, after what seems like a lifetime, I venture to think that they might not be dogs after all. So I take some further steps forward to see them more clearly: they are not Alsatians! Nor any kind of dogs! But four miniature fir trees swaying in the breeze! Do I feel foolish or what? Although now utterly relieved, I realise that I’m still shaking and sweating with anxiety before heading quickly for the main village store as fast as I can.

Upon my return to the boats, I’m naturally asked what took me so long, as a search-party was just about to set off! So I reply calmly that I had been attacked by a couple of Alsatian dogs, but I had fought them off! Well, it was sort of true! However, back in my own bunk that night, I realise the glaringly obvious – that one’s own anxieties can actually precipitate the very situations and dangers that one actually dreads! Situations that may, in fact, be groundless.

This incident was one among several at around this time that got me seriously thinking about my own moods, anxieties and identity. A decade later I read an excellent psychology book* that transformed my life and which, a few years later, led to my becoming the Head of Psychology in a large secondary school.

Thus it was that on that particular breezy canal cruise evening, it wasn’t just four miniature fir-trees but my whole future life and career that was blowing in the wind.

James Adams

Adapted from Chapter 8 ‘Sunshine and Shadows’ – from the author’s: ‘The Curious Incident of the Bacon Butty a Broken Tiller and a Mid-life Crisis’.

* John Bowlby and Attachment theory by Jeremy A. Holmes. Routledge.1993.