As I attacked the sixth pair of trousers with the steam iron, I reflected that maybe, just maybe, it had not been such a good idea to strip the boat of all our items of clothing for the duration of her period ashore. In the past we haven’t bothered, simply relying on the onboard dehumidifier to protect our gear from damp and mildew for the winter; and, indeed, that had worked for sixteen years or so, the only exception being when we had had a berth that had no shore power. But this time, for no strong reason, we had decided to make a clean sweep, and what a trawl the resulting clear-out was: it filled an entire large suitcase and overflowed into the many huge canvas sacks that we normally use for transporting shopping and dunnage. We were astonished. All boats are limited on stowage space and ours is no exception. There are no drawers, just lockers and a few shelves, so clothes tend to get rolled up and simply crammed in using the haemorrhoid system. Items get added for some special occasion such as a celebratory run ashore but then, mysteriously, are never taken home again; extra underwear and socks are brought onboard in case of an unplanned immersion or an unexpected cold spell – and remain there. Why on Earth did Jane have six pairs of shoes onboard? Why did I have three dress shirts, one with double cuffs and cufflinks, and four pairs of smart trousers? When we turned out the suitcase back home there were so many pairs of socks and items of underwear that we could not cram them into the drawers in our bedroom and it dawned on me that we had, in effect, created a second home with duplicate items of everything. And all of it appeared to be in the ironing basket. I turned to the next item in the enormous pile: a pair of Jane’s flannelette pyjamas, worn only on the boat. As if by magic, a voice spoke from the hall,
“When you come to my pyjamas could you iron them please? The fabric is a bit rough otherwise”
Now who irons pyjamas? Still, her wish is my command and I pride myself in providing a comprehensive service. I reached for the spray starch; does one put the crease down the front of the trousers like a pair of slacks, or across the seams, like a pair of jeans? I opted for the latter, pyjamas being informal attire. I must say, the resultant package looked very smart when I had folded the ensemble into a crisp, neat, exact square with sharp starched creases down the jacket, as taught at Dartmouth. I wonder if she will notice? Probably not. And now for that brassiere: pass me that starch.
Onboard ship we had a ship’s laundry, usually a tiny compartment containing a range of industrial laundry equipment and manned by The Chinese Laundrymen. This small band of Hong Kong Chinese toiled away in their cramped steamy den twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, rarely venturing out except to collect food or use the heads or bathroom. They lived, worked and slept in there and only communicated with the rest of the ship through No 1 Boy, the head laundryman. Of course they charged fees for their work: they operated as a private company and were not slaves; but they kept themselves to themselves and worked like Trojans. I was the Laundry Officer in one ship, but even I had to consult the personnel files to remind myself how many laundrymen there were (about six in a frigate). I dealt with Mr Tow, No 1 Boy. As Laundry Officer I received free laundry, but presented Mr Tow with a thick bundle of new £10 notes (as was custom) every Chinese New Year. By golly, how those men worked and their product was always immaculate. In the tropics, my white shorts and dress uniform could stand up on their own, so good was the starching. Having Hong Kong Chinese onboard in a private capacity was a legacy of empire, I suppose. When I was a Midshipman in 1970/71 my ship also had a Chinese cobbler and a Chinese tailor. The former would run up a bespoke pair of boots or shoes in a week or so, based on a traced footprint; the latter could run up a suit or uniform in no time. Both were ridiculously cheap. As far as I know, no ship has these artisans any more and I am not sure about the Chinese laundrymen either, now that Hong Kong has returned to being part of the PRC.
Provision was always made in a ship’s complement for manning the laundry, just as provision had to be made for other communal tasks such as internal cleaning, washing-up and so on. There was no branch borne solely for these menial tasks though stewards looked after officers’ accommodation and waited at table in the wardroom. Instead, every department had to provide a number of hands for communal tasks on a rotational basis under the principle of “all of one company”. Describing this process could involve consequences in certain circumstances, as happened to a friend of mine, whom we will call Fred. Fred had been promoted from being a Chief Artificer (what is now, in the 21st century navy, a senior technician ) and was a Special Duties, or SD, Officer: an obsolete branch which, at the time, filled an essential role in providing specialised, though narrow, expertise in a particular subject such as engineering, seamanship or whatever. We were serving in an aircraft carrier and it was the Captain’s custom to write, every six months, to the parents of Juniors (ratings under the age of 18) to give them an update on their sons’ progress. Of course, these letters were drafted by the ratings’ Divisional Officers and the drafts (in longhand in those days) would pass through several iterations as they transited through various levels of command on their way to the Captain for typing and his signature. It just so happens that one of Fred’s men was a Junior Mechanic who was working as part of the ship’s Dining Hall Party, so when Fred drafted the Captain’s letter, he wrote something like,
“…your son is employed in the ship’s Dining Hall Party, a communal task which everyone has to do from time to time, but he will soon be returning to his engineering duties and training…”
and duly sent the draft up the line for approval.
Now, the way paperwork is done in the Royal Navy is that correspondence or drafts such as I have mentioned are placed in a file or pack and the pack is circulated to relevant officers. Each officer comments on the correspondence as a minute on a facing sheet of paper, starting with “By First Lieutenant”, or whatever their title was, and ending with the date and their initials. The exceptions to this “top and tailing” of minutes were the First Sea Lord, Flag Officers and Commanding Officers (= The Captain) who, instead, just wrote their minute anonymously in coloured ink: the First Sea Lord used green ink, Flag Officers used purple ink and Commanding Officers used red ink. Anyway, to get back to my story, Fred’s draft letter duly went up the system and after several days the pack returned to him with an anonymous minute in red commenting on his draft. It said,
“Be more specific!”.
As a newly promoted SD Officer in the Marine Engineering specialisation, Fred undoubtedly knew a Greer Mercier Flask from a Plummer Block, but he had not had the benefit of a Dartmouth education and the significance of the red writing passed him by. Snorting with annoyance, he re-drafted his letter to,
“…your son is employed in topping up the pepper pots and ketchup bottles in the ship’s dining hall and occasionally sweeping or swabbing the deck to remove discarded crumbs and spots of gravy…”,
and promptly sent the pack back up the line.
Several days later the pack returned to his IN tray, this time with a new anonymous minute written forcefully in red saying,
“Do not be facetious!”
Fred had had enough of this. Shooting his cuffs, and voicing the comment,
“Who is this so-and-so? I’ll give him facetious…”,
he drew the pack towards him, grasped his pen, and began to formulate a terse and witty response. Fortunately, one of us was passing behind him at the time, glanced over his shoulder, and saw the writing in red. It was like one of those scenes from the cartoon of Tom and Jerry where the cat goes rigid, points, and screams in terror. We just managed to stop him before he put pen to paper. His comment, when it was all explained, was,
“Well how was I to know…?”
On the Covid front we are still enduring the so-called “second wave”, though the disparity between the high number of daily positive tests and the relatively low number of daily deaths remains. The situation also varies significantly according to the part of the country one examines: infection (with or without symptoms) appears to be high in the north of England, but is low in the south. Cornwall, in the bottom left, East Anglia, on the right, and South Wales have low infection rates. Notwithstanding the situation in South Wales, the principality has taken it upon itself to shut down and to close its borders with England, the latter of dubious legality and impossible practicality. Scotland is extending its existing lockdown and is about to introduce its own grading system which, I dare say, will be as different from England’s as possible. University cities typically have seven times the number of infections of cities with no students. In England we have had a minor revolution in that the mayor of Greater Manchester refused to move to the highest response level, Tier 3, without a substantial compensation package from central government. A negotiated deal could not be reached and so the laws were imposed on the region. Liverpool, Greater Manchester and South Yorkshire go to Tier 3 on Saturday, meaning, broadly, that pubs and bars which are not serving food must close; restaurants must close at 2200; separate households cannot mix outdoors or indoors in private gardens or hospitality areas; no more than six people can meet outdoors publicly; and people are advised not to leave or enter the area. The aim, as before, is to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed, but I note that hospital occupation and the death rate for respiratory problems in Greater Manchester are at about at the usual level for this time of year, and the new temporary “Nightingale” hospitals are still not in use. I genuinely sympathise with the people being restricted in these regions as I believe that any form of mass lockdown is simply kicking the can down the road, but I admire the prime minister’s robust response during the negotiations with Manchester’s mayor: at the end of the day it comes down to the question of “who is running this country?”. The number of daily deaths attributed to Covid 19 currently stands at 191.
I have never been a great one for sport. I will amplify that: I know nothing whatsoever about any kind of sport and, in the days before television remote controls, I obtained my exercise by diving for the television set to switch off the Olympics. Alas, my son Rupert developed a taste for football despite all my efforts to shield him from the game, and he ended up supporting Sunderland United: a lost cause if ever there was one. As Rupert grew into a teenager without any sign of a cure for his affliction, Jane took me to task for not developing a healthy rapport with the lad, citing football as a potential starting point. I took this advice seriously and resolved to watch the next Sunderland game on the television so that I could clew up on useful phrases and comment on the action. I seem to recall that I even took notes. The next day I tackled young Rupert with an opening gambit.
“Not a bad game last Saturday…”.
He looked at me suspiciously.
“I thought Thompson played well, but that was a really dirty tackle. And as to that ref…”
“Yes”, he said, responding at last, ”Since they bought in Cartwright their game has really picked up and they may make the Premier League”
“Did you see that bit in the second half – that was brilliant”
You get the gist. At last we had a good rapport going and we were bonding. In my mind’s eye I could see this relationship growing by the minute like the framework of a new house, no easy task with a teenager. We chatted some more in great detail, me drawing on my mental notes of the game.
“It’s a pity they lost though”, he said.
“True”, I said, “but they did quite well bearing in mind that they were playing against a top Scottish team”.
There was a silence.
“What blinking Scottish team?”, he asked with some incredulity.
“Tranmere Rovers”
“Father, Tranmere Rovers is a team from Liverpool”.
The noise I heard was the crash of our newly found football relationship collapsing like a house of cards. We never spoke again about football, but now and again he still looks at me and shakes his head. Fathers.
Yesterday was Trafalgar Day: the 215th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar in which Admiral Lord Nelson and the British Fleet took on the combined fleets of France and Spain off Cape Trafalgar and defeated them: thwarting the attempt by Napoleon to invade Great Britain. Sadly, Nelson was killed by a sniper during the battle and he was greatly mourned by the Royal Navy, who loved him. He is still much revered by the Royal Navy. Last night, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in aircraft carriers and patrol vessels, in frigates and nuclear submarines, ashore and afloat, officers of the Royal Navy will have been sitting down at Mess Dinners to commemorate his memory We in the Royal Navy have the unique privilege of drinking the Royal Toast to the Queen while sitting down; but we stand to drink the toast to The Immortal Memory of Admiral Lord Nelson. A great man.
When I retired from the Royal Navy, the dried-up husk – emptied of all its energy and worth – was cast onto the shore clutching a personal “thank you” letter from the Second Sea Lord (“Dear Horatio… Yours sincerely…” personally added in writing). With the thanks came an extensive pack of papers telling me, inter alia, that I still held the Queen’s Commission and rank, that I should keep my uniform in a serviceable condition, and that if the balloon went up, I would be among the first to know. I could not recall having signed anything to that effect when I joined Dartmouth, but I shrugged, sharpened my sword, and bought a new uniform cap (well, you never know). Jane was still working and so it was at that time that I added the household duties of Dhobying, Decks, Dusting and Soogeeing to the existing onerous tasks of DIY, Drinks and Executive Command. How hard could housekeeping be, I reasoned: surely it was simply a Planned Maintenance task and could be tackled as such? But housework is literally and figuratively a chore, don’t you find? I lasted two weeks. It was so boring. I then suggested to Jane that perhaps it would be better to employ a professional for the job so that I could be released for more important duties such as drawing up and maintaining the Master Plan, creating a broad strategy for our retirement, and overall supervision of the household. Having capably juggled the housekeeping, childcare and cooking at the same time as holding down a job for the previous fifteen years, alone, while I was at sea, Jane just looked at me in that way of hers. In my defence, I have to say that women, by their own admission, are known to be superhuman and capable of multitasking, unlike us men. Also, the housekeeping was turning me into an old woman: at one point I ordered Jane out of the lavatory before she could use the facilities because I had just cleaned the pan (I seem to recall that I may have actually polished it too). No, I argued with cogent and logical reasoning, it would be far better to employ a Mrs Mop. This aspiration became flesh in the form of Sue the Cleaner, one of the many Sues we know (Blog 57). Sue was great, both as a cleaner and a source of local gossip and we kept her on until Jane retired and the housekeeping (excluding Decks and Dhobying) reverted to her. I always remember that, after Sue the Cleaner’s first day, the kitchen sink positively sparkled so much that I almost had to wear sun glasses. I pointed this out to Jane when she came home from work and she let me wax poetically and enthusiastically about it at some length before interrupting and saying,
“Horatio, I cleaned that before she came. I wasn’t having some woman coming in here and thinking I was a slut”.
I don’t think I will ever understand women. But it is fun trying.
22 October 2020
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 