Hard work never killed anybody, my grandmother used to say.
I'm not going to disagree with my beloved granny but this week, it certainly
came close.
My Beloved's father has been building a barge over the last
couple of years and this week the time has finally came to launch it. It's now
in the water and pretty soon we'll be off on its inaugural voyage. But there
are a few things to be done first, as you'd imagine, like converting the inside
of it from a building site to a habitable living space. I really hope that no
health and safety inspectors come visiting for a while.
I'm astounded at how he's built it single-handedly without
any plans. He just got some sheet metal and started welding. Fabulous. It's
even more impressive when you learn that he's seventy-three and just does this
as a hobby. If I'm half as capable as that at his age I'll be happy. Actually,
I'd like to have been half as capable as him at any age in my life. With my
sedentary, chained to a laptop lifestyle, I don't come close. He's incredibly fit
- note that I didn't add "for his age"; he's just incredibly fit
whereas I'm more… well let's say I'm
cuddly and leave it there.
Older readers might recall an advert from the 1970's that
went "Weebles wobble but they don't fall down". For those too young
to remember, Weebles were little egg-shaped toys by Hasbro. They were weighted
in the bottom so that, while they may have appeared unsteady on their feet,
they were difficult - if not impossible - to knock over. That's what I'm like moving
around the boat. Some people don’t like shimmying around the thin walkways or
wobbling along decks that are constantly moving below their feet but I'm fine
with it. It must be something to do with my low centre of gravity. Just like
those Weebles toys.
Which is why I felt such a total plank the other day when,
for the first time ever, I stumbled on deck.
It was my own fault. I'd tried to squeeze myself past a mate
on one of the thinnest parts of the deck. He pressed himself against the hull
and was hogging almost all of the handrail so I sort of tried to hop around
him. It was, I realise both now and at the time, a very foolish thing to do. I
would normally never have bothered but I was cold, it was late in the day and
(most importantly) I was bursting for the loo.
I was almost around him when I felt something tugging at my
foot. A capstan that had been there all along must have suddenly grown a little
as it grasped my ankle and pulled me off balance. I stumbled. I fell. I
scrabbled and clawed at my pal's back.
He grasped the handrail even tighter, clenching his entire body in case I
actually managed to cling on to him.
He needn't have bothered. I missed completely, grabbing at
the air behind him. For a moment I hung in mid-air, one leg and at least half
of my bodyweight leaning over the port side of the ship. I could hear the water
lapping against the hull below me like a siren beckoning me down to the murky
depths. Not that canals are very deep. The odds are that I'd be able to stand
up in it and the water wouldn't come to much above my chest, but that wasn't
the point. I had no desire to get completely soaked on a freezing December day,
not least of all because I didn't have a change of clothes with me.
I looked down to the muddy water, fully aware of what fish
had done in it for centuries. I looked up at my mate, still clenched solid in
terror. I did the only thing that I could. I dived for the safety of the deck.
Unlike those Weebles I did indeed fall down, but by some
miracle I stayed dry. I made a perfect one-point landing that rang around the
metal hull with a satisfying echoey 'boing'. The aforementioned spikey capstan
hit me flush in the trumpet causing me to let forth with a very unmanly shriek
of pain and surprise.
The boat rocked.
I rolled around the deck like a very unhappy beached whale
who'd just had a metal capstan forced into his blowhole. This way and that I
thrashed, trying to find something that I could hold onto that would stop me
from wobbling over the side.
The boat rocked in the other direction.
The seventy-three year old boat builder came running from
where he had been sawing wood on the top deck to see his son-in-law (in all but
name) impaled on his best capstan. And he still wants me to help him with its
maiden voyage.
I hope he doesn't have a gangplank.
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