Time to own up (another ridiculously convoluted post) + update

I lived in Falmouth for some years, connected to the Falmouth Lifeboat in one way or another. I remember they were a bit fed up with a local family of tripper boats complaining that when the lifeboat was going off on a shout, her wake made their cruises slightly lumpy for a moment or two. FFS, this was a boat–  or life–saving business and even then they didn’t exceed the harbour limit.

But I digress.

It’s time to begin your education in ropework.

Allow me to introduce you to the Turk’s Head knot.

It starts like this

And before you know it you’ve got this

For a grip on a spar, handle etc,

Or a bangle maybe

Here's one I made earlier, on the handle of my handmade toolbox

It can be turned into a lumpy table mat – but I don’t fancy a delicate wineglass on that –

Or for tightening into a ball to form the end of a heaving (throwing) line.  It is now illegal to hide a heavy brass nut or pebble inside it. Throws better, kills better.

Or just for showing off. Are most sailors show–offs? Discuss.  

Actually it’s not that difficult.

And because this is me, we could go right over the top and get into more far–reaching territory, with the allure of art and mathematics entwined:

TURK'S-HEAD KNOTS  (BRAIDED BAND KNOTS) 

A Mathematical Modelling by Skip Pennock

 

“Given a common Turk’s-Head knot, there is only one number of Leads, a positive integer, which happens to be equal to Two or greater, because after all a knot of only one Lead would be the Unknot.”   

Where q = 12 Bights, and p = 7 Leads….

Anyway, before I get completely out of my depth…..

One fine day in Falmouth I find myself at the far end of town.

There I am on the other pier, the enemy’s territory, where their cruise boats hang out waiting for customers. Tourists are ambling up and down the pier, staring out at the harbour and all the pretty boats. All the English people have their mouths open, a self–conscious half–smile fixed to the face. 

I am leaning on a railing. I am at a loose end for half an hour, and so is one of the enemy’s lightweight  ½“ mooring ropes, draped around the railings. You’ve got there before me.

Nonchalantly departing twenty minutes later, there was a sight for sore eyes on the railing. About 12 loops with 3 parallel leads, beautifully executed, tightened up nicely, and either going to mean their leaving very late, or cutting their losses, about 6 to 8 feet of them.

Bad girl.

update

It was two leads, I've remembered, so it would have taken about 5 minutes to undo. Not so bad, really. 

Phun in Physics

I mentioned my physics teacher on last post. She was a star among teachers. 

One fine spring day she introduced this experiment. 

She gave each pair of us a large test–tube half full of water, an ice cube and a bit of metal gauze to hold down the ice underwater. She wanted us to determine the displacement of the ice, in ccs, towards a proof that water expands when frozen.

Ten minutes later she asked how we were getting on. Our results were crazy, haywire, all over the shop. We struggled on.

Five minutes after that she couldn’t hold it in any more, and started laughing. “Enough, enough!” she said, struggling for breath. “Don’t you know what day it is?”

The first of April, and not one of her allegedly bright young girls had twigged.

Silence

This is Friday 21st. Despite the fact that I missed the midnight deadline.

On Wednesday a man phoned to confirm that he and his mate would be here today. It's been a month for me on their waiting list. They just needed the address and directions.  I asked how long the job would take, roughly, and whether they’d be able to get here about eleven. (Being an insomniac, can never be sure how much sleep I’ll have had, so the later the better, just in case. And I was thinking they'd want to be away before the Friday rush-hour started.)

“It’ll take about 4–5 hours,” he said.  “Eight o’clock.”

“Ah. Um. Right. Eight o’clock.”

“Eight o’clock is a state of mind!” he said in a very jolly voice.

And so it was.

They arrived, we all shook hands, they brought in all their gear from the van, then set about finding their way around the house, its mysterious contents and the two lofts. An hour later, and following a couple of calls to the letting agent to ask the landlord if he knew where certain hidden things could be found, and whether we had permission to take up some carpet which was glued down, they were ready to start work in the upstairs bathroom.

First they removed the tractor. It’s been in there for months, but since it wasn’t actually in my way, I wasn’t too bothered.

Then they extracted the team of Japanese drummers, that team from the north of Japan with the headbands and their huge bowl drums and massive arm muscles. 

Then they took away the offshore speedboat, the kind which costs thousands of pounds just to fill the tank, roaring past to win its latest international race, slamming on the wave tops.

Next to go was the RAF Tornado. You know the one. They dive bomb you from behind and scare the shit out of you while you’re trundling down the valley. The noise from this occupant was enough to drive the birds from the garden, especially the timid pheasants. They never got used to it.

And finally they neutralised the volcano. I think it was Vesuvius. It certainly behaved like it. Oh and after every eruption, it snowed outside for a minute. Powdery snow floating down to the conservatory roof every ten minutes, regular as the Old Faithful geyser. If the air wasn't freezing, it was hot water falling down.

Halfway through the operations, the main man said “You know when I called to arrange today? Wish I’d seen your face when I said 8 o’clock.” I laughed. "You mean Ah. Um. That one." Yes. He was right. It was probably quite a picture. I was up today at half past six after three hours' sleep, worrying about not having vacuumed the stairs after being poorly a while, about the backlog in the kitchen etc. "Don't worry about it," said the man. "You wouldn't believe what we see sometimes." He'd said, after I'd coughed and sneezed my way through that phone conversation, "We'll see you on Friday, if you're still alive by then!"

Lots of cups of tea. Lots of doors left open and all of us freezing. Lots of tubing and plastic tanks filling up with black oily water. Lots of banter. I asked whether they would be putting inhibitor into the radiator circuit. He smiled. “You know too much,” he said. And yes, two lots.

Some minutes later I was telling them a story about my physics teacher and her sense of humour. Some time after that we got on to dissimilar metals. Well I did, cos that's what he was alluding to. (A problem with the valve to the pump being decayed, to put it politely.) Cathodic protection, sacrificial anodes, all that stuff. Being a know–all is one of my most endearing qualities. He gave me that look again. “You’re dangerous,” he said. “But we love you very much and my empty cup’s over there.”

By one o’clock they were done.

And here I am. The tank in the loft isn’t subject to the dumping of hot water at intervals you could set your watch by, under the pressure of blocked radiators. The condensation on the roof inside won't be dripping on to everything stored up there. The pipes aren’t shaking the house. I sat here the other day just after 9 pm, and watched my table lamp and PC monitor wobbling madly for a few seconds, thinking Here We Go Again, and waited for the inevitable overflow of hot steaming water to hit the frozen conservatory roof, accompanied by my prayers for it not to crack the glass. But nothing happened. Oh well, I thought. Can't be identical every time.

Things had got so bad I couldn't tell the difference between my domestic Vesuvius and the earthquake up the road in Ripon, Yorkshire.

I can sleep while the heating's on.

I can stop worrying about the boiler being slowly wrecked. It would have happened, apparently.

I have proper heat, for the first time since Christmas Eve. (That was good timing, wasn't it!)

There is peace throughout the house.

Life is good.

Anyone got an issue?

My brother sent me two books at Christmas. 

One Day – David Nicholls

The Dance of Anger – Harriet Lerner PhD

I’ve been saving these up – will start reading them this week after library books go back.

Literary ladies and gentlemen amongst you have probably heard of the first (same writer of Cold Feet for TV amongst other works) but the second, you’ll be astounded to discover, is about dealing with anger, focusing on the female variety.

The back cover says

“anger is an important emotion that is often a cover for feelings of hurt, frustration or violation, and this misdirected anger can surface destructively as self–criticism, denial or guilt.” Hmmm. Might have a point there.  Self–criticism and guilt sound faintly familiar. A while back, and fuzzy, but memorable enough not to be ignored.

The front cover says that Susie Orbach thinks it’s “a careful and compassionate exploration of women’s anger”.

My brother only became aware of the book via a psychotherapy friend of his, and thought it sounded interesting and challenging – and halfway through he wondered whether I might get something out of it –  well, since my life has been a bit upside down for the last year or five.  Or ten?  Something like that.

Do I have issues?  Ooooh, probably lots of them but I don’t really notice. So I’m not categorically saying whether I’ve dealt with them and moved on (my preferred choice), or conveniently ignored them, or deliberately stuffed them somewhere which will explode unexpectedly one day like a W W 2 bomb in the cellar. Usually I’m too preoccupied with what I need to get on with next, and so fine that when I answered the phone a couple of months ago my best friend said “How come you’re always so damn HAPPY ?”  I started laughing, just delighted with myself for having the right vibes, and telling her I don’t know why….. not the foggiest. I get up in the morning happy, and try to make sure I’m the same way by bedtime, just like everybody else.

Be reassured.  I am not one of those titterers-at-anything, the type you can hear squeaking at high frequency every 30 seconds across the room at a party.  And if you discount the mad annual fortnight down the Big Hole, it’s true that I’m naturally a happy person. Unflappable (wouldn’t have been much use in the Mayday Search and Rescue business otherwise), good at fire–fighting (literally), driving in hostile conditions, catching huge spiders with my bare hands, unworried by creepy crawlies, needle injections, mice, even (as you know by now) the odd rat, easy to live with, easy to live without – HA !!......    Did we stumble on the first issue there? Break–ups are categorised in so many styles and time–frames. I’ll just say my last one took about eight or nine years because I’m persistent, a bridge–builder, an optimist and an eejit.

I suppose there are things which could qualify as issues – death of father when I was twenty (five weeks before my wedding), the early and short 3–year marriage (initially unaware he was violent and manic–depressive), the loss of two out of three brothers, a couple of close encounters with the almighty later on – but I don’t see these as problems, just facts. I’m absolutely NOT wearing a halo but navel–gazing is too much hard work of the wrong kind. This post is as close as it gets, and only prompted by that book arriving.  If there was something to deal with, I like to think I did. Successfully. Full stop. Let’s see how it looks when I’ve read the book. I’ll let you know.

Going to post this before I get all coy again and change my mind.

At the moment, having a ferocious cold for three days now following the triple–flu–jab, and feeling justifiably aggrieved because it’s the first cold in twenty–odd years, it’s more a case of “Anyone got a tissue?” I bet you saw that coming.

cranberries experiment

washing cranberries for sauce at Christmas

This post is just an experiment to see how the photo behaves under my different messings-about. There was no messing about with the sauce, in case you're wondering. It was lovely, especially when I dumped some port into it and a half-teaspoon or two of spices like cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. 
This was Christmas 09.
I may leave this up here; I may cause it to disappear. 
Don't worry I'm not turning into food monkey, whose delightful excellence is unassailable in foodland, in my opinion.

Update five minutes later : I'm happy with it, especially clicking on the image.
It's so pretty I think I'll leave it here.
Thank you for your attention.

In this week....

I left my last post with the thought of an anniversary. Then I looked it up, and I’d been a bit previous by a day or two. In this week of 1993 in Shetland my diary said, amongst miscellaneous detritus:

Jan 3^rd

Woke at 6.  Phoned Station for new forecast. Southerly hurricane force 12–13 by 2000 tonight. Phoned Willie [farmer neighbour] and passed it on. Went back to sleep. 

What with the wind and my restless thoughts tonight I couldn’t concentrate on anything, and went next door to Willie's for an hour or two. Southerly hurricane at the southern end of the garden (and lifted off my feet down the drive) but back steps and porch were oddly calm. Back home, traced source of mysterious bad smell – found 5 mince-pie-shaped lumps of carbon in the Rayburn, put into the lower oven when I got back at 5 on New Year’s morning.

Jan 4^th

Got a nap this afternoon. Wind going back up to force umpteen by tomorrow morning.

January 5 diary page is empty. I rely on memory.

I was off sick at the time - for 18 months in the end (nothing to do with depression by the way) and the Coastguard were holding my job open for me. For four years I'd been in charge of my own brilliant ‘D’ watch (aka Delta Force) and I took proprietory interest in what everybody was up to at the Station, especially My Gang. 

I remember clearly that mother phoned, 0840 that morning, and woke me up. “I’ve been watching the news and there’s a ship drifting towards the south end of Shetland. It seems to have broken down. You’d be mad as hell if it was on your doorstep and you didn’t know, so I thought I’d phone. Sorry I woke you!”

I said all the right things, checked the BBC which was showing library pictures of the coastguard and saying nothing new, and went back to sleep. Ships were adrift off Shetland every other day of the week in my job.  

One mile away from me, while I slept, Merchant Vessel Braer struck the rocks at 1115.

The rest is public history. The immediacy of it was another country, but on the 5^th it was still just a ship aground, for me.

On the 6^th

I got up around 9 and padded into the warm kitchen. It was just light, the winter days being so short at 60º North. Looking towards the stone walled noost where my boat was kept, I saw my firewood (NO NOT MY BOAT despite the critics who would have loved to make it so – some people have NO SHAME when it comes to a good bonfire) – no, simply old fence posts (no trees to speak of in Shetland so I had the charity of my farming neighbours to feed the wood–burning stove) now piled up 16 feet high overnight. The hurricane winds had reshuffled them into a fantastic sculpture.

I spotted Willie walking up the path and went out to say hello. Then I saw him moving the timber pile single handed.

It wasn’t fence posts. He was lowering down my boat (which takes four men, or three men plus me, to lift her) from sitting on her stern end, sky–pointing like a gannet.  He was terse and preoccupied. I found out why when we walked up to the cliff edge and looked down, and saw a brown sludge filling the geo (Shetland / Old Norn word for small fjord) up to about 200 yards out. The oil had come in on the tidal subcurrents overnight and was trapped in the geo. 

Back at the house, I looked around. The exterior doorhandles were sticky with salt and oil. The rain puddles had a blue rainbow sheen. I couldn’t see out of the windows. Everything was blue. House, lawn, car, stone walls, fencing. The air was almost unbreathable, the oil blasted into aerosol by the wind. We were talking through the necks of our jumpers. Willie was shrewd and foresighted. He was already talking about compensation, and saying his sheep, mostly pregnant ewes, would have to be pulled into a barn. (The dairy cows were already in for the winter.)

The point being that the sheep would consume the oil on the grass. It would dissolve their stomach linings and kill them, and in some cases it did. Spontaneous abortions were another problem. Cats and dogs were to be kept indoors. Washing themselves would mean ingesting oil from their coats. The local shop ran out of catlitter. There was talk of our getting breathing masks handed out by the council but that was days away. We were tested for daily build–up of hydrocarbons in the urine, but it seemed that the taxi drivers at the airport and the local emergency workers were the first tested. No–one ever got around to me, and I was too sick to care. I never got my mask either. I did go to one meeting at the local community hall hosted by experts from London – institute of toxic diseases or something – and even in my altered state I could see that the graph, showing the rising levels in the urine, cut off at the previous day within one decimal point of Dangerous and still rising. Nobody pointed it out. After a lively and impassioned meeting, we sat in morbid knowing silence.

The planet’s media took root. There wasn’t a spare hotel bed in ninety miles. The CEO of Maritime Emergency Operations arrived and was given a billet way up north at Brae. Not ideal, when the Marine Pollution Control Unit (MPCU) command & media hub had been set up at Sumburgh airport, the southern tip, where a hundred new phone lines had been installed overnight, and the dispersant-spraying aircraft were based. It also meant that the Station was left in peace to get on with your daily Search and Rescue.

On Saturday 9^th I drove up to Lerwick and did a heap of shopping – for some unknown intuitive reason buying enough to feed an army, including wines and spirits and treats, and stopped by the Station on my way home. My boss steered me swiftly into his office for a chat and said, honest as the day, that I wasn’t looking at all well. We talked about the Braer and he told me about the CMEO.  I said I had two spare rooms up and ready, and Chris J Harris was welcome to choose one of them.  Got home and cleared away Christmas decorations, vacuumed, put away the shopping including 8 huge water bottles (our water would be contaminated for a while yet) & 2 jumbo Flash for windows, paths, car, cat  etc (sorry….joke..)

And so it came to pass that I had a paying lodger, receipts and all.

Press releases and conferences. Laying the table at night for breakfast, just like a real B & B. Effortlessly morphing myself into a media circus (this comes naturally) videoing stuff from all channels with split–second precision for when he got back, so he’d know in the face of tomorrow’s press conference where the media focus was pointing. Presenting him with a whisky and water when he got in, and wine with dinner. Lighting a wood fire and talking about it all. Being privy to stuff I swore to forget and wish I could remember now. He was a brilliant guest, and pleasant and fun. And of course Shetland Coastguard couldn’t resist talking about us ‘living together’. Confronted with this at some meeting at the Station, we laughed awkwardly and gave them their minute of fun.  Ha ha yeah yeah ….  Grow up!

A few days after the Braer grounded, Prince Charles came visiting. He went next door to Willie’s, and discussed winter cabbages and sheep and cows and carrots and what all. I have a photo of the press pack following them from his house down the road towards the dairy barns. I could put it up here if I could find it. Meanwhile, Prince Philip was at the airport, holding forth about the wildlife we were losing in scary numbers.

A week or so later, a good–looking cheerful young man appeared on my doorstep and came in for a cup of tea.. He was representing Bio–Remediation Services, and wanted to take some samples of my garden soil. Fine. Fill your boots, boy! The idea was that he could supply some substances to neutralise the contamination. He’d also taken samples from a potato farmer within half a mile of the actual wreck, but it turned out that my garden was the worst contaminated of any private land in Shetland and the only house closer to actual oil than mine didn’t really have a garden.

And then I discovered that this light oil, Gullfaks or Brent crude, quickly breaks down in the soil anyway, being a natural fertiliser – an organic unprocessed 'chemical'  – but didn’t I have the fattest healthiest carrots and peas and the tallest weeds known to man? I never saw the bright young man again, because I’d wised up by then. No hard feelings – he was genuine, within the meaning of the Act.

Coming soon - another teeny glimpse of Shetland Coastguard Life.

Meanwhile, here’s a picture of my then house of 14 amazing years ~ ‘Finisterre’, Noss, south end of Shetland, and mine’s the one in the middle of the shot, closest to the cliff. The red thing is the landing-on-water float of your local Coastguard helicopter.

Told you I loved living in the sticks! 
If I can get to the photo drawers (unreachable in spare room) I'll put up a couple of the oily ones.