Help. I am a tennis widow. Or should that be a tennis widower? Whatever, I am left to my own devices after 1330 every day except Sunday, destined to make my own entertainment, perhaps nibble on a little dry bread and mouldy cheese for supper, and to go to bed alone: a lonely soul. It is, of course, Wimbledon fortnight and – as predicted in my last blog – Jane is in her seventh heaven. As I sit in my solitary eyrie of a study reading Practical Construction of Warships or The Admiralty Manual of Seamanship, Volume 1 (as one does), I can hear all manner of weird cries from the drawing room below:
“Oh, for God’s sake!”
“Noooo. Why did you do that?”
“Yes, Yes, YES!”, followed by clapping.
My mind boggles: even I don’t get that reaction.
I should not be surprised, of course, for it happens every year and, when that time comes, neglect, despondency and loneliness are the themes that define my day. But I take it in good part: one of God’s little soldiers just plodding on in the march of life, never complaining and always ready to bring a wan smile and a glass of iced water or chilled wine to my dear wife, glued to her television set. At least I can quietly pour myself a snifter in the evening without the usual tacit admonishment of,
“…and you’re going to have that alcoholic drink although it is still midweek, are you?”. There have to be some perks.
The Wimbledon season has meant a role reversal in the Shacklepin household. For the duration of war tennis I have been cooking the supper. One night we had Black Bean, Pork Mince, Noodles and Coriander with Crushed Peanuts (Delicious Magazine), which matched the name of the magazine; on another night we had Wild Mushroom and Garlic Rice with Goat’s Cheese (Delicious Magazine), which meant no kissing. Tonight we are set to have Butternut Carbonara (Tesco). I have secretly quite enjoyed the role reversal, not least for the fact that I invariably lubricate the procedures with a glass of chilled white wine. Jane saves these recipes in vast box files and plucks them out, seemingly at random. Sadly, her love affair with Delicious Magazine is waining rapidly and she is contemplating cancelling her subscription, for the publication, which has produced some excellent recipes in the past, has deteriorated in volume and quality during the last 15 months and is now increasingly dominated by recipes for vegans and vegetarians. Waitrose Magazine is going the same way. I do not know what proportion of the British population is carnivorous, but I would wager that meat eaters are still significantly in the majority. I would therefore expect a cooking magazine with broad readership to reflect that, rather than the opposite. There are plenty of food magazines that specialise in cooking for vegans and vegetarians, and I am sure they are excellent. Delicious Magazine and Waitrose Magazine should stick to offering a wide range of recipes, proportional to consumer tastes. But then, as a friend of mine once said, our society has always kowtowed to minorities and the situation is getting significantly worse; there is a difference between tolerating minority views, and actually adopting them against the majority opinion or wishes.
Covid-wise, England is still bumping along, with rising infections from the Delta variant offset by few deaths (typically 20 a week) and low hospital admissions, the vaccination programme having successfully weakened the link between infection and serious illness. Despite this, there are signs already that the UK government may back-pedal on its promise of total release from restrictions on 19 July (“…some precautions may have to remain…”) so my prediction in the last blog still looks good. The British government and its public, with 85% of the adult population effectively vaccinated, is still terrified of a disease that now has symptoms identical to the Common Cold. I despair.
Health, maladies and aches and pains seem to dominate one’s life as one gets older. I am not entirely sure when the hypochondria started (though in my case, probably at the age of 28), but it is definitely getting worse. We already own a pulse oximeter (Blog 79) to measure Jane’s blood oxygen level, and an EKG heart monitor (Blog 93) to record her heart rhythms. After an impromptu consultation with a fellow boater, an ex nurse, on one of the marina pontoons Jane proposed that we buy a further item of medical equipment, a blood pressure monitor. ‘Why not?”, I thought: another gadget from Amazon. So now our kitchen is beginning to look like the set of Dr Kildare. And that is where the problem came in: all that equipment was just crying out to be played with. I tried the pulse oximeter: no problems there, heart beating and 98% oxygen. I tried the EKG heart monitor: apparently normal. I then tried the blood pressure monitor: 120/90; bonza, as the Australians say. The snag came when I tried my blood pressure again, two weeks later (for no other reason than that I was bored): reading 140/90. Was that not a little high? I tried again: 150/90. Surely not. I tried a third time for best out of three: 160/90. My God, my pressure relief valve will be lifting shortly. I then embarked on a comprehensive system of regular readings, four times a day, recording the values conscientiously each time, calculating the standard deviation, the mean and the median, and plotting a neat Gaussian distribution curve. The pressures remained obstinately on the high side each time I measured them. Then the memsahib chipped in and started nagging me to make an appointment with our GP (yeah, right). In the end, I cracked – mentally, not a blood vessel – and called the surgery. It took me two ten-minute attempts to get through, but when I did I was given a telephone appointment for later that morning; can’t fault the system there. After discussing my diet, my punishing exercise regime and my non-existent symptoms the GP reckoned there was nothing to really worry about. What a relief: I do not take any regular medication at present and I prefer to keep it that way. The moral of the story? Don’t keep measuring body parameters, for the subsequent anxiety can simply make them worse.
Well, we have the new inflatable dinghy (Blog 95) and it is an absolute treat. The vendor very kindly delivered it personally, along with the accompanying outboard motor, and gave me a very comprehensive handover. I inflated the dinghy, found it to be very sound and stable, and we shook hands on the deal. Regular readers will recall that I bought my first inflatable dinghy last year (Blog 58) with the aim of widening the options open to us on our boat: a small dinghy (a ‘boat tender’) would enable us to anchor off a beach and row ashore, or to moor to a buoy and visit a nearby pub or village. It had to be light to handle, easy to stow and compact. The inflatable that we bought last August was a fair compromise on these requirements, but proved to be just a little bit too small for extensive use. I was working on persuading Jane to authorise the purchase of a bigger dinghy, possibly with an outboard motor, and I succeeded after an extensive psychological campaign as recounted in Blog 95. The day after purchase of this new vessel we launched her and found her to be much more stable than her predecessor. I fitted the small, but heavy, outboard motor (not without some difficulty), started it up, and set off on sea trials. It had been some 30 years since I last handled a boat with an outboard motor and I was a little rusty. My first attempt to increase power resulted in the motor revving up to full power and the bow of the dinghy rearing high out of the water at (apparently) 40 degrees to the accompaniment of screams from Jane and laughter from our boating neighbours, Raymond and Carol. Thoughtfully, they also offered several words of advice while recording the sea trial on a mobile phone – no doubt as a formal record. I trimmed the boat and tried again; this time it all went very well and I zoomed around the marina like a bird released from a cage. Alas, this pleasure could not continue forever and mummy soon told me that play time was over and that it was time for me to come in and wash my hands before supper. It was great fun, and I declared myself very satisfied. Later in the week Jane and I decided to put the dinghy to her ultimate test and use her to take us shopping in Dartmouth, a mile downriver (actually, I decided; Jane reluctantly acquiesced). Like Columbus setting off for the New World, and with Jane gripping the thwart like a drowning woman, we duly set off into The Great River (well, the River Dart). Gradually I opened the throttle and we were soon bouncing over the waves, roaring along at a good – oh – four knots. Spray flew from the bows as we hit the wash of other boats, the engine roared and Jane offered helpful direction and words of advice (“Where are you going? You’re going to hit that boat in a minute…”). I developed a stiff neck and cramp in my hand, but we made it to Dartmouth unscathed and secured to a pontoon. Our disembarkation was a little undignified, being undertaken on hands and knees (can’t see Jane doing that in her dress and high heels), but we soon recovered our composures. I swaggered along the pontoon and up the steps in my lifejacket, conscious of the eyes of the many tourists and onlookers on the quay: here were two seasoned sea dogs popping ashore for victuals after a testing voyage around the Horn, still a little unsteady after all that ship motion. Alas, the image was tainted a little when I unceremoniously tripped over a ring bolt and nearly fell up the steps. I needn’t have worried: no one was taking any notice, being more interested in the crabs that the local children had caught. So might Sir Walter Raleigh have been received when he returned to Tilbury from the Americas clutching a potato and an ounce of shag. Anyway, the expedition was a success for we bought our fresh fish and other groceries and returned to the marina dry and proud.
Phase 3 of The Great Dinghy Adventure is to fit a davit to the stern of APPLETON RUM to facilitate lifting the outboard motor from its stowage and lowering it onto the dinghy. I will let you know how I get on.
Ting-ting, ting-ting, ting-ting, ting-ting. The striking of eight bells on the clock of the BRITANNIA Royal Naval College across the river in Dartmouth was the only sound to disturb the calm of a perfect summer evening at our marina last week, unless you counted the bleating of the sheep on the surrounding Devonshire hills. A seal basked on a marina pontoon and dolphins were reported to be disporting themselves downriver, off Dartmouth. Occasionally, the steam train of the Dartmouth Steam Railway puffed by, 200 yards away, on its journey between Kingswear and Paignton, or the paddle steamer KINGSWEAR CASTLE made her way up river with her characteristic pad-pad-pad; but otherwise all was tranquility as we sipped our glasses of Pimm’s on the quarterdeck in the setting sun. As I have observed before, when the weather in Britain is nice, then it is really nice. Sadly, that was just on one evening, but we must be grateful for small mercies. June was not exactly the best of months in terms of the weather and, paradoxically, the weather in the south west of England was actually worse than further up-country: while Melbury (apparently) basked in bright sunshine and heat, Dartmouth was subjected to only sunny intervals, cool winds and lower temperatures. But we did get that one evening that is worth remembering.
The other evening worthy of note was when I glanced out of the stern windows to see an enormous cruise ship in the river, apparently heading straight for us. Jane and I immediately dashed down the pontoon to get a better view and take a few photographs. In the event, the HEBRIDEAN SKY did not prove to be an enormous cruise ship exactly, rather she is a modest ‘boutique’ cruise ship capable of carrying 100 discerning guests, usually on cruises to the Arctic and Antarctic (whatever turns you on). On this occasion she was cruising along England’s south coast, leaving Portsmouth and calling at Dartmouth, Fowey, Lundy Island and the Scilly Isles. She had just spent a day in the rain in Dartmouth and was in the process of turning around in the river before sailing. Any large ship in the rural Dart looks incongruous, but the river is actually quite deep and can accommodate large vessels; the turning area for such ships is just upstream of the Higher Ferry and immediately downstream of our new marina. HEBRIDEAN SKY is a beautiful ship, looking more like a billionaire’s yacht than a cruise liner, and we later looked up her details on the internet. The English cruise she was on was a week in duration and cost about £3,500 per person. Hmmm, we thought, £7k for a week’s holiday in the rain and the English Channel. Nice ship and exclusive, but – perhaps not.
“What’s that gurgling noise?!” Like a meerkat, the memsahib sat bolt upright, her finely tuned sense of impending disaster sending alarm bells ringing in her head. Nothing wrong with her sense of hearing now then.
“Nothing to worry about”, I said from my position hanging upside down with my head in the boat’s engine compartment, my feet in the air, “Just a little routine maintenance”.
It had been a long and varied day, with several jobs successfully completed, and we were relaxing in the calm of the evening. Supper was finished and we were occupying ourselves as we usually do on the boat, reading and listening to the wireless. But something was bothering me. I had made a few modifications to the plumbing the previous day with a very satisfactory outcome, but I had noted that the pipework as fitted, while perfectly functional, just wasn’t quite right: the angles were not exactly 90 degrees and the pipework was unsupported. In short, the plumbing did not reflect proper engineering practice and it irked me. I should have rectified the matter years ago, and – indeed – it was on my long list of jobs to do, but there were always more important matters to deal with. Tonight, for some reason or another, it all came to a head and I thought I would just lift the deckboards, peer into the bilge, and give the layout a good looking-at; not do anything, you understand (I was showered, clean, and in my smart evening clothes known as ‘night clothing’), I would just look. Hmm, I thought, the problem was caused by two lengths of pipework that had been installed just a bit too long. If they were shortened, then the trapezium of pipework would become a simple rectangle and the system returned to good order. Now it just so happens that the fresh-water pipework on the boat is plastic and uses a proprietary system of instantaneous couplings known as Hep2O; there are no copper pipes or soldered joints, and very few compression fittings. A special tool is needed to undo the instantaneous couplings, but otherwise using the Hep2O system is a plumber’s delight – rather like a big boy’s Lego, but with pipes. Looking at it, I thought that rearrangement could be done quickly and easily: I would just undo that and that, takes those bits out, cut those bits, and click it all back together again: absolute doddle. No time like the present. So I took out the toolbox, isolated the fresh-water system at the tank and tilted myself head-first into the bowels of the boat. And that is when the problems started. Despite using the correct tool, some couplings would not come undone because, hanging upside down, I could not get enough purchase; I had to move further up the line to remove another coupling instead and, hence, remove even more pipework. Have you ever had a situation like this? You know the sort of thing: you want to do A, which is very simple; but to do that you have first to do B, C, D and E (what engineers call “work in way”). To cut a long story short, I ended up removing almost the entire fresh-water pipe system and the fresh-water pump, followed by the connection to the fresh-water tank itself. The gurgling noise that Jane had heard at the beginning of this paragraph was all the boat’s fresh water, some 650 litres of it, pouring into the bilge. I did get it all done, eventually: the outflow from the fresh-water tank was bunged using a wine bottle stopper; the pipework was trimmed and supported properly; the system was reassembled; and the bilge was pumped out. Two hours later, with the sun set long before, the whole thing buttoned back up all neat and proper, I emerged from the bowels with a red face, indigestion and bruised ribs, but with a satisfied smile on my face.
“Done it!”, I said to the memsahib.
She looked up from her reading position, where (I noted) she had sat for the entire exercise, and just sighed,
“You never ever learn do you? You and your five minute jobs”.
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. [Psalm 90.10]
Eight days to reaching the biblical limit – provided, of course, that I don’t burst a blood vessel over the Covid regulations first. I will let you know how it feels to be Old next time (if I haven’t flown away).
2 July 2021
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 