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| THE BEAST-HERE SEEN FAR FROM THE SEA |
I was born the fourth of five boys and as I grew up, I realised that my mother had six names for me because she obviously had too many of us to be able to remember our individual names with certainty. This led me to be able to answer to the name that appears on my official birth certificate, together with any of the names that appear on my brothers’ birth certificates. That would make five names so far, but in exasperation, mother would sometimes resort to calling me – or any one of us – as “Oi !” particularly when caught with a hand in the cookie jar.
Mother had a hands-off approach to parenting. If it weren’t broke, then it didn’t need fixing, meaning that she really only concentrated on one thing at a time, hopefully the most needy. For me, this was ideal as I preferred not to have my childhood disturbed by an over-zealous parent, so I could get on with the important activity of learning by experience.
One of the earliest lessons was that when on a push-scooter, if a tree loomed up ahead, it was wise to bear left (or right) or a bloody nose would result. Later, when roller skating at primary school, I didn’t quite make a corner on which there was a brick wall, and I awoke in the sanatorium covered in plasters and with a chipped tooth. And concussion, the results of which I simply can’t remember which is probably just as well. Thus, wisdom dictated that preparatory evasive action was prudent in cases which involved fast movement.
Lesson two ? Well, the farm on which I was born was not connected to the national grid until the mid 1950s, so that father had installed a single cylinder diesel driven Lister engine which could provide a low-voltage supply. Probably just as well because I had a habit of grabbing things to see what would happen – and all I got was a pleasant tingle. Later, when the farm had been hooked up to mains electricity at 220/240 volts, I had other lessons to learn. Like those three curious small holes in the wall were there for a purpose. Inserting a screwdriver into each hole in turn provided no experience for the first two, but extreme experience when I tested the third. I found myself flung across the room and the screwdriver was not in the same condition it had been before I started the experiment. In a word, it was burnt and blackened, and looked rather like I felt.
Happily, none of these experiments was undertaken with mother in attendance or she might have found a seventh name for me, possibly one which at that time, I would not have understood.
I had decided early on – encouraged by the local company directors – to embark on language tuition. That one can be so naive to expect to be able to speak a language from one lecture a week over a six month period ! However, I soon realised that fluency in Palace Pharsi was something that only a very few ever attained, but that being able to tell a Tehran taxi driver that he was overcharging, was much, much more important. I felt that I was making some progress when I arrived home one evening, enraged, having just had a blistering row with the taxi driver – and having prevailed. Telling Mary about it over supper, she gently reminded me that the sum involved – which I had saved – was valued at less than an English penny !
Towards the end of the first year in Tehran when I realised that I was not going to continue to work in such a corrupt arrangement, I needed to have business cards printed so I could share them with potential employers. By this time, I was able – albeit with some difficulty – to read some Pharsi, and I felt it important to use both sides of each card with English on one side and Pharsi on the other.
Did I ask what’s in a name ? Well, when translating a name from one language into another, particularly when one of them uses the Latin alphabet and the other uses modified Arabic script, transliteration can be challenging. My original given name is Kenneth which is common and simple in English but rather more complex when pronounced in Pharsi. Modern Persian does not possess a “th” sound and trying to produce something in Pharsi which approximates to the “th” sound usually employs something which sounds like an “s” in English, often accompanied by a fine spray of spittle. So, to avoid embarrassment or confusion, it seemed the best thing was to remove the “th” from my name entirely, obviating the need to complicate its translation into Pharsi. It was thus that I became known as “Ken” and I’ve always thought that the Pharsi for my name is rather neat:
*****
Move on a few years to the time when I was forced into early retirement – the circumstances for which seemed more to do with ensuring that a senior colleague did not have to deal with me any longer as she was unsuited to a management role and I was less than diplomatic about it – and my wife and I found ourselves left a house on the north Cornwall coast. At first we thought this was a grand idea for a second income till we discovered that a 400 mile round trip to change the sheets once a week was prohibitive. Looking at the alternatives led us to decide that we should sell our small house in Kent and move down to Cornwall permanently.
The house overlooks a tidal estuary on which, during the season, lots of sailing dinghies with multi-coloured sails may be seen bobbing and occasionally capsizing. Having built my own sailing dinghy, I thought it’d be an excellent idea to join them. However, having “retired”, for me to be sailing a dinghy which can easily be handled by a ten year old, perhaps didn’t fit the image I had of myself. I needed something a little bigger and one, hopefully, which didn’t have a boom to administer bruises when I didn’t duck in time.
I let it be known that I was in the market and eventually, someone mentioned that there was an interesting Drascombe Lugger for sale, not too far away. I phoned and went and inspected it and found it to be ideal. This was because it was said to be unsinkable.
Buying a boat in Cornwall, one would expect it to come with a Celtic name, but in this, I was to be disappointed. Emblazoned on the hull was the name of the sailing company that had hoped to rent it out, and I was told that this would be removed – leaving nothing behind. Nemo. This meant that I would not be haunted by the bad luck said to be visited on those who change the name of a boat.
So, what to call the boat ? I suggested “The Hesperus” but Mary banned this idea as she studied English and History at university and is familiar with Longfellow’s poetry. “Too obvious and probably inviting some disaster”, was all she would say. So I thought to try a different tack and suggested “Mary Deare”, but I received much the same response as even she knew of Neville Shute’s work. “Ah-ha !”, said I, but if I were to call her “Mary Dear” instead, “how would you view that ?” Mary thought a moment with a slightly faraway look in her eyes and then agreed that it was entirely suitable, much to my surprise.
I am not a sign writer, so I went in search of someone to cut me a stencil so I could spray paint the name on to the bow of the boat. I found one and arranged for her to cut two stencils – one for the Lugger and one for the tender which would serve her.
Perhaps this is the place to explain that the Lugger would occupy a mooring in the estuary so that one would need a small rowing boat to take one from shore to the mooring whenever one wished to sail. This small boat is called a tender and the local administration requires that the tender carries the same name as the boat it serves so that when checking boats on moorings, it matters not at all whether the boat or the tender is tied to the mooring – both are identified as belonging together.
Thus, the first stencil would have lettering proportional to the size of the Lugger, but the tender’s lettering would be rather smaller as befits something marginally larger than a coracle. Only, because the Lugger was to be called ‘MARY DEAR’, I couldn’t resist having the stencil for the tender cut for a slightly longer name, ‘TENDER MARY DEAR’. Mary was a little less than impressed when she finally saw this variation on the tender !
The spray painting of “MARY DEAR” on the Lugger seemed to go quite smoothly on the first side. When it came time to strip the stencil off and inspect the result, I was quite pleased until I checked that all the letters followed exactly the same line. Sadly, they did not. The last “R” had been slightly rotated and was lower than all the other letters. Obviously, the sign writer had not stuck the stencil firmly enough and had not noticed this slight error.
So, now what to do ? Cutting the stencil to remove and reset the last letter would be one thing, but to remove all the paint on the first side and respray would be quite another. Obviously, I should leave the first side but correct the stencil for the other side lest the boat became known as the “MARY DEAR” with the droopy “Rs”.
There’s lots in a name, it appears.
Happily, none of these experiments was undertaken with mother in attendance or she might have found a seventh name for me, possibly one which at that time, I would not have understood.
*****
I was obviously seen as a troublemaker when employed as an engineer in the UK because it took less than 3 years before the company that employed me in Ashford, Kent, decided that I should go to Iran to represent them in a joint venture. Iran was sufficiently far away and relatively little known at that time so that most people in the office could not have found it in an atlas without an index. This meant “Out of sight – out of mind” though I began to suspect they thought that I was going out of my mind from the confidential memoranda that I sent back claiming the company was corrupt and that our association with it was unlikely to benefit us.I had decided early on – encouraged by the local company directors – to embark on language tuition. That one can be so naive to expect to be able to speak a language from one lecture a week over a six month period ! However, I soon realised that fluency in Palace Pharsi was something that only a very few ever attained, but that being able to tell a Tehran taxi driver that he was overcharging, was much, much more important. I felt that I was making some progress when I arrived home one evening, enraged, having just had a blistering row with the taxi driver – and having prevailed. Telling Mary about it over supper, she gently reminded me that the sum involved – which I had saved – was valued at less than an English penny !
Towards the end of the first year in Tehran when I realised that I was not going to continue to work in such a corrupt arrangement, I needed to have business cards printed so I could share them with potential employers. By this time, I was able – albeit with some difficulty – to read some Pharsi, and I felt it important to use both sides of each card with English on one side and Pharsi on the other.
Did I ask what’s in a name ? Well, when translating a name from one language into another, particularly when one of them uses the Latin alphabet and the other uses modified Arabic script, transliteration can be challenging. My original given name is Kenneth which is common and simple in English but rather more complex when pronounced in Pharsi. Modern Persian does not possess a “th” sound and trying to produce something in Pharsi which approximates to the “th” sound usually employs something which sounds like an “s” in English, often accompanied by a fine spray of spittle. So, to avoid embarrassment or confusion, it seemed the best thing was to remove the “th” from my name entirely, obviating the need to complicate its translation into Pharsi. It was thus that I became known as “Ken” and I’ve always thought that the Pharsi for my name is rather neat:
Move on a few years to the time when I was forced into early retirement – the circumstances for which seemed more to do with ensuring that a senior colleague did not have to deal with me any longer as she was unsuited to a management role and I was less than diplomatic about it – and my wife and I found ourselves left a house on the north Cornwall coast. At first we thought this was a grand idea for a second income till we discovered that a 400 mile round trip to change the sheets once a week was prohibitive. Looking at the alternatives led us to decide that we should sell our small house in Kent and move down to Cornwall permanently.
The house overlooks a tidal estuary on which, during the season, lots of sailing dinghies with multi-coloured sails may be seen bobbing and occasionally capsizing. Having built my own sailing dinghy, I thought it’d be an excellent idea to join them. However, having “retired”, for me to be sailing a dinghy which can easily be handled by a ten year old, perhaps didn’t fit the image I had of myself. I needed something a little bigger and one, hopefully, which didn’t have a boom to administer bruises when I didn’t duck in time.
I let it be known that I was in the market and eventually, someone mentioned that there was an interesting Drascombe Lugger for sale, not too far away. I phoned and went and inspected it and found it to be ideal. This was because it was said to be unsinkable.
Buying a boat in Cornwall, one would expect it to come with a Celtic name, but in this, I was to be disappointed. Emblazoned on the hull was the name of the sailing company that had hoped to rent it out, and I was told that this would be removed – leaving nothing behind. Nemo. This meant that I would not be haunted by the bad luck said to be visited on those who change the name of a boat.
So, what to call the boat ? I suggested “The Hesperus” but Mary banned this idea as she studied English and History at university and is familiar with Longfellow’s poetry. “Too obvious and probably inviting some disaster”, was all she would say. So I thought to try a different tack and suggested “Mary Deare”, but I received much the same response as even she knew of Neville Shute’s work. “Ah-ha !”, said I, but if I were to call her “Mary Dear” instead, “how would you view that ?” Mary thought a moment with a slightly faraway look in her eyes and then agreed that it was entirely suitable, much to my surprise.
I am not a sign writer, so I went in search of someone to cut me a stencil so I could spray paint the name on to the bow of the boat. I found one and arranged for her to cut two stencils – one for the Lugger and one for the tender which would serve her.
Perhaps this is the place to explain that the Lugger would occupy a mooring in the estuary so that one would need a small rowing boat to take one from shore to the mooring whenever one wished to sail. This small boat is called a tender and the local administration requires that the tender carries the same name as the boat it serves so that when checking boats on moorings, it matters not at all whether the boat or the tender is tied to the mooring – both are identified as belonging together.
Thus, the first stencil would have lettering proportional to the size of the Lugger, but the tender’s lettering would be rather smaller as befits something marginally larger than a coracle. Only, because the Lugger was to be called ‘MARY DEAR’, I couldn’t resist having the stencil for the tender cut for a slightly longer name, ‘TENDER MARY DEAR’. Mary was a little less than impressed when she finally saw this variation on the tender !
The spray painting of “MARY DEAR” on the Lugger seemed to go quite smoothly on the first side. When it came time to strip the stencil off and inspect the result, I was quite pleased until I checked that all the letters followed exactly the same line. Sadly, they did not. The last “R” had been slightly rotated and was lower than all the other letters. Obviously, the sign writer had not stuck the stencil firmly enough and had not noticed this slight error.
So, now what to do ? Cutting the stencil to remove and reset the last letter would be one thing, but to remove all the paint on the first side and respray would be quite another. Obviously, I should leave the first side but correct the stencil for the other side lest the boat became known as the “MARY DEAR” with the droopy “Rs”.
There’s lots in a name, it appears.
*****
Simply hilarious!!
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