“Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone”.
So ran the song by the late Bill Withers in 1971, when I was a fresh-faced young Midshipman serving in a destroyer, I had a 30” waist, plenty of fair hair, a brand new Triumph Spitfire to impress the girls, and the world was my oyster. That ship has sailed, but I find myself humming the tune now as I contemplate being in the Watch Ashore, otherwise described as ‘life beyond my last Command’. Yet – you know – I don’t feel as bad as I thought I would. The sale of APPLETON RUM, our thirty-three foot motor yacht, in December, was very sad but – as they say – every cloud has a silver lining and we now find ourselves substantially better off. We can now afford holidays that are not on the water; we can repair or replace broken domestic appliances; we can expand our financial horizons; and I can buy more waistcoats and gadgets. I have been surprised by how little I have been upset about losing my boat and by how stress-free I feel. Maybe I was subconsciously worried about the next bit of boat that was going to break. We had a mammoth sale of all the items from our second (floating) household and it all added to the coffers for funding all manner of goodies on our wish-list. It was amazing how much there was: foul-weather gear, seaboots, lifejackets, dehumidifiers, tools – all disappeared courtesy of Mr eBay. That money will burn a hole in my pocket, but that is another story. Incidentally, the real name of the boat, now sold, is PLYMOUTH GIN – I used the pseudonym APPLETON RUM to avoid having bricks thrown at me. The distillery allowed me to use the name but, alas, I never received any free gin.
Speaking of gadgets, I simply must introduce you to Henry. Henry is the latest newcomer to the family, one outcome of the Shacklepin equivalent of the ‘peace dividend’ that resulted from the sale of PLYMOUTH GIN. Henry is not a dog, no, we don’t do dogs; Henry is a robot lawnmower. No matter that our lawn is a modest 20 square metres in area; no matter that (as a friend so tactfully put it) I will be totally bored and unemployed without a boat to fix or a lawn to mow; no – I must have the latest technology. Henry arrived on our doorstep in December when, as we all know, grass is at its most vigorous, and I spent a rewarding day on my hands and knees on a muddy lawn burying the boundary wire. The way these things work, you see, is that the robot lawnmower is constrained electronically by a wire that is stapled into the lawn about 200 mm (8”) all the way around its edge. The wire is effectively buried by grass growth over time, so you don’t see it. There is a similar wire that runs from an arbitrary point on the boundary wire to the lawnmower’s charging base – a platform that is anchored to the the lawn close to the nearest external electrical power point. A robot lawnmower operates on a random basis daily, trimming the grass ‘a little and often’, pottering silently around the lawn, returning to its base to recharge, and never going rogue. Well, that’s the theory. I did have a few teething problems with Henry, the little rascal. The plan is that, as the robot crosses the boundary wire near the edge of the lawn it stops and retreats to move elsewhere. The distance that you must staple the wire from the lawn edge varies, depending on whether the lawn is on a slope, whether the edge abuts paving, or whether it drops off into a flower bed. It seems I may initially have stapled the wire a bit closer to the edge than was sensible in a few places because, on his prototype run, Henry celebrated his new-found freedom from his box by exiting the lawn and savaging Jane’s chlamydia (or whatever) in the flowerbed. This called for some rapid adjustment before Jane returned from her shopping expedition. I then found that, at the lower end of our sloping lawn, Henry often became stuck because he rolled off the lawn, then could not get back because his little wheels were slipping in the mud. Thinks: maybe December was not the best time to install and use a robot lawnmower but – hey – it was my new toy: no point in buying it and then stowing it in the shed. Anyway, I think I have cracked it now and the lawn has almost recovered from being a diorama of the Battle of the Somme. Henry has been removed, washed and placed in the shed until the Spring, and the debris of Jane’s flowers have been removed and safely buried in the compost bin under a pile of rotting cabbage leaves (what the eye doesn’t see…). Roll on the Spring, and we will see some action! Watch this space for a later report.
The email from the local council pinged into my Inbox and I casually opened it. What a shock! The email read,
“WE HAVE INVOKED THE EMERGENCY PROTOCOL”.
Whoa, I thought; crikey. What? Are we under a threat of nuclear attack? Has Mr Trump pre-empted his inauguration by declaring war on Russia? Should I be shaking the mothballs out of my old uniform?
I read on, and discovered that the Emergency Protocol was because of Impending Extreme Weather. I looked out of the window. It was grey and slightly damp outside, the wind was ‘light airs’ at most, and the temperature hovered around zero Centigrade. In other words, a typical January day in South West England. Where was the problem? Ah, the forecast was for – wait for it – heavy falls of snow – and we were all to batten down after laying in large stocks of tinned food, rice, pasta and other comestibles. All persons over 60 should not leave the house in order to ‘protect the NHS’ (ie not overload medical resources by hobbling into a hospital dragging a broken leg). Not that old chestnut again – it is about time that the British government realised that the NHS was created to look after us, not the other way round. Jane and I had no plans to go out in the cold anyway, so we snuggled down in the Drawing Room after taking the precaution of digging out thick tights for her and my seaboot stockings for me, and bringing in our Wellington boots from the garden shed, that they may be warmed ready for use.
Nothing happened.
The temperature did drop to -5C at one point, but no snow fell in Melbury. Snowdonia, the Pennines, the Cairngorms, the moors and Salisbury Plain received a good dollop of the white stuff of course, and the A303 trunk road that crosses east-west through Wiltshire, Somerset and Devonshire was closed because of (what appeared to me to be) about 2” of snow. Local television pictures of the devastation revealed fields like a winter wonderland – with tufts of grass poking up through the snowfall. Whatever snow that did fall in Barsetshire, it was all gone in half a day. Later, the UK Meteorological Office issued a warning of rain for Melbury. What, rain? In South West England? In January? What is it with these people? It’s called Winter – get over it. Oh, and stop ‘crying wolf’ – one day the real thing will come along, as it did in 1963, 1975 and 1981, we will be given warnings, but no-one will believe the authorities. Emergency protocol, forsooth.
‘Oh wad some power the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as others see us’. The quotation from Rabbie Burns, so apt as we approach Burns Night, could readily be applied to the Shacklepins. We recently spent a week sleeping in our guest bedroom and using the family bathroom while our bedroom and en-suite bathroom were being decorated and – oh dear – what our guests have been tolerating without complaint. The bed creaked; the water carafe rattled; one bedside lamp had a defective switch; the small landing courtesy light (intended to deter guests from falling down the stairs and overloading the NHS) did not operate; the lavatory cistern took two hours to refill; and the shower over the bath flooded the bathroom. Otherwise all right. Of course, we have slept in the guest bedroom before for the very purpose of ‘seeing ourselves as others see us’, but never for more than one night and rarely using the family bathroom. I did know about the lavatory cistern, but had not got around to fixing it. I also knew that the shower screen on the bath could be better. However, neither of us was aware of the scale of the shortcomings. Behold, all is now revealed to us and major changes have been implemented, starting with the introduction of a shower curtain. I also fitted a new filling valve to the lavatory cistern, a process that involved me lying on my back for half a day in a pile of rust, with water dripping into my eyes, swearing profusely. I could hardly stand up afterwards and I still have the bruises (what it is to be old). Still, most of it is done now and future guests can visit the Hotel Shacklepin in full assurance that all defects are fixed. Well, nearly all – I’m not sure what we can do about the creaking bed but, hey, you can’t have everything: it’s not The Ritz you know.
My name is Horatio Shacklepin and I am a chocoholic. There – I feel better for that. Fortunately, I am not yet quite a card-carrying chocoholic, for I would never specifically buy chocolate when on a shopping expedition, nor secretly poach an existing supply in the house. Place a box of chocolates in front of me, however, and I will comfortable clear the top tier and even start on the bottom level – and my digestive system will suffer for it accordingly. With this in mind, Jane and I tend to follow the words of the Lord’s Prayer to ‘lead us not into temptation’, and chocolate is rationed accordingly. Alas, we have the good fortune to have many kind and generous friends and last Christmas generated a positive cornucopia of chocolates as presents: After-Dinner mints, Swiss chocolate, Belgian chocolate, British chocolate – it was all there for my delectation, and I was sorely tempted to succumb. Fortunately, Jane recognises my weakness and so, this time, she stowed most of the chocolate away in some hidden repository in the kitchen where I dared not venture. The exception was a box of liqueur chocolates. That box had already been breached when we had some visitors and, hence, was no longer virgin. It lay on the coffee table, stripped of its cellophane wrapper and all but crying out, “Take me, take me”. Christmas is over and so is the season of sweetmeats taken on a random basis. We do not snack, and even the pudding course during dinner is restricted to weekends only. Yet those liqueur chocolates could not be left to waste and I reasoned that it would be impolite to spurn our friends’ generosity by leaving them to rot. And so it came to pass that, on a Monday evening, with puddings and alcohol banned on weekdays, Jane relented and handed me not one, but two liqueur chocolates from the box. I savoured each in turn: the Harvey’s Bristol Cream Sherry and the Courvoiser, as I recall. I can still taste them now. They were delicious but, of course, the ingredient in chocolate that triggers addiction immediately did its work and I was desperate for more. I looked appealingly at Jane with my ‘little boy’ look and my big blue eyes; I mentioned in passing what a treat it was for one who has suffered cancer, who has gazed into the abyss then stepped back, to have little treats; I even assumed the puppy ‘sit-up-and-beg’ position. With a sigh, she reached over for the box and I congratulated myself that I still had the old charm – I reckoned I was good for another one or even two chocolates – she could refuse me nothing. She opened the box, closed the lid, and returned the box to the table. I looked at her incredulously.
“Right”, she said,”We will allow ourselves two a night, which we’ve just had. I have now counted those that are left, so you can’t have any more”. She pushed the box away with an air of finality.
That’s my girl: firm but fair. Apparently I was wrong to think that she can refuse me nothing, for she can refuse me chocolates too. Ho hum.
In thirty two days I will complete my treatment for prostate cancer, a process that started in February 2023. Radiotherapy completed in July 2023, but I have been injected in the belly every three months since the start, and I take hormone pills twice daily. The side effects have been the loss of libido and chest hair, an increase in weight of about a stone, and frequent urination, but these are little potatoes and God has been good to me. So, 20 February is the Big Day, when all the pills and injections stop and I can return to normal life again. Raise a glass to me – I will. Here’s hoping…
So, what can Commander Shacklepin do with all that money sitting in the bank, just waiting to be spent? Well, we are off to Spain in March to visit friends who are richer than us poor folk; we are off to York, which (surprisingly perhaps) I have never visited; and we are off to Paris for a cultural visit with the local arts society. Oh, and maybe we could get a new car…But Jane has declared firmly that there will be No More Cars, which is quite right and sensible. But you and I know better than that don’t we, dear reader?
Now if you will excuse me, I am off to be issued with my liqueur chocolate ration for the day. Happy New Year.
19 January 2025
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 