So
the wife and I are going to sail the boat to the West Country. The
plan is to get from Southampton, where the boat lives, to Falmouth,
which is about as far as you can reasonably travel without having to go
right round Land's End and press on to North Cornwall, an idea too
ghastly to contemplate. Really brutal yachties get there non-stop in
twenty-four hours. Because we are old and infirm and incompetent, we
are going to take weeks,
in a twenty-five-year-old boat whose keel was once nearly knocked off in
Brittany (not by me, I might point out); and whose engine imploded
the last time we went Way Out West.
Provisioning,
as the stupidest sailor will tell you, is the key. Most of the boat
is going to be filled with drink: a lot of it non-alcoholic, but also
as many of the stronger beverages as I can lever into the gaps
between two-litre bottles of sparkling water and stained bulkheads.
When the great Cunarders used to cross the Atlantic in the last
century, they would routinely carry two hundred jars of foie gras, a
thousand lobsters, and tens of thousands of bottles of wine. This is
what I bear in mind, as I fuddle querulously between the chandler's
store and the supermarket.
The
reality, as it happens: that fizzy water, plus discount whisky in
litre bottles, plus a jacuzzi of really filthy grog. These days, I am sticking
remorselessly to £5-and-less, partly on account of price, partly on
account of its indestructability. Even after three days open, it
doesn't get any worse - in fact it improves, especially after that
first encounter which leaves you wiping your eyes with a tea towel
and coughing into the sink. You let a Léoville Barton breathe for
three days and see what happens. Not only that, but you can hurl the
cheap stuff recklessly about without degrading it or compromising its
character. This is important if it blows up or you're stuck in
a wind-against-tide situation, with all the crockery flying around
and the drawers bursting open - just like the Cunard days, when they
had to board up the portholes, lash the potted plants down and dampen
the tablecloths so that the plates didn't shoot off. Masses of
fence paint red, therefore, plus some rosés
for if we get a heatwave.
The
edible provisions, though, are more problematic. We already have some
tinned and bottled goods lying around in the boat, most of them
dating back years, even decades. But why so much canned sweetcorn? We
must have four tins of the Jolly Green Giant's grisly little pellets.
I don't remember buying them. I don't even like canned sweetcorn. What
do you do with it? Use it in omelettes? It's a kind of comedy
vegetable. Also a profusion of tinned tuna and long-life red kidney
beans: what do we do with these?
I can see that if we were absolutely wretchedly starving, if we'd
been drifting in the Atlantic for six days, we could tip them into a
battered metal container and eat them cold, using MoD surplus spoons
while wearing fingerless mittens and composing notes to our next of
kin. And the wine pairing with this picture of misery? Now I think
about it, some of PK's Mateus would go down just fine. We could chill
it by trailing it in the icy waters for an hour (watch out for those
cheeky killer whales!) before serving it in our bombproof boat
tumblers. Oh God.
No,
well, let's assume that a) it won't come to that b) I can get
something to eat that can
be eaten by anything more refined than a camel. Frankly, after a long
and horrible slog to windward, I am not fussy so long as it numbs the
pain. A giant sausage and a bottle of Calvados would be good. We even have a little jar marked Poudre de Curry, clearly acquired in France, to put the colour back in our cheeks. That
and a nice relaxing Doris Lessing novel to curl up with at the end of
the day. We shall see. Either way, I'm going to be silent for a while.
Which means that if we take
some time
to be equivalent to about four weeks, I am just going outside and may
be some time.
CJ
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