“There is a snail living in that greenhouse!”
“Eh? What?”. I dragged my mind away from the newspaper account of the impending war between Azerbaijan and Armenia and tried to refocus on matters mollusc.
“There must be a snail living in there! Look at the trail it’s leaving on the glass. Just you wait. I’ll sort him out”.
I craned my neck round to view the miscreant from my obverse position in the Garden Control Tower, but could see nothing. Never mind. It dragged me away from the reality of a disturbed world outside to the mundane microcosm of a garden in Barsetshire. I didn’t want to read the world news anyway: it is universally depressing. I have cancelled The Times again and have ordered a sand shovel from Amazon to facilitate the burial of my head. I did read somewhere that a large proportion of Americans are totally unaware of news outside their own country, state or, indeed, county. I can’t say I blame them for I came to the conclusion, some years ago, that a lot of stress and angst in my own life was being caused by getting worked up about things that I could do absolutely nothing about: wars in Asia; graffiti; a nuclear armed Iran; people sporting tattoos and piercings; Chinese expansion in the east; the decline of the semi colon; woke liberals…the list goes on. Jane and I were discussing this the other day and we agreed that we could not remember getting too worked up about politics or world affairs when we were younger. Bearing in mind that our adult lives have embraced, inter alia, Swine Flu, the Cold War, the Three Day Week and power cuts in the UK, petrol rationing, galloping inflation and mortgages of 15%, the Falklands Conflict, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the invasion of Iraq, and my being passed over for promotion to Commander that is quite some admission. Of course, it is probably because we had more immediate things to concern us. Or possibly that, in our present increasing senility, we have forgotten just how bad things were and how we did, in fact, care. Having said all that, I will still read the world news and shout at the politics programmes on the wireless on a regular basis. The fact is, we all need a little bit of stress in our lives now and again, or we would become benign smiling zombies sitting in our upright chairs in the old people’s home. Angst is good, and Jane vented hers by leaving the breakfast table and taking a pair of secateurs to Brian the Snail who lives used to live in the greenhouse. Alas, younger readers (if any) and non UK residents will not understand my reference to the children’s adult television programme, The Magic Roundabout, which combined a very dry and satirical English script with a French visual children’s animation to produce an adult cult-following in the late 1960s: Dylan the hippy, Brian the Snail, dour Dougal…The French, I understand, were baffled by the English interpretation.
We are back on dry land again (hence the saga of The Death of Brian) and our boating year is drawing to a close. Our marina in Dartmouth is undergoing a vast redevelopment from its previous existence as a shipyard and is about to start the phase that involves the sinking of new piles and the fitting of new pontoons. Hence, the management of the marina is keen to get as many boats ashore and out of the way as possible. APPLETON RUM will be lifted in late October, will have her bottom cleaned and polished (always a sound practice), and will be put to bed on the hardstanding for winter until the new berths are ready next spring. We have scheduled a last visit afloat to celebrate our wedding anniversary at Taylor’s restaurant and to remove bedding and so on for the duration. The promise of a new berth is exciting. At present, the pontoons that we moor on were made by the original shipyard from steel that has been patched, re-patched and welded many times. We berth against another boat and a degree of nautical shuffling is required to get out and proceed to sea. Fortunately, we get on exceptionally well with our “chummy” boat next door and the crew make a mean gin and tonic. When the new pontoons are ready – we hope by spring 2021 – we will have our own individual finger berth on a modern pontoon that has hardwood decking and looks very tiddley. Eventually, the whole marina will be utterly transformed to incorporate a hotel, holiday cottages, residential homes and a nautical college so we view each new development with lively anticipation, just as we look forward to the inevitable increase in mooring fees commensurate with the new facilities.
I should explain that our time on the boat is not spent solely on trips at sea and dinghy trial sessions. The original plan was that the boat would also become a holiday home in the south west: an area in which we used to holiday regularly. The cost benefit analysis that justified the shift in moorings leaned heavily on the savings we would make from not staying at self catering properties in Devonshire. A normal stay onboard usually incorporates lengthy walks in the area on alternate days, as outlined in Blog 54, and these are not without their excitement in a modest way. I recall that last year we walked to the National Trust property of Coleton Fishacre, previously the home of the D’Oyly Carte family of Gilbert & Sullivan fame. It is a modest and lovely house with a huge garden sloping down to the sea, so homely that I could just imagine us living there very happily (if only they got rid of the tourists). We were walking back along the narrow country lanes (a death trap, by the way, not recommended) and, as we approached a crossroads, Jane broke away from me to examine some item of flora on the opposite verge. This was very naughty, of course: as you will know from your Highway Code, (Rules for Pedestrians), (General Guidance), Rule 2, we should both have been on the right hand side of the road, and I did draw her attention to the fact, but she ignored me. At this point, a car emerged slowly from the right at the crossroads. It was driven by a respectable looking woman of middle to late years with permed hair and dressed in sensible tweed. Her resemblance to the late actress Margaret Rutherford was uncanny. She was faced by the sight of two people in the narrow road, one on the left-hand verge and one on the right (there were, at least, two grass verges). It was apparent that this close quarters situation was utterly beyond her experience or driving capability, because I could see her waving her arms, mouthing silently and, as they say in the vernacular, “giving it some”. She stopped, which was the sensible thing to do, and we strolled past. As I passed her open car window, I smiled benignly and said,
“I’m so sorry if it’s too difficult for you”.
“You sarcastic bastard”, she spat.
It is one of the many prerequisites of a successful naval officer that one should be able to inspire one’s people to do things outside their comfort zone and against all their instincts and ingrained behaviour. It was so refreshing, in this instance, to find that I had been successful in inspiring this doyenne of the local county set and Women’s Institute to vent her Anglo Saxon so well. I smiled again, gave her a cheery wave, and moved on whistling a merry tune. Sarcastic? Don’t know the meaning of the word. I must look it up in the dictionary.
The Covid 19 situation in the UK lurches on and the number of deaths per day has started to increase slightly, though at a rate nowhere near the same as the number of positive test results. The last is still being taken as a sign of a “second spike” and draconian measures have been imposed in some regions in the country. We now have to wear face coverings in restaurants and pubs as we transit to our table, whereupon they can be removed (so helpful when one is eating or drinking). Stand, and it is mask on; sit and it is mask off. We only heard about this new variation by chatting to friends, the news on CV19 being so annoying that we have stopped reading it. Jane and I are the only people in the United Kingdom who grumble about the ineffectiveness and pointlessness of wearing face coverings: everyone else in the country, including all our friends, are out of step. Scotland, wilting under the lash of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, appears to have been receiving the worst restrictions, with some students at university being told that they cannot leave their halls of residence or return home at Christmas, and the Scottish police stopping a 10-year-old girl’s birthday party and threatening her parents with arrest because too many people were popping in and out to leave birthday presents. I am glad I no longer live in Scotland: there is a fine dividing line between having a strong decisive leader and being ruled by a megalomaniac. Here in England, there have been so many bans, restrictions, curbs and U-turns that Boris himself could not explain the current state of “can and cannot do” in the north east region, when pressed recently. At last, MPs are starting to rally to demand parliamentary approval on all Covid 19 restrictions in England instead of the current chaotic dictatorship. I only hope that sanity is restored soon.
Quite a mild piece on Covid 19 there. I must be mellowing in my old age.
An anecdote from my old chum of Blog 51 fame must surely be overdue. For the benefit of readers who did not read the earlier blog, I should explain that my friend was a great raconteur of true stories from his naval career, with far more experiences than I. I would give him credit here, but the anonymity rules of a blog dictate that he must remain nameless. He once recounted to me his experiences as a Cadet in the training frigate in the early 1970s. The training that he (and I) went through involved a year of general training at the BRITANNIA Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, including three months at sea in a frigate of the Dartmouth Training Squadron; a year of general training at sea as a Midshipman; then specialist training – Engineers to read for a degree and Application Courses, Seamen and Supply officers (as the specialisations were then called) back to Dartmouth, then other establishments. The period as a Cadet in the Dartmouth Training Squadron was spent, essentially, as a rating: we slept and ate in a messdeck, painted ship, scrubbed decks and hauled on ropes. We were also required to watchkeep on the bridge, navigate the ship, and host guests at cocktail parties: a bit like sociable galley slaves. And now to the story. My chum was acting as the Bosun’s Mate (one of two guards on the gangway) on the night of a cocktail party in a foreign port. After the cocktail party petered out at about 2000, the wardroom went for a run ashore, smartly dressed in their dog robbers, and the evening quietened down. Some time before midnight, the wardroom returned in dribs and drabs, happy but not drunk. Each officer saluted gravely and went below. The Gunnery Officer came over the brow, saluted as was the custom, walked across the flight deck and, fully clothed in jacket and tie, dived over the side. Astonished, the Quartermaster (in charge of the gangway) immediately sounded the General Alarm and piped, “Man overboard! Man overboard! Away seaboat, port side”.
This was virtually an unheard-of alarm in harbour and it resulted in much tumult and shouting, with members of the duty watch running hither and thither, boats being swung out, searchlights being manned and a general mêlée on deck. In the midst of this chaotic scene, up the gangway again came the Gunnery Officer, dripping wet. He saluted again, as was custom.
“What’s going on?”, he asked.
My chum the Bosun’s Mate, somewhat bemused by the whole episode, replied hesitantly,
“We have a Man Overboard, sir…”
“Strap me”, said the Gunnery Officer, “I’ll help”, and promptly crossed the flight deck and dived in over the side again.
You don’t get runs ashore like that anymore.
We continue the culinary experiences and adventures, this week with a visit to The Red House at Marsh Benham near Newbury. We discovered this epicure’s delight many years ago when we were cruising along the nearby Kennet & Avon Canal. The first time we visited was characterised by us consuming an entire bottle of wine with an excellent lunch, then tacking back down the lane to our mooring on the canal, Jane tottering in her high heels, before crashing out onboard to sleep it off. We were woken by heavy rain on the metal roof of the boat and a feeling of having no idea where we were, who we were, or in what dimension. But I digress. We have taken to meeting our friends Fraser and Isla at The Red House every few months, the hostelry being fairly equidistant between our two houses, and we have never been disappointed with the food. This time, we had not met since February, just before The Black Death descended on us, so there was much to talk about. It was very pleasing to see that the eatery was fully booked: a testament to to the quality of the food and, I hope, a sign that the establishment will not go to the wall in the present economic situation. The fact that the pub was offering 25% off food may also have enhanced the popularity. The pub was vigorously enforcing the new ‘face coverings on entry’ rule and this could have been a mark against it under my policy outlined in Blog 60, but the proprietors carry a lot of credit with me from previous visits, so I kept my little black book in my pocket. I had chicken chowder, followed by steak and kidney pudding with savoy cabbage; Jane had roast beetroot salad followed by liver and bacon and chocolate ice cream. I was a bit puzzled by the term “chicken chowder” because it was my understanding that the term referred to a thick fish soup, but it still tasted delicious, the only drawback being the chicken bones and skin that were left in it. I have an aversion to bones and finding one usually puts me off a dish immediately (I once nearly choked on a piece of lamb bone, such asphyxiation process being undertaken against the backdrop of my wife and dinner guests laughing about it in the next room). I persisted in this case. Steak and kidney pudding with a mustard sauce is an old English favourite and I tucked into that like a good trencherman, washed down by a hearty Malbec (what a joy it was to be retired, with no work to do that afternoon). Jane declared her roast beetroot salad to be a bit thin on the beetroot, a bit heavy on the apple, and a little overpriced for what it was. Very picky my wife. She relished her liver and bacon, however, because it is a dish very rarely eaten at home, I having an aversion to offal and it being awkward for Jane to cook separate dishes for one meal. Yes, I know that the kidney in steak and kidney pudding is offal; don’t be pedantic. Our 50/50 share of the overall cost for the lunch with drinks came out at £50 for a couple, which we all thought very reasonable indeed, and Jane drove home as she was more sober than I was (in my defence, I only had two glasses of wine).
We drove down to The Big City the other day not, as you might infer, to do some sightseeing, but so that Jane could claim her free packet of Percy Pigs with a voucher from Marks & Spencers (M&S): fourteen miles for a packet of sweets and an enforced visit to ladies’ lingerie and Per Una. We found The Big City to be busy with tourists, but with many shops closed and boarded up. Bill posters, proclaiming obscure left wing propaganda advocating the slaughter of all Conservatives, had been stuck on many of the empty windows. Many big retail names had gone: Radley, L K Bennett, Lewins, to name but a few. The sales floors of M&S were very sparse and the quality of the clothes was a poor shadow of its former self. I thought the menswear on offer was (how can I put this tactfully) somewhat colourful and appealing only to a minority interest. We drifted aimlessly around the city, Jane clutching her pink sweets like a little girl at a village fête, but we decided that shopping and browsing had lost its pleasure under the present muzzle-wearing régime, and we soon came home again. It is very sad to see a lovely city dying on its feet and looking so shabby; still, Jane had her sweets, so she was happy.
Visits to big cities were not always so disappointing. I remember when our son Rupert was in his late teens he went through an “arty” phase and wanted us to drive him to some poetry extravaganza in far-away Bristol. Like good parents, we agreed and I appeared, ready to set off, in my Arts Rig (No 5) comprising large hat with floppy brim, a long silk scarf, a red silk shirt with top two buttons undone to reveal hairy chest, bright yellow trousers and suede boots. For some reason this annoyed him (“I knew he would do this! Mother! Tell him!”) and I was sent away to dress properly. The event in the Arnolfini, Bristol’s Centre for Contemporary Arts, was a bit bizarre to my mind (one poet spoke for ten minutes with every other word a four-letter one), but we made something of the evening by having a drink afterwards in the Pitcher and Piano and by me pointing out to Rupert attractive girls who would make pleasant companions for him. This last did not find favour. Eventually, we set off on the long journey home with Jane sober and driving. This went well until we came across a police road block in a nearby town because of a traffic accident and this threw out Jane’s navigation. She stopped indecisively.
“It’s no big deal, woman. Just do a three-point turn and we’ll go the other way”, was my helpful recommendation.
So Jane executed a nine point turn in someone’s driveway (security light coming on and curtains twitching) and we shot off the other way. By now Rupert and I, in our cups, were bonding at last and having an in-depth discussion about some matter of great import. Jane was sober and not entirely happy with this alliance and the boy-versus-girl situation that was developing. As we pulled up to the house, home at last, Rupert said,
“Oh Father, Alien 3 is on – we’ll just catch it. Mother, could we have some of those nice chicken sandwiches with mayonnaise that you do, with the crusts cut off”.
The boys did watched Alien 3, but their enjoyment was a little spoilt by the noise of someone dismembering a chicken in the kitchen next door with quite unnecessary violence.
As I write it is raining cats and dogs and the central heating is trundling away. Jane has just brought me a warming cup of tea and asked me how things are going by the polite enquiry of,
“My God, how much longer are you going to be writing that thing?”.
It seems that the sun passed over the zenith some time ago and the evening is drawing in. She is missing me, bless her, so I must draw a close and run to her side. By the sound of the loud chopping going on below me in the kitchen she probably needs advice on how to slice an onion. I simply must oblige.
Remember: stay dry, stay muzzled, and don’t kill granny.
30 September 2020
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 