MAY I FLOAT THIS BY YOU?
Chapter One-4th Installment
I loved my time in Norfolk. Never having been
a great fan of hills the Norfolk terrain suits me fine. I remember
thinking when Sir Edmund Hillary was asked why he had climbed Everest and
answered “Because it was there” that it seemed to me a very good reason to
walk round it.
I liked the Norfolk people with their musical
long-vowelled accent, though with the passage of time I suspect
Norfolkspeak might morph into the unattractive flat, lazy language that
permeates the land. I learnt that Norfolk people aren’t stupid especially
when it comes to business, being canny and patient in getting the result
they want. They certainly prove the Walter Gabriel advice that “If you
want to find an idiot in the country then you’d better bring him with
you”. (I know Walter wasn’t from Norfolk and that Ambridge is
based somewhere in the west of the country but it still applies.) Boat
auctions were held every spring in Wroxham the “capital” of the Broads.
The auctioneer was selling a smart, secondhand Mirror dinghy and bidding
was enthusiastic by locals and incomers alike. The auction took place on
a piece of land between the River Bure and a roadway on which, opposite
the auction, stood Moore’s Small Boat Showrooms full of lovely, brand
new, varnished sailing dinghies. As I watched I noticed the locals drop
out of the bidding more or less at the same time allowing two blazered
bidders, both sporting captain’s hats, to compete with one another. The
auctioneer was masterly. Sideways smirks were exchanged among the
locals. As bidding faltered he called to one Blazer “You’re not going to
lose it for another 20 quid are you?” and matey duly weighed in, “Ho
ho” cried the auctioneer warming to his task and turning to the other
Blazer”He’s nicking it off you, Sir, just for £20” It got personal between
the two yotties and the auctioneer knew it. “He’s laughing at you Sir. It
could be yours for another tenner and then we’ll see who’s
laughing” On and on it went, the locals loving every minute and joining in
with the encouragement. At last, when we were down to “Don’t lose
your dream for a fiver, old friend”, the wife of Blazer No 1 arrived from
doing a bit of shopping and, quickly realising her other half was blowing
her long awaited refurbished kitchen on a second hand boat, put a stop to
proceedings. Blazer No 2 had won the day. But at what cost? Well, to the
delight of the auctioneer, the locals and probably, in hindsight, Blazer
No 1 (and certainly Mrs Blazer No 1’s kitchen fitter), at a cost 10 % less
than he paid the auctioneers he could have walked the 15 feet across the
road to the aforesaid Moore’s Small Boat Showrooms and bought the same
dinghy, brand spanking new. I learnt a lot about auctions that day
and Norfolk was a good teacher.
After driving 4 hours from
work and stopping for a reviver in the Black Horse at Hoveton (now gone-the
Black Horse-not Hoveton) we arrived at Turner’s Yard, found a dinghy and rowed
across, one rowing and one shining the torch in his eyes for fun. I was out of
the dinghy like a gazelle and Ady passed up the bags and stuff. His gymnastics
were less gazelleish and as the dinghy floated away from the boat he went in
the drink. It wasn’t deep but it was very muddy up that dyke (Stoppit!) and the
situation wasn’t helped because whilst trying to haul him aboard I was laughing
so much I kept dropping him back in. Eventually the Creature from the Black
Dyke (what a good name for a brass band) was landed inside the boat. The
discomfort was exacerbated by the fact he was wearing his one and only office
suit and as in those days it was a hanging offence not to be properly attired
when arriving on the Monday we spent most of the weekend trying to get the suit
returned to something approaching respectability. I don’t think we were hugely
successful. Sorry Ady.
He was more successful in a later incident
which could have become an accident whilst moored in the main yard. Ady was
painting the side of the boat whilst stood in a dinghy and was concentrating so
hard on the job in hand that he appeared not to notice as I had along with a
group of Sea Scouts readying a yacht on the other side of the basin that the
dinghy was getting further inch by inch away from the side he was so
attentively painting. The audience watched, silently, (bastards) as Ady
realised his predicament. His fingers were grasping the gunwale of the boat and
his feet were trying to retain contact with the dinghy. We were all sure he was
going in (prize bastards all) but there was a moment when it could go either
way. With the tenacity for which he is famed he slowly, very slowly, with feet
hooked under the inside of the dinghy and knuckles white gripping Broad Wave
drew the dinghy back under control until he was secure again. He had heretofore
been unaware of the audience which was now about 20 in number but when the
spontaneous applause broke out around the yard shattering the Horning Sunday
morning quiet he looked very pleased with himself. Being the good mate I am I
put my camera away to wait another suitable photo opportunity.
Some more “dyke” tales.
Did
you know the
earwig gets its name from long-standing myths claiming the insect can climb inside a person's ear and
either live there or feed on their brain. While any small insect is capable of
climbing in your ear, this myth is unfounded. Earwigs don't feed on the human
brain or lay their eggs in your ear canal. Well, that’s a relief but whatever
it was in my ear one night alone in Thurne Dyke I knew I didn’t want it there.
The Lion Inn at Thurne was one of my favourite spots, easily reached by boat
from Horning with good moorings and it was a good pub. I’d dined well if not
wisely and retired for the night. I woke, or rather, was awakened, by the most
amazing and frightening noise in my right ear. A high pitched buzzy noise that
scared the bejasus out of me. I tried to extricate whatever it was by poking my
finger in my ear but that made things worse. I panicked. I was on my own up a
dyke in the middle of Norfolk. The pub was shut. I sought out my big rubber
torch and staggered to the mirror hoping to get a better view of what I was
doing. As soon as I switched on the torch whatever was making the racket flew
out, hit the glass of the torch and fell on my bunk. Do you recall the scene
from Dr No when Bond repeatedly and frantically beat a tarantula to death? Same
thing except I was sweating more than Bond, had to sit on the end of my bunk
for about an hour before regaining my equanimity. Another difference was that
for a month after I stuffed cotton w00l in my ears on retiring. I don’t think
Bond did that.
On
another occasion I was moored in a dyke just along from the Ferry Inn at
Horning. Three of us had been to the pub as seemed polite and it was not
unknown that when back on board a game of crib accompanied by whisky and
cigarettes ensued. We played and drank and smoked into the early hours.
I
awoke in the morning, frightened to open my eyes in case I bled to death. I
felt even worse than I’d expected though probably not as bad as I deserved. My
head was aching and fortunately before I lit the gas under the kettle it dawned
on me and the other two that the headache was as much due to a pungent smell of
petrol. On closer examination the awful truth permeated our very thick heads.
The engine on Broad Wave was a Morris Vedette petrol engine and I had filled
the tank the previous afternoon. Apparently the tank had ruptured at the bottom
so whilst we had smoked our time away the previous evening we were in fact sat
on a bilge full of volatile fuel. We obviously couldn’t start the engine not
just because there probably wasn’t sufficient fuel but mainly because we would
have been in that Great Boatyard in the Sky before our time; quite possibly
taking a couple of adjacent craft with us. This would not have made us very
popular either round Norfolk or in the Hereafter.
We pulled the boat round to the yard and to be
fair they set about the job without delay. The bilges were filled with soapy
water before being pumped into empty oil drums. The damaged tank was removed,
steam cleaned, welded and reinstalled. A full tank of petrol was provided and
we were able to go on our way. I settled the bill which wasn’t outrageous but
did include the cost of disposing of the soapy contents of the bilge. Quite
right and proper. We left, grateful to have survived, although I did note as we
turned onto the main River Bure the lad from the yard tipping the soapy
contents of a barrel straight in the drink.
In previous paragraphs
I have referred to the “yard” or “boatyard”. I think the word conveyed so much
more than just a place where boats are moored as in the current day word “Marina”
Horning was a fine example of how this transition affected the whole of the
local community. Not just Horning. My first experience of this was the purchase
at auction of Broad Wave was at Clifford Allen’s Yard at Coltishall. The yard
closed, the hire fleet auctioned off and a housing development took its place.
Throughout the Broads the same scenario removed these places
of work, building and maintaining boats, jobs for the locals and sources of
income for local shops and replaced them with desirable, stylish and expensive
housing. Whilst the locals might have thought them desirable they couldn’t
afford them especially as one of the main sources of work and income had
disappeared. Many were/are second homes the owners arriving on Friday evening
with all necessary supplies for the weekend. A walk down Horning High Street no
longer has any interest unless you’re an estate agent. No sound of work, no people earning a wage, no
soul.
One cannot criticise the people who sold up nor the
developers and home buyers. The transition was and still is unstoppable. One
can only repeat that mantra necessary to make old age more bearable “We had the
best years”
I can’t mention Horning without reference to the Sunday morning Regatta on Horning Reach which could be viewed just for fun from The Swan PH. It is not necessarily watched with pleasure if you’re on a boat and haven’t encountered this flurry of sail before. I was lucky. My old man had oft sailed and motor cruised through Horning on a Sunday and new the game. Hug the starboard bank as best you can and the yachts shooting hither and thither will treat you as part of the bank tacking right up to you before wheeling away in the other direction. For the uninitiated hirer having left his/her base at Wroxham an hour previous arriving to see a sea of sail tacking in all directions the temptation and understandable reaction is to try and dodge round the unpowered craft. Sometimes more often than not they finish up in the middle of the armada much to their terror and the yachtsmen’s vociferous disapproval. Many hours have I spent, sat, pint in hand, at a table outside the Swan and watched civilisation break down, marriages disintegrate and dream holidays turn into nightmares. Great fun. I once saw a man decide he’d had enough of this lark and moored up outside the pub stepping ashore, rope in hand, whilst telling his wife to put the boat in reverse. Poor woman who obviously had no idea what to do hit the throttle instead and the boat sped away leaving matey on the bank after he had wisely let go the rope. As his wife roared round in a circle sending yachts in all directions to avoid collision he harangued the poor woman from the bank using the sort of language rarely heard on the Sabbath. She in turn, every time she passed him on her circuit, screamed that she’d never wanted to come on this ****ing holiday in the first place and he could stick the ****ing boat where the sun don’t shine. Eventually she got the boat under some control and they were last seen heading back towards Wroxham in studied silence. I do hope they didn’t give up on their holiday, that the marriage continued and their bit of civilisation was restored.Our last year of five with Broad Wave was 1976-the long hot summer still recalled by my generation usually to dispel all references to global warming as being a recent event. It was a sizzler and the boating was tremendous. My rose tinted glasses indicate I spent the whole of that record breaking summer afloat but obviously that could not have been the case-even I had to earn a living; an inconvenience to one who even now believes I was too beautiful to have to work.
Broad Wave covered the whole of the Broads, north and south with many good times and a very few not so good.
On what transpired to be the hottest day of the year we
cruised to Wroxham, the sun beating down, the varnish bubbling into life on the
wheel, demanding that shade and licensed
premises be sought as a matter of urgency. Just before Wroxham Bridge on the left
as you pointed towards Coltishall was a large corrugated iron shed offering
shade and a mooring. A short walk over the bridge took us to The Hotel Wroxham,
only recently completed and by my standards pretty swanky. After slaking our
thirst we returned to the boat and I sought refuge in the lee of the boat shed,
squatting on the ground and leaning back against the shed for a short siesta.
Did I mention it was a corrugated iron shed? As I leant back the searing heat propelled
me upwards like a rocket. Apparently it was both impressive and amusing to
observe as I danced, writhing in 90 degrees to rid myself of my smouldering
shirt revealing a back of red and white stripes reminiscent of a Sunderland
footballer with very tight kit. In a summer famed for its record number of
reported cases of sunburn I had the dubious and single honour of being the only
case of shedburn to visit Norwich A and E. The shed has now gone. You know
what’s replaced it.
Sadly Broad Wave herself also suffered from the arid season.
A wooden boat of mahogany and pine she was fine during the hot weather but when
Denis Howell, Labour’s Minister for Sport was appointed by P.M. Harold Wilson
as Minister for Drought it all went a bit wrong. In politics as in most things
you need luck and Dennis had it from day one. In the last week of August, he was made Minister for
Drought (but nicknamed 'Minister for Rain').Howell was charged by the Prime
Minister with the task of persuading the nation to use less water. Dennis responded
by inviting reporters to his home where he revealed he was doing his bit to
help water rationing by sharing baths with his wife, Brenda. Within days, heavy
rainfall caused widespread flooding, and he was made Minister of Floods.
Poor old Broad Wave-her roof leaked like a sieve where the
heat of the last 4 months had dried out the timber and the caulking between the
planks had failed. The ensuing bill of nearly £500 quid eventually broke our
spirit and the bank and we decided ruefully that a financial break from boating
was necessary. It sounds a small enough sum but we were skint and in today’s
money nearly £4k was not easily found. This was more than we could spend
without feeling the pinch. Plus the 4 hour journey on the Friday and return on
Sunday was getting a bit of a drag.
The work also took forever with estimates from the boatyard
rising almost as soon as we’d agreed the last estimate. The work was carried out
by a lovely man called Dick, a real Norfolk carpenter and boatbuilder employed
by the yard. His skills were such that I could watch him, spellbound, as he
worked, carving, gluing and screwing. Such skills are rare now and weren’t in
abundance then. As someone who does a lap of honour if he manages to get a
screw in place at first attempt I was so impressed.
I mentioned to Dick, in confidence, that whilst I admired his
work I was getting a bit fed up with the increasing bills being sent by his
employers. He answered in broad Norfolk. “Whaat yew gotta remebber bor is an ‘undred
year ago these’ll been ‘orse thieves an we’d a hung ‘em but noo they got
boatyards n it’s legal”
I also remember Dick for one of the finest descriptions of
someone’s passing-I mentioned that the local pub had been quiet the previous
evening as apparently the landlord had died that week. “Thaat’s roit ‘appened
last Weddersday. Old boy woke in t’middle of night, give ‘er a nudge in the
ribs, a couple o grunts an he were gorn”
And so was Broad Wave. Death by Penury. I can’t remember the
details of her going but I do recall the sadness at losing her and leaving
Norfolk. I knew it would not be long before I found another boat; but where?
Comments
Post a Comment