May 2021

On the first of the month we had a delightful surprise visit from our friends Ruth and Subash and their children Suresh and Ezhilvizhi to introduce us to their new baby, Rajendra. 

On the fourth I got my second covid jab at the Newark showground, just outside the town.  I can't help feeling a peculiar kind of pride in the way human science has risen to the challenge and developed effective vaccines in just a few short months.  It seems the risk has to be immediate and palpable before we can mobilise our efforts in this way, while we look on in despair at the challenge of climate change or just carry on as if it doesn't exist.

Our daily Poppy walks continue to give us exercise and continuity and a widening circle of friends.  This is Zak, a gentle giant who Poppy seems to adore.

This year has been fairly busy with celebrancy work and May was no exception, including my first funeral where I encountered rival funeral parties.  I met most of the mourners in the crematorium car park, only to have my attention drawn to a rival group assembled on the path to the chapel entrance.  It turned out that the man who'd died had had a son by an earlier marriage, who no one thought to mention to me.  There was clear hostility between the two groups and no way they could have sat together without a punch up.  I introduced myself to the son I'd never met and negotiated with him that although he and his party wouldn't be welcome at the service he could accompany me to the back of the hearse and "pay his respects" to the coffin, before it was unloaded and taken in the chapel.  I felt awkward doing this as funerals are, as far as I'm aware, public events to which one can't bar access, but I did it anyway and it worked, to the extent that following the son saying his goodbyes at the rear of the hearse his party retreated, while the funeral director ushered the other party in and locked the doors behind them.

Back on the water! (Almost)

After months of browsing Ebay and a mysteriously named site called Apollo Duck I finally made the decision to buy another boat.  For the first time in my boating career I let experience triumph over hope and actually went shopping for something sensible - a dinghy, which I could sail occasionally and store inexpensively at a local sailing club.  I then spent weeks trying to work out what kind of dinghy and even made an offer on a type of boat called a "scaffie", only to realise just in time that it would actually be too heavy for me manhandle.  To cut a long story short I ended up making an offer on a Cornish Cormorant which was kept down in Christchurch on the South Coast near Bournemouth.

Having got a tow bar fitted to our little Fiat Panda I drove down to Christchurch to pick up the boat in early April, my first long car journey since the first lockdown in March 2020.  Here it is fully rigged in our front garden.  It has a little bowsprit and a traditional gunter rig, which along with the hull colour makes her look a bit like our beloved "La Fulica", which I sold almost ten years ago now.  Over the years I've spent a lot of time sailing in my head, but weirdly I can only do this when I actually own a boat.  In the same way I am unable to fantasise about winning the lottery unless I buy a ticket.  I'm looking forward to many happy years of head sailing and maybe some real sailing too.