Village Events - Part 1: Ken Gibbs

Persevering readers of this blog will either have grown weary of the style and have sought more substantial fare elsewhere, or they are still curious about how one of their number can have sustained living among the Cornish for so long without becoming one of them. Not that the Cornish are difficult to accommodate, it’s just that they do things differently – so differently.

This was illustrated recently when I was walking in the village to buy some bread. To do this, I have to pass a bus stop where I noticed two women who were obviously visitors to our village, were standing next to the east bound bus stop intently studying their smart phones. As the women were ‘more mature’, and visitors to the village, they were obviously unaware of the west bound bus stop immediately opposite, which is unmarked. Perhaps the local council ran out of paint, leaving us having to work out on which side of the road one must stand to catch the bus for the direction required.

The women were equipped with rucksacks and walking poles and obviously were heading for the coast but were standing on the wrong side of the road for their bus. As I had seen this too often, I felt compelled to advise them. They were thankful for the advice but were uncertain when the next bus was due. I pointed out that the ‘Cornwall Go’ app could probably provide the answer. I left them to make my bread purchase.

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Some ten minutes later, I found the two women on the right side of the road for their bus, earnestly examining their smart phones. I asked if they had successfully downloaded the ‘Go Cornwall’ app ?

One of the women asked me, “What’s an app ?”

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I didn’t dare ask the ages of the two women but had to make the suggestion that they seek instruction from their grandchildren who would undoubtedly know the right terminology which would be understandable to them. Indeed, seniors over 70 years of age should not be allowed out without a grandchild to guide them through the intricacies of our technological age.

And just in case the reader is wondering about the age of the author of this blog piece, let me assure them that he was born near the beginning of the Second World War, making him a bit north of the 80 year-old mark.

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EASTERLY DIRECTION BUS STOP

NOTE THE WILDFLOWER MEADOW GROWING ON THE SHELTER ROOF

AND HOW POLITE THE MAN IS, LETTING THE WOMEN SIT

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This reminds me of meeting an old friend of mine whom I frequently meet in the village. He, in about 2010, asked me to partner him in the men’s tennis doubles in the extra super senior league. Quite apart from my not knowing what age one has to achieve to qualify, when I was told, I had respectfully to decline as I was probably about 6 years too young. My friend had the grace to apologise because he thought I was the same age or 6 years older than he was, and that was even before I had grown a beard. Tut, tut ! He, by the way, is definitely Cornish.

It was a pity about the tennis as his standard of play is far, far better than mine even though he is that much older than me. Ah, well, you can’t win them all.

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Our home overlooks a tidal estuary and when we decided to move from Kent to Cornwall to make the most of this lovely part of the United Kingdom, it was inevitable that I had to find a boat/dinghy to sail on the estuary as the bird life is prolific and if one sits quietly in a boat with sails down, the water birds treat you as one of their own. Here one can study swans, Canada geese, mallard and shelduck not to mention some of the shore waders like the oyster catcher, the curlew and more.

One doesn’t spend a lot of money on a dinghy not to use the sails, but one is expected to ‘sail’ periodically to demonstrate that you can keep the sharp end pointing forward, and the mast above water. That’s the theory, anyway.

When sailing, I always preferred to be alone – not just to avoid the embarrassment of running into another dinghy with a crew member on hand to witness it, but I seriously like the silence where I don’t have to concentrate to ‘hear’ what the other person is saying because I am quite deaf.

There was a day when the breeze was fresh and the boat was responding well, and I had tacked a couple of times right across the widest part of the estuary, when I decided to drop the sails and take a rest before returning to the mooring. It always seems to happen at the most inopportune moment but the ropes became twisted and the sail would not ‘drop’, so I had to stand up against the mast to try and release the twisted rope. Just as I managed to release the last twist, a very sharp gust of wind hit the boat, flinging me down on to the very hard seats when I felt something breaking.

If you have ever been in such a situation, you would know that your mind goes into overdrive about how are you going to be able to sail back to the mooring; pick it up and transfer into the tender (that coracle-type bathtubby-thing) which would get one back to shore. And then how to get to the doctor – would he even be in the village at this time of day ?

What was of interest was that the shock somehow didn’t let me know that there was trouble with my ribs until after I had managed to pick up the mooring and transfer to the tender and made it back to shore where someone took one look at me and said that he’d look after the tender – that I should go straight to the doctor. Which I did.

The doctor looked at the bruise; prodded around a bit and then said that I had broken two ribs and he could do little for me beyond providing some degree of pain relief. As with many prescriptions, one is told what the maximum dose is and not to exceed it – which gave pain relief for only about 18 of 24 hours daily.

Sensibly, and to avoid exceeding the dose, I used whisky for the ‘uncovered’ 6 hour period for about 2½ to 3 weeks thereafter, seriously denting the whisky stocks. I was somewhat troubled about which was giving me the most pain – the broken ribs or the whisky hangover. The moral of the story is – don’t break ribs when you are alone in a boat.

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After the double-rib-debacle, I tended to be a bit risk averse but there was the time when I had had a most satisfying, but possibly less demanding sail, that I managed to make it back to the mooring without breaking another rib, so was still in control of matters. As one does when you are not going to be sailing for the next few days, one stows everything tidily so that no passing hurricane can cause any loss or damage, and then comes the interesting transfer from the boat to the tender.

The boat is rather larger than the tender so one has to sit on the edge (gunwale) of the dinghy, swing your legs from dinghy into the tender, then push off from the dinghy and row to shore. Quite simple, but being a bit clumsy, I found my waterproof jacket caught on a rowlock (if this doesn’t mean anything, consult Mr Google who will be able to help), which meant that I couldn’t reach the tender nor could I recover back to the dinghy. In a nutshell, I was tipped down into the water between dinghy and tender. Whoooppppsss !

Happily, I always wore ‘floatation’ (for the uninitiated, this means ‘Life-Jacket’). Even more happily, I was 21st century man in this respect and was wearing an automatic life-jacket which is rather like a soda-stream device that when it finds itself wet from landing in the water, it goes off with a bang and fills the life jacket with air to keep your head above water. The bang was so loud that people on the shore noticed and saw this as a comic act. Why on earth have a boat if you’re going to swim away from it ?

The spectators on land did absolutely nothing to help me in my distress – as I emerged from the water, everything was full of water so I made very slow progress. The nearest spectator innocently asked me if this was the way I usually dismounted ? I wanted to wring his neck but I was so heavily weighted down that I couldn’t do anything.

I suppose one could call it a spectator sport ?

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