Blog 100. Mustn’t Grumble…

I have had a complaint.  No, not a complaint about being a dangerous insensitive bigot, espousing the outdated views of the the 20th century (that position is still available), but for being too technical in my blogs.  A friend of mine has commented that she enjoyed my writings, but found that about a third of the content was too technical and boring for her.  I was delighted that it was just one third, quite frankly.  I took the point onboard, of course, and it was a fair point; but I suggested to her that if I had omitted some of the technical detail with an explanation on the lines of,
“Don’t bother your pretty little head with this my dear, it’s too technical for women to understand,”
then a raging mob of females would have been clamouring for my head and other extraneous parts, and rightly so.  The thing is, I do not write with a target audience in mind: I just share my experiences in life and jot down what I find interesting at that time with the odd opinion thrown in.  I am flattered that some people seem to like my musings (I have a modest international following), but I recognise that not all of the content is of interest to everyone.  Other friends say that they just skip over the boring bits, and I am working on the theory that one person’s boring bit is another persons’s genuine interest.  So there you go: can’t please everyone, but if I can please someone, somewhere, then I am content.

So stand by for a technical bit about the pitfalls of owning an electric car.  If you think that this may be boring and just want a summary, then jump to Paragraph 9.  If you want to skip it all and move to the travel and culinary section, then jump to Paragraph 10.  

I write this piece partly because the UK government has declared that no more internal combustion engined (ICE) cars will be sold in the country after 2030, nine years from now.  Some people may, therefore, be considering buying an electric car and wondering what the pros and cons are; well, here goes.

Range anxiety.  Have you heard of the term?  No, it’s not about the Red Indians worried about the white settlers invading the prairies where the deer and the antelope play.  It’s to do with electric cars: the concern that new electric car owners have that their car batteries will run out of energy before they can recharge them.  And I have just had a basinful – not of energy, but of range anxiety.
You see, we wanted to travel to Tyneside to see my brother and his wife, to pack in a bit of a holiday by the seaside, and to see how much the old home town had degenerated since I took my hand off the tiller and moved Down South.  Tyneside is about 320 miles away and it usually takes us 5 ½ hours to get there by car.  But now, of course, we have an electric car, making a relatively simple journey just that little bit more complicated.  I love my electric car, not because I am Green, but because it is wonderfully efficient.  Used mainly for fairly local journeys (ie out to about 60 miles) it is perfect, for it recoups energy whenever you decelerate, it is quiet, it does not pollute and it is very cheap to run; there is (currently) no annual Road Tax to pay and on some days I recharge the battery using the sun via the photovoltaic panels on my house roof.  On many local journeys, an ICE car never even gets up to full operating temperature and this is bad for efficiency, bad for the engine and bad for the environment because of the incomplete combustion that results.  Travel further than, say, 100 miles in most electric cars, however, and consideration has to be given to where you will recharge on the road: a bit like Wells Fargo looking to change the horses on their stage coaches as they cross the Wild West.  And there’s the rub: drive a car with an ICE and there is no problem with refuelling, for service stations are everywhere – you just stop at the next one as it appears on the horizon and fill up; the car will probably have a range, on a full tank, of about 350 miles or more.  This is not so for recharging an electric car: not only are the chargers few and far between, they are of various types, supplied by various agencies, operated by different means, and are of variable reliability; and that is before you take account of the fact that others may already be using them.  Now my car is a Nissan Leaf with a 40 kilowatt hour (kWh) battery that has, in the summer, a predicted range of 170 miles.  Theoretically, we would only need to recharge once on a 320 miles journey.  However, there needs to be a margin for contingency planning, for not finding a charger working at the 170 mile point and having to find another.  So knock that range down a bit. I tend to recharge when the battery reaches 40% – 50%, or roughly when my remaining range is 50 miles.  Incidentally, if your battery does run out of energy in an electric car, your breakdown service will transport you to the nearest working charger and, in some circumstances, will pay for you to stay in a hotel overnight.

Still with me so far? Right: there are generally three ways to charge an electric car. At the bottom end, you can plug it into a simple domestic AC 13A socket, which is fine if you are staying somewhere overnight: it will take me, for example, about thirteen hours to charge a completely flat battery in the UK with its 220V domestic voltage. The next level up is the ‘Fast’ or ‘Level 2’ AC chargers that can be found on bollards or posts in some supermarket carparks, at workplaces, or may be installed at home; they charge at 7kW so will take, for example, six hours to recharge my car from flat. Finally, there are the ‘Rapid’ or ‘Level 3’ chargers: they are the big boxes with the thick cables you may see at motorway service stations or on trunk roads and they use DC at up to 480 volts and about 100 amps to charge a battery quickly (to further complicate matters there are two types of connector for Rapid chargers, and a third unique to Teslas, but the principle is the same). Rapid chargers will take about 30 minutes to charge my car to 80% capacity and they are the ones to aim for if on a long journey – you go off for a coffee or comfort break while the operation takes place (the rate of charge slows rapidly after 80%, so the norm is to recharge no further than that point). Are there lots of these? Well, at two motorway service stations I stopped at on the M5 and M1, there was only one at each, yes one; the most I have seen so far at these locations was two. So you will see that a potentially big list of public charging stations has now been whittled down to a much smaller list of actually usable places suitable to support long journeys. You find these public chargers, by the way, using a map-based App on your iPhone or computer, called ZapMap, which is free to use.

So how do you pay for this?  The Level 2 AC chargers that you may see on bollards in some supermarket or public carparks are often free to use – you have to use your own charging lead to connect, but otherwise they are good value – but they are no use on a long journey as they are slow to charge.  Different suppliers have different ways of obtaining their fee for the electricity.  The best Rapid charging stations simply work on contactless: you connect up, wave your credit card at the machine and you are away.  Others work on an RFID card that you have obtained from the supplier: you create an account and give the supplier your bank or credit card details.  All also have an App that works on an iPhone or whatever, and some work only from the App (and so are dependent on a good mobile phone reception).  To date I have 15 Apps and associated RFID cards and the list is growing as I discover a new supplier. The charge for electricity ranges from £0.25 to £0.40 per kWh, so a recharge to 80% costs, typically, £5 – £6.

Given all this, I knew I would have to plan the journey to Tyneside, not just with regard to the route, as I normally would, but also with planned recharging stops.  The factors I have outline above also required me to identify alternative locations to be used if the first choice of chargers were not available – rather like an airline pilot has to plan for emergency landing strips and alternatives.  Fortunately, the  ZapMap App tells you where every single charge point is in the British Isles, their type, the supplier, the cost, and whether they are currently working or occupied.  Armed with this piece of software and my trusty spreadsheet I drew up a comprehensive journey plan that General Eisenhower would have been proud of.   So began The Grand Tour.

I won’t burden you with the detail. In a 320 mile journey to Tyneside we recharged four times, five if you count the top-up at journey’s end. Each stop lasted at least 20 minutes. Both chargers at one motorway service station were out of action, diverting us to our alternative charger further up the route. One other charging station was occupied, so we used a second planned alternative. On arrival in Tyneside, four of the planned chargers were either in use or unusable, necessitating a frantic diversion to a fifth in a different town. Finally, in Sunderland, we came across the King of Charging Stations: a station rather like a petrol filling station, run by an outfit called Fastned, and comprising six Rapid chargers. We drove in, we connected up, I waved my credit card at the screen, and we were done. Excellent, but why are there no more of them?
Moving on from Sunderland to visit our friends in Altrincham in Greater Manchester, we discovered – much to our surprise – that that vast metropolitan area, ringed by its many busy urban motorways, had very few Rapid chargers. Very kindly, our friends Sam and Laura in Altrincham invited us to park our car in their drive on arrival, and plug in to their domestic supply. The relief I felt at not having to prowl around Greater Manchester seeking an available and working Rapid charging station was immense, and we relaxed for the first time in the entire trip. Journey time from Sunderland to Altrincham, 130 miles away, but by an indirect route across the Derbyshire Dales to avoid the motorways, required three recharges, all without problem. Finally, the journey south from Altrincham to home in Barsetshire was undertaken on conventional roads as we have always done, the M6 and M5 being very congested and prone to blockages. We recharged three times without problem, though we did have to queue for ten minutes at a motorway service station to connect up. We flopped into the house after about seven hours. The Grand Tour was over and we were exhausted mentally and physically.

In summary, I expected a long journey by electric car to be a bit more difficult than going by a conventional ICE car, but I thought I should give it a try – to push the boundaries, as they say.  It proved to be not so much difficult as to be very stressful, to require careful planning, and to be something of an endurance test.  On the plus side, it was an adventure (shall we say), it cost only about £20 to travel from home to Tyneside, and we have seen a lot of places where we would otherwise not have stopped.  On the minus side, I rarely relaxed on the whole trip except at Altrincham.  Conclusions: while electric cars are excellent for short to medium journeys from home of up to, say, 60 miles (which, for most car owners, may be the commonest usage), they are not really suitable for long journeys unless they have a very large capacity battery.  The UK simply does yet not have sufficient fast public chargers on its main trunk roads and motorways to support the majority of electric cars, as they are currently configured, for long journeys.

With that technical section out of the way, normal service has now been resumed.  Welcome back.  Now, about that holiday.

We do not normally programme in an overnight stop on a journey to Tyneside but, as we knew this journey would take longer, we thought we would plan for a break. Doncaster, that well-known haven of sophistication, aesthetic delights and tweeness seemed as good a place as any, particularly as we expected to be passing through there at the five-hour point. Our initial thought was to stay at a Premier Inn or Holiday Inn, where one is usually guaranteed a good night’s sleep even if the culinary delights are unsophisticated. However, I discovered the Best Western Premier Mount Pleasant Hotel on the outskirts of Doncaster, which came with very good reviews, particularly for the food, so we booked a room there for the night. In my comments on booking, I asked (only semi facetiously) for a top floor room away from any noise, dogs or children. I received a very straight-laced reply that they could not guarantee that on a Saturday night. It was to prove a prophetic response.
The Mount Pleasant Hotel turned out to be a very impressive establishment built in extensive grounds on only two floors in a sort of square doughnut configuration; we later discovered that it had been converted from the stables and other outbuildings of a large country estate. The landscaped grounds were immaculate and the building itself was well found and maintained, presenting an overall welcoming impression of comfort and affluence. There was a large carpark and even a single electric car charger, albeit only a 13A domestic socket, that we plugged into (free) for the night. This, we thought as we approached the grand semi-circular entrance, was our sort of place. The first sign I had that, perhaps, something was going to rain on my parade was when I saw a car being unloaded by a collection of boisterous and plain-speaking northern young ladies carrying long dresses and clutching impossibly high heels. Oh God, I thought, I have broken one of my rules for booking holiday accommodation; how could I have forgotten it? Shacklepin’s First Law of Hotels: never, ever, ever book a hotel that also hosts weddings. Inside the hotel foyer hordes of people milled around, some booking in, others just drifting about. A large lady, wearing a sash that proclaimed “Mother of the Bride”, swept past followed by a marauding band of noisy feral children; a family arrived after us, wearing Sports Direct designer shorts and flip-flops. With a crash, my hopes of a quiet, select stay among like-minded people, pancaked on the hard reception floor. However, we had no choice other than to make the most of it, and Jane was hissing at me to stop grumbling and overreacting. Because of Covid, the reception desk was screened by perspex with a tiny slot in the bottom like you find in the Post Office. This, along with the fact that the receptionist wore a mask, the hard floors in the foyer, and general noise of everyone in the area, made hearing and communicating very difficult: I ended up bending down and shouting or listening through the little slot in the perspex which, I suppose, rather cancelled out the purpose of the screen. Never mind, the receptionist was most helpful and welcoming, and we were soon trundling our luggage up to our first floor room. The room was large, well appointed, and very comfortable with a luxurious en suite bathroom and a walk-in shower. Alas, the view from the room was of the inner roof tops, but one could hardly expect the hotel to allocate us a scenic room for just one night’s stay. We were very pleased. We did have problems with the television, but that was fixed promptly by the Assistant Manager, a delightful man who came from Barbados and who swapped stories about the Caribbean with Jane. At the appointed time, Jane and I changed into our smart clothes and went down to the restaurant for dinner. We entered the bar, with its long tables, hard floors and banquette layout, and ordered pre dinner drinks. Where, we enquired, was the restaurant? The reply was that we were already in it. I gazed around like a visitor to the zoo. Fellow drinkers mostly wore vests or polo shirts, and slacks or (I shudder) denim. Some wore shorts. To think that I had debated with myself whether to wear a tie with my jacket, before deciding – daringly – to go open-necked. Jane wore a lightweight summer dress and high-heels. We both looked a bit incongruous. Never mind, fairly quickly we were whisked into the inner chamber where there was more banquette seating, complemented by hard composite-topped tables. Virtually all the outer walls were of glass, with fine views over a terrace (with more tables) and the garden. On a bright, hot, summer’s day it would probably have been breathtaking and the perfect place to eat. Alas, on an overcast evening in Yorkshire, first impressions were not quite so good. I’m afraid that, at the time, it reminded me of a works’ canteen, but – on reflection – that is a little harsh. The fact is though, the restaurant did not have the comfortable warm ambience that I would have preferred: the hard surfaces and mock-timber floors made for poor acoustics and all the glass doors to the terrace being open made the restaurant freezing. I assumed that the hefty ventilation was to combat Covid, but it could have been because Yorkshire folk thought the temperature outside was tropical. Jane shivered in her summer dress and even I was barely comfortable. The menu, when it came, was all right without being as imaginative as we expected from the reviews. Jane was so cold that she ordered the soup to warm herself up; she proclaimed it to be “nice”: that most English of English adjectives that ranks something as passable without getting too carried away. I had the terrine, which was well-presented and delicious. Jane had a breast of chicken as a main course (declared as “all right”); I had pan-fried salmon fillet coated with pesto, which was of a very high standard. The service was excellent: friendly, efficient and prompt – ranking among the best I have ever had in a restaurant. Overall, I enjoyed the food more than Jane, who basically was so cold that she could not relax. The high point was having a lively conversation with a party of Yorkshire people on the next table, who proved delightful company and were very friendly. When they heard that Jane was cold one of them simply got up and shut all the external glass doors:
“You’re in Yorkshire now, lass. We say and do what we think, and don’t muck about”.
And so to bed for a good night’s sleep. Or not. Shacklepin’s Second Law of Hotels: never, ever, choose one that does live music.
We retired at the early time of 2130, being shattered after our journey, and sat reading. Shortly afterwards, the music started: thump, thump, thump. We looked at each other. The music was coming from almost directly beneath us: so much for the request for a quiet room away from any noise. The music and beat became louder as the evening wore on, but we were so tired that we still dozed off fitfully, and it probably stopped at about 2300, which was reasonable. At 0030 we were woken by loud noises, slamming doors and drunken arguments from the corridor outside; we drifted off again. At 0330 there was a large BANG outside in the corridor, followed by harsh words, muttering, an altercation and more slamming doors; we later were to discover that a guest returning to his room must have swayed into a heavy portrait on the wall in the corridor, which then fell to the ground with a resounding ‘crash’. We drifted back to sleep. We had had to book a time for breakfast, which was a ‘first’ for us, but on the day the staff were not fazed when we presented ourselves early. Breakfast was a buffet affair in the restaurant, served with excellent coffee. There was another wedding scheduled that day and the whole area was buzzing, despite it being fairly early on a Sunday morning. I enjoyed the food, but I don’t do noisy or sociable breakfasts; the occasion filled a little hole, but was hardly breakfast at the Athenaeum Club, and soon we were on on the road again. Overall, it was a delightful up-market hotel with absolutely first class welcoming staff, well-cooked food and very comfortable accommodation. Alas, it was too noisy, too busy and, perhaps, a little too much ‘of the people’ for us. It might be a good place to stay for a week’s holiday provided, of course, that the hotel wasn’t hosting a wedding or offering a tribute to a rock band.

And so to Sunderland, and a stay at the Hilton Garden Hotel right next to Sunderland United football ground, The Stadium of Light.  The location does not sound very prepossessing and, indeed, the view from our room was of the side of a football stadium preceded by acres of carpark.  However, we had stayed before (Blog 28) and had found it to be big, modern, comfortable, and exceptionally good value at about £67 a night for B&B.  The trick, of course, is to check the Sunderland United website before booking, and to make sure that the team is not playing at home during one’s intended stay.  The hotel had not changed: it was still very comfortable, with every member of staff whom we met friendly, welcoming and helpful without exception.  Our room was large, contemporary and of the standard layout – the only minor ‘down’ side was that the carpet was badly stained with coffee or tea in parts and would have benefitted from either a deep clean or, more likely,  being replaced.  We dined in the restaurant that night and the food was fine without being particularly exciting.  I had shredded pigs’ cheeks with greens and creamed potato, which was a pleasant surprise and very enjoyable; Jane opted for simple fish and chips.  The nice thing about modern hotels that are part of a chain is that they are usually predictable and of a known uniform quality.  You do not expect great things in the restaurant, but the food is wholesome.  Overall, we were delighted with the hotel and very likely would stay again: at least we managed to get three nights of perfect, quiet, sleep.

I’m afraid Sunderland, or what we saw of it, was not terribly impressive.  The city came across as very dirty and industrial, with litter blowing around the streets and grit getting into your eyes.  At the car charging station by the River Wear there was a little viewing platform that was approached down some steps from a carpark.  I went down to look at the Wear, where my father’s ships had been moored many a time, and found that the viewing platform was covered in discarded food cartons, old rags, bits of timber, drink cans, and parts of a bicycle: it had apparently been used as a bedding area for a tramp.  I tried reporting the litter to Sunderland City Council via their website, but gave up after twenty minutes of trying to upload photographs; it was not my city, so there were limits to my attempts to help the townsfolk or local council officials.  South Shields, seven miles away and my birthplace, was only a little better.  Many shops in King Street, in the centre of town, were boarded or shuttered up: casualties not only of economic times and new shopping centres, but also of the fallout from the Covid epidemic.  As in Sunderland, litter and dirt blew everywhere in the brisk easterly wind, the town looked unwelcoming and the people poor.  One naturally has fond memories of one’s childhood and, possibly, they are somewhat rose-tinted.  Nevertheless, as I remarked to Jane, South Shields in my youth may not have been sophisticated, but it was clean, had many varied and good shops, several excellent parks, a bustling air and pleasant hard-working people.  Now the place looked run down, shabby and impoverished.  The riverside was still appealing, though there was no longer the industrial activity that there used to be: coal mining and export has ceased and, where there used to be three or four shipyards, only empty sites remained.  We saw only two ships on the Tyne in the whole time we were there.  After all this, I was delighted to see that the fine long beaches and cliffs of South Shields were as excellent as ever, the amenities being much improved from the somewhat  understated way they were when I was young.  The weather was, unexpectedly, sunny and hot during our stay, and the coast was very popular with holidaymakers.  Jane and I did not manage to do as much as we wanted to during the visit, concentrating our time on seeing my brother and his wife: we managed a cliff walk of some three miles, but did not have time to stroll along the beach or South Pier.  It was probably just as well, as the sands were packed solid with people.

South Shields has several restaurants, most of the ethnic variety: Ocean Road, at one time, had the record for having the most Asian restaurants in any one street in the UK.  Of the rest, none could claim the title of haute cuisine exactly, but Colman’s Fish and Chip Restaurant has a good reputation, and Jane always clamours for a Minchella’s ice cream, Minchella being a long established family in the town of Italian descent.  We graced the latter’s ice cream parlour in Ocean Road and asked for two large tubs of vanilla ice cream. The woman at the counter blinked at us: did we realise that the tubs were not just big, they were very big?  Yes, said Jane, we only come Up North every two or three years and this was our treat.  So there we sat in this ice cream parlour at a tiny two-seater table, gazing out at the street and stuffing ourselves from two buckets of ice cream.  There was a certain free-surface effect as the liquid sloshed around in out stomachs when we finally lurched out. 
“See you again in 2023”, I told the staff.

Colman’s Fish and Chip Restaurant has always, also, been in Ocean Road but in the last few years the establishment has  opened another, perhaps more up-market,  venue on the sea front.  At the bottom of Mowbray Road, right next to the South Beach, there is a bandstand: one of those large Victorian edifices that you normally see in English parks.  This particular building was always known locally, for some reason, as Gandhi’s Temple and it doubled as a public convenience, which was located in the basement.  A few years ago Coleman’s bought this building, which had fallen into decay, added a glass extension and made it a seafood restaurant.  There, Jane and I dined on a beautiful summer’s evening, gazing out at the ever-changing seascape.  We had the last booking for the evening at 1930 and our table was still occupied when we arrived, so we were invited to have a drink in the cocktail bar.  This was situated in the old part of Gandhi’s Temple, in the circular rotunda part of the building and the experience was almost surreal: I could not believe that I was sitting in such a perfect contemporary bar, sipping gin and tonic in, of all places, my old home town.  It almost felt like Monte Carlo.  Almost.  The fly in the ointment was a collection of five or six women at the bar, all quaffing sophisticated cocktails, joshing with the barman, and shrieking periodically.  The noise practically pierced my eardrums and I could barely hold a conversation.  Fortunately, our table was soon ready and we moved off to eat; the women remained and it was clear that they were there to drink, not eat.  I was amazed, for it was a Monday night, not a weekend.  Clearly my initial assessment that the town was impoverished was faulty.  There were some good choices on the small menu, one of which was a medley of local seafood for about £54 (presumably shared).  Alas, at that time in the day some dishes were ‘off’,  so I opted for pan-fried sea bass, which was excellent, and Jane had boring-old cod and chips.  The only drawback of this excellent restaurant was the noise.  The acoustics were terrible and you could barely hold a conversation or hear the waitress.  It was such a shame for, otherwise, it was the perfect evening in perfect circumstances: watching the surfers in the freezing water, seeing the ships at anchor in the offing, and relaxing as the sun set and the lighthouses on the Tyne piers lit up for the night.  Recommended, but take ear plugs.

Our last night on Tyneside was to be spent dining out with my brother and sister-in-law in South Shields.  In the past, we have dined in a restaurant called Mambos, which I described in Blog 28 as being a sort of  “Colosseum meets the Acropolis in the Adriatic”.  Despite its brash and ostentatious decor, and the fact that it is popular with large noisy parties, the restaurant produces some excellent food.  I assumed that my brother would opt for Mambos this time (he likes speaking Serbo-Croat with the staff), but he seemed lukewarm on the choice.  Apparently, Mambos had split into two sister establishments, one of which was called “Bun Bun”, the name giving a fair indication of the type of cuisine, and the other “Wine and Dine”.  This time, my brother suggested a little Turkish restaurant that he knew sited, inevitably, on the “ethnic mile” that is Ocean Road.  I shrugged; why not?  I had not eaten Turkish food for a good many years, and it would be a nice change.  On the night, Jane and I duly fronted up at my brother’s house to collect him and Marion, and he opened the door with a sheepish expression on his face.  There had, he said, been a bit of a snag.  He had only just got around to booking the Turkish restaurant that evening, but there had been no reply.  In a panic, he had scoured the internet to check on opening hours and so on, and had found that the restaurant had been “closed down until further notice”.  So, either there was a hygiene problem, or there were no staff because of Covid.  Oh dear.  Fortunately, my brother had managed to book us in at Mambos original “Wine and Dine” restaurant – the one that looked like the Acropolis.  So down we went. In Blog 28 I described how, when we dined there in 2017,  the restaurant  was hosting two vast birthday parties for families of various ages including babes in arms.  Now, in 2021, it appeared that the families, the balloons and the babies were still there.  The noise was terrible.  As before, the food was excellent: my brother had fried squid, I had butterflied chicken, and the girls had steak.  All the food was truly excellent, the chicken being very tender and the steak just right (I had some of Marion’s).  It was hardly believable for South Shields and I was impressed for the second time that trip.  Alas, the atmosphere – just like the night before – was uproarious.  If we heard “Happy Birthday” being sung once, we heard it sung three times and we soon became tired of it.  It was such a shame: another potentially very good meal ruined by noise.  I wonder if the same crowd will be there in 2023?

In Altrincham, Laura and Sam treated us like visiting royalty and we relaxed mightily. The weather was not exactly tropical, but the rain held off for most of the time and we spent a pleasant day at the RHS’ new Bridgewater garden, a horticultural delight for Jane, and even I could appreciate the work that had gone into it. Growth was still at a fairly early stage but the garden had considerable potential and, in a few years, would be even better. The next day we visited Speke Hall, a National Trust property dating from the Elizabethan period, and remarkably well preserved. The National Trust seems to have moved towards choosing a particular theme when describing its property, and concentrating solely on that. The theme for Speke Hall was the oppression of Roman Catholics during the Protestant reign of Elizabeth I and the difficult time the Catholic owners of the hall had, or the torture that Roman Catholic priests endured if caught. It was a fair theme, but somewhat narrow in its outlook: I would have liked to have known more about the architecture of the house, the provenance of the family, and the history of the hall in the 400 years or so since Elizabeth. Like all National Trust properties now, alas, the information boards were written as if they decorated an infant school: the only thing missing was the phrase, “…and are you sitting comfortably children?”. The lavatories helpfully contained signs telling me how to wash my hands. It all rather grated with me, but we still found the visit fascinating. The executives of the National Trust will, of course, be the next up against the wall when the revolution comes and I form the Shacklepin Republic.

Anyway, we are back home now, marking time for the school holidays to end, when we can return to our boat in Devon without – we hope – the heaving crowds.  Jane has gone deaf in one ear – possibly a 1 in 100,000 chance side-effect of the beta-blockers she is on (it could only happen to Jane); she has also developed a repeat of the painful and itchy rash on her chest that she had exactly one year ago (Blog 51), and currently sleeps with an ice pack clutched to her bosom.  Poor kid, she really has been in the wars.

As to Covid, well the daily deaths related to the virus in UK have levelled off at about 90 a day.  Cases were falling rapidly, but have reached a point of inflection and may be rising again, but hospitalisations remain low.  89% of the population has received one vaccination and 77% has received both.  Plans are in place for a booster shot next month.  Symptoms now are still similar to the Common Cold but, although the condition is usually mild if caught by those who are vaccinated, it can still be very bad for some and fatal for a few.  The surge in deaths and hospitalisations that the gloom-mongers expected following the relaxation of compulsory restrictions in England on 19 July has not occurred, but the virus is still with us.  One day things will be completely back to normal, but I am not sure when.  At least we completed the entire Grand Tour without ever wearing a face covering, so things must be looking up.

Mustn’t grumble.

16 August 2021

Blog 99. Anyone Who Hates Dogs and Children Can’t Be All Bad

You know, it’s a funny old thing: we can put a billionaire into space on a commercial spaceship; we can put a robot lander on Mars; we can plumb the depths of the oceans; we can create a device that replies sensibly to questions when asked by voice.  But we cannot produce a bootlace that doesn’t come undone.  There is something wrong with our priorities today.

We spent a delightful day in Plymouth the other day, at one time my favourite city.  I spent an aggregate of  six years in the city studying engineering there, and three of my ships were based at Devonport.  The city took a mauling in WW2 and so what one sees in the city centre today is a clean modern early 1960s  ordered layout, supported by the ubiquitous use of concrete.  Despite that, I always found Plymouth to be varied and vibrant: a pleasure to visit.  Alas, as in many other cities and towns, a further redevelopment to the east of the city centre to create a more-modern, covered, shopping complex has sucked the life out of main shopping streets themselves.  Some shops have closed, others are of dubious attraction, and the streets are dirty and wind-blown. When we visited, the only thing missing from completing the image of Ghost Town seemed to be the tumbleweed, though the litter and take-away cartons, blown around by the south westerly wind, made a reasonable substitute.  The ancient harbour at The Barbican, to the south east of the city, used to offer a quaint stroll, some good fish and chips, and the Plymouth Gin Distillery: our Mecca.  The last time we visited the distillery (claimed to be the oldest working gin distillery in England) we took a guided tour  and sampled an included gin and tonic in the bar, a room with a ceiling fashioned like the inside of an upturned boat.  We bought a crate of Navy Strength Plymouth Gin afterwards (yes, a crate).  Alas our visit to Mecca this time was in vain, for the gates were closed, with no explanation (probably “Due to Covid…”).  After a difficult search on the website I found that Plymouth Gin was also continuing to demand face masks and social distancing  for visitors despite the government relaxation, so I metaphorically crossed the establishment off my list of prospective suppliers (their loss, Amazon’s gain).  We drifted around the rest of The Barbican, but were disappointed to see how many shops were shut.  Yarmouth Stores, an excellent source of seamen’s, fishermen’s and submarine sweaters in the past was boarded up (closed several years ago apparently); Edinburgh Woollen Mill in its prime site on the harbour had gone; we could not get served in Weatherspoon’s pub as the bar staff ignored me; and The Tudor Rose Tearooms in their genuine quaint Elizabethan building were closed.  We could, however, have treated ourselves to several tattoos on various parts of our bodies.  Overall, The Barbican was disappointing and looked a bit seedy, but it did fit the bill of a dodgy quarter in a seaport, where sailors go to spend their wages and discuss the cultural aspects of their extensive voyages with loose women, and – of course – that is what it has always been.

While I remember, I do wish (non) service providers and the media – who should know better – would stop using that dreadful hackneyed and ungrammatical phrase, “Due to Covid” as an excuse for poor or non-existent service.  First of all it is not an excuse, it is a reason: an excuse excuses something and there is no excuse for inefficiency and not adapting to circumstances.  Second, the term “Due to…” is incorrect; the  phrase should be, “Owing to Covid” or “Because of Covid”.  Harrumph.  My old English teacher must be spinning in his grave.

We tried strolling on Plymouth Hoe, but the wind blew Jane’s skirt up so many times that she decreed enough was enough (sailors can only get so much excitement in one day).

After The Barbican we negotiated Plymouth’s complex and busy road system (it wasn’t like this in my day) to be lunch guests of our old friends Margery and Benjamin, with their daughter and grandson.  I am a great advocate of the WC Fields school of thought on human behaviour that anyone who hates dogs and children cannot be all bad.  I have cultivated and refined the same persona over many years.  Margery and Benjamin have both creatures, and I dare say they feared that I would kick one and eat the other, but they need not have taken out that insurance policy, for Lucy the dog did not drool over me, ruin my tights, smell, try to copulate with my leg or bark; and as to children, well, there are children and then there are children: not all are noisy and misbehave. Their little grandson Bartholomew was a great delight once he had overcome his shyness.  We chatted on the floor for some time discussing his range of toy motor cars, me speaking English and he speaking Twoyearoldspeak, the language of the parallel universe, which I understood perfectly.  I had made him a two-foot model of the Brittany ferry PORT AVON, a vessel that steams in and out of Plymouth on a regular basis.  It was a project that started off during the Third Great Lockdown of 2021 with the concept of making a ship that could be viewed in real life locally and related to, and in which Bartholomew could store his cars.  I know that little boys like to have toys with hidden compartments and so on, because I am a little boy myself.  Alas, I got a bit carried away with the project and, instead of making a brightly painted simple boat with a hole in it (fundamentally, the initial plan) I ended up making a full-scale model of the ferry based on the shipbuilder’s plans; this for a 2 ½ year-old.  I had hoped to scale the model to take standard small toy cars like the old Matchbox cars of my heyday, but I soon realised that such a vessel would have to be several yards long and almost big enough for Bartholomew himself to crawl inside.  I did not think that this would find favour with Honeysuckle, his mother, so I made some tiny cars and lorries to fit the model.  These were so tiny as to guarantee that Bartholomew could fit several of them up his nose without difficulty, thus ensuring him a free adventure visit to A&E in Plymouth Hospital for a whole day and assuring me of a place in Honeysuckle’s heart forever.  Honeysuckle is my proxy daughter, the daughter Jane and I never had, and a young friend.  It is essential to have young friends (ie people younger than 45) so that you can suck the youth out of them and retain an up-to-date cool vocabulary.  Having a proxy daughter has most of the advantages of a real daughter, but without the disadvantages of having to endure the terror of her going through the Goth stage of development, the inappropriate boyfriends and the suspicions of boys’ lecherous behaviour.  Honeysuckle also had her baby son with her, young Joey.   He was no trouble at all, but I don’t do babies as they all look the same to me.  Indeed, Joey looked to me like a miniature version of The Mekon.  Honeysuckle looked at me blankly when I ventured this opinion, clearly not knowing if I was being insulting or complimentary (few people can ever tell with me).  I was surprised to find that she had never heard of The Mekon and Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, but then she is Young according to the Shacklepin Scale of Age.

Dan Dare, Pilot if the Future was one of the characters in the boys’ magazine Eagle, first published in 1950.   The magazine (I will not demean it with the description ‘comic’) was the brain child of the Reverend Marcus Morris and the illustrator Frank Hampson. The aim was to produce a boys’ magazine that would have high principles, educate, and encourage good behaviour while still being a good read.  There were many features, but the adventures of Colonel Dan Dare, a spaceman, led the front page with its beautifully drawn, full colour illustrations and excellent storylines.  The Mekon was an evil, two-foot tall, green megalomaniac humanoid from Venus with an enormous forehead (hence brain) who floated around on a big saucer, like a serving dish.  His ambition in life was to conquer the solar system with, perhaps, a secondary aim of conquering the galaxy.  Another feature of each edition of the  Eagle was a brilliantly produced cut-away colour drawing of some engineering artefact, such as a ship, an aircraft, a car or a coal mine; taken with the cartoon strip Captain Pugwash, it helped to inspire me as a naval engineer.  Issued every Friday for the princely sum of 3d (threepence to young readers of this blog), Eagle came just at the right time to complement the adventure playgrounds that were the bombed sites of post-war Britain, when WW2 was fresh in the memory of many children, austerity and rationing were still a feature of life, and an exciting future (beyond collecting shrapnel) beckoned.  The magazine itself was limited in size because of paper rationing, but it packed a great deal into its high quality and detailed pages.  Soon, it was The magazine to have.  Alas, all good things come to an end.  The magazine was expensive to produce and, after a change in publisher, the loss of Morris and Hampson as editor and illustrator, and a general lowering of quality the magazine gently died in the 1960s.  You can still buy Eagle annuals, however, or the several adventures of Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future in illustrated book form. I have several, purely for historical and sentimental interest you understand. 

Oh dear.  I have just realised that I described Honeysuckle’s baby, Joey, as looking like an evil green megalomaniac from Venus.  Sorry about that.  What a lovely little chap he was, so like his mummy.  Oh heck, I’ve done it again.

Thinking of gin and tonic (I could just manage one now) there are almost as many ways of making the drink as there are of making a dry martini. We prefer ours in a long glass that is packed full of ice and with a slice of lime or lemon, making it a long drink with dew forming on the side of the glass. Jane prefers Durham Gin with Schweppes tonic; I prefer Plymouth Gin with Fever Tree tonic. But, of course, that is just a personal preference: there is no standard way of making the drink. There are some people who like their G+T in a short glass with just one ice cube, others who like the drink in a balloon glass like a wine glass. We tend to order something else if it is likely to come warm (ie with less than two ice cubes) as that is even worse than being offered a glass of white wine at room temperature. And let’s face it, there is nothing worse than warm champagne. But to get back to the old G+T, we had a new variation the other day, courtesy of our Dartmouth friends, Raymond and Carol: it was gin and tonic with a slice of cucumber in it instead of a slice of lemon. I thought at first that Raymond had failed the Logistic Officer exam by forgetting to buy a lemon at the local Co-op, but – no- the drink was delicious and tasted much better with the cucumber. So there you are: try a G+T with a slice of cucumber; it’s good. And don’t forget to add the iceberg if you are kind enough to offer us one.

The traditional naval officer’s drink (before my time) was not rum (see Blog 44), but Pink Gin. This comprises a few shakes of angostura bitters swirled around in a wine glass, topped up with a measure of gin and water added to taste. As a young midshipman on leave I once ordered the drink (to try) in a dockside pub in South Shields, my home town. The barmaid’s response, in her fine Tyneside sing-song accent, was,
“We’ve only one sort of gin here, hinny, and it’s not coloured pink”.
This was greeted with much mirth from the assembled tugboat men, river pilots and rough sailors in the bar and I realised that I was among Philistines. Years later, I did make a Pink Gin guided by Jane (who had been a part-time barmaid in her youth). It was absolutely foul. Naval officers of my era drank Gin and Tonic or Horses’ Neck, both with ice and lemon.

The latest development in the Covid saga is that some people working at home are not only reluctant to return to work, but are proposing to sue their employers if they do not continue to allow the new relaxed style of honest toil, working from home.  One challenge being considered is on the basis of “commuting causing stress”.  You couldn’t make this up: employees demanding that their employers pay them for not going to work.  Methinks (me hopes) that a few dismissals will be in the offing; let us see if they will be able to still afford that BMW when on the dole.

In my comments on Covid and the UK government’s response to it over the last year or so, I may – just occasionally – have been known to hint at my opposition (and Jane’s) to wearing face coverings, my argument being that their effectiveness is so small as to be negligible.  About half my friends disagree with me, saying that wearing a mask is no big deal, but I consider myself as that sound stepping stone standing firm in the fast flowing stream of public opinion.  Given my declared stance on the matter, my interest was fired, therefore, when the consumer magazine Which? conducted a review of face coverings a few months ago.  The best mask was the Airpop Pocket Mask costing £24.99 for four and it had a proven industry-standard filtration efficiency of 99.9% for particulate and bacteria.  Testing was conducted using bacteria, which are 3 microns [three thousandths of a millimetre] in  diameter, in an aerosol spray.  I was impressed, despite myself, and started searching the internet for recipes for humble pie.  Then I read on. Which? explained that it could only quote figures for bacteria and rank masks according to that criterion.  It then admitted that a Covid virus has a diameter of 0.1 microns, 30 times smaller than a bacterium.  So even the best  commercial face mask available to the public has holes in it thirty times bigger than the Corona virus it is trying to prevent.  One scientist has likened the effectiveness of facemarks to someone firing tennis balls at a matrix of scaffolding poles six feet apart.  England legislated for compulsory face masks to be worn in inside public spaces in June last year and one would expect the measure to have had a significant effect on the incidence of infections; however, if you examine the graphs of infections and deaths from the Office of National Statistics website for that time and thereafter you will see no corresponding drop in infections or discontinuities in the curves after the measure was introduced.  Given all this, why then do the government and some scientists and doctors continue to recommend the wearing of face coverings?  Beats me.  I have no idea, other than, perhaps, wearing face coverings provides assurance and a sense of security to some very frightened people.

The madness continues. We have already been told that the countryside and food are racist, along with all Anglo Saxons in the United Kingdom, its Dominions and the United States of America. We have now moved on, and the latest thing to be so labelled is eating with a knife and fork. Yes, it’s true: some chef or other has decreed that eating with a knife and fork has colonial overtones and is therefore racist. I can only assume that the chef, himself, eats with his fingers. Still, if we regress, it will avoid accusations of HKLP I suppose. I wonder what will be next? Best sell those shares in Andrex toilet tissue and buy up shares in Pampers disposable nappies instead (I am, in any case, getting on a bit now). The other latest revelation is that it is illegal to call a grandmother a grandmother. Well, not illegal exactly, but an industrial tribunal has ruled in favour of a woman who resigned from a firm because she was referred to as a grandmother in one of the company’s written car reviews, despite actually being a grandmother. Apparently it was age discrimination. This is Alice Through the Looking Glass at its best.

We have been “Oop North”, visiting my brother and sister-in-law in South Shields, then later on to Altrincham to inflict ourselves in some old friends who could not think of an excuse fast enough.  It was a culinary experience and travel adventure that was so so fun-packed that it is worthy of a separate blog, so I will wind up this one now.

Gosh, I wish I could be a fly on the wall when Honeysuckle sees the pseudonym I have given her.

3 August 2021

Blog 98. ‘Ping’

Nobody works, nobody goes to school.  That was Jane’s sage observation when I complained about how busy the River Dart and our marina was, midweek, mid July, before English state schools had broken up for the summer holidays.  She was, as ever, quite right.  The NHS automatic ‘Covid Track and Trace’  system uses a smartphone App that interacts with everyone in your vicinity, swapping personal details electronically using Bluetooth.  If anyone you have been physically close to subsequently has a positive Covid test result, then the system sends a message  to you and all others who were near the victim (‘ping’) and tells you to isolate for ten days, whether you subsequently test positive or not.  It sounds very swish, and I suppose it is, but the App is so sensitive that everyone within Bluetooth range of a ‘diseased’ person gets ‘pinged’; it can even ‘ping’ people in the house next door to a Covid-infected person.  Net result: thousands of people are ordered off work and (supposedly) isolating and many industries are struggling to keep afloat.  In schools, whole ‘bubbles’ or year groups are sent home if one pupil tests positive – again, even if pupils test negative.  The whole thing is, in short, a complete pot mess and a paradox.  It is a paradox because, according to surveys, more than half of the English are frightened to go into a building without wearing a mask despite the covering no longer being a legal requirement from 19 July; yet Wembley stadium was packed for the recent football extravaganza (no masks, no distancing); so was Wimbledon for the tennis; and the beaches and seaside towns of England are packed solid with holidaymakers.  I just don’t get it: either you are terrified of catching Covid and never go out or mask up, or you aren’t.  Who are these people who are terrified? Certainly they aren’t football or tennis supporters, or holidaymakers in England.

As I predicted in earlier blogs, Boris has not only wimped out of the decision to remove Covid restrictions, he has done one worse, something that I did not anticipate.  The government lifted all law-enforced restrictions in England as planned on 19 July… but then advised everyone to continue following the restrictions anyway.  Boris has passed on responsibility for our well-being to individuals, relying on our common sense and judgement (good),  but has also authorised local authorities, public transport, shop, venue, theatre, restaurant and pub owners to impose their own rules as a condition of entry.  Thus, the dog is off the leash and we are at the whim of every petty-fogging, risk-averse little service provider or council official who is terrified of coming out of lockdown.  The prime minister has given us freedom with one hand and taken it away with the other; instead of a consistent (if unwelcome ) policy we now have a whole host of varied ones.  London Transport (or TfL to give it its proper name) requires passengers to wear masks, but some national rail companies do not; passengers on a train passing into Wales or Scotland could be without masks one minute, yet required to wear them next minute as they cross the border, even in an empty carriage.  Visiting a town or venue now brings with it uncertainty, and the spontaneity that we hoped to regain on 19 July has failed to appear: will this museum, shop or restaurant still demand that I wear a mask, or will the decision be left to me?  What price our much vaunted vaccination programme, with 71% of the adult population double jabbed?  Positive test results (I refuse to call them infections) have peaked and are now falling.  Deaths and hospitalisations are still rising, but can be expected to peak and fall as they follow the trend of the test results, and the levels of both remain low, currently averaging about 60 deaths a day in a UK population of 68 million people (0.000074%).

Ironically, the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for Health were ‘pinged’ themselves and had to self isolate, despite them being double-vaccinated and with no symptoms.   This makes a mockery of the government’s campaign to encourage younger adults to accept a vaccination: what would they gain by doing so if even the double-vaccinated still have to isolate, infected or not?  We have also moved from instances of genuine illness necessitating isolation and care, to some sort of ethereal non-existent condition that, despite all logic, demands that people isolate themselves ‘just in case’ on receiving a ‘ping’.  The ‘pingdemic’, as the media have labelled it, is causing as much economic damage as the real epidemic did a year ago and there is now another run on goods in the shops as the logistic infrastructure is decimated by people having to leave work, whether ill or not, because they have been ‘pinged’.  The government has refused to reduce the Bluetooth sensitivity of the NHS Covid App, but has made certain key jobs exempt from the ‘ping mania’, though employers have to apply to do this; however, exemption is being resisted by the unions.  No surprise there. Some people have deleted the NHS Covid App from their smartphones to avoid being identified in this manner; I know I have.  The situation is totally ridiculous.  Covid rant over (for now).

After I wrote the last blog I was chatting on line to Rupert, my son, about The Football Match in which England lost the cup to Italy.  Contrary to my assertion in Blog 97, I actually did watch the match right through, partly to keep Jane company (she had been pressured into watching it by Rupert) and partly because I thought it my patriotic duty.  It was all right: I could see some of the skills involved and get some inkling of the excitement that fans felt; I thought the Italian team seemed to be taking the initiative much more than the English team and deserved to win, but then what do I know?  Anyway, I was pontificating on all this with Young Lochinvar when he revealed that – contrary to what I wrote in my last blog (which he doesn’t read) – all that extravaganza was not the World Cup.  It was the European Cup, or Euro.  Do you mean to say, none of you could have told me?  And we have to go through the whole thing again next year for the World Cup?  Oh my God.

So anyway, we were sitting in our garden at home, sipping a gin and tonic and basking in pleasant sunshine when a large brown rat appeared, wished us a pleasant day, and continued on into the undergrowth. Jane practically had a heart attack. I pointed out that the poor chap was only looking for a home, perhaps seeking a bijou residence for himself and Mrs Rat, but it cut no ice with Jane. She hates rats. We immediately deployed rat poison left over from the incident of mice eating the garden shed (Blog 83) and I was detailed off for sniper duty, armed with an air pistol. Jane is now so terrified that she will not go into the undergrowth for fear of a rat running up her leg. It never rains, it pours. Watch this space for more news of Roland and family.

The British Isles were sweltering in a heat wave last week and the reaction of the population passed from the, “Whoa, what a scorcher!” phase to the, “Thank you very much, but can we return to normal now?” phase.  Monday 19 July was the hottest day for us, at 32C in the shade.  At the time, we were back on the boat earlier than planned, a much anticipated visit by friends being cancelled because one of them was ‘pinged’ (see above) and had to quarantine for ten days; they tested negative for Covid, but still had to isolate.  Very disappointed, but free of an obligation, we shot off early to the boat and – in hindsight – made a sound decision: the heat wave hit as we arrived.  It is ironic: after a year moaning about the wind and cool temperatures in Dartmouth, we were now crying out for both.  There wasn’t any wind – even at sea – but I did achieve one of my ambitions: to swim in the translucent green waters while at anchor in Scabbacombd Bay, near Torquay.  Naturally, Jane remained very firmly onboard, the sea not being up to Caribbean standards.  I also managed another plunge a week later, this time in Ladies Cove near Dartmouth.  That bathing platform on the boat and its little ladder finally came into its own.  And let me assure you, dear reader, that in all that swelteringly hot un-British weather with the deck too hot to stand on when barefoot, the English Channel on both occasions was absolutely perishing.

You may think that when a boat is at anchor in a sheltered bay, then she is at rest as if lying alongside a quay.  Alas, that is not the case.  Even when at anchor a boat is subjected to the wind and, more significantly, the swell.  Everywhere we anchored, APPLETON RUM rolled like a destroyer in a hurricane; rolled, in fact, more than she did when under way.  The natural swell in the sea was exacerbated by idiots happy carefree fellow citizens zooming around in fast speedboats or jet skis, creating a massive wash.  Nowhere was sheltered from the swell, and it was very uncomfortable.  We did, however, manage to find tranquility by anchoring in the river itself, this time at the mouth of Dittisham (pronounced ‘Ditsum’) Mill Creek.  We dropped the hook just on the edge of the mud shoal, a good distance from the only other boat there.  There was a bit of wash from passing boats and inflatable tenders, but it was bearable and we settled there for the night.  To the south east, hidden by Higher Gurrow Point, was the village of Dittisham with two thriving pubs, a popular al fresco restaurant, and many, many, tourists;  to be avoided, therefore, by misanthropes such as I.  To the north, high on a hill and looking down onto the river, were two very imposing estate houses designed by John Nash in 1805: the easternmost was Sandridge Barton and the westernmost, higher up, Sandridge Park.  The estate was the birthplace of the Elizabethan explorer John Davis and both houses (I subsequently discovered) were available for holiday let.  I did not find the rental fee as, when I looked, they were both fully booked – or perhaps off the market.  Since each grand house had about six bedrooms and they had swimming pools, it would be fair to say that the rent would be more than two pounds, ten shillings and sixpence apiece.  More affordable, perhaps, would be Sandridge Boathouse right down on the shoreline to the east of Sandridge Barton, and accessed only by footpath and steps or (I guess) boat.  That looked bijou, quaint, very secluded and peaceful, comprising just two bedrooms, but with power, heating, freshwater and a modern kitchen.  Again, I was unable to find the cost of rental, but I thought the expense would be worth it if one craved a hermit-like existence like me.  Apparently renters’ luggage is delivered by Land Rover across fields to the top of the footpath/steps, but the renters themselves must make their own way by shanks’ pony.  Treat ‘em rough and they love it (or so it is said).

It is a curious facet of human behaviour that some people crave company.  You must have come across this if you have ever had to use a public lavatory cubicle, been camping or, for that matter, if you have ever parked in a large empty carpark seeking peace and quiet; some clown inevitably comes along and uses the next cubicle (though there are seven others free), pitches their tent, or parks their car right next to you.  So it is with anchoring in a secluded anchorage.  When we anchored in Dittisham Mill Creek on a Monday night there was one other boat there, and we chose a spot as far from him as practicable, affording both him and us some privacy.  One other yacht appeared during the evening but, again, dropped anchor far away.  The next day we took the tender up river to explore the village of Stoke Gabriel in the blistering heat and, when we came back, we found that another yacht had arrived.  This one, proving the Shacklepin Theorem of Over-Sociable People, had anchored about fifteen metres from us.  He was so close that I could have tossed a peanut over onto his deck without any effort (and if you have ever seen me throw something then you will know that that is not far).  Why did he do that?  Boats and ships do swing at anchor under the action of wind and tide and, although they often move in unison, there is a degree of individual randomness in the way they lie.  Consequently, when anchoring you always leave room to swing, keeping an imaginary circle clear according to the radius of the amount of anchor cable let out.  This ‘clingy’ boater had not done that.  Fortunately, we planned to move on so his positioning did not cause a long-term problem, but I was baffled and irritated by his choice of location.  Shortly after our return with the tender we weighed anchor, but even that manoeuvre was rendered difficult by the other boat’s closeness: he was practically on top of my boat’s anchor.  Crazy, these people: lavatory cubicles, camp sites, car parks, and now anchorages.  No wonder so many people are being ‘pinged’ for Covid isolation (see above).

Thinking of lavatory cubicles, I did hear of a (reportedly true) story of a chap who had an odd experience in one (it’s OK, there is no need to issue a Snowflake warning of an unsavoury story). 
This chap went into the lavatory cubicle and was sitting there at ease, as you do, when – right on cue – someone entered the cubicle next to him.  There was the usual rustling of clothing and a pause, and then the bloke in the next cubicle said,
“So, how are you doing?”
The first chap was a bit nonplussed.  For a start (interesting piece of info here girls), unlike women, men just do not talk to each other in public lavatories; no, not at all.  Secondly, a cubicle in a public lavatory with your trousers down is not really a place to indulge in small talk.  Still, he was English, and the English are too polite to ignore strangers if directly spoken to.  So after a hesitant pause, he replied,
“I’m fine thanks.”
“How’s the wife and kids?”
“Erm, yes they’re fine too.  My eldest, Justin, is 9 now and the youngest, Victoria, is coming up to 3.”
“Anyway, I was wondering if we could meet up for a drink some time?”
“Well, I’m a bit busy at the moment and I don’t really…”
“Tell you what Pete, I’ll call you back later.  There’s some prat next to me keeps interrupting me and taking the Mick when I’m on the phone.”

Mobile phones are the bane of our lives in my opinion.  I hardly use mine except in emergencies, though I do use it to search the internet occasionally or to consult a map.  To do that, I stop, move off the path and undertake the operation in private.  I hold any conversations briefly and very quietly, and answer calls almost with embarrassment for fear of disturbing others.  If indoors, I leave the building to talk. This is not so for modern man (or woman) it appears.  Full-blown private  conversations are clearly audible as people walk along the street; worse, the new trend is to hold a video conference as they walk, holding the phone – not to their ear, but in front of them like a mirror and bellowing as if hailing the masthead.  We hear a lot of it in our marina, our berth being unfortunately located at a sort of nautical crossroads in the interlock of pontoons, a positive hub of human interchange:
“And how is my little poochy poo….”
“Yes, mummy loves you….”
“I know darling, it hasn’t been the same since I had the hysterectomy…”
“Well, she said she was size 10, but I’ll swear she wasn’t less than a size 14…”
It is amazing the personal information that people proclaim to the world in loud voices, and their interlocutors can be heard even louder.  On one occasion a full conversation on the boat just ahead of us was clearly audible even on our quarterdeck as we sipped a sun-downer.  I could have made a fortune selling shares in the company discussed (if I had any).  I am just waiting for one of these pedestrian video conference callers to walk right off the pontoon as they rabbit on, oblivious of their surroundings and all around them.  I shall laugh like a drain.

The cancellation of our friends’ visit left us with a mound of food, so we brought it down with us to the boat and invited our Dartmouth friends, Raymond and Carol, onboard for a three-course Sunday lunch.  I have commented before on Jane’s ability to produce scrumptious meals in the tiny galley onboard, but this time she exceeded even her previous record.  The temperatures down below in a heat wave and with the oven on can be imagined, but she still came up trumps and a good time was had by all, the entire  event being well lubricated by champagne (to celebrate the Freedom Day that never happened) and chilled white wine.  We had Peaches, Watercress, Mozzarella and Parma Ham for starters, followed by Chicken Breast stuffed with Peppers and Goats’ Cheese, served with Crushed Potatoes, a Parsley, Garlic & Oil dressing, and Broccoli. We finished off with English Strawberries and Cream. The weight we must have gained from the food and wine was offset by the pounds we lost in the heat.  It all made me think of the conditions that our ancestors must have endured as they explored the world, all dressed in the best Lancashire broadcloth, shirts, breeches and tricorn hats, with no air conditioning and with only primitive bathing facilities.  Heaven knows how they managed in the heat.  And, by golly, how they must have stank.  There is a very good historical novel called Shogun by James Clavell, which describes the conditions in Japan in the 16th century when an Elizabethan sailor is shipwrecked there.  The Japanese civilisation at that time was much more advanced than that in Europe: the people were very clean, bathed regularly, and their houses were immaculate.  In contrast, the Europeans bathed, if at all, perhaps only once a year; often slept with their livestock; and carpeted their rooms with straw or rushes, changing the material every few months.  Consequently, the Japanese view of Europeans was that they were filthy stinking savages not worthy of respect.  The English character in the book eventually comes to appreciate the Japanese way of life and particularly revels in receiving hot baths and dressing in looser, cooler, clothing.  The only downside to Japanese life at that time was that, despite being civilised in so many ways, it still ran under a feudal system and any peasant who failed to show respect to their betters was summarily beheaded.  Still, it’s a small price to pay for a hot bath and a pretty garden with miniature trees.

Mid-stay on the boat, we spent a very pleasant interlude enjoying a cookery demonstration and three course lunch at the Glazebrook House Hotel in the village of South Brent, further inland.  I had found the hotel, quite by chance, as I was surfing the internet some months ago and it was flagged up when it met my stringent criteria for a get-away weekend at some time post Covid.  The hotel, set deep in the Devonshire countryside yet conveniently close to the A38, proved to be quiet and very civilised.  The demonstration and subsequent meal were excellent and we were so impressed by it all that we booked ourselves a three-day break with dinner for next October.  It was not cheap, but it met all my criteria for a perfect break in Devonshire: close to Dartmoor, no dogs, no children, no riff-raff (I made up the last characteristic, but you get the gist).

“Kee-haw! Kee-haw! Kee-haw!”. 
We were woken at the crack of dawn by herring gulls wearing hobnail boots, pattering on the deck a foot above our heads.  I suggested to the birds – who are, after all, God’s creatures just like us – to please desist and go away, but they did not appear to speak Anglo-Saxon.  I banged on the deckhead and that eventually worked but, by then, I was wide awake and the damage was done.  Jane, of course, just muttered something about chrysanthemums, turned over, and went back to sleep.  I got up, cleaned my teeth, washed and shaved.  Creating my usual double espresso in the galley, I repaired to the upper deck with my cup and saucer to survey the riverscape.  It was, as it usually is at that time, tranquil and inspiring.  The sun had just appeared over the eastern side of the valley and its rays were already steaming off the dew on the seat covers on the quarterdeck, and evaporating the early morning mist on the river.  Not yet too hot, the atmosphere was what I would call Standard English Summer (this is opposed to Standard Scottish Summer which, in my experience, contains hail).  Sitting in the upper conning position Command Seat, and sipping on my coffee, I revelled in the whole passive experience.  I did consider shaking Jane and inviting her to join me, but wisely resisted the temptation.  Today, I decided, I would wash down the boat and give her a good leathering (the boat, not Jane).  Four hours later, with a bacon and egg sandwich under my belt and Jane spring cleaning down below, I was soogeeing down the superstructure oblivious to the cooling soapy water that splashed over my bare legs and feet.  It was going to be another hot day and I judged that I had better wash off the soap fairly quickly before it dried on.  I removed the hose from its stowage in the wash-deck locker, plugged it into the tap on the pontoon, and started to sluice the boat down copiously.  There was a squawk from somewhere on board.
“Good”, I thought, ”I’ve managed to get that damned herring gull”.
My ornithological analysis was disproved, however, when an irate strawberry-blond head appeared through the hatch.
“Do you know the windows are open?”
“No, but sing me a few bars and I’ll try to pick it up.”
“Very funny.  I’m soaked, and so are the soft furnishings”
She retired with a toss of her damp curls, presumably to deploy a large sponge and a towel. Oh dear: Horatio in trouble again.

A hose in one’s hand can be very satisfying, empowering perhaps, and very tempting.  Later still, in the cool of the evening, I was topping up the freshwater tank while Jane was having a shower onboard.  It just so happens that the freshwater filling connection on the boat is on the deck just above the window of the heads.  As I concluded the filling operation and replaced the filler cap I could hear Jane slopping about in the shower, soaping herself everywhere and singing “Roll Out the Barrel”(not), and I felt an overwhelming urge to try a jolly jape.  I lifted up the small window of the heads and peered inside.  I could see only a shower curtain and a vague human figure beyond.  I lifted up the still-running hose, but was arrested by a stern voice within.
“Don’t even think about it”.

How on earth did she know what I was about to do?

27 July 2021

Blog 97. It’s Only a Game.

Look.  It’s only a game.  It’s only 22 over-paid vacuous young men chasing a bit of leather around a field for 90 minutes.  It’s not Agincourt.  I have just seen two Daily Telegraph headlines that read,
“Southgate summons the warrior spirit of generations past” and
“I am in tears writing this…”. 
I didn’t read the rest and ended up skipping about 50% of the newspaper.  When I then skipped the dire news on Covid, with its predictions of relaxation of restrictions not happening after all, I had only a quarter of the paper left.  Yes, yes I know I am A Man Alone in the current euphoria of maybe England winning the World Cup for the first time since 1966, but I have to say it again: it is only a game.  Still, the whole shebang seems to make a lot of people very happy and it has taken their minds off Covid, so I suppose it has all been a good thing.  I don’t begrudge the pleasure it affords, it is just that I don’t understand it.  Good luck then, chaps; I shall be reading an improving book when it all takes place on Sunday night or maybe go for a walk; the streets will, after all, be deserted.

Did you know that there is a right and wrong way to slice a tomato? Me neither. I have still been preparing the suppers during Wimbledon week as outlined in Blog 96 and I had graduated to providing a pork pie salad one evening. “Nothing to that”, I thought: cut pie in half and plonk on plate; remove lettuce from fridge, rinse and slice; anoint with dressing; spoon on accompaniments, negative coleslaw for Jane; slice tomato and cucumber and add to plate; serve. Jane had magically appeared like a genie from a bottle during the final stage of this operation, it being break time on Centre Court and she being suspicious of malpractices taking place in her kitchen. So spectral was her appearance that I jumped as a voice at my elbow said,
“Why are you cutting the tomato like that?”
I was nonplussed. Was there a right or wrong way? I had sliced the tomato up and down, that is, parallel to the axis of the stalk. It seems I should have cut it across ways. I shrugged and cut another one as directed, thus providing an option for the discerning diner. Even then the presentation did not meet with approval, for I was disturbed to note that she had left part of the tomato on the plate when the meal was finished; it seems that the bottom of the tomato – the bit with the stem and the little dimple on it – is traditionally discarded on preparation and not offered on the plate. Oh dear: I had eaten mine. Various other shortcomings were noted on the presentation of the salad, which I had created using my own haemorrhoidal system, to the point where she just burst into giggles and shook her head sorrowfully. I was, she said, hopeless, but she appreciated that I had tried hard. It reminded me of my school PE report from 1966.

The prime minister has announced that all Covid restrictions on meeting, distancing and face coverings will be dropped from 19 July.  If all goes well.  A final decision will be made on Monday 12 July and I still predict that he will give in to the doom-mongers and kick the can down the road yet again.  You see, the positive test results related to the delta variant are still rising (“soaring” according to the media) and the number of deaths has risen too.  However, the latter statistics are not increasing at anything like the same rate as cases, standing at 34 daily, as I write.  Moreover the case rate, though still rising, is beginning to fall off and will reach its peak probably in the next few days; it is already falling in Barsetshire.  No matter, some members of the public and most of the media are appalled at the thought of abandoning compulsory face masks: a recent poll indicated that some people think the masks should be worn, literally, forever and some favour a nighttime curfew as well.  Wearing face coverings in certain scenarios remains government advice, but – if the relaxation goes ahead – the decision will be left to individuals and the owners of premises such as shops or pubs.  I think it is a sensible move (well, I would wouldn’t I) as it credits individuals with common sense and personal responsibility.  Those who are uncomfortable with the relaxation can keep on wearing face coverings, and shops, pubs and hotels can take the risk of losing (or gaining) customers by excluding people who are uncovered.  Sadly, this whole thing is splitting the country, just like Brexit did: it would have been far better if the government had nailed its colours to the mast , ditched the law on masks, left the matter to individuals and withheld advice.  But there you go.  I still think Boris will bottle out on Monday:  “just a little longer, folks…”. I will be pleased if I am wrong.

We don’t watch a great deal of television, but sometimes – after a long exhausting day of being retired – you want to watch something entertaining after dinner or supper.  We have quite taken to the 25-year-old detective series Wycliffe, set in Cornwall, the series being repeated at the moment.  The plots are good, the acting well done, and the scenes stunning.  As each programme is only an hour long the plots cannot be too complicated; there are no red herrings as there is no time to incorporate them, and so the first suspect tends to be the actual culprit.  Nevertheless, the series is very watchable.  The other programme that I would recommend is Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon Prime.  Jeremy Clarkson, of Top Gear fame, is rather like Marmite: you either like him or you cannot stand him.  We are of the former opinion, but even if you are of the latter persuasion I would give the series a whirl.  It is hilarious.  Clarkson owns a farm in the Cotswolds and, two years ago, decided to try to work the land himself.  The series covers his ineptitude and his triumphs while doing a very good job of educating the viewer in the difficulties and techniques, the trials and tribulations, of modern farming – all in an entertaining way.  It is fascinating and definitely recommended.

I knew it was a mistake to paint that idyllic picture of balmy weather on the quarterdeck in Dartmouth (Blog 96).  Since then the weather on the boat has been pretty awful.  When it wasn’t raining it was blowing a hooley, overcast, or both.  We travelled down last Sunday at 0500 to beat the traffic then spent the rest of the day, between showers, doing jobs in that fuzzy twilight world that goes with a very long day and a lack of sleep.  I fitted that new outboard-engine mounting davit, as predicted last week, and – to my surprise – the procedure was completed without any problems at all.  We slept the sleep of the just (as in “just shattered”) that night and managed a few other jobs the next day but, by evening, the clouds were black and heavy, the rain came down, and the wind whipped up into a Force 5/6 south westerly.  The forecast was for more of the same, the boat creaked and groaned in her moorings and I gazed out at the squalls after supper and thought to myself, “Why are we doing this?”.  We had booked a birthday lunch at Taylors’ Restaurant for the following Thursday, but that was the only commitment for the week.  I pondered and made one of my masterful decisions:
“Let’s go home.  We’ll cancel the lunch.”
“What now?” said Jane. 
It was 2100 and I had just hauled down the ensign for the night.
“Yes”, I said. ”I’ve had enough of this”.

So with no more ado, I donned my foul weather gear and seaboots and retrieved our bags from the car, fighting my way up the pontoon against the wind and rain in the process.  Jane emptied the refrigerator and we shut down the boat’s systems.  By 2200 we were on our way, me still looking like an advert for Fisherman’s Friend throat lozenges and Jane in a state of shock and bemusement.  We staggered into the happy homestead at 0045 on Tuesday morning and collapsed into bed (I did take off my seaboots).  It has taken us the rest of the week to recover our sleep and our wits.

Well that’s it then: three score years and ten. What does it feel like? No different, of course. I am still 40 with the mind of a twenty-year-old and the tact of a rhinoceros. Last week, for the first time, Jane asked me if I would like a birthday cake. When, surprised, I replied that that would be nice, she asked what sort I wanted. I replied enthusiastically,
“Fruit cake, please!”
She looked away and I thought I heard a muttered,
“Bloody hell…”
Sensing some reluctance, I tried again.
“Carrot cake, then?”
“It would need refrigeration and we are travelling to the boat…”
Hmm not doing too well in the patisserie stakes here, I thought.
But she eventually relented and went for carrot cake (fruit cake was difficult, not because of the effort or skills involved, but because we had none of the ingredients in stock. I finished the last slice of carrot cake yesterday and, I must say, it was fantastic).
Our conversation moved on to the Special Meal. Regular readers will recall that on Jane’s birthday I normally prepare a special dinner for her (Blog 50) and it is a practice that she reciprocates. This is a double treat because Jane is a superb cook. A few days ago, she asked the inevitable question: what would I like? I thought of my favourites, all of which had been rejected in the past. No harm in trying again – it being a special birthday.
“Beef olives, please”.
“No, you’re not getting that.”
“Chicken Marengo?”
“No, you aren’t having that.”
“Oxford cutlets?”
“No, you’re not getting them either, whatever they are.”
“Cheesy hammy eggie?”
“What’s that, for heaven’s sake?”
“It’s a traditional naval dish, a bit like croque monsieur, but with an egg added. ”
“No.”
“Beef Wellington?”
“No, too rich and too much work”.
Oh dear.
In the end, we settled on barbecued fillet steak: simple, but a treat. True, I will be the chef, barbecues traditionally falling within the purview of the spear side of the family, but what the hell. You know, being Jane’s husband is just one big birthday and just being with her is birthday present enough (was that all right, girls?). Indeed, Jane is looking after me and at my beck and call all day until midnight. I was brought tea in bed this morning and she emptied the dishwasher for me while still in a comatose state at 0700 (her, not me). Now there’s sacrifice! I did try pushing my luck and asking for a foot massage later, thinking that she could refuse me nothing as King for the Day, but she told me to push off; clearly there are limits to both servitude and fruit cakes, even for a King.

It is the duty of the Marine Engineer Officer of a British warship (and, no doubt, other navies too) to carry out a number of pre-sea checks personally before sailing, reporting to the Captain, “Marine Engineering Department ready in all respects for sea, sir”.
It involves testing the ship’s steering in main, local and emergency control, comparing the actual position of the rudders with that indicated by instruments; testing the ship’s sirens from all operating positions, remotely, automatically and by hand; testing the main engine telegraphs; testing the main engine throttles ahead and astern in all modes of operation, remote and hand control; and visually confirming that shore electrical power cables and shore steam hoses (as appropriate) are disconnected from the jetty. It is a laborious but important task and the personal element is a proud tradition. I have undertaken the job on more occasions than I care to remember, rising at some God-awful time like 0500, usually on cold, dark and stormy mornings, in time to get the job done for an 0800 sailing time. It is a principle which I have brought with me to operation of my boat and I have a check-off list for that purpose: when the lines have been let go, it is a bit late to discover that the steering doesn’t answer or the engines won’t engage.

I mention all this because, despite all my experience and methodology, I cocked the whole thing up the other day and nearly killed Jane.

It was before the bad weather and wind came along. The conditions for sailing were very favourable: the sun came out from behind a cloud, the wind was light airs from the east, the tide was at slack water. I made another of my masterful decisions:
“We will go to sea”.
I started the engines. I tested the throttles ahead and astern, I proved the steering from both helm positions, I tested the siren, I switched on the VHF and GPS, I singled up the mooring lines. Taking a last look around, I removed the stern line and told the First Lieutenant Jane in my firm commanding voice,
“Let go for’ard!”
She let go, I engaged astern, and we made gentle sternway out of the berth. Suddenly there was a shout from the fo’c’sle.
“Horatio, the shore power cable!”

We were still connected to the shore power by an electric cable that was running out as she spoke.

She caught the cable just as it parted, her aim being to keep the live end out of the water. Of course, what that meant was that Jane ended up standing there on the fo’c’sle with the head line in one hand and a live electric cable in the other, the boat being otherwise detached from the land.
There was, to put it mildly, much tumult and shouting.
I did manage to manoeuvre the boat back alongside, but Jane – holding a live electric cable as she would a venomous snake – was powerless to throw the head line back onto the cleat on the pontoon. Fortunately, others were passing and lent a hand. All was eventually secure and we could recover the situation. We sailed fifteen minutes later, this time with all umbilical cords removed.

You are allowed to say it.  Nay, let me do it for you:
“Shacklepin, you dipstick”.

But I do slice a mean tomato.  Unconventionally, in the perpendicular style.

Now if you will excuse me, I must flash up the barbecue.  Prepare to be amazed by my al fresco culinary skills.

10 July 2021

Blog 96. “Forty Thirty. Silence, Please”

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

Blog 95. Welcome to the Hotel California

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

Blog 94. You Challenge The Sisterhood At Your Peril.

The son and heir has gone vegetarian.  It could be worse: he could have become a vegan (though no prejudice there – I never missed an episode of Star Trek in its day).  Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy vegetarian food and we often have it; but I do object to having vegan or (less often) vegetarian views thrust upon me, especially if they are mixed with strongly-held opinions on man-made climate change that declare that cows and their flatulence are going to kill us all.  “Each to their own”, is my philosophy, and let me make my own decisions without being nagged.  Rupert (our son) came down for a day on Friday, possibly to commemorate Jane’s 70th birthday a week in advance, and it was a delight to see him after 18 months.  No, he doesn’t live in Australia, only three hours away in Hertfordshire, but he is a very busy man and things have been a bit difficult lately.  Don’t they say that you have a daughter for life, but a son only until he marries?  Jane was unfazed by the announcement that Rupert had renounced all meat as we have an old friend who is also vegetarian and Jane is quite happy to prepare a meal accordingly.  A really good vegetarian meal can be a bit of a challenge if the offerings of some some British restaurants are to be believed: the best some can offer is risotto, a nut cutlet or an omelette.  Things are getting  better, I understand, but it would be good if chefs saw the requirement to produce an imaginative vegetarian meal as a professional challenge rather than a chore.  Jane, with  the menus she uses,  is very good and I have yet to be disappointed.  We had Moroccan Spiced Pie with Yoghurt and Harissa Sauce (BBC Good Food website) for our meal with Rupert and it was very filling and delicious; he seemed pleasantly surprised: perhaps he expected a risotto or nut cutlet.  The only problem with vegetarian food generally (according to Jane) is the time it takes to prepare all those vegetables; in that, I do help and I am a dab hand at skinning a butternut squash, a technique that Jane has not mastered.

Rupert looked very slim and healthy on his vegetarian diet and I did wonder if we should become inclined a bit that way ourselves.  Not just for that reason; I was squeamish about meat as a boy (Blog 71) and, like many carnivores, would probably give it a miss if I had to catch a beast myself, skin it and dismember it.  Fortunately, in our civilised world, I don’t have to.  I remember that, quite a few years ago, there was a documentary on the television about the Royal Marines, specifically the mountain warfare cadre: the élite among the  élite, a pretty tough bunch.  We were shown some of their survival training, which included eating rabbits’ eyes (good for rehydration) and making an omelette with wild birds’ eggs and earthworms. A few weeks after that particular episode the Commandant General of the Royal Marines was attending a Mess Dinner with the army in Aldershot (the Royal Marines are part of the Royal Navy, nothing to do with the British Army).  After the food was finished, the Mess President announced that he had a gift for the Commandant General as an extra course and presented him with a tobacco tin containing four earthworms.  This was received with great mirth by the assembled army officers, but the Commandant General of the Royal Marines never turned a hair: he picked up and ate all four worms raw, washing them down with a glass of claret.  Those Royal Marines can be such rough men;  but then, I suppose, that is what they are meant to be.

I served alongside Royal Marines several times and always found them to be bit of a law unto themselves, though highly professional and very tough.  Like army officers, Royal Marine officers (at that time) bore their rank on their shoulders, comprising pips, crowns and – at senior level – crossed batons and sabres.  Unlike naval officers, whose ranks were shown by gold stripes on sleeves or shoulders, Royal Marine rank badges were hard to discern, particularly as their combat uniforms were identical to those of Other Ranks.  To further complicate matters, Royal Marine officer ranks used to be one step out from the ranks of army officers, so that a Captain RM was equivalent to a Major in the British Army and a Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy; a Major RM was equivalent to a Lieutenant Colonel in the army or a Commander in the Royal Navy – a Senior Officer (the ranks have since been aligned)  A fellow officer of mine, a Major in the Royal Marines, once told me of an encounter he had had that exemplified the confusion of identifying ranks.  He was walking through the dockyard one day and noticed a Midshipman coming towards him.  He prepared to be saluted, but did not receive the courtesy as they passed; he shrugged and did not follow it up.  However, five yards later he was arrested by a shout behind him:
“Royal Marine!”, shouted the Midshipman in a shrill voice.
My friend stopped and looked back.
“Yes?”
“ Come back here!”, commanded the Midshipman.
My friend lumbered his way back.
“Don’t you, in the Royal Marines, salute officers?”, demanded the Midshipman.
“Sometimes”, said my friend.
At that point, realisation dawned on the Midshipman’s face as he saw the  Major’s crowns on my friend’s shoulders.  Much spluttering,  apologising and saluting followed.  That Midshipman was very lucky: my friend might have eaten him.

Saluting is a courtesy in the armed forces and not an anachronistic subservient homage to one’s superiors: it is a way of greeting each other as fellow members of the Armed Forces working to a common cause, of people ‘all of one company’.  Occasionally one does encounter a rating or junior officer who fails to salute, usually in error.  Various techniques can be used to challenge such omissions, but the best I ever came across was the gentle reprimand used by a friend of mine, a solution that also summed up the ceremony very well.  He would call the miscreant back and say to the errant rating or junior officer,
“The Queen has commanded that, when we meet, we should salute each other”.  
“Now: you go first”.

Anyway, Rupert’s visit went very well and we enjoyed an excellent long sunny walk in the countryside after his arrival, followed by the aforementioned meal and a fairly large quantity of alcohol.  The Only Son went up ten points in his mother’s estimation by a) his actual arrival and b) bringing two bunches of flowers; he lost points when he later opined that her luxuriant and carefully planned garden “looked a bit overgrown”.  But, overall, the offspring could do no wrong and I was very soon relegated to second place in her affection.  I could live with that.  Twenty hours later, with a hangover, and after declining any breakfast other than two paracetamol, he was gone, taking with him the remnants of the Moroccan Spiced Pie and a complete Eton Mess (his favourite pudding) that he had declined the night before: a 20 hour visit over in a flash.  It was great while it lasted and we must be grateful for small mercies.

Yes, on reflection, we decided we would move towards a vegetarian diet in future.  First, however, we would have that barbecued fillet steak (rare) for supper, and I would need to use up our frozen stock of bacon as bacon sandwiches for breakfast.  No need to get carried away.

The Covid situation in UK trundles on, with little change from the last blog, or the one before that.  As I said in an earlier report, the statistics are bumping along the bottom now, with only the odd ripple disturbing the reports of zero deaths.  The casualty rate is currently below the figures usually reported on British roads. Weekly deaths are still around 50, daily deaths less than 10, daily hospital admissions still dropping; all this despite a rise in infections attributable to the Indian variant, now re-designated  the Delta variant.  Of vaccinations, 77% of the British population have received  their first jab, and 55% have received their second and full immunisation.  Despite this, the media are screaming with headlines of rising infection and warning of the government postponing its 21 June milestone for removing the final Covid restrictions.  I despair.  After the Delta variant there will doubtless be an Epsilon variant as the virus mutates yet again; then a Zeta variant, then an Eta variant and so on.  The vaccinations have been proven to cope with Covid and can be ‘tweaked’ to cope even better with each variant; let us accept that the virus will always be with us – endemic – and get on with returning to normal.  The vaccinations work. Kicking the can down the road is not the way ahead: the economy needs to get going again.

Regular readers will have noticed something of a hiatus in my blog frequency and will have inferred, correctly, that I have been away on my boat again.  With a fair bit of time on my hands in the evenings and no television to distract the mind I could probably have turned out a blog last week, but I was suffering from writer’s block or, to put it more plainly: as I could think of nothing good to say, I decided to say nothing.  If only I had followed that maxim for my previous life: I could have been a Vice Admiral and had more friends now.  Ho hum. The weather in Dartmouth was still variable.  While much of Britain – even Scotland –  sweltered in temperatures of up to 24C during the English Bank Holiday, Dartmouth had sunny days, but a persistent cool wind from the east.  This was sufficient to preclude any lounging on the quarterdeck quaffing gin and tonic, and generated a lumpy swell outside the harbour (“lumpy”: a nautical term that means Mrs Shacklepin cannot keep her feet onboard, gets her spectacles covered in salt spray and – hence – vetoes further marine exploration).   As usual, I completed lots of jobs onboard and, as defects fell off one end of the list, others emerged to take their place.  Perhaps this is called creative inertia; still, it keeps me out of mischief.

Jane had another one of her heart episodes while we lay in bed on the boat one night (they always happen when she is in bed). This time, armed with her rinky dinky AliveCor KardiaMobile EKG Monitor from Amazon (Blog 93), she captured the data (peak heart rate 185 beats/minute) and it has been sent off to her cardiologist for analysis. The episode went on for just under two hours and we were poised to call an ambulance at the two-hour point (as advised) when the whole thing subsided. It is all very distressing for her and we hope the new data will help generate a diagnosis and treatment

The world has gone mad.  Not content with breast feeding to be renamed as “chest feeding”,  cervical smears being offered to men who have decided to be women, and women themselves now to be called “people who menstruate”, the woke liberal establishment now demands that we stop using the term “mother”; instead, we are to refer to a “person who gives birth”.  Is anyone in authority ever going to stand up to these idiots, and tell them to b****r off?  As it is, all sane people will simply ignore the demands and laugh at the fools who issue them. If only Jonathan Swift were still alive: he could have incorporated the whole madness into his Gulliver’s Travels.

She will not let me buy a new inflatable tender for the boat.  And that after I had ordered her a pair of stylish seaboots to keep her diddy feet dry in stormy weather and when helping me scrub the decks (I didn’t mention that last bit to her, not wishing to complicate matters). There’s gratitude for you. Regular readers will recall from Blog 59 that I bought a tender last year in order to widen the scope of our boating adventures.  The choice was a compromise of several factors such as safety, ease of handling, packed size, weight and – of course – cost.  I settled on a 2m lightweight model that folded into a large rucksack.  We have used it once and it was, well, OK but a bit small and unstable.  Have you ever played in a swimming pool with one of those inflatable crocodiles? You know the sort of thing, where you sit on top, wobble, fall off, then spend ten minutes trying to get back on again. No? Not into inflatable crocodiles?  Well, anyway, you get the gist.  Our tender is a bit wobbly like that.  It is also difficult to row, difficult to steer, and Jane has to crouch in the bottom boards, her limbs rigid in terror.  So I have done a bit more research, asked around those who have tenders, applied some basic stability criteria and now propose a bigger and wider replacement.  I submitted these proposals to Jane with cogent reasons why we should change, several offsets to make the idea cost-neutral (buy fewer cravats and waistcoats; use less fuel; eat less)  and a list of the many places we could paddle to in the new tender.  And she said ‘no’.  She did concede that, if I sold the old tender first, then she would reconsider the proposal (I had intended to do things the other way round).  I can see that I am just going to have to chip away at her resolve by my usual subtle means.  Letting her fall in from the existing tender might do the trick, but is, perhaps, a bit drastic even for me.  Also, she is part of The Sisterhood and I must be wary.

The Sisterhood is a strong force and I, a mere man (or person who doesn’t menstruate), challenge it at my peril.  Its feelers stretch out across continents and oceans, and even extend to tapping into these blogs.   One female distant cousin in South Dakota in the USA took me to task for my remark to Jane in Blog 86, “My God, you’re a girl!” when she turned up for breakfast wearing a smart dress and court shoes (I thought I had been quite complimentary).  Now a further female cousin – this one in North Carolina in the USA – has given me stern advice regarding Jane’s heart problem, outlined flippantly in Blog 91 (“Don’t Touch My Button!”).  I quote my cousin verbatim:

“ Now, regarding Jane [and her heart], you must NOT push buttons, flip switches, or piss her off”.

Who? Me?  Never.

7 June 2021 

Blog 93. The Blue Poop Challenge

Whatever happened to Wonderloaf? Or Mothers Pride? Or thick sliced white bread? I posed this question to Jane as I gazed, disappointingly, at the rough lumpen toast with bits in it that rested on my plate at breakfast time. The previous night we had pondered on the important issue of what to have for breakfast the next day and I had expressed a desire for a really nice piece of toast, lashings of butter and Jane’s home-made marmalade: a surprisingly rare occurrence as we more usually have something cooked with eggs. Alas, the fulfilment of this preference did not meet my expectations, and Jane gave me toast made from that strange fancy bread with bits in it. I don’t know what it is called, but it is brown or wholemeal and seems to incorporate bird seed. Most of the time I don’t mind and the bread features frequently with our poached or scrambled eggs; but for a simple breakfast, to be taken with marmalade, I wanted toasted white bread, thick sliced – like about ½“ thick. I voiced my mild disappointment accordingly, but was told – in no uncertain terms – that white bread was bad for me and, in any case, was no longer obtainable in the thick-sliced version that I craved. There was also an unspoken suggestion, reinforced by a sharp eye, that if I didn’t like the breakfast then I could always prepare it myself. I tried calling her bluff on that one and expressed the intention of baking my own white loaf, only to be told that she already had some of my bread in the freezer, ready cut in thick slices, but it was bad for me, so I couldn’t have it. Noting that we had just turned full circle, I gave up. To add further insult to injury, Jane then proceeded to read out an article from the newspaper stating that I should not drink black coffee on an empty stomach either, so I should desist from my current practice of taking the double espresso before breakfast. It all made me ponder on what is the point of life if one cannot indulge in a little luxury now and again: we were not talking cream cakes or pain au raisin here, just a thick slice of toast made from British white bread, not mucked about with, and eaten maybe once a month. I think she is trying to preserve me in aspic, bless her: I am, after all, a little treasure worthy of eternal life.

Continuing on matters sewage from my last blog, Jane now has us participating in an on-line trial to produce blue stools (I hope you aren’t eating breakfast). The “blue poop challenge” is part of a research project into how fast we digest food and it involves baking blue-dyed cup cakes, eating them, and reporting when the – er – end result appears blue in the lavatory pan. The cup cakes, when Jane had baked them, came out a bright fluorescent lightning blue colour like something out of Star Trek, but they tasted all right. We await the results and I will let you know when they manifest themselves..

The weather is still pretty awful, a situation exacerbated by the news that the citizens of Moscow are baking in 30C temperatures.  No chance of that here, and we abandoned the boat last week after six days of rain, wind and (very occasionally) sunny intervals.  We did have the pleasure of entertaining our old friends Benjamin and Margery from Plymouth.  We managed to rush them onboard in a gap between heavy downpours and celebrated the milestone of being able to entertain people indoors with a bottle of Cremant de Loire.  Alas, they declined the option of joining us in steaming the boat away from her berth into a rain squall and Force 4 wind, so we remained alongside gorging ourselves on Jane’s lunch, catching up on news, and slurping wine.  It was a tough choice and I could see that they were disappointed to miss the fun of life on the ocean wave, but the wine offered some consolation I am sure.

It occurred to me, as I re-read an earlier blog, that some readers might not fully understand my reference to “Day Running in a frigate from Portland”. The island of Portland (actually joined to the mainland by a causeway) is located off Dorset and has the distinction of being the first place in Britain to receive the Black Death. It does not surprise me, for it is a bleak and awful place, exposed and wind-swept, and – until just over twenty five years ago – was a naval base for the Royal Navy. Day Running from Portland comprised raising steam at some ungodly hour each morning, sailing into stormy weather and the notorious sea area known as the Portland Race, and doing Something Awful before returning alongside or mooring to a buoy, shutting down, and then doing Something Else Awful. For Portland was more than just a naval base, it was the home for Flag Officer Sea Training, the officer responsible for bringing warships up to full operational standard before they joined the Fleet. The Something Awful referred to earlier could be fending off an attack by aircraft, submarine or ship; blind pilotage (as in fog); boarding a suspect vessel; or taking on fuel and stores at sea. The Something Else Awful could be fighting fires, plugging leaks, pumping out floods, landing an armed party, assisting a civil power after a disaster or resisting an attack by enemy divers. All these things occurred, 24 hours a day, for up to six weeks. It was all very necessary to bind a Ship’s Company into a single efficient fighting unit, but an absolutely dreadful experience. No one in the Royal Navy liked Portland; indeed, we all dreaded it. Even the pubs ashore were awful. Yet Workup (as it was known colloquially) had its humorous moments, particularly when viewed from afar and happening to other ships. I remember that there was one frigate that was tasked with the requirement of boarding a suspected merchant ship. The victim was played by a Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) – a tanker – called GREEN ROVER. The RFA, by the way, is a collection of supply ships and tankers manned, not by naval personnel, but by members of the British Merchant Navy: a hard working crowd who get little credit for their contribution to the Fleet, though I believe their pay and leave conditions are better than the Royal Navy. Anyway, this frigate was tasked with stopping the merchant ship (GREEN ROVER) and then boarding and searching her. Steaming up to the tanker’s beam, the frigate signalled in International Code, by flag and light, Flag KILO:
“STOP INSTANTLY”.
No response.
She called up the ship by VHF radio and ordered her to stop.
No response.
So the frigate stood off and fired a 4.5″ shell across GREEN ROVER’s bow.
Still no response (the RFA crew were old hands at this).
Then the frigate’s CO had a brilliant idea. Frigates at that time carried an anti-submarine mortar: a triple barrelled weapon that fired three bombs, each about 12″ in diameter and 3′ long, ahead of the ship, exploding at various depths above and below a detected submarine. Into one barrel of this mortar the frigate’s crew inserted a large bag of potatoes and this they fired at GREEN ROVER.
It was something of a success. The bag of potatoes described a neat vertical arc and landed bang-on the top of GREEN ROVER’s wheelhouse, pierced the deckhead, and exploded inside, firing potatoes in all directions.
GREEN ROVER stopped and the way fell off the ship.
Cheered by the result, the frigate’s boarding party set off in the motor whaler, armed to the teeth. Unfortunately, the success story ended there, for when the boarding party clambered over the tanker’s bulwarks they were met by an extremely angry crew of merchant seamen who beat them up and summarily threw the boarding party over the side. A case of defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, I feel.
Incidentally, the naval base at Portland closed in 1995, but Workup, or Operational Sea Training, still takes place though now only in the comparatively benign naval base of Devonport in Plymouth. I dare say they still have their fun, but they are welcome to it.

After all that head-shaking and sucking of teeth last week over the latest bogeyman in the Covid 19 saga, the Indian variant, it has now been revealed that the vast majority of people who have died from, or are in hospital with, the variant were eligible to have the vaccine, but had declined it. Enough said. Moreover, after all the hand wringing and threats of halting the programme taking us out of lockdown, the scientists have concluded that the vaccines are – in fact – very effective against this latest variant. But if you are missing this bogeyman then fear not, for there are others lining up for take off: there is now talk of a triple-active mutant variant with pike (or something like that), or a malady called Black Fungus, which sounds like a novel written by John Buchan; the medical fraternity, the British government and the media clearly believe that, when it comes to controlling the general population, Fear is Good: beat them with the stick, then offer the carrot just out of reach, then repeat the cycle; whatever you do, don’t actually give them the carrot. Statistically, it is quite clear that – at long last – the hospital admissions and deaths associated with Covid have been decoupled from detected infections. Daily deaths for the whole of the UK remain in single figures and are still dropping asymptotically, hospital admissions likewise. There are infection hotspots related to the Indian variant, notably around Bolton and Blackburn. With exits now freely open, people are beginning to go on holiday abroad again: some to “Green” approved countries (too many to list here, but ranging from Australia to Tristan da Cuna), but also – more head shaking from the government here – to “Amber” countries (Afghanistan to Yemen, including the USA). The authorities are clearly shocked that some citizens have actually exercised their own judgement on risk in this matter and are choosing to go to “Amber” countries, despite the test and quarantine requirements associated with the decision. People thinking for themselves? This will never do. For completeness, by the way, the “Red” countries range from Angola to Zimbabwe and include India. With this last country, an old saying referring to stable doors and bolting horses springs to mind.

In further matters medical, a lively row has broken out regarding face-to-face appointments with GPs.  It started when a newspaper revealed that the NHS had instructions in place directing GPs to avoid – or even not offer –  face-to-face consultations and rely, instead, on telephone or on-line consultations.  This caused an uproar among the public, so the instruction was flipped into requiring all GPs to provide face-to-face appointments with any patients who wanted them. Cue uproar from the GPs, who have no wish to provide such a service and want to continue with isolation and a telephone triage service.  It is a very curious thing: my dentist, dental hygienist, pharmacist, chiropodist, optician and osteopath have been providing face to face consultations since last June without any difficulty other than the usual face coverings and strict appointment times.  Astonishingly, even hospital consultations are picking up again (Jane has been three times without problem).  Yet my GP surgery ceased on-line booking of appointments last March and the waiting room of the surgery remains empty.  Telephoning to get an appointment can genuinely take hours and often results in finding no appointments available or – worse – simply being cut off.  The impression given by GPs is that they would rather not have to deal with the grubby public and their nasty diseases at all – or at least keep them at bargepole length and discuss their ailments only after extensive filtering and pre interrogation by a female Heracles, the gatekeeper of Olympus.  To be fair, many – if not all – GPs have been heavily engaged in the vaccination programme, which has reduced their availability; nevertheless this outrage from the profession at a time when the epidemic is easing does not do it credit though it has an historical  precedent: the British Medical Association opposed the introduction of the NHS 73 years ago.   Personally, I have no problem with the concept of triage as it should weed out the sickbay rangers and time wasters in order to make way for genuinely ill patients such as my good self;  however, the system should not require protracted waits on the telephone and having to describe one’s piles to some flibbertigibbet or termagant on reception who has no medical qualifications.  At the very least, the triage person should be a nurse.  My theory on General Practice is that the majority of patients are just worried about their symptoms and want simple reassurance that it is not serious; current guidance on ailments does not help one’s anxiety when, for example, anyone with chest pain is told to dial 999 immediately and anyone with a new spot or mole is advised to see a doctor at once.  Triage or seeing a nurse instead of a doctor might well bowl out these cases at an early stage.  At the end of the day, however, you cannot beat a proper consultation with your personal GP who knows your history.  Alas, I rather think that that is now a pipe dream unless you go private and pay a small fortune.

A GP appointment is not exactly a pleasure, of course. In days gone by the surgery would be held in an old house with, maybe, only two doctors presiding. Patients turned up on spec and simply waited their turn rather than having an appointment. I believe there are still some surgeries like that, but most are modern purpose-built facilities with a dozen or more GPs. Ours is one such edifice and there are several “waiting areas” instead of one waiting room. I have always been very satisfied with our GPs (we no longer have a designated doctor) once I have overcome the difficult hurdle of actually getting an appointment, but I never like the waiting area: people sitting there silently and morosely, grizzling children, nothing to read, assessing each other and deciding either that the others are loafing or that they are highly infectious, shouldn’t be contaminating everyone else, and – er – should go to see a doctor. I remember a friend of mine telling me the saga of his local surgery in the early 1960s. The archetype establishment of its time, it was located in a large private house and had one central waiting room with a row of chairs down each side. There were two consulting rooms, each related to its corresponding row of chairs, and two resident doctors. The GPs were traditional doctors who took their time to know their patients, but somewhat different in temperament. My friend related how he was sitting in the waiting room one evening with the rest of the sick and hurt, no-one speaking, several coughing and wheezing, when, from behind the door of Doctor A’s consulting room, he heard Doctor A exclaim,
“A SICK NOTE! Good God man there’s nothing wrong with you! I’ve never heard such nonsense!”
As one man, the entire line of Doctor A’s patients got up from their chairs and transferred themselves quietly to the line for Doctor B, across the room

Ready-meals are not really our forte, the memsahib being of the view that she is quite capable of producing a tasty wholesome meal herself without any short cuts, thank you very much.  Cooking is both her hobby and her pride and I must say she is damned good at it.  So when our friends Fraser and Isla recommended a company called simply, Cook, as a source of such meals we took note, but thought we were unlikely to use the firm a great deal.  Fast-forward to now, when we can visit the boat again, and we decided to reconsider the recommendation.  The cooking facilities onboard are not bad for the size of our boat, but are still limited: there is a small refrigerator, about 250mm of work surface, a two-burner gas hob and a small oven that burns any food placed at the back.  With these facilities Jane still works wonders, but it did occur to us that ready meals might ease the burden on her and – let me be frank here – would reduce the number of pots and pans that I had to wash up.  We have used supermarket ready meals occasionally before, buying food from Marks & Spencer or Waitrose with mixed results – the steak from the former company, eaten on my birthday last July, is still being digested (Blog 54).  There is also concern regarding the ingredients and nutritionally value of these supermarket ready meals, with monosodium glutamate, sugar and salt sometimes featuring in the contents.  Hence, the recommendation of using meals from Cook was attractive.  The firm uses the freshest ingredients and traditional home cooking techniques, sourcing, hand-preparing, cooking, freezing and distributing the meals all in-house in one facility in Kent that employs 300 people.  Meal portions are available for one, two or four people and there is even a Sunday lunch option for a large party.  The meals can be cooked straight from frozen, which is a big advantage, and delivery is free for orders over a certain amount.  Prices of the meals are very reasonable, with a main course for two costing typically about £8. There are also High Street outlets, though only in England.  Anyway, we tried some meals from Cook and they were absolutely superb, so good in fact that we have ordered further batches to cover the weeks when we are away on the boat (we can store the frozen food in a freezer in the marina ashore).  So there you have it: a recommendation for delicious food, ready cooked in the county of Kent and certainly worth a try: Cook (www.cookfood.net). Of course, if you don’t live in England or within delivery range of one of their shops then I’m afraid you are fresh out but – hey – you can’t have everything.

Well you will be pleased to read that Jane’s period with a heart monitor taped to her chest (Blog 91) produced no results to worry about. We were due to depart for the hospital in the Big City on Sunday for the follow-up consultation in Cardiology (on Sunday, note) when Jane received a call that proved to be telephone consultation instead. That seemed quite sensible to me, but it was a pity she was not told of it in advance: we had just put on our coats ready to depart and it was one hour before the appointment time stated in the letter. Also, the drive to the Big City – both of us dressed up in our best Sunday Rig – was going to be our excitement for the day. Anyway, the recorded traces of Jane’s heartbeat showed no defects though – as I said on Blog 91 – she only gets these funny turns once in a blue moon so a week’s monitoring was unlikely to produce anything. However, the consultant suggested to Jane that she might consider buying an ECG heart monitor from Amazon that could be activated if her heart went funny again. Another gadget from Amazon, I thought; excellent! I sought out the recommended AliveCor KardiaMobile EKG Monitor, which links with, and records to, a mobile phone and gulped: £99. Oh well, I was going to buy a new telescope for the boat (such affectation intending to present an alert and professional nautical image when deployed, especially if I wore my new Breton cap with the gold RNSA cap badge); but I suppose a fully-monitored and well-running Jane will be better value for money. The thing is, what with her dodgy leg, I just worry about which bit of her is going to drop off next.

Following up on my second paragraph and the saga of the blue poo, by the way,  I can report that we are four days down the line and still nothing blue in the pan.  I knew you would be interested.  Is this what they mean by being anal retentive?

24 May 2021

Blog 92. Hurrah For The Life Of A Sailor!


The heads ceased working at 0715.  I know this because I had just finished using the facility and I was now (literally) faced with the ghastly residue.  The heads, as you seasoned sea dogs will know by now, is the nautical equivalent of the lavatory.  As there is only one lavatory onboard I suppose the name should be ‘head’ as favoured by the USN, but traditionally we of the Royal Navy have called the facility ‘heads’ whether singular or plural, just as the French refer to les toilettes, and who am I to mess with tradition?  The heads onboard is a sea toilet, that is to say that the device operates differently from your lavatory ashore: you do not just press a button that leads to a flush of fresh water washing away the effluent to somewhere that is “anywhere but here”. Instead, there is a hand pump and a little lever; you pump away vigorously and it empties the pan, you move the little lever and pump some more and sea water flushes the pan at the same time as it is emptied.  The operation is mechanically simple and theoretically reliable, and a series of simple non-return valves ensures that the effluent does not come back at you (you hope).  In our boat it takes 30 vigorous strokes fully to empty and flush the system.  Where does the effluent go?  Well, at sea it goes overboard; in harbour it goes into a holding tank onboard, which is subsequently emptied by sucking it out or by dumping it at sea beyond the three mile limit.  The mackerel love it.  Anyway, to come back to my early morning adventure, I pumped and pumped and the brown contents of the bowl, instead of going down, actually increased in volume, dangerously approaching the rim.  In desperation I prayed to the patron saint of engineers, St Patrick, and he clearly took pity on me as the bowl suddenly began, very slowly, to empty – though not without frequent blowbacks, spitting  and bubbling, like some malevolent geyser in the volcanic Icelandic wastes.  Alas, although the pan emptied, that was only half the battle: the heads would not flush.  Try as I might, I could not draw in fresh sea water to usher the effluent to its final resting place.  I sighed.  Philosophically, I washed my hands and girded my loins for yet Another Job on the Boat, this one before breakfast.  Of course, you could reasonably ask why I had not used the lavatories ashore in the marina, as normal, instead of the cramped and fickle heads onboard; the answer was that the rain was coming down in stair rods in a semi horizontal direction and I was disinclined to make the journey. To continue the story, you will be relieved to know that it has a happy ending.  Nestling in my “come in handy” box was a complete sea toilet repair kit with all the replacement parts needed.  Sleeves rolled up, shoes and socks removed, rubber gloves on and disinfectant on standby, I took the heads apart and replaced all of the rubber  ‘O’ rings and noisome non-return valves, the disintegration of the latter being the cause of the problem.  In two shakes of a lamb’s tail the whole contraption was back together and working a treat, which is what I received from my grateful wife in the form of a delicious breakfast.  Boating life: you can’t beat it.

Matters sewage and sewerage first featured in my professional life when I worked in the Ministry of Defence design division responsible for developing sewage treatment plants (STP) for the Royal Navy. Under the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) regulations all ships except warships have to be fitted with an approved STP or holding tank. Before that, ships simply pumped the stuff over the side as they had done for centuries. Warships are excluded from the IMO regulations but most, if not all, navies comply for the simple reason that, without an STP, a visiting warship would not be permitted in most ports. Having been built in the 1960s, my last steamer did not have an STP, but we overcame the problem in some foreign ports by rationing the heads onboard, the ubiquitous use of wooden bungs and rags, and diverting our sewage into shoreside bowsers or lighters alongside. I remember that we used the latter solution in Naples, an arrangement that cost the Crown a considerable sum of money, and watched the sewage barge take its load just beyond the harbour bar, where it dumped it in the Mediterranean. Actually, the infinite volume of the sea and the chlorine in seawater (and all those mackerel) process sewage naturally in quite a short time, but that does not mean we would like to swim next to the stuff. When I was a boy I could stand on a hill by the harbour mouth and watch the brown stain of effluent from the River Tyne spreading out from the two piers a mile out to sea at ebb tide, but we still swam from the beaches and here I am today. Mind you, at that time the River Tyne itself would not support life and, if you fell into the river, you had to have all manner of vaccinations as a matter of urgency. Thankfully, the Tyne and all other British rivers are no longer routinely contaminated by sewage, and aquatic life has returned extensively. Sewage in inland waterways and rivers would be a major problem because the effluent extracts oxygen from the water as it breaks down and the oxygen-depleted water will not the support plants or fish. I could go on and describe how most STPs work…it’s quite interesting…no? All right. So there you are: a potted history of all things sewage.

We are back on the boat, snuggled down as the wind throws us against the pontoon and the rain comes down mightily.  By the middle of May, Britain had received 91% of its normal quota of rain for that month, so we are on track to break the record for rainfall set in 1967.  Was it only a month ago that I wrote that the earth was as hard as iron and crying out for rain?  Clearly, the cries have been answered.  Amazingly, given this very inclement weather, we managed to take the boat away from her berth the other day and even managed a trip at sea.  There was a brief lull in the weather system on Friday and we took advantage of it. The original plan was simply to give the engines a work out: to get them up to operating temperature and to set the propellers turning.  We only took APPLETON RUM down to the harbour mouth as part of that plan and, in passing, to assess the sea state beyond the bar.  To our surprise, not only was the swell quite benign, but the sun also took the opportunity to say hello.  So away we went, course south-by-west, heading for the Skerries Shoal, three miles off Slapton Sands in Start Bay.  Gradually I brought up the speed: our stern went down, our bows lifted up and soon we were “on the plane” and creaming along at fourteen knots.  Behind us our wake curled upwards and outwards in furrows of green sea and cream foam: APPLETON RUM was alive.  Given our previous adventures recounted on these pages, you will be surprised to read that we did not encounter heavy swell, did not pitch and roll, throwing kettles, books and wives in all directions; we were steady as a rock and going some.  Alas, heavy showers and the next weather system were forecast for noon, so we thought it prudent to turn at the Skerries Buoy and return to the river, but it had been fun while it lasted.  We have remained alongside every since, the wind gusting to Force 5 and the showers blasting the windows like a fire hose.  Life on the water is not like life at home: all the elements manifest themselves at a higher level.  Boats travelling up the river – even small outboard-powered dinghies – create significant wash that rolls us around, even when alongside.  Largely unencumbered by any major land mass or buildings, the south westerly wind whips up the River Dart or down Mill Creek, tugging the boat against her warps and bouncing her off her fenders.  The warps creek in their cleats, creating a constant background noise by night and by day.  Then there is the moaning of wind in the rigging of sailing craft in the marina and the tink-tink-tink of halliards hitting metal masts; the moaning sounds like music or children’s voices, or perhaps it is a banshee, haunting us with the ghosts of drowned mariners.  And as for the rain, well, given our exposure the stuff comes down in sheets and you can see squalls coming from half a mile away.  Fortunately, we have all the kit for when we are outside: the salopettes, the seaboots, the waterproof foul weather jackets with hood and high collar, the automatic life jackets.  The only downside of that kit is that it takes ten minutes to put it on and ten minutes to take it off; that and the fact that, as soon as you get it all on then, as sure as eggs are eggs, your body develops an urge to pass water and all the impedimenta have to come off again.  Jane’s gear is stylish and slimming, comprising a white top with royal blue facings, fetching fluorescent hood and matching royal blue salopettes (no seaboots – cannot find any for her diddy feet); mine is all-over bright orange so that, when fully kitted out, I look like an advertisement for John West Kipper Fillets and walk like a Michelin man.  Still, at least I look the part and am dry.  Snug as bugs in a rug, we are, and greatly relieved that we are not out at sea in this lot.

A trooper in the Household Cavalry has been convicted of sexual assault by court martial and sentenced to two months in army prison.  His crime was pinching the bottoms of two fellow (female) soldiers, as a prank, while on parade; he claimed that he had done it to “lighten the mood”.  It was a daft thing to do, but it is amazing how this relatively trivial, though unwelcome, activity has been escalated.  It is like one of those irregular verbs: I pinch her bottom, you grope her, he sexual assaults her.  The response seems a bit over-the-top to me, but then I often forget that I am living in 2021, as did that trooper, along with the fact that he is living in a society that – rightly – regards that sort of behaviour against women to be totally unacceptable.  In mitigation, I think he was genuinely skylarking and his action might just as easily have been against a fellow male soldier: it is the sort of thing that a band of brothers does to lighten the mood.  But he really was very silly.  The bit that truly astonished me about the whole thing, however,  was that the female soldiers who (correctly) complained, stated that they were “traumatised and almost in tears” because of the incident.  Good grief.  They are soldiers.  If they were were traumatised by having their bottoms pinched in public – probably by a friend or, at least a member of the same company whom they knew –  then heaven knows how they will cope in combat.  How Britain’s enemies must  tremble.

On the subject of Covid, all talk is on the latest bogeyman, the Indian variant.  This joins the previous bogeymen, the Kent variant, the Brazilian variant and the South African variant in the long list that the government and the media have used to terrify us.  Soon to come are the Moldavian variant, the Transylvanian variant and the Venusian variant ad infinitum.  Certainly, India is suffering  very badly from Covid 19, particularly in Delhi where the hospitals have been overwhelmed, and the Indian variant is said to be particularly infectious – just like the Kent variant was and so on.  However, one must take into account the fact that the population of India is measured in billions, not millions, that it has a high rate of poverty and millions of homeless preventing the country from locking down, and that it does not have an extensive health infrastructure. There is also a high degree of ignorance in the population and a reluctance to be inoculated (the Indian prime minister has advocated the application of urine and cow dung to combat the disease).  All the current scientific advice in Britain indicates that, provided we have been vaccinated, we should be able to resist this latest variant.  At the moment, the UK statistics continue to show a fall in hospital admissions and deaths as part of a continuing trend; positive test results have increased slightly, but the low fatalities suggest that our resistance is good.  As I write, weekly deaths attributable to Covid in the UK stand at 72, dropping at 9%; hospital admissions at 103 dropping at 1%. 69% of the British population have received at least one dose of vaccine.  The rate of inoculation is to be increased in the UK and the gap between the first and second doses is to be reduced in order to increase immunity.

On the home front, Britain passes yet another milestone in the move to come out of lockdown tomorrow,  Monday 17 May.  After that, we can entertain friends indoors for the first time in many months.  Up to six people can also go inside a pub, restaurant or indoor event and – to quote the prime minister – we can hug each other again.  I don’t know where all this hugging and kissing  business came from; it is not something I indulge in greatly, except with the memsahib – and that only on high days or birthdays;  it is treated with suspicion if I act amorously with her at any other time.  Certainly I do not extend the practice to members of the same sex.  I think it all started when we started to do the Sign of Peace in church, businesses started calling us by our Christian names, waiters started addressing us with, “Hi guys”, and Mr Anthony Blair (“call me Tony”) became prime minister; it is yet another nail in the coffin of civilised British behaviour. And,  by the way, who is the prime minister to say when we can or cannot hug each other?  It is almost tempting to start the practice out of sheer imbuggerance. 

The sun has come out from behind a cloud.  We are still bouncing around, but that little ray of sunshine seems to make the wind more bearable somehow.  Jane has complained about having to provide tea, twice, while I have been writing to you good people and – further – I have been ordered to go outside and repair a rainwater leak somewhere in poor old APPLETON RUM’s structure.  Oh yes, and the gas has just run out and I have to change over bottles.  To quote the brave and late Captain “Titus” Oates, 

“I am just going outside and may be some time”.

16 May 2021

PS.  The sun went in and a squall hit me when I was half way through the job.  I was soaked.  By way of apology, the sun came out again just as I finished.  Hurrah for the life of a sailor.

Blog 91. Don’t Touch My Button.

“Don’t touch my button!”
I have received many tactile related instructions, directions and orders from my good wife including, inter alia,  “Don’t touch my tummy” and “Don’t touch my leg”; but “Don’t touch my button” must surely be the most bizarre and the only one positively crying out for a witty riposte.  You see, she has, at last, been fitted with a heart monitor after a seven month wait, and a small thin electronic device – about two inches square – is now mounted on her upper chest, with sensor pads stuck underneath and to one side.  The aim is routinely to record her heart rhythm over the course of a week, but in the centre of the device there is a button, to be pressed if ever she gets a repeat of the uneven, palpable heart beats first reported in Blog 59.  It was to this button that Jane was referring when I gave her one of my habitual morale-boosting embraces, forcing me to jump away from her as if she were positively charged with 440 volts.  I am fascinated by this Panic Button: will she collapse in a jumble of bones if I press it, like one of those androids in the film iRobot?  Or will the button engage turbo overdrive in Jane’s already over-endowed metabolism?  Who can tell, for it is unlikely that the button will be pressed in earnest during the course of one week, as she only seems to get one of her “episodes” about once every three months. I am not too sure if the heart monitor will tell the doctors anything, but at least they are trying, of sorts, and it has given Jane something else to fret about, namely, how to take a shower while wired up like a logic circuit board.

That talk of iRobot reminds me to provide an update on the new robot vacuum cleaner, which we have named Marvin.  We have had robot vacuum cleaners of one sort or another for about fifteen years, our first one, a Roomba, arcing its final spark just before last Christmas.  People have asked me if the machine actually worked and I always replied that it did, though with, perhaps, 80% efficiency: a quick whip round with a conventional upright vacuum cleaner was still – ideally – needed about once a month to mop up any leftovers.  However, our new robot vacuum cleaner that arrived in February is another Roomba, a 980 model, and it is much better than its predecessor; I would give it an efficiency of 95% and I have never had to follow up its operation with a conventional vacuum cleaner.  Not only is it more efficient and quieter, it is controllable by an iPhone app or by voice control using Amazon Alexa.  Of course, it also cleans under beds and furniture: the bits that a conventional vacuum cleaner cannot reach. You can set up a schedule and label the rooms that the machine has mapped out digitally too, so that you can tell it to target, say, one room if you wish.   As I write, I have just asked it to come and clean the kitchen: a little chirrup heralded its activation from its lair in the dining room and it then trundled its way to the kitchen before starting to beat, sweep and clean.  The only snag that I have found with the beast is that it is so efficient (or our house is so dirty) that I have to empty its dirt bin after every operation, such requirement being passed on to me by voice and a text.  I do wonder, sometimes, who is the master and who is the slave here.  So there you are: robot vacuum cleaners do work, though you have to choose your model carefully using an impartial review agency such as the Consumer Association’s magazine, Which?  The very best machines, scoring 80% on the Which? scale, are the Dyson 360 Heurist and the Roomba s9+,  a snip at £1,199 and £2,083 respectively; but my Roomba 980, scoring 80% on the Which? scale, cost nothing like that amount, though the current price is £699.  Curiously, the worst scorer was the Miele Scout RX1 on 35% and £349; a very paradoxical result as Miele is generally one of the best manufacturers of electrical goods in the market.  So these things are not cheap, but then it depends on how much you like gadgets, how much you value your time and how much you enjoy vacuuming; personally, I think it is money well spent.

Deaths attributable to Covid in the UK dropped to unity one day last weekend and, overall, are dropping at 39% weekly.  Hospital admissions related to Covid are dropping at 16% weekly.  The vaccination programme is still rattling along and about 39 million people in the UK have received their first jab; 17 million have received their first and second.  This last statistic includes yours truly and the memsahib, who rose at oh-crack-sparrow last Saturday morning to be ‘done’ for the second time at the racecourse of the Big City at 0800.  It was almost as cold up there on 1 May as it had been three months earlier, when I received my first vaccination.  We compensated for the early start and cold weather by indulging in a Fat Boy’s Breakfast on return to the happy homestead (there have to be some perks).  Oh, and by the way, this time I received A Badge after my vaccination, or – at least – a little round sticker saying, “I’ve Had the Covid Vaccination”.  I displayed this proudly on my Barbour gilet, much to Jane’s exasperation, but then lost it somewhere sometime after arriving home.  I suspect sabotage.

With Covid restrictions set to ease in the forthcoming weeks, much interest has been revived in taking foreign holidays, though I cannot think why: to me, in terms of sheer pleasure, the pre-departure tests, the wearing of face masks on arrival abroad, and the hullaballoo after return to the UK all put it on par with a week spent day-running in a frigate from Portland. The government has helpfully labelled various countries using a traffic light system so that holidaymakers can make a sensible choice when it comes to destination, those labelled “green” involving minimum travel fuss and those labelled “red'” requiring expensive quarantine on return. In this list I was delighted to see that South Georgia, an almost uninhabited frozen rock in the South Atlantic, and the Faroe Islands, in the North Atlantic between Norway and Iceland, are included in the “green” category. As I have said many times before, we all get our pleasures in different ways. Personally, I have always found that a week spent in the bracing winds and refreshing waters of Marsden Bay, South Shields to be perfectly adequate for reviving the spirit and setting up the constitution.

The jet stream has shifted, yet again, and is currently wizzing west to east somewhere south of the British Isles. This has encouraged a depression in the North Atlantic and we are revelling (?) in what the UK Meteorological Office is pleased to call, “unsettled weather” ie it is, and will remain for the next seven days, wet and windy. So just guess where we are going next week? Right first time: we are off back to the boat in Dartmouth, gluttons for punishment. Whether we get away to sea or, for that matter, away from our berth remains to be seen, but I shall be reporting our adventures as usual in due course. It is interesting to note that the sale of boats – like that of houses – is going through the roof in the UK. I am not sure why, but I hope the new owners at least use the craft that they buy. I have been a boat owner now for 19 years and have berthed in nine boatyards or marinas in that time. Every marina has had one common factor: 95% of the boats therein never moved from their berth. This has always baffled me: quite apart from the depreciation, boats are very expensive to buy, expensive to moor and expensive to maintain, yet most owners seem content to let their boats just sit there, resting on their beer cans and gathering green mould. In one marina I was in there was a beautiful steel motor cruiser that I would have loved to have owned; in two years I only ever saw the owners onboard once, and that was to sit on the quarterdeck in the sunshine quaffing gin and tonic while the boat remained alongside. Some owners to whom I have spoken have admitted to lacking confidence in handling their boat, hence their permanent attachment to the jetty. Their reserve is sensible, but there are many courses available that can be taken under the banner of the Royal Yachting Association (RYA) to solve the problem. The cost of a course is but a fraction of the cost of the boat that has been purchased, and so would be good value for money. It is all very odd. Incidentally, there is no requirement in the UK to be qualified or have a licence to own or cox a boat: anyone can take a boat away from these shores (provided it is their property).

The task was an important one: to make a wooden bowl for a very good friend of ours, who was about to celebrate her birthday.  I do wood turning for a hobby so the task was not an onerous one, rather it was a pleasure to make something for a friend and it gave me a sense of purpose.  I had a nice chunk of steamed pear in my stock and I reasoned that it could be carved into a decent eight-inch bowl.  I duly mounted the raw material in the lathe and began the six-hour process of converting a piece of tree into a useful household artefact.  First it was turned into a fat cylinder, then I started the curves.  But there then emerged a snag: there was a crack through the wood.  So I turned the wood a bit more to cut out the crack and stopped to check: it was still there.  Round and round went the lathe, higher and higher grew the pile of wood shavings, and smaller and smaller grew the cylinder.  It started to dawn on me that I was in danger of converting a nine inch hunk of tree into a matchstick and enough bedding to house 101 hamsters.  A rethink was required. The diameter of the eight inch “bowl” was now down to four inches, but I reasoned that if I cut the cylinder in half, it would remove the cracked section.  I could then proceed to recover my losses and manufacture a bowl three inches in diameter and one inch high.  This I did. 
Arguably the most important part of bowl-making is the polished finish; certainly it is the hardest part and I was determined to make an especially good effort this time.  My friend is very keen on the all things Green and on the environment, so I set out to use only natural products. Painstakingly, I sanded the almost-finished product with the requisite seven grades of increasing fineness glass paper; I finished the wood with fine wire wool; I burnished it with a handful of wood shavings; finally, I polished the bowl to a high gloss shine using two coats of  beeswax from genuine Barsetshire bees and a woollen cloth from fleece sheared from a Welsh sheep.  I removed the finished, though somewhat diminished, product from the lathe and examined it:  yes, the damage limitation exercise had worked well and – though I thought it myself – the finish was perfect.  I took the bowl into the house for a rewarding cup of tea and my usual Two-Minute Praising from Jane.  Now, Jane is used to my bowls, indeed, the house is full of them: large bowls, small bowls, ornaments, candle holders, and all things round.  Yet every time I make a new one, Jane receives it with a radiant smile, boundless enthusiasm and fulsome praise before carefully placing the item on a shelf somewhere, like mummy thanking her child for that fourteenth jewellery box he made in infant school from an empty carton of Kraft Cheese Slices.  This time I entered the kitchen with my finished product wrapped in my apron, and revealed it with a modest flourish.
“Oh”, said Jane, peering at it under her spectacles as if it were some microscopic specimen from a murky pool, “It’s a bit small isn’t it?”
“Well, yes”, I said, somewhat surprised by the lukewarm reception. “I had to cut it down because of a crack.  But I’ve managed to recover the situation and look at the finish”.
“Yes, yes…”, she said distantly. ”And this was for Harriet on her birthday was it?”
“Yes.  Smell the beeswax.  You can almost see your face in it.  She should like it I think”. 
I eased it under her nose while noting, with some concern, her use of the past tense, first and third person singular word, “was”.
“Yes…”, she said again, “You don’t think…well…you don’t think, maybe, it looks a bit like…an ashtray?”.
“An ashtray!”.  
I confess, I was more bemused than upset.
“Yes”.  She then burst into a fit of giggles.  “It’s just the right size”.
“But look at the finish! The layers of beeswax.  The shine…”
“Yes dear, it’s very nice; beautifully made.  But I’m afraid it does rather look like an ashtray.  We can’t give Harriet that.  We’ll have to give her something else”.  
And she took the little bowl that now apparently doubled as an ashtray, and placed it on a shelf somewhere to join the others.
“It’s a jolly good bowl dear.  Well done.”
And she burst into giggles again.  
I sighed and my shoulders sagged. Oh well, back to the workshop then: I think I have a nice piece of Black American Walnut somewhere that I can turn off.  As I left the house I could hear Jane giggling again.  

I don’t suppose you know anyone who would like a beautifully hand-crafted and very highly-polished ashtray made from steamed pear, do you?

8 May 2021