Well, that’s it: we have decided to part. Frankly, it still breaks my heart when I think about it: life on my own after all these years, but what choice do I have? I know I have been painting a picture of domestic bliss in all these blogs, but you may have sensed a certain disquiet with my personal situation, a certain reservation as I described my happiness? Well, a love once new has now grown old, as Simon and Garfunkel say, and life as it was cannot continue. The time has come for us to sever our relationship so that we can move on to new horizons: a clean break. Let me tell you, it is really hard at my time of life. What’s that? Jane? Good Lord, no. I mean the boat. Yes, the unthinkable has become the thinkable: my beautiful twin-screw 31-foot motor cruiser APPLETON RUM goes on the market in May and I am truly bereft. Regular readers of these pages will be aware of my frequent references to ‘BOAT’ being an acronym for ‘Bring On Another Thousand’ and, indeed, I have spent a fair bit on my boats over the last twenty two years, seven of those years on the present incumbent. I did not begrudge it because, as well as being a mobile holiday home, the boat has been my hobby. I could literally spend hours polishing the superstructure, splicing and whipping ropes, manufacturing new innovations and repairing old ones. She was my ‘man cave’ and, if she cost a few bob, it was worth it for my mental health. However, last month for some reason, I experience a revelation on the road to Damascus: it suddenly dawned on me that, while we could still afford to run APPLETON RUM in our present situation despite the annual hikes in mooring fees, Jane on her own could not – not even for the time it took to sell her. I am not planning on dying just yet, but one has to face the prospect that we all suffer from at least one fatal illness in our lives and even I am not immortal. I could not possibly leave Jane with a millstone around her neck. Why this possibility never occurred to me before is a mystery, but there it is. I might add that a degree of impetus to the decision was added when I calculated how much it costs to keep APPLETON RUM every year and foolishly revealed the sum to Jane. Her eyes went all misty at that point as she imagined how many cruises or holidays in Tahiti she could enjoy for that money…the palm trees, the white sand, the clear green waters, the sunshine; all these thoughts appeared to pass through her mind. So there it is, dear reader: the end of an era. Of course, it could take years to sell her (the boat, not Jane) and we will continue to maintain and use her in the interim; but someone will love her as I did and extract many more years of fun and pleasure from her. They will certainly get a bargain, for she is in tiptop condition and I have the bills to prove it. Search, in due course, www.networkyachtbrokers.com, Birchwood TS31 at Dartmouth, and no, APPLETON RUM is not her real name. I’m sure you can work it out if you are truly interested.
‘Gaslighting’ is a term that apparently originated in a play of the 1930s, but which – after a long period of being rarely used – is enjoying a revival. It refers loosely to the practice of convincing someone to doubt their own perception, reasoning and common sense in favour of an alternative belief, often (these days) to facilitate government control over the masses or to support some ideology or other. There are plenty of examples in our lives of the 21st century, but I am very grateful to the UK Meteorological Office for offering a topical one in their recent statement that April 2024 in the United Kingdom has enjoyed above average temperatures. They do enjoy their little joke. The fact is, April in the UK has been absolutely perishing, with low temperatures overnight and bitterly cold winds. At the end of March, when British Summer Time came into force, I enthusiastically stowed my woollen sweaters, moleskin trousers and stout brogues in favour of my chinos, short-sleeved shirts and deck shoes; Jane even started painting her toenails. A week later I had swapped them all back again and Jane declared that she would be retaining her vest and trousers for the foreseeable future. To be fair, temperatures in Melbury have averaged about 10C during the day and topped 15C occasionally, which tie in with our records of previous years and seem reasonable, if not outstanding. However, overnight temperatures have been in low single figures and the month has suffered almost constant bitterly cold winds, usually from the north or east, not to mention the rain. There is no way that you will convince me that April has enjoyed above average temperatures or, for that matter (noting a previous Press release), that 2023 was the warmest year on record. The fact is, our comfort is not based on temperature alone (entering lecture mode here: pay attention at the back). Most people know that wind chill has a significant effect, and there are a number of complicated formulae to calculate it that I won’t burden you with; but few realise that humidity is another key factor. As anyone who has experienced a sauna will tell you, we can endure quite high temperatures provided the atmosphere is dry, but if the humidity is high eg, if we put water on the coals of a sauna (making the air more humid) then we become distinctly uncomfortable and the tips of our ears and nasal passages burn. The optimum temperatures for human comfort are actually 22C dry bulb and 15C wet bulb, measured on a wet and dry hygrometer, and these are the ideal parameters set on a properly tuned air conditioning system. Put more simply, the optimum atmospheric condition for human comfort is 22C and 50% relative humidity. Low relative humidity, eg from central heating in the winter, can give you sore throats; high relative humidity, as experienced in the Amazon jungle or a Turkish bath, will make you feel distinctly uncomfortable or can even kill you. None of that applies to the UK in April 2024 of course; I just thought I would throw that in. Lecture over.
Jane has recovered from her experience in A&E (Blog 131) and my recent quarterly view showed no return of my prostate cancer (smiley face, as the young people say). I am still experiencing hot sweats like a menopausal woman, (which has brought out my empathy for the opposite sex), I never get a night without at least four excursions to the lavatory, and I am still overweight from the hormone treatment, but these are small prices to pay for being rid of cancer.
Bravely, we embarked on the boat in late April to clean off the seagull guano and generally get her back to a state of aesthetic decency, but after two nights of not being able to sleep because of the cold we gave up and returned to the comfort of home. At Noss Marina there was no visible sign of progress with the coffee bar, the ‘boutique’ hotel or the luxury flats (Blog 128): just lots more heaps of rubble at the site and a great deal of dust and muck all over my boat. As we battled against the northerly wind on the pontoon on the way back to the car, I was reminded of that song by Allan Sherman, “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh” in which all things were terrible at Camp Granada until the sun came out. One day, the sun will come out and our summer onboard will begin. In the meantime, at home, the central heating is still on and the garden furniture is still secured to the house with a stout rope, a ring bolt and a double sheet bend.
Our unplanned return from the boat and the relatively sudden decision to put her on sale left us with five empty days and a rather odd indecisive state of mind. It was, in a way, a taster of what life would be if we were not driving down to Kingswear every few weeks for a life on the ocean wave. We decided to ‘do’ a visit to the countryside. From her Gardeners’ World magazine, Jane had acquired a free ‘two-for-one’ ticket to the gardens of a little-known place called Athelhampton House in Dorset and we decided to take advantage of the offer. It helped that Athelhampton House had ten newly-installed electric vehicle charging points, which would enable us to top up the car while touring the gardens. What an absolute delight the day out proved to be! Athelhampton House (www.athelhampton.com) is located just outside the village of Tolpuddle, near Dorchester in Dorset and is now privately owned, yet open to the public. English readers will recall from their history lessons that Tolpuddle was the home of the Tolpuddle Martyrs: a group of six men who were convicted of forming a secret society involving oaths in 1834 (it was also an early trade union) and sentenced to be transported to Australia in punishment. No one could accuse those 19th century English politicians of being soft on industrial relations. Athelhampton House gardens, created at the turn of the 19th century, comprised ten individual gardens within the overall plot, each one with a different theme and layout. Jane, of course, was in her seventh heaven. The River Piddle gurgled its way around the periphery and provided a tranquil background to the whole experience. As the current streamed through the reeds it rather reminded me of that painting, Ophelia by Sir John Millais.
The house itself is still lived in by the present owner despite dating from the 1400s, and it has been added to by its many owners over the centuries. We found it surprisingly warm and welcoming, despite its age and dark-panelled rooms – we could happily have lived in it. It was also quite a labyrinth, with narrow passages, changing levels, hidden narrow staircases and secret doors. Thomas Hardy was a frequent visitor, apparently, and the house was also popular with Noel Coward. The film Sleuth (1972) starring Lord Olivier and Michael Cain was filmed at Athelhampton House. Rounding off the visit, we enjoyed an excellent snack lunch in the café, where we received the best service and best value for money that we have encountered for many years. All the staff were pleasant, attentive and efficient and the food (coleslaw-filled baked potato for me and home-made soup for Jane) cost us only £15. We washed the lunch down with a carafe of draught Wessex Water. The whole site, by the the way (if you are of the Green inclination) is carbon neutral, electricity being generated by solar panels in an adjacent field, supported by batteries, and the house warmed by ground and air heat pumps. Our electric car really appreciated the top-up while we toured the estate. So there you are: Athelhampton House, a grand day out with excellent catering and a pit stop for the electric car. If you have the time, you can also visit the Tolpuddle Museum nearby and learn all about those martyrs (spoiler alert, they were pardoned after three years and returned to Dorset).
You will be delighted to know that the gleditsia has recovered. The gleditsia is the Honey Locust tree (Fabaceae, sub family Caesalpinioideae – do buck up) that sits immediately outside the Garden Control Tower aka the Breakfast Room or Orangery, and which has been a source of concern to the memsahib for some time. At one point it looked dead and we called in a tree surgeon to offer his opinion; I unearthed the chainsaw from its winter storage and flexed my trigger finger in anticipation. However, the tree – clearly terrified by what was to come – suddenly recovered rapidly and started to behave itself, so that it now has many buds, if not blossoms. Stand down from first degree of readiness. I would imagine that the bleak spring outlined earlier has had something to do with it but – for now – it has had a reprieve. Meanwhile, we think the blue tits have found a home in our nesting boxes and so we can expect some fledglings shortly – all is right with the world, at least in our tiny microcosm; I make no comment on the wider world – read the newspapers if you want to depress yourselves about that.
So – it is the first of May and summer, surely, cannot be too far away? We are off back to the boat to make the most of what time we have left with her. Wish us luck.
1 May 2024
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 