caravan1

It's a bright and sunny day and I am sitting at my desk, listening to Monteverdi and staring at my screen wondering what is going to emerge from my mind today. I don't suppose it matters much at the end of the day, all this is so ephemeral and one day all will be lost in the scrapyard of hard drives and servers that is building up with every passing day.

I guess I could talk about the caravan year. Bear in mind that all I write is unprepared and only comes from one viewpoint. The move to the caravan took place because we were newly married and didn't think it was appropriate to continue living in a bachelor house. A work colleague lived out in the countryside, near to the beach and had a caravan in his garden that we could rent for five pounds a week. I jumped at the chance and for me that year was quite wonderful. It was small, and basic but it was home for a year. The accommodation was made up of a small bedroom, subject to mildew, a tiny kitchen, and a small lounge heated by a small solid fuel burner. Without it the place was freezing and with it on we roasted. For all its issues, it was home for a while.

Ted, our landlord, gave us the use of his bathroom and there was an outdoor toilet for middle of the night emergencies. He also had a boat.

Ted's boat was a 10 ft plywood dinghy with a small outboard motor that he had found somewhere buried in the garden. It was never the easiest of things to start and there were times when i thought that it never would. I have to say at this point that i am lucky to still be here. (I think) In Ted's boat, we would venture out to sea, mainly at night, in order to fish. Now i am not a small man, Ted was then a good 18 stone, that's 250 pounds American/Canadian, and we went out with no life jackets, no flares, no lights and no thoughts whatever about personal safety. To make matters worse, Ted had no real appreciation of maritime rules and regulations, and to us, navigation buoys were there to tie up to.

During Cowes week, probably the world's most famous sailing event, we tied up to a buoy as was our habit and started fishing in the glorious sunshine, admiring the boats with their coloured spinnakers, heading in our direction. We hadn't any way of knowing that we had tied up to a mark and that in a few minutes, millions of pounds of expensive plastic and metal would come hurtling around the buoy. Our presence had not gone un-noticed as we had effectively extended the mark by a good 50 ft, and they ere all obliged, the whole fleet that is, to go around us. I learned words that day that i had never heard before, and I cowered in terror in our tiny floating pile of wood as the last of them hurtled round and vanished.

Then there was the night that we went out much further. Well it was a clear night and very calm. This time Captain Ted took us out to a buoy called Peel Bank. The water here was deep and fast flowing. No anchor would hold us and so of course we tied up to the buoy. It was a perfect night and we were even visited by a passing seal. That night, just as we were settled into the fishing, I at the front of the boat facing down tide and Ted seated at the aft end next to the outboard and over the spare petrol tank, cigarette in mouth as always, when we were treated to a rare sight. The QE2 came into Southampton and at the same time, the France came out. An there we were on the very edge of the busiest shipping lane in the country, in a tiny boat.

I saw the bow wave coming . It looked like a new horizon, growing from the old one. Because of Ted's weight, there were two inches of wood above the waterline at his end, and when I pointed out what was coming our way, he shot towards the front end and we sat side by side facing the oncoming tsunami.

There are always a number of bow waves and the first one picked us up and slammed us into the buoy. So did the second and the third. The boat did not break up and neither did we take in water. Had we done so, no-one would have noticed and we'd have drowned there and then, never to be seen again. Maybe we were - and perhaps this is another life that I am living.