Right. The next time I put forward the idea of driving down memory lane (almost literally) and completing a journey on the old trunk roads instead of the motorway (as in Blog 87), then for heaven’s sake stop me. We decided to have A Grand Day Out last week: a Drive, as my parents would have called it. We decided to drive to Port Solent, near Portsmouth. This was partly to get us out of the house for a change; partly to re-accustom ourselves to driving an electric car with the requisite pit stops to recharge; partly to have a look at another marina; and partly to visit a chandlery, and look at inflatable dinghies or tenders. This last aim was a follow-on from last week (Blog 94) to have a proper look at the real thing and decide the size we would need. Regular readers will correctly infer that it was also part of my softening up process on Jane, trying to persuade her to agree to a capital purchase, previously vetoed. Our car could easily do the journey on one charge, but – ever the pessimist – I thought it would be prudent to top up the car battery at Romsey en route, then continue along the old A27 to our destination, spurning the M27. All went well at first, for England was at its best: the sun shone, the weather forecast was good, the first half of the journey was scenic and smooth, and we recharged at Romsey Leisure Centre without any problem. Then we drove into Hell. My memory of the A27 was hazy: certainly it was a road that I had used a lot when I was based in Portsmouth but, hmmm, now I came to think of it, that would have been forty years ago; in later naval appointments I had used the motorway. The road was appalling: congested, slow, and with a confusing dog’s leg in the middle that took me off the route onto the A33 somewhere on the outskirts of Southampton. Stop, start, stop, start – we lurched along in the suburban traffic queues, frequently getting in the wrong lane and generally making very little progress. It must have taken us over an hour and a half to travel thirty miles. Eventually, we did reach the outskirts of Port Solent and I was astonished by the changes in the area. At junctions, vehicles shot out from right, left, straight ahead and behind: the A27 had become an eight-lane trunk road and was buzzing like a wasp’s nest; it used to be a quiet urban street. In my day, Port Solent, off to the south, did not exist in name and had been a fairly rural, low-lying coastal area that housed only the Royal Navy’s antediluvian firefighting school at Horsea Island, a great deal of smoke, three geese, two seagulls and not much else. I had not been back since. The area now had acquired a fancy title and comprised an enormous complex of flats (called “apartments”), a multiplex cinema, industrial units, many carparks, and Premier Marina’s Port Solent site – our destination. We drove round twice before we found the marina, the roadsigns being confusing and contrary, but eventually we parked outside the Reception building and switched off the power unit with a sigh. We clambered out of the car like two beasts that had been trapped in the double bottoms for a week, and took in the view. It was breathtaking. A huge expanse of glittering, translucent green water lay in front of us in the sunshine, stretching over to medieval Portchester Castle. To the north was Portsdown Hill, still with the characteristic buildings and radar aerials of what used to be the Admiralty Surface Weapons Establishment (now the Defence Evaluation & Research Agency I believe). To the south lay Paulsgrove and Fareham Lakes and, beyond that, out of sight, was Whale Island, Portsmouth harbour and the naval base. Navigational piles marked the channel into the marina itself, which was accessed by a tidal lock. The marina looked modern and smart, with all the facilities needed to support the leisure boating industry: boat lift, workshops, dry stack area, fuel. It was surrounded by blocks of very ritzy-looking flats, like a nautical coliseum. This, we thought, is partly what our marina will look like in the future. I thought it would be a good idea to charge up the car again so that it could be topping up as we wandered around; we didn’t need to do that as we had sufficient charge to return home, but – like passing water – a wise man does it when the opportunity presents itself and does not wait until he becomes desperate. I approached the marina Reception for guidance. I had previously sent them an email asking what facilities the marina had to charge electric cars. The reply had been vague and of the style of “none as such, but marina staff will provide a portable facility on an ad hoc basis”. I did not understand what they meant by that: a portable generator perhaps, or a 600V battery? Anyway, armed with this information I approached Reception only to find that it was shut, with a notice on the door: “Buzz to speak. Reception closed because of Covid”. Ah yes, the – now standard – excuse for poor service; it was a wonder it didn’t say, “Don’t you know there’s a war on?”. I buzzed and explained my business, asking at the same time where I could get this “ad hoc car charging”. There was an awkward silence. Eventually, a figure appeared on the balcony above me, a male Juliet to my Romeo. He was even more vague than the previous email: he gestured hazily to a car park and the dry stack, which housed beached yachts, in the distance and said that, if I wandered round there, I might find “something” to charge the car. My male bovine excrement alarm was ringing at full volume by this time – clearly there were no facilities, but – worse – my email had triggered no thought to make any future provision for electric cars despite the government’s plans to ban the sale of ICE cars in nine years’ time. Jane and I did wander over to the area he had indicated but, of course, there was nothing: not even a 13A socket. My own marina at Noss (also part of the Premier Marina Group) is still being developed and facilities are currently somewhat basic; yet they still provided an external 13A socket and a dedicated bay for an electric car when I raised the matter, and the Reception is always open to visitors during the day. We were not impressed by ‘Solent.
We thought Port Solent Marina was rather impersonal, overlooked and over-busy, and we would not have liked to have kept our boat there despite the lovely views. On the plus side, the marina did have a large bar and brasserie, The Port House, and there we sat in the sunshine eating a very pleasant lunch, served with no fuss or requirement to have booked. From our table we viewed the boats on their moorings, did some people watching, and sought out the chandlery. I had concluded a fair bit of business online with Marine Superstore, the chandlery, but I had never visited it before. It proved to be a veritable Aladdin’s Cave, full of shiny things for boats that you never knew you needed. I wandered the store in delight, touching shackles here, stroking oilskins there, seeking out the inflatable boat section. The showroom was huge and in several sections, like Santa’s Grotto. I was in my seventh heaven, but the magic didn’t seem to be there for Jane somehow: she trailed behind me like a teenager taken into town for a new pair of sensible shoes instead of being allowed to go to the school disco, her eyes dull and lack-lustre, her steps mechanical. Odd that. Anyway, in grotto cavern number five (or whatever), I eventually found the inflatable dinghies and was able to assess their robustness, heft and potential stability. I brought Jane back from her Fourth Degree of Readiness and drew her attention to a 2.3m vessel that looked like it was The Business. Amazingly, she showed some interest and agreed that we should go ahead with the purchase (I may have worn her down when we passed through the stainless steel deck fittings for the third time earlier). Remembering the motto of my alma mater, HMS THUNDERER, to “Beat the Iron While ’Tis Hot”, and never being one to miss an opportunity, I drifted nonchalantly, but determinedly, back to the cash desk and stated the intention of acquiring the dinghy; alas, they had none in stock and had no forecast of when next they would. Damn. Still, the Rubicon had been crossed and I set myself the secret task of finding that type of dinghy from wherever I could find one. I wondered what the Border Agency did with those dinghies used by illegal immigrants in the English Channel – maybe I could get one cheap. It was, by that time, time to go. The journey home was straightforward: we took the M27 motorway. Road works limited our speed on the motorway to 50mph, but the trip was still pure heaven after the journey down. We staggered into home stiff, baked, coated in suntan oil, but happy. What a Grand Day Out.
I did track down an alternative supplier of 2.3m inflatable dinghies the next day (Carpe Diem – Seize The Day) and placed an order on-line immediately. Blow me, a few hours later, my friend Raymond in Dartmouth sent me an email flagging up the fact that his neighbour was selling a 2.3m dinghy, with its outboard motor, for the same price I had just paid for the new dinghy. What a coincidence! This was obviously an opportunity too good to miss. Within the hour I had contacted the seller, bought the boat and motor (unseen), paid for it, and cancelled the on-line order. Raymond very kindly agreed to effect the delivery from his neighbour to APPLETON RUM at her mooring. Oh it is all so exciting. I love spending money, don’t you? More on the new (old) tender and its outboard motor later.
Whale Island (mentioned earlier) is an artificial island in Portsmouth Harbour, created by the spoil from the dredged harbour and excavated dry docks in the dockyard in the 19th century. It is home to HMS EXCELLENT (a shore base), once the Royal Navy’s Gunnery School, but now Naval Command Headquarters. The island (developed from an original natural thin promontory) was created largely by French prisoners of war in the Napoleonic Wars and is joined to the mainland by a bridge. In my time, if you were not of the gunnery branch then most officers just passed through EXCELLENT for courses, often with a shudder for the gunnery branch was the home for the Navy’s parade training experts, the Gunnery Instructors (GIs) – the equivalent of the Regimental Sergeant Majors in the army. EXCELLENT meant lots of shouting and lots of marching, rifle drill, sword drill, doubling around the parade ground and firm orders: excellent in nature as well as name. In another life, I should have been a Gunnery Officer. It just so happened that I was living in EXCELLENT in about 1989, undergoing several courses. Home was too far away to commute, so I lived in the mess (the wardroom) during the week. Now, it is a characteristic of naval shore wardrooms, and probably the officers’ messes of the other services too, that they are very quiet in the evenings and virtually dead at weekends: officers who can, go home after Secure to their wives or husbands. When I was staying, one evening after dinner such officers as there were seemed to drift away like the sands of the Nile and the bar was empty. I wandered idly through the building, absorbing the history (I believe EXCELLENT may be the oldest shore establishment in the Royal Navy), looking at photographs of long-dead officers in obsolete uniforms (some, bizarrely, on horseback) and ships turned to razor blades centuries ago. Down one corridor I found an obscure narrow stairway that twisted its way up to the cabins on the first floor and, purely out of idle curiosity, decided to explore. Half way up, at the turn of the stairs, I happened to glance up and saw a small hole, suspiciously like a bullet hole, in the wall just below the join with the ceiling. Underneath was a small brass plaque, about 3” by 2”. It read:
“This bullet was fired by Sub Lieutenant A J Ponsington-Smythe Royal Navy [not his real name] on the occasion of a Mess Dinner to celebrate Armistice Day, 11 November 1918.”
Gosh, that must have been one heck of a party. We don’t have mess dinners like they used to.
Summer has come (in Melbury at least) and it appears to be the time of All Things Sport. First there is something going on called the Euros (which I thought was a currency), but also it is the time of tennis, and the build up to Wimbledon next month. Jane loves tennis and loves Wimbledon. In the heat of a warm sunny day she will sit indoors with the curtains drawn, swinging her head from side to side as she watches the television where players grunt at each other like primeval cavemen or cavewomen. Having seen some of the female players I think the comparison is apt. Every now and again someone on the television will say “Juice” or something like that, and the crowd will clap. I presume that that is when the players break to get their Robinson’s Lemon Barley Water or other juice. I cannot see the attraction of the game, myself , but Jane is totally hooked and I let her get on with it. She is making the supreme sacrifice next month and giving a miss to part of the Wimbledon tournament so that I can enjoy my birthday on the boat in Dartmouth; but I know her thoughts will be elsewhere during my birthday lunch. I have my boat and new dinghy; Jane has her garden and Wimbledon: different ships, different long splices.
Thinking of splices, the last time I was on the boat I spent a busy afternoon splicing some warps. I was not actually sitting on a bollard, splicing away with gnarled hands and a fid while sucking an old pipe and wearing an old cap at a jaunty angle, but I might as well have been. Like bulling shoes (Blog 88), splicing is a wonderful opportunity for just pondering on life. I was reflecting that the ability to splice rope seems to be a dying art among seamen, and I wondered if it was a skill still taught in the Merchant Navy and Royal Navy. The ability to complete a back splice, eye splice, short splice and long splice used to be a prerequisite for advancement to Able Bodied Seaman (AB), but I would wager that that is no longer the case. I rather suspect that the rate of AB has probably been overtaken by political correctness too, along with Ordinary Seaman (OS). Heaven knows what they call them now: Able Bodied Seafarer perhaps, with no-one being allowed to be ‘ordinary’. I was taught splicing when I was a little boy by my father, a Master Mariner, and I have never forgotten the skill though I would not like to attempt splicing steel wire rope any more. Fortunately, today’s hawsers are of man-made fibre rather than steel wire, so the need will not arise.
The woke brigade have gone for poor old James Watt now. Apparently his family had some distant association with slavery, so the co-inventor of the steam engine is to be damned for all eternity, like Isaac Newton. The SI unit of power will be banned from use, as will be the unit of horsepower. One English university is already reviewing ways to remove Newton from the curriculum and, with his excommunication, his laws of motion will be discontinued, the SI unit of force will be obliterated, aircraft will fall from the sky, ships will sink, engines will not run and all motion will cease. How much longer will this nonsense and the purging of history go on for?
I wrote a whole two paragraphs whingeing about the UK government’s decision to postpone, for another 5 weeks, the removal of the remaining Covid restrictions. I set out the facts that the majority of the adult population have now been double vaccinated; that the rise in infections is occurring among young people who mainly shrug the virus off; that deaths remain few and hospital admissions small; that the new milder symptoms are sore throat, runny nose and a headache – like the Common Cold; that Denmark is abandoning face masks; that Florida and Texas have been free of restrictions for months. But then I thought, what’s the point? We are in a sinking ship with lifeboats for only half the passengers, but the Captain won’t let anyone abandon ship because he says that if we all cannot be saved, then none of us should be. Apparently 70% of the English, asked in a poll, think this is fine, so I am in the minority; but that doesn’t make me wrong. And do you know what? In 5 weeks time on 19 July we will be given the same lame excuses for why we cannot open up. I am reminded of that song by The Eagles, “Welcome to the Hotel California”
“You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave”
15 June 2021
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 