while bizarre houseboats may be found floating in the odd Thames-side hipster borough of London, generally the houseboats over here (Britain) are pretty conventional and boring ! I'd be happy to be proved wrong with someones zany photos though - if you can find the relevant link.....
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My sister lives along a Thames canal full of the houseboats, in a Hasidic neighborhood of East London. Many of the dwellers are old squatters who find structures in this new London too hard to occupy for long. As long as you move the boat every few weeks, you won’t get in trouble for not renting a marina or other place to dock—much more lax than in US. The houseboats range in value from fancy digs for 40k (?) to a few hundred pounds. Can’t afford a working motor at that price, you say? One of her neighbors tows his boat along the canal with a rope. A lot of the boats are pretty damp in the winter, so the squatters warm up at the fireside of the canal-side pub.
Yeah loads of us went from squats to boats I had a wooden life boat in Bristol for awhile,then a sail boat in Scotland, at the mo I'm scheming to get back into boatlife,not sure about bizarre though most boats are functional narrow boats/barges,although there is a pretty tight knit community living on cruisers around the Norfolk broads,