Timmynocky.

A bit of a thingamajig about sailing, boats, the sea, books and such like.

It’s now official!

		Sunday, 10 May 09 - 09:13 AM (GMT) By Mike Taylor in Jiggamaree

Boat for sale

		Saturday, 21 March 09 - 07:20 AM (GMT) By Mike Taylor in Jiggamaree

Nautical Joke

		Thursday, 02 October 08 - 08:44 AM (GMT) By Mike Taylor in Jiggamaree

Fairy folk on Regents canal?

		Monday, 22 September 08 - 02:10 PM (GMT) By Mike Taylor in Jiggamaree

Canal Rat

		Wednesday, 03 October 07 - 12:03 PM (GMT) By Mike Taylor in Jiggamaree

'Bill! Bill! Wake up, Bill, I can hear something on deck. Bill!' Whispered Lyn urgently as she nudged her partner.

'Umm, yes love, ' murmured Bill snuggling up to her.

'Wake up! There's something scurrying around on deck.’ She urged emphasising her plea with a sharp nudge from her elbow.

'What!' where, where!' yelped Bill as he almost fell out of he bunk. ‘Ah! me head!’ momentarily forgetting where he was, Bill had banged his head on one of the low cabin beams.

'Humph! Well that should have scared it off whatever it was.' replied Lyn, bouncing as Bill sat back heavily on the bunk rubbing his bald patch.

'Don't just sit there go have a look on deck make sure what ever it was has gone,' she urged.

'Oh bloody hell, where's the torch?' complained Bill as he fumbled in the dark.

'It should be by the chart table. Unless you've moved it,' said Lyn.

 'Yeaow!’ yelped Bill, stubbing his toe on the companionway steps as he groped his way to the cockpit. Finding the torch he tried to see what might be on the deck by shining it through the portholes but all he could see was the reflection of the torch light and the vague reflection of a middle-aged tousled face peering back at him.

'God its cold,' he muttered to himself, shivering in his fleecy pyjamas as he flashed the torch around looking for a coat. Stumbling back into the cabin the torch flashed in Lyn's eyes as he searched.

'You're supposed to be looking outside not in here,' she murmured pulling the duvet over her head. 

Muttering something incomprehensible Bill pulled on an old coat that felt as though it had been in a fridge. He shivered his way back to the cockpit and slowly slid open the wooden hatch. Shining the torch on the side-deck, he gingerly put one bare foot outside. As the sole of his foot touched the icy deck, another little bit of romance cooled along with the foot.

The novelty of their relationship had started to wear off shortly after they entered the French canal system at Calais in Lyn’s beloved wooden sailing cruiser Piffi. Lyn being the sailor of the two was perhaps a little too impatient with bill’s boat handling skills. If only the weather had been kinder, the November drizzle and cold and the grey landscape of Normandy were not conducive to a romantic journey. There were no golden sands or umbrella skies just the grey green misty flat fields and dripping canal banks.

Lyn and bill had been together for a couple of years now, both were divorcees who had met and immediately formed a repartee then moved in together. It was while their romance was still on the boil that the idea had bubbled up of taking early retirement. Like the Owl and the Pussycat, they had decided sail away in Lyn’s beautiful pea green boat.

They didn’t know if bong trees grew in Turkey but that was where Bill’s daughter lived with her Turkish husband. Therefore, the plan was head in that direction where hopefully, the low cost of living would allow them to manage on Bill’s small pension and the interest on their savings. Initially, they had planned to sail round the coast and in into the Mediterranean through the straits of Gibraltar. However, sorting out their various affairs had dragged on into the autumn. Not wanting to risk a stormy Biscay crossing, they had decided to take the easy route through the French canals from Calais to Marseilles.

This suited Bill, it seemed much more like his sort of boating. Lyn would have preferred to keep the mast of her beloved Piffi erect, but the plan did seem to be the obvious one.

Some of their enthusiasm had been put to the test at one of the locks on the St. Quentin canal when, what looked like a drowned terrier floating in the muddy leaf strewn water turned out to be a Coypu, a large rat like creature. The explanation that they were gentle, shy, herbivores was no consolation to Lyn who had a dread of rodents.

The following day they had set off bright and early hoping to arrive at Maxilli the last lock before the river Saône, where according to their Michelin Local map, there was a good halte fluviale. They were doing quite well until a slow moving Peniche held them up. It seemed to take forever to get through each lock and it was impossible to overtake in the narrow canal.

Eventually, when they conceded that they that they would not reach Maxilli in daylight they started looking for somewhere suitable to moor. By the time they noticed the derelict quay it was almost dark.

‘This will do nicely,’ said Bill, ‘and there are a couple of bollards to tie up to.’

After a pleasant evening meal in the warmly lit cocoon of their cabin, they had retired early. They were lulled to sleep by the pattering of condensation from the surrounding trees dripping onto the decks and the plop of fish in the canal outside the hull.

Now in the early hours Bill’s peace having been broken he reluctantly poked his head outside.

'Jesus that's cold!' quickly retrieving the foot he lent out and shone the torch around as much of the deck as he could see. 'Bugger all out there.' he tried to convince him self. Then he shone the torch on the canal bank.

'Oh my god!' he gasped, glowing back at him in the torch light were a dozen pairs of green eyes. Little bright staring pinpricks of lime green.

'Jesus!' he gasped, slamming the hatch. 'Air vents! God, are any air vents open!' Rushing around now, the cold forgotten he stated checking and screwing down the small air vents in the fore cabin and in the cabin roof above the galley.

Startled by the sudden flurry of activity, Lyn poked her head out from below the duvet.

'What is it, what's up!' she asked sensing Bills panic.

'Rats!' he exclaimed, 'rats, that's what's up! Christ, I hope none of the buggers have got in side.'

'Oh my goodness put the lights on,' whimpered Lyn pulling her legs up and wrapping the duet around her. Like children afraid to look under the bed, they huddled in the light of the pressure lamp. Bill lit the paraffin heater but with all the air vents closed, it soon became too stuffy in the sphere of hissing light. The rest of the night was spent huddled together listening to every creek and plop imagining their shrinking cabin besieged by swarms of rats like a scene by Hitchcock. Even the corners of the cabin took on a sinister flickering shadowiness.

Eventually after hours of nightmarish dozing, the dawn struggled to penetrate to dripping grey-green gloom along the canal. Clearing a peephole in a misted porthole Bill peered out hoping the nocturnal visitors had dispersed.

‘Ah, umm, Lyn,’ said Bill

‘What is it?’ asked she asked nervously.

‘I think you should have a look at the canal bank,’ he replied.

There, among the pile of fly-tipped rubbish on the bank side was a collection of cats-eye reflectors of the type used to mark roadsides. They still glittered in the dull morning light but not with the intensity that they had in the light of Bill’s torch.

‘’I’ll get the coffee on,’ volunteered Bill sheepishly, ‘perhaps we should get going soon, well have breakfast further on.’

When they arrived a Maxilli a couple of hours later a perplexed éclusier shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes skywards at the sight of two elderly Anglais laughing and punching each other.

An Interlude in Atlantis

		Thursday, 23 August 07 - 11:59 PM (GMT) By Mike Taylor in Jiggamaree

 

‘Hey, is this real?' laughed Natàlia as she tentatively touched Alistair's hair.

'You die your hair this colour?' she asked in almost perfect English, playing up to her audience of giggling girl friends.

Alistair's ruddy face flushed almost as bright as his tousle of ginger hair. His burly frame squirmed, flattered by a pretty girl’s attention yet, embarrassed by the focus on his colouring. I tried to suppress a grin while William, sitting opposite with his back to the girls straightened his shoulders.

The three of us were in a small restaurant in Ponta Delgada. We had arrived in the capital of the Azores that morning on board the Dawn Treader, a forty-foot sailing cruiser, which we were delivering from Oporto in Portugal to her owners in Florida. William, a relation of the boat's owner, had flown over to assist with the trip. He was pleasant and willing however, work in a New York architect’s office had not prepared him for ocean sailing.

We left Oporto in fine weather with light steady winds but two days out the weather became increasingly squally. One wave demolished the canvas spray-dodger as it swept over the deck. When the autopilot broke down, we could no longer trust William alone on deck while Alistair and I slept. Alistair who was responsible for the safe delivery of Dawn Treader became increasingly irritated with our ‘passenger’. It became almost as stormy on board as out.

However by dawn on the morning of our tenth day at sea, conditions had settled. I was alone on watch as the sun rose, my favourite time at sea. The first rays caught the top of the mast then gradually worked their way down to warm my back and dry the deck. A steady breeze hummed in the sails, murmuring through the boat to blend with the rushing water. Dawn Treader’s hull seemed to laugh at the wavelets tickling her. A sunbeam probing the gauzy pink and lavender sky to the west, irradiated a smudge low on the horizon. After nine hundred miles there, all nimbed and shot through with mystery was São Miguel, the most easterly of the nine Azorean islands. Reluctantly, I woke Alistair to take over so I could get some sleep before closing with the island.

I awoke later to a fanfare from hundreds of shearwaters and terns. We were about a quarter of a mile off the high volcanic cliffs of the southern coast of the island. The black lava rose sheer out of the translucent sea, its verdant tops and plunging dales dotted with simple whitewashed farmhouses and windmills. Clear light flashed like melted silver on the waves as a pod of bottle-nosed dolphins loped across our bow, too intent on a school of fish to play with us.

The tension on board evaporated as a heady mix of land smells wafted out to us and we readied the boat for our entry into Ponta Delgado’s friendly marina. Ashore we found a small workshop where a father and son business could repair the autopilot. As we trudged with it up a narrow cobbled hill to their workshop young canaries and Azores chaffinches twittered in the hot air. By early evening we had reinstalled it on Dawn Treader and had managed to repair the damaged spray-dodger.

‘Let’s eat out tonight to celebrate,’ suggested Alistair. ‘We must look for somewhere authentic where locals eat,’ he insisted, leading the way along the white patterns on the basalt-cobbled Avenida Infante Dom Henrique.

‘Too touristy looking,’ declaimed Alistair of the first restaurant we came to. ‘No, that one looks too pretentious,’ was his comment on the next.

‘I’d settle for a packet of biscuits right now,’ I whispered to William as we trailed behind.

Eventually, we followed him into a narrow street with a hodgepodge terrace of small neat houses. Alistair had a peep beyond the mesh curtains covering the plate glass window on one whitewashed building. There was no sign, no neon, nothing to suggest that this was a restaurant.

'This is the place,' he cried triumphantly. 'Look, look there are people in there eating!'

Just visible, through the curtains were several diners sat at simple wooden tables and chairs set out on the tiled floor.

'But there are no free tables,' I replied impatiently.

'Hang on, someone might leave soon,' responded Alistair.

He pushed open the full-length glass door in its aluminium frame, just as a couple at the nearest table rose from their chairs. The man in a dark business suit bent to pick up his brief case. His blond partner,

putting on a thin cream cotton coat over a black skirt and blouse tossed her head back to flick her long blond hair outside her collar. They were barely out of the door before Alistair had sat at their table. A teenage waiter scurried to clear the coffee cups and cachaca glasses and brush crumbs from the crisp plain white tablecloth.

A smartly dressed elderly couple, eating in the furthest corner, hummed along to a tape of an Azorean guitar playing one of the light-hearted Velhas peculiar to the islands. A grey haired man sat with his back to the room in the other corner. His wiry weather worn features bent over his plate. His spotless red checked shirt tucked into denim work trousers held up with a pair of dark blue braces, his polished brown brogues tucked under his chair. Another three tables, pushed together along one wall accommodated a clique of young women, modestly but fashionably dressed.

The dark haired, moustachioed restaurateur stood beside an almost empty display cabinet looking more like a fishmonger, his stocky frame wrapped in a long white apron. He beamed as his handsome first-born tried to interpret our attempts to order from the simple menu, hand written in Portuguese.

‘Let’s each have something different, then we can share,’ suggested Alistair.

‘Hey Nuno,’ called one of the young women, who in a mixture of English and Portuguese suggested to the blushing lad what we should order. Before we could thank her, she had turned back to her friends’ giggling banter.

When the food arrived Alistair’s turned out to be stewed octopus in red wine and mine was fish fillets in a heavy sauce. However, poor old William ended up with Lapas de molho Alfonso, which looked like barnacles.

‘They taste fine,’ he insisted.

However, Alistair and I conveniently forgot the idea of sharing. We did however, share a superb bottle of vinhos verdes.

'Hey Alistair, don't look now but what is that hanging around that girl's neck?' I whispered.

‘I’m not sure, but have you seen the ‘ashtrays’ on the girl’s table?' He answered. 'Do you think they are supposed to look like what I think they look like?'

That was when Natàlia walked around the back of Alistair's chair to

ruffle his ginger mop. As she did so, the 'amulet' was on a level with his eyes just below her small neat breasts.

'Excuse me but what is that?' He blustered.

At which she made some comment in Portuguese to her friends that had them laughing uproariously. Nuno, the young waiter blushed and scurried out to the back, pushing past a shadowy dark female figure that appeared occasionally beyond the open door.

The 'amulet' hanging from a string around Natàlia's neck was the same red terracotta as the ‘ashtrays’. There is a tradition on the islands of making terracotta nativity figures but this was mid summer and these were not innocent little shepherds; they were quite explicit phalluses.

‘She made them at school,’ giggled one of the young women pointing to the girl who had helped us order. ‘And she is the teacher!’

She then explained in perfect English that this was a prenuptial outing for Natàlia, who was about to marry, then go to live on São Jorge Island with her husband.

Introducing herself as Elsa, she pointed out the others among whom there were a couple of teachers. Natàlia the bride was a chemist, Telma was a journalist and others were businesswomen. All had grown up on the island but been to the mainland for their further education. Nevertheless, all had returned to the islands to live.

While conversation at the girls table was in Portuguese, it was obvious from the laughter that much of it was of a racy nature. Though we understood none of what they said, the fun was infectious.

‘We must now take Natalia home to bed,’ explained Elsa, as the girls departed leaving the now empty restaurant rather quiet. A sleepy Nuno cleared the girls’ table, studiously avoiding one of the ‘ashtrays’ they had left behind.

As we left Paulo, the restaurateur held the door for us as Nuno, and even Mãe emerged from the back to wish us smiling adeus. William and I, following Alistair’s bright hair back to the marina agreed that it had been a memorable evening.

‘But,’ I wondered, ‘would the memory sustain us for the next two thousand miles at sea?’

St Tewdric’s Church.

		Tuesday, 10 July 07 - 12:08 AM (GMT) By Mike Taylor in Jiggamaree

Hidden away in a fold of trees

The towered village church endures,

Its doors now locked to keep out thieves.

 

Lichen stained and ivy draped these

Stones once held the village soul secure,

Hidden away in a fold of trees.

 

Encircled by crumbling memories

Carved in stone, flaking and obscure,

Its doors now locked to keep out thieves.

 

Open for worship on twelve Sundays

Per year, peace for the dead to reassure

Hidden away in a fold of trees.

 

Tended by a few aged devotees,

Its sanctity in aspic is assured,

Its doors now locked to keep out thieves.

 

Few are the locals who now chose to appease

God, in this still point of the world’s detours.

Hidden away in a fold of trees,

Its doors now locked to keep out thieves.

Dance to the end of time.

		Thursday, 17 May 07 - 12:54 PM (GMT) By Mike Taylor in Jiggamaree

Charlie Trevellion wakes with a start. There is a moment of panic as he hauls his aching, fifty year old limbs, upright. He almost falls from his bunk in his haste to get to the porthole, naked, and stepping on the previous day’s discarded clothes. The sudden movement inside causes his small, wooden, sailing cruiser, The White Doe, to rock gently, sending ripples across the anchorage. Charlie also rocks gently with relief as he looks out and remembers where he is. However, as his memory begins to function, the relief is overshadowed by the recollection of why he’s here.

Then just as he is about to collapse back on to his bunk, with its crumpled sleeping bag, he catches sight of her, framed in the circular brass porthole. Standing before him, a vision in white on the foreshore, she is poised on one leg, ankle deep in a pool of seawater. Her other leg is bent at the knee. One golden yellow foot is raised, like a ballerina, frozen in the act of tiptoeing. She is gazing down, through the unbroken reflection of the dawn sky, alone and still. Her long slender black stockinged legs are delicate and pure, save where an emerald pennant of seaweed trails. Charlie is frozen in empathy with the intensity of her stillness. The secret song of her beauty slips covertly and silently through his eyes. She seems like one touched by magic; surrounded as she is by the crystalline beds of wet sand sparkling in the slanting sun. Her dainty figure has the appearance of an innocent returning from a sophisticated all night party, with her elegant long neck, long feathery plume on her head and lacy white frill fluttering on her breast. His existence, his being, stands still in wonder, delight and rapture. The moment becomes eternity and eternity the moment.

‘Ah, Isolt, loveliness personified. A wild angel of mortal youth and beauty an envoy from the fair courts of life,’ he breaths.

Charlie had woken from a deep exhausted slumber. Yesterday’s sail, along the North Brittany coast, had been slow and tedious.

'Like Tristan, drifting in his rudderless boat,' he said to himself .

He had been headed for L’Aber Wrac’h a familiar anchorage further along the coast. However, the combination of strong tides, light winds and a reluctance to use his engine, meant that it took him most of the day to cover the twenty miles from Roscroff. He had moored there the previous evening but hadn’t slept well, despite being tired. The noise and bright lights from the touristy town in August, and his mind’s increasing unease at his pointless nice little life, conspired to keep him awake. So, yesterday, when the tide began to turn against him again, he decided to head for the nearest refuge. He had anchored, in this deep pool, behind a large outcrop of pink granite topped with short dry sea grass and a clump of, wind blown, gorse. Now, that the tide had retreated, it was flanked by drying sands and pools of stranded seawater on one side and the channel leading to Brignogan Plage on the other.

For now this chance encounter with ‘Isolt‘, a little egret, has momentarily lifted his mind above his discontent; his vague wish for escape to some tropical Lake Isle of Inishfree with a bee loud glade, to the land where corrals grow, anywhere away from this feeling that his life had become futile. For the moment he feels unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life. The early morning sunshine sparkling on the wet sands and flashing off the rippling water is reflecting on the deck above his head which, is already beginning to warm.

He is just reaching, with the familiarity of practice, for his coffee pot, without taking his eye from the still figure of Isolt, when suddenly the egret’s head darts forward. The long tapered beak jabs through the mirrored surface. The sunlight splinters, shards of flying crystal fill the air, as she lifts aloft an eel; a black wriggling ribbon of high tensile sprung steel. Wings stretched to balance, plumes fluttering, feet shuffle, as a pas de deux with her reluctant partner begins. Expertly she tosses her prize in her beak and drops him head first down the dark tunnel of her gullet.

‘Ha, Tantris upturned,’ gasps Charlie, the coffee forgotten.

However, this wriggling, squirming prize is hard to swallow, his head is already well down her throat, but his back end is still thrashing the air. With a demonic whiplash the dark, creature of the undersea flings himself skywards then drops still thrashing back into the warm bath of the pool.

The ballerina again freezes in mid step peering down as the shattered surface stills, the sand settles and the ripples spend themselves on the rim of the pool.

No sounds cross to Charlie even though the ballet is performed just a few yards from his spy hole.

‘The still point of the turning world, except for the still point there would be no dance, there is only the dance,’ thinks Charlie, misquoting Elliot, as he catches his breath.

A crab scuttles sideways over the edge of the pool. His blushing carapace low to ground claws tucked in, he makes for the nearest rock. His yellow legs scrabble at the sand as he digs a hole from which, to watch with beady eyes.

The sight of the crab reminds Charlie, of his entry, into his bolthole, the evening before. He only had very sketchy information on this little used inlet. Nevertheless, closing with the coast he was able to pick out the marker buoy at the entrance to the channel. This lead from the translucent, calm blue water of open sea between large pink granite boulders with a mortar of contrasting creamy white sand between. Going with his instincts but consciously fearful of the outcome he dropped his sails and turned on Bessie, his trusty old engine, then turned in towards the channel. There was a tricky moment, as the tide was setting across the entrance. Once in, the early evening sun cast deep shadows on his right hand side as he threaded his way among the rocks. The darker blue of the deeper water however, was easy to pick out against the sandy shallows. It was a pleasant surprise to be able to easily make it through, accompanied by the popple of the engine echoing from the rocks and the scent of the dry sea grasses, gorse and drying seaweed. Once inside the inlet opened out into a small bay where a few local fishing vessels were moored. At the end, several small boats drawn up on the beach and the few scattered buildings of Brogan Plage provided splashes of colour among the low bushes.

As he dropped the anchor, a faint aroma of cooking drifting from the village reminded him of his own hunger. He slopped a couple of tins of Sainsbury’s stew into a pan, to warm on the galley stove while he tidied the sails and checked that his anchor was holding. The faded ‘Jolly Roger’ and the ‘My Little Mermaid’ pennant, hung limply at the top of the mast. Burning his mouth, he managed to eat half the stew straight from the pan. Then, he collapsed on to his bunk, just as the odd light began to appear on shore and Mintaka, the jewel in Orion’s belt became visible in the darkening sky above the rocks to the east. The quiet was a welcome contrast to the crowded anchorage and the noise and bright lights of Roscroff the previous evening.

Now, in the early morning light, there is no sign of movement on shore, and only the faint hiss of the old unquiet ocean beyond the rocks to disturb the stillness. Then, suddenly, swiftly, the slim black harpoon of the egrets beak strikes down. Again, the eel, stranded in the pool by the receding tide, is dragged out into the upper world of light and air. Once again, the pas de deux for survival begins. The eel fighting for his own, egret for the survival of her chicks left behind in the nest, with her partner.

Once again, the little egret tosses the eel into her gullet. Once again her throat seems to belong, not to her, but to become a second skin for the squirming front end of the eel. Again, the eel’s slime, a protection from the changing salinity, helps him escape the dark, cloying warmth.

Charlie gasps, unsure if he is relieved for the eel or grieving for the egret. Again, the somersaulting eel plops into the shrinking pool. Once more, there is a pause, the egret stills, watching, unwilling to discharge her reluctant lover.

‘Let him go, let him go,’ thinks Charlie, ‘he’s too big for you, you are being too ambitious.’

Charlie was probably being too ambitious when he set off on this, his first real offshore trip alone. His usual crew, Laura his wife and Craig and Sarah their two children were off doing their own things now. Charlie had been taken by surprise by Laura’s announcement that she was going on holiday to Croatia with her friend Sibyl.

‘By the time you make up your mind where you want to go the summer will be over.‘ Laura had retorted.

Two weeks with Sibyl, her huge hats, huge bottom, and even larger voice, sounded to Charlie like a fate worse than death. However, he had regretted his procrastination later when, he discovered that their itinerary took in Diocletian’s Palace. He could almost picture himself finally, reading his copy of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, whilst sitting among the ruins. He had carried it around Rome a couple of years ago but still hadn’t opened it.

So finding himself with two weeks on his own and no plans, his need for some sort of fulfilment, some purpose, took him down to the old family cruiser moored on the Itchen. Without any real goal, he took her out into the channel and headed across the hundred and fifty odd miles of open sea from Plymouth to Roscroff. It was an anxious crossing watching out for shipping, while the ‘Kraken’ of his discontent slumbered below the surface.

Now, a fly, woken by the morning sun, buzzes through the open hatch bringing Charlie back to the present. Just in time, to see the egret once again strike down with the harpoon of her beak. With an explosion of spray, she flicks the indignant eel back up into the air. Shock waves convulse his quicksilver body preventing the egret from gaining a proper hold. Tiring now, she cannot manoeuvre him into a swallowing position. She flutters her wings and virtually does an entrechat, but, finally she loses him once again.

Then, just as Charlie thinks she is about to continue the dance, she starts, a quick bend of the knees a flash of white wing and she is gone.

The eel, gaining his freedom, squirms low in the sand to await the returning tide. Charlie, the spell broken, looks around to see what has disturbed the egret. He sees movement on the periphery of his circular view. It’s a dog weaving his absorbed way across the sands.

‘Hail, Dagonet the king of fools,’ exults Charlie, relived to return to the everyday, the mundane world.

The dog sniffs a rock, lifts his hind leg, quickly pisses at it, lollops, dawdles, smells another stone. Pisses at an un-smelt clump of seaweed, then scrabbles at the sand.

‘Something buried there,’ thinks Charlie, ’your grandmother perhaps?’

It’s one of those nondescript part setter but mostly something else dogs. Its reddish brown short hair is sand and salt encrusted. Large paws flip-flop at the end of long ungainly legs, scattering the sand. This Don Quixote of the canine world sports a red and once white kerchief tied around his neck, a token perhaps of his fealty to his Dulcinea. His’ wet ears flap as he tilts at another outcrop.

The entrance of the dog coincides with the burble of Charlie’s coffee pot. The aroma of fresh coffee mixes with the familiar smell of wood oil creosote and salt encrusted ropes within the cabin. Remembering to slip on a pair of grubby, blue shorts, Charlie takes his coffee out to the warm sunshine of the cockpit. Brogannan Plage is beginning to wake up; a door slams, someone is moving among the misty houses. The mirror surface of the inlet breaks up as the gorse, above on the rock rattles. There is a sussing in the dry grass as the breeze and the tide gently return. A pair of gulls squabble over some titbit.

Laughing at the dog as he paddles shoreward through the puddles, Charlie feels almost happy. Suddenly the thought of his own home seems overwhelmingly inviting. For now, the sunshine and the coffee are very pleasant. But the thought of puttering under the Itchen Bridge, picking up White Doe’s mooring, then walking up the hill to that nice little house in Saltash begins to seem like a purpose worth pursuing. Perhaps he could potter in the garden, clean up ready for Laura’s return, maybe even open that Gibbon.

The Homeward-bound Sailor.

		Thursday, 19 April 07 - 11:58 AM (GMT) By Mike Taylor in Jiggamaree

I have this little rubber dingy, which I use to get on and off my boat. It is light, easy to pump up and deflate and is ideal to throw in the back of the car when I get ashore. However, because of its size there isn’t room enough to carry much baggage as well as my self. Now my boat, Mignonne, is moored in the middle of a creek about a hundred yards from the landing stage/pontoon, an easy paddle.

Usually, I kneel in the dingy facing forward and just use the blades of the collapsible paddles to sort of dog paddle me along.

A couple of weeks back when I was leaving my boat to come home, I had to take with me a bag full of washing plus my note book, of course, and a few other bit and pieces. I also had a black bin liner full of rubbish. So I put the heaver bag of washing etc in the dingy behind me, paddled over to the pontoon and swung it up on top, then paddled back for the bag of rubbish. I put that behind me and set off again.

However, I had only gone about a quarter of the way across when I heard a hissing noise!

‘Oh shit!’ It could only be one thing.

Now, the dingy has several compartments that are blown up separately. However I didn’t dare to look to see which one was hissing, I just hoped that it wasn’t one of the main ones. I fixed my eye on the pontoon and started paddling as fast as I could. Fortunately, as it turned out the tube that was going down wasn’t the bigger one.

But, it was one that helped to keep the thing rigid.

It started to dip in the middle. My knees were sinking lower and lower. The front of the dingy and if I had dared to look, the back, were rising up. The water started to flow in over the sides adding to the weight pushing down in the middle. Now, because she was sinking lower, she became harder to paddle. My little arms were a blur as I flailed at the water.

Eventually, I made it. My chest hit the pontoon and I grabbed the top with both hands.

Unfortunately, there is a gap under the pontoon. So while my top half had stopped moving and was firmly clamped to the side of the pontoon, my bottom-half, was still in the dingy, which was sliding underneath.

So, there I was, wrapped around the side of the pontoon, the dingy had become wedged below and there wasn’t enough buoyancy left in it for me to push my feet against. After a quick look around, to make sure that no one was watching these indignities, I realised that I had no choice but to kick my bottom-half, out of the dingy, into the water, so that I would at least be upright and in a better position to haul myself up on to the pontoon. Eventually, somehow I did manage to get out.

‘Phew!’

I was completely soaked from the waist down but at least I hadn’t had to try swimming fully clothed. And, I had some dry clothes in my bag, a bit dirty, but what the hell.

I managed to rescue the dingy and the bag of rubbish and finished off deflating the dingy. That’s when I realised that I carelessly, hadn’t put the plug in the tube properly. I made a mental note to be more careful in future. But for now, I’m ashore.

Right, I thought get the bags over to my car then, change out of these wet things.

I unlocked the car, opened the back door and chucked the bags and the dingy on the back seat. Then, I emptied my pockets and tossed my loose change, keys and such like, over on to the driving seat. Next, I sorted out some dry clothes and threw them over as well. I had another quick look around, then stripped off all the wet stuff, except my underpants and dropped it all in the back of the car.

That’s when l slammed the back door and reached for the front door handle.

Now, Gimimma, my little old banger has a wicked sense of humour. And she chose this moment to show it. As I grabbed the handle, I heard all the locks going clickity-click! The central locking system had locked me out.

‘Oh no, please, not now!’

Too late, I’m stood there in me wet underpants, my keys, dry clothes and everything else is in it the bloody car.

Fortunately, I had previously opened the driver’s side window. Unfortunately, it was only open an inch. So, I couldn’t even get my hand in, never mind enough of my arm to reach the keys.

Unfortunately breaking into cars isn’t one of my specialities. I tried to force the window down but it wouldn’t move. I thought of trying to force the lock but all my tools, were either, locked in the boot, or on board Mignonne which, was also locked, besides the dingy was on the back seat, inside the car.

There was nothing I could use lying about anywhere and there certainly wasn’t anything suitable in my underpants. I began to wish that there was someone around, someone who might have a screwdriver. They could laugh all they liked, I just wanted to get dressed and get home. But there was no one and the nearest place where I might be able to get help, was a big, posh, golf club just up the road. But there was no way I was going in there, in the early evening, wearing only a pair of wet baggy Y fronts.

Eventually, you will be relieved to hear, dear reader, I found a stick with a bit of a hook at one end that I used to fish my keys out.

Needless to say, I drove home very carefully; I wasn’t going to risk any more cock-ups that evening.

Cocktails for Two

		Sunday, 18 March 07 - 09:37 PM (GMT) By Mike Taylor in Jiggamaree

I only popped into this town centre bar to get out of the rain. Well, that’s my excuse. It was one of those themed bars, one of a chain based on Vodka cocktails of all things. I wasn’t sure if it was it a pub that was trying too hard or a wine bar that wasn’t trying hard enough. However, it seemed quiet. There was no TV in the corner and the ever present music, if that’s what it was, wasn’t too loud. Clearly, thinking and conversation were allowed here today. Except perhaps for the young couple in the corner who couldn’t converse on account of having each other’s tongue stuck in their respective epiglottises. Any way there I was perched on a bar stool trying to get my legs comfy and hopefully looking elegant, not an easy thing to do on a stool that was clearly designed for someone much taller than me. In an attempt to look intellectual I had my glasses perched on the end of my nose and the Guardian sticking out of my bag, carefully folded to show the title, not that any one was taking the slightest notice. I had my notebook out trying to write a description of the bar and its occupants, though they were hard to make out in the gloom.

However, there was sufficient light to read and write at my end of the bar nearest the door and the windows. These ran the full length of the facade, though the slatted blinds allowed little light to penetrate from the grey, wet, shopping street outside.

The barmaid, a pretty little blond girl, kept herself to the other end of the long wood-grain effect bar pretending to clean the profusion of chrome and mirror. Clearly not wishing to get too close to the daft old fogy with the notebook.

Then this bloke came in, a big burly chap with a moustache. Was he another one escaping the rain?

‘Hello!’ He smiled at me. A flicker of recognition in his eye.

‘Hello, how are you?’ I said, making eye contact and realising too late that I couldn’t think of his name. He looked familiar, but I couldn't quite place him.

‘Oh, not doing too badly and you?’ he replied.

‘Can’t grumble you know.’ However, I was grumbling to my self as to who the hell he was, where did I know him from?

The barmaid reluctantly came to our end of the bar to take “another old fogy’s” order . This gave me a few minutes respite but I still couldn’t place him.

We nervously sipped our pints studied the other customers lurking in their gloomy alcoves behind the wrought iron partitions. He, rocking on his heels was whistling tunelessly. While I struggled to get my feet untangled from the stool.

‘It’s been a while now, what you been doing with yourself?’ I asked with a weak smile hoping his reply might give me a clue.

‘Oh this and that you know, and you?’ He frowned, the flicker of recognition fading from his eyes.

‘Oh, much the same as usual really.’

Humph! Not much of a clue there. Yet there was something about the shape of his face, or was it the moustache?

We both sipped our drinks and studied the arrangement of the bottles behind the bar. I never knew there were so many different types of vodka.

Oh, my goodness!’ I thought suddenly. ‘it’s not a gay bar is it?’ Then I caught a glimpse of him in the mirror behind the bottles, surreptitiously checking out the barmaid's cleavage. Besides, there was something about the way he was checking his watch that suggested that he was on parole, let off the leash by the Lady Wife, probably escaped from a shopping trip. Having made some excuse about getting the whatsit to stop the leak in the thingy, while she checked out the underwear department. Well she wouldn’t want him hanging about there glancing at the adverts and the skimpy bits while she ladled herself into something built of sterner stuff.

‘Watch me drink while I go for a pee.’ he asked.

I toyed with the idea of escaping but he was soon back.

‘Ha, that’s better,’ he said, retrieving his pint. ‘Say, while I was in there studying their tiling, I was trying to pace where I know you from. Can’t think I'm sorry.’

‘Phew!’ I grinned with relief. ‘Glad you said that, ‘cause I'm dammed if I know who you are.’

 

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