Saints be praised, my ship has come in. I am required, officially, to give Jane a massage every other day using warm oil. I chortled with glee and flexed my fingers when she gave me the news. Whoopee!
“Don’t get any ideas, matey”, she said, fixing me with a basilisk eye.
“Heavens no, my dear. I shall be professional and disinterested throughout”, I said, gazing at her innocently with my baby blue eyes. She looked at me warily. I think she would wear a body stocking for the evolution if she could but, alas, the area requiring massage is her left thigh. After she imparted the news I considered the wide range of oils available, some with a marine engineering background to add that extra frisson of excitement efficacy: OEP69 for the extreme pressure? OMD113 for its detergent properties? Or simple Castrol GTX for a sporty flavour? She scotched my tribological ambitions in very short time: ordinary sunflower oil would, apparently, be perfectly adequate, but she intended to use, instead, argan oil from the Argania spinosa of south west Morocco; we just happened to have a bottle of it (as you do).
This new and exciting development in our mundane lives has emerged from a problem with Jane’s left leg, which – for quite some time – had been giving her pain when she walked, particularly when climbing uphill. She is being treated by our osteopath, an extremely capable practitioner who has also treated the England football team when not fixing Jane, and it was he who had prescribed the oily massage, along with some special exercises involving elastic bands that I am not permitted to describe to you: indeed, I am banned from the room when she is doing them, such is their provocative nature. It transpires that, paradoxically, Jane has been walking too much and too far: those nine-mile hikes in hilly Devonshire have done her no good at all and she has to take things a little easier for the moment. And as for that massage: why, it is a win/win situation for she gets a better leg and I get stronger fingers and the best laugh I have had for a long time. Right, my dear [cracking his knuckles], get your kit off and lie down. Now, I’m not going to hurt you…
Our clocks went back this week and we are now back on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), which is the correct natural time for Britain or, strictly speaking, those parts of Britain that lie on the Greenwich Meridian (zero degrees of longitude). At noon GMT on the Greenwich Meridian, the sun is at its highest point in the sky; after that time it starts to descend towards sunset. This is how navigators at sea calculated their longitude in the days before GPS (entering lecture mode here, pay attention). They carried a very accurate clock, called a chronometer, that remained set on GMT and they noted the time from it when the sun locally was at its highest in the sky (ie local noon). They measured the height of the sun (or, to be more accurate, the angle between the sun and the horizon) using a sextant. The time difference between noon at Greenwich (1200) and the time locally when the sun was at its highest (read from the chronometer) was then used to calculate the longitude because there are 15 degrees of longitude for every hour of time difference from Greenwich (24 hours in a day equating to 360 degrees in the earth’s rotation). The requirement for a highly accurate chronometer in this process is axiomatic, and achieving that goal historically is another story. I will not burden you with how to calculate latitude; I have probably tortured your mind quite enough, even supposing you got this far. I mention all this because, over my lifetime, the term “GMT” to define time has gone out of fashion; the preferred term now is “UTC” (Universal Coordinated Time), a time calculated by precise atomic clock based on the Earth’s rotation. I rather suspect that UTC is preferred now because the French hate any international standard that is based on English history, but that is just a scurrilous suspicion. I will stick with GMT, just as I will stick with AD and BC to describe dates rather than the trendy CE and BCE, woke terms introduced to avoid perceived offence to non-Christians. These traditional terms have been established for centuries, some for millennia, and I see no reason to change them now.
Time is interesting. Einstein wrote an entire theory based on it (you will be relieved to know that I have no intention of describing it here). Time can go slowly – such as on a wet Easter Sunday in Wales, or fast – such as after you reach the age of 60. Time in Britain used to be measured locally, based originally on the sun, but later on the local church clock. The church clocks in, say, Penzance, would strike noon about 22 minutes after the church clocks in London because they were farther west. In Britain it was only the coming of the railways in the mid 19th century that standardised the time for the whole country into one time zone, and this was so that a proper railway timetable could be published. The standardised time for the United Kingdom was initially viewed with great suspicion by the lesser educated, for it was believed that the government was stealing their time. Arguments about our time continue to this day and scarcely a year goes by without someone complaining about the whole concept of moving from GMT to British Summer Time (BST) in the spring and back again in the late autumn. This idea of Daylight Saving was first mooted by the American Benjamin Franklin in the late 18th century, but Germany was the first country to adopt the measure, during WW1. The United Kingdom followed suit when that war ended and, of course, many countries use Daylight Saving today. In Britain, Double British Summer Time was used during WW2 (to increase war production) and a trial was undertaken in the late 1960s/early 1970s in which BST was maintained for winter as well as summer. The latter trial produced inconclusive results and was abandoned. So here we are in 2020, still arguing about whether Daylight Saving is necessary over one hundred years since it was adopted. I suppose it makes a change from moaning about Covid 19.
Now: would you like me to explain how it is possible to over-lag a pipe? No? It’s very interesting…Another time perhaps.
The British are not good at complaining. That is a very bold generalisation, but I think it is fair comment when one compares us to, say, Americans, who set the bar high and have a reputation for being very exacting in the level of service they expect for their money. For example, tolerating poor food or service in restaurants is not uncommon in Britain:
“Everything all right here?”, asks the hotelier Basil Fawlty in his restaurant.
“Oh yes, lovely, thank you Mr Fawlty”, is the reply despite the meat being cold and as tough as old boots
Sadly, I fit the mould perfectly in this regard though, in my defence and the defence of my fellow countrymen, I take the view that it is not my job, as the customer, to act as the Quality Assurance Manager for a restaurant: if I get a bad meal then I simply tell all my friends about it and make sure that I do not return. That is the British approach on the whole, though I do have some friends who are very tactful and fair in drawing management’s attention to shortfalls in service. I have complained about food and service from time to time, but I have found that complaining only results, at best, in a delayed meal with the diners’ courses out of sync or getting cold while the defective dish is replaced or (rarely), at worst, in bad feeling and an upset stomach if the complaint has not been well received. There is also the risk that the chef may spit in your food. This reluctance to complain applies to other faulty products too and I tend to get Jane to take products back if they prove defective. This is not because I am a wimp (though I am), but because by the time I have built up the pressure to complain I usually have become so angry that there is a risk of me losing my temper. Like the Incredible Hulk, I am not likeable when I am angry. Angry people sometimes say things that they should not say.
An example of that little homily occurred several years ago; this is a longish story, by the way, but bear with me while I relate the salutary tale as there is a lesson to be learnt therein. I had decided to buy some new ink cartridges for my fountain pen (I normally fill the pen from an ink bottle; this was a rare, and not repeated, venture into modernity). At lunchtime I drove down to the centre of Bath (where I worked at the time) and visited WH Smith, the stationers. There, I scoured the shelves and finally found the correct ink cartridges for my Waterman fountain pen, bought them, and returned to work. Those readers who can remember, or may still have, a fountain pen will recall that an ink cartridge is about two inches long and is tapered at one end in the shape of a bullet, the ‘nib’ end being the narrow bit. Back at my desk, try as I might, I could not get the cartridges to fit my pen: the ‘nib’ end was too narrow. This was most annoying, but I decided that it was a consequence of my foolishly buying the product off the shelf from a general stationer’s instead of from a specialist pen supplier. It just so happened that, in Bath at that time, there was an excellent purveyor of pens and high-class stationery called Woods: the sort of place in which I could spend hours just looking at the pens, the propelling pencils, the bottles of green Stephens’ ink, the Filofaxes and the Basildon Bond writing paper. The staff in Woods spoke in hushed tones and wore brown dust coats, like doctors or pharmacists but at a more artisan level, and this garb added credibility to their expertise and authority. The next day I drove into Bath again, entered Woods, and approached one of these savants. I explained the situation and asked, could she help?
“Of course, sir”.
She presented me with the correct cartridges. I looked at them. They looked suspiciously like the ones I already had. I asked, was she absolutely certain that these were the correct ones for a Waterman fountain pen?
“Definitely”, she said.
So I bought them (at a price greater than the ones in WH Smith) and returned to work. I tried them in the pen. Yet again, the narrow ‘nib’ end was too small for the pen. Now I was getting annoyed: that was two fruitless trips into Bath in my lunch hour. Uncharacteristically, I immediately leapt into my car and drove back to Woods, this time taking the fountain pen and cartridges with me. I approached the woman who had sold me the cartridges an hour before and introduced myself. She remembered me. I did not lose my temper exactly, but (shall we say) I was not my normal happy cheerful self. I said firmly,
“You sold me these cartridges and assured me, twice, that they were the correct cartridges for this Waterman pen”. I held up a cartridge and the pen for her scrutiny.
“That is correct, sir. Those are the correct cartridges”.
I unscrewed the pen.
“Well, I am a Chartered Engineer”, I said, ”and I defy you to fit that cartridge into this pen”. I cannot recall if I snapped my fingers at this point, but the sentiment was there.
“Certainly, sir”, she said.
She took the cartridge, reversed it from the way I held it and inserted the larger, blunt end of the cartridge successfully into the pen.
“Ah. Well, thank you very much”, I said meekly. And crawled out under the door.
I revisited Bath quite some time ago and I noticed that Woods had closed after over a hundred years of service. But I still experienced a flush of embarrassment as I walked past the building. Not my finest hour, perhaps, but I learned from it: far easier to get Jane to take things back if they are faulty. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
We are still in the “second wave” of CV19 infections and the total deaths that were reported yesterday, as I write, stood at 310 for the whole UK. At one point it looked like the death rate might have been levelling off, but that does not now seem quite so likely. At least the rate of daily deaths is not as bad as it was in April. Those component countries of the UK that have their own governments or assemblies have revelled in their new-found autonomy from central government and have fallen over themselves to adopt different approaches to the problem. Entirely as I predicted in my last blog, Scotland has upped the ante on epidemic states (“I see your three Tiers and raise you five”); Wales has gone into a total lockdown (referred to as a “firebreak”, just to be different) and has banned the sale of “non essential items” such as clothes and books, while allowing the sale of alcohol; Northern Ireland has yet another version of restrictions. England is still tackling the problem regionally, with Greater Manchester, Liverpool, South Yorkshire and areas of Lancashire among those parts at the highest level of restrictions, Tier 3. The term “circuit-breaker” is replacing the term “lockdown” and I am sure that will help enormously. There is a strong possibility that a vaccine may be available by Christmas, which is good news, but I am puzzled by the number of people who have said they would not have it. Heck, I would piddle on a carburettor if it would help us to get out of the present restrictions.
“Don’t you know there’s a war on?”. So went the common refrain eighty years ago whenever anyone complained about service or the absence of goods in the shops. Someone must have rummaged in the archives, dug the phrase out, and repackaged it for Covid 19: “Don’t you know we’re fighting a virus?”. The current epidemic is being used as an excuse for every inefficiency and occurrence of poor service going, and no-one seems to challenge it. Go on almost any website providing a service such as a bank, an insurance company or the local authority and the warning is there somewhere: expect delays. Even Eurostar tried to use Covid as an excuse for not providing WiFi in some of its rail carriages recently. While some private companies have overcome the difficulties of the present situation by innovation, the ubiquitous use of Perspex or by manning telephones from home, others, and many public bodies, have just thrown up their hands and shut down their service: all too difficult. Yet, you know, throughout this seven-month epidemic the lights have stayed on, the water has flowed, the gas has lit, the bins have been emptied, the shops have been manned, and Amazon has managed next-day delivery. On top of this the medical and emergency services have saved lives, arrested criminals, put out fires and rescued mariners. My point is that, if these stalwart people can go out there and do their job in contact with the public for seven months, then there is no excuse for office-based people on the end of a telephone or computer terminal not being able to provide a service. This epidemic has become an excuse for laziness, risk avoidance and a lack of innovation. Hrrmph.
I outlined in my last blog (Blog 64) the tragic events surrounding the run up to D-Day in South Devonshire and, since then, I have read an extract from a leaflet issued to American servicemen to help them integrate with their host country. It was well-written and most illuminating, particularly the annex that listed the different meanings of words in American and English. Along with the rest of my generation I was brought up watching Broderick Crawford and Clayton Moore on the television, so many differences were already known to me, but it is educational to realise that, back in 1941, the American way of life was still something of a mystery to the British. For example, several older Devonshire natives had never seen a black man before and were fascinated by black US soldiers and sailors. Some of the terms that we British used then were new to me and, clearly, some of our words have gone the way of time. I noticed that the US leaflet did not address some of the more potentially embarrassing misunderstandings that could arise: “I’m just popping out for a fag” or “Can anyone lend me a rubber?” must surely have caused some incredulity among the GIs. Thanks to films and television, we in Britain are a lot more familiar with the American way of life now, though some aspects can still surprise us. I remember when a bunch of my Chief Petty Officers went for a run ashore in Mayport, Florida, consumed a certain amount of that stuff that made Milwaukee famous and, hiccuping quietly, took a taxi back to the ship, four of them sitting in the back. The taxi was pulled over by a traffic policeman for some misdemeanour or other and the policeman was giving the driver a serious talking to.
“But he was only…” interrupted one of my Chiefs in the driver’s defence.
The policeman put his hand on the butt of his revolver.
“Shut up Limey!”
According to the account given to me, you have never seen four senior ratings close their mouths so fast. We don’t tend to get that sort of robust response from the British bobby, on the whole.
Oh dear, I am in deep doo dah. The memsahib has just appeared in the doorway with a stern look and clutching an item of ladies’ underwear and a floor duster. My initial elation that a new and exciting diversion might be in store was dispelled when she explained her meaning. It seems she has discovered that I have been laundering her knickers, camisoles and other smalls in the same batch as the washable floor mops and dusters. I had applied that well-known psychological principle of “what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over”, which has worked well for me in the past. Unfortunately, I had failed to take account of Little Miss Pinkerton, she of The Eye That Never Sleeps: put succinctly, her wide-awake eye had seen. This came about because (as I pointed out to her) she had interfered in my part of ship, namely Dhobying, by transferring the latest batch of washing from the washing machine to the tumble dryer while I was occupied elsewhere; in the process she had discovered the extraneous items in the mix. During the lengthy dressing-down that followed, real or imagined historical occurrences of sawdust and grit in her brassieres, knickers and tights were mentioned, together with all manner of unexplained rashes and itches. I was told, in no uncertain terms, to desist from the practice of mixing household and personal laundry forthwith. Aye, aye sir ma’am. Phew, lucky she didn’t see how I cleaned those mooring warps taken from the boat.
Life goes on here in Barsetshire and we have adjusted back to life ashore, seamlessly. Jane is either gardening, cooking or baking cakes and I am either buying new gadgets or making model ships. It is all rather mundane, of course, and our expeditions into the wastes of the Great British Countryside have had to be curtailed because of Jane’s poorly leg, but we are content. Following the practice of some friends of ours we have decided to Go Out For a Drive two days a week, and visit different towns or cities. I am just a little bit worried that we are turning into our parents and emulating their behaviour in the 1960s (we are already using their phraseology), but we cannot stay at home every day or we will get cabin fever. When the clocks went back Jane commented that we would get a lie-in the next day and it would be like a holiday. I told her,
“Honey, for us every day is a holiday”.
We have good friends, good health, good food and are spending our son’s inheritance. What more could you ask?
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think Jane is ready for a little heated oil therapy. Oh, and remember children what the grown-ups are telling us: face, hands, knees and bumps-a-daisy.
29 October 2020
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 