Authors Electric

 I didn’t stay to chat. I didn’t join the group which was heading for the pub. I left the meeting as quickly as I could and hurried down the beach. This year’s Peter Duck holiday had begun. There was already a game of cards in progress on the cabin table but I didn’t join in. Merely pushed my meeting notes somewhere far out of sight, ate my share of the supper and settled into my bunk. Nine nights of sleeping on board and waking early every morning to walk along river walls or beaches with the dogs instead of our familiar fields (lovely though they are). The saltings above Waldringfield Gwen, my oldest granddaughter joined the following day. I was impressed by her initial questions: did we have flares? where were they kept? Was there a VHF set and who was qualified to use it? You might think this implied some lack of faith in our ability to negotiate our very modest river to river passages but I thought they were good questions to ask on arrival on any new boat on which you we...

  'Sula' in Scotland ‘There’s little point keeping old boats alive if their stories are forgotten,’ said Robert Armstrong, when I apologised for my eagerness in inviting myself to visit him. Robert is a boatbuilder working on the west coast of Scotland. His home is Sula , a 24’ 5-ton Bermudan sloop, built in 1939 by David Hillyard in Littlehampton, Sussex (as Mistrale ). She’s his home, his mobile workshop and his transport.  When I invited Francis and I to visit them, Robert was immediately welcoming though he couldn’t be specific as to where they might be: ‘Everything I do is weather and tide dependant so planning beyond a few days never works out for me […] but wherever Sula is moored you're welcome.’ For me, Sula is Barnacle Goose, ‘Barney’, the yacht my parents owned 1951-1957, in the first years of their marriage.   They’d bought her in Rye, fitted her out in a mud berth, then sailed her home to the River Deben in Suffolk. My father was building up his business ...

'Sula' in Scotland  ‘There’s little point keeping old boats alive if their stories are forgotten,’ said Robert Armstrong, when I apologised for my eagerness inviting myself to visit him. Robert is a boatbuilder working on the west coast of Scotland. His home is  Sula , a 24’ 5-ton Bermudan sloop, built in 1939 by David Hillyard in Littlehampton, Sussex (as  Mistrale ). She’s also his mobile workshop and his transport.  When I invited Francis and I to visit them, Robert was immediately welcoming though he couldn’t be specific as to where they might be: ‘Everything I do is weather and tide dependant so planning beyond a few days never works out for me […] but wherever  Sula  is moored you're welcome.’ For me,  Sula  is  Barnacle Goose,  ‘Barney’, the yacht my parents owned 1951-1957, in the first years of their marriage.  They’d bought her in Rye, fitted her out in a mud berth, then sailed her home to the River Deben ...

  Peter Duck in winter acrylic on board by Anna Mortimer There’s a phrase I like in the C of E communion service when we give thanks for bread ‘which earth has given and human hands have made’.  It’s one of the many phrases that can’t be taken literally. What one actually gets, in most churches, is a tasteless white wafer made of wheat flour and water, then stamped out by machine and packaged hygienically. Minimal intervention by human hands, it would seem (though I’ve now watched a couple of You Tube videos which show labouring nuns, smiling and thinking holy thoughts as they work some basic machinery.) The usual communion wafer is nothing like real, crumbly, hand-made bread. Even if one never makes it oneself (I don’t) homemade bread seems to retain some tactile evidence of fingers mixing; palms and wrists and upper arms kneading; a baker’s bodyweight leaning into the dough, lifting and turning and rolling. No doubt it’s tiring work for people who have to make it all the tim...

Friday. End of the working week. Jobs to be fitted in. Always keeping one eye on the clock to make sure everything gets done. There's a meeting at the village church to discuss practical arrangements for an evensong by candlelight. Perhaps if we turn off the harsh electric lamps that glare down from the ceiling and let softer lights make pools and shadows in the large,old space, perhaps we will feel closer to the people from the past, who have lived and worshipped and died where we live now.   But we have to get the logistics right. Twenty-first century people, even in villages, are not as comfortable with the dark as our ancestors had to be. We must ensure they can arrive and leave safely and feel comfortable while they are here.  Our meeting's at 4.30. Already it's after 4.00. I’m in the laundry room and hurrying to unload the washing machine, to take clothes off hangers and put them in the airing cupboard, take out the previously aired clothes and pile them into a bask...

It should have been an achievable adventure, an old-style family jolly, nicely within the capacity of different-aged adults, an old wooden boat, visiting children and dogs. Three of my grandchildren would be sailing from the Mount Batten Centre in Plymouth for the Cadet dinghy national and world championships. My son Frank and daughter-in-law Alice were lead organisers; Francis and I were among the sponsors. This would also be my oldest granddaughter’s last event. Retirement comes at 17 in the uniquely child-centred Cadet dinghy class. What could be more fun for me, my brother Ned, son Bertie, dogs Nellie and Solo, than to spend a week or two sailing Peter Duck to Plymouth from Suffolk, so we could show our support for the young sailors and watch the racing from on deck? Yes, it’s 300 miles – we could reach Scotland for that, or the entrance to the Keil Canal – but, taken in stages, it would be a matter of six long days or eleven shorter ones. Time on land for the dogs to empty thei...