Friday 16^th November

Not only do things sink when they go overboard, but things go wrong, on a boat.  (They go wrong in real life too, of course.  My little house is forever having minor disasters – cupboard handles perish and break, the hot water service suddenly sprouts a leak, the dryer dies, the brand new dishwasher gets filled with crapola and grinds to a halt.  Tenants sometimes do strange things to other people’s property…Such is life!)

Last weekend the first issue was that the wind instrument wasn’t working, not at all, not a flicker.  This was annoying and distressing – Pete has spent a lot of $$$ and a lot of effort getting it to work, and there it was, inert and useless.  This was actually all resolved when we got back to the marina and a big howling wind appeared from behind the mountain.  The wind instrument perked up no end and started working as it should – obviously the wind on our trip to Port Arthur had been too weak to get the instrument up and get running.

So what else was wrong?  Oh deary me the toilet.  Yet again.  On the trip to the Peninsula Pete spent a good three hours down in the bathroom, dismantling the pump and gently putting it all back together.  It worked, more or less, until we were nearly back at the marina, where it just refused to flush or to pump.  Pete’s jaw was set in a very grim position as he contemplated pulling it all apart.  Again.  He looked at me with deep suspicion – WHAT had I put in the toilet bowl????  Well….I could only admit to…the usual…And isn’t that what a toilet is for?  He spent another long session with it on Monday, and rang, quite happy, to tell me that the problem was at the other end- the outlet pipe was all bunged up with some sort of seaweedy or algal growth and once it was cleaned out everything was ticketyboo.  (For the moment, she says darkly…)

This morning Pete is going to drive down to Port Arthur (WRX not 2XS) and he is going to dive from the jetty to look for his glasses.  We have both scoured the house, the boat, Unit One, the car, for his spare pair but they have vanished, less explicably than the ones which sank into the kelp.  I rang to ask Meriloy if Richard wanted to go along for the ride, but he was otherwise occupied.  He did say, brightly, in the background, that he has had great and unexpected success diving for lost items and that he once found a knife lost three years previously.  So..watch this space!

India #19

After I had sent out my ratty episode of Indian Travels into cyberspace, I got the following email from Heather:

“Your bit on Indian rats brings to mind a story Tony tells of being asleep on a rooftop in India one night after being away from me for some many weeks.  He was having a lovely dream about me where I was gently moving my fingers through his hair – he woke with a smile on his face and found that he actually had a rat on his head which was sifting through his hair with its claws – presumably hoping to find some lice or other protein…………”

She and Tony have also told me a story which I make them repeat, as a party piece, whenever there is a social gathering.  Tony was trekking with some friends in Nepal.  They had been way up in the mountains, where food is scarce and you just eat whatever there is.  They arrived at a small hostel and found, to their unbounded joy, that there was toast on the menu.  Bliss!  They each received a small round of pale toast on their plates, and sat very happily chatting and waiting to eat whatever came with it.  One of Tony’s friends turned to gaze lovingly at his piece of toast, only to find it had turned bright yellow.  What the….?????  His friends all looked at him with great pity, and pointed upwards.  There, sitting on a rafter right above his head, was a large rat which had just pissed a very accurate stream right onto his toast….