When the seed was sown

Last night on the phone I quizzed Mum about her and Dads early days together.

I only realised later that maybe this was a bit tactless and insensitive of me so soon after Dads death, I don’t know how she mourns him, she doesn’t say. I wonder if her heart aches with sorrow and loss when she thinks too deeply about their experiences over the years together.

Mum and Dad met in 1957 whilst on a camping holiday in a Cornish field. She’d gone with a friend and her boyfriend, who had brought along one of his flatmates, who turned out to be my Dad. It was a chemistry thing, Mum said.

One day during that holiday, the two ‘couples’ hired a sailing dinghy and spent a day out on the Helford river. All novices together, and had a great time.

So there was sown the seed. Right there on that little sailing dinghy on a river in Cornwall.

3 weeks later Mum and Dad were crossing a road in Victoria. As they stood side by side on a central reservation in the middle of the road, Mum glanced over at Dad, and it dawned on her that Dad would never get around to asking her to marry him, he just didn’t have that look about him, so there and then she proposed to him. I wonder how aware of they were of their surroundings for those brief minutes on that traffic island, with busy London life flowing around and past them.

3 weeks!

On March 24th 1958, they were married in a church in Godalming, Surrey.

All within 6 months of meeting each other.

They talked of their future together and of having an interest that they could share, and continue to share with children in the years ahead. As it was, Dads life revolved around his customised Riley special, which he raced at events around the south. Mum loved skiing, she’d been to Switzerland a few times and caught the bug.

They’d got a taste of sailing whilst on holiday in Cornwall, and decided that it was something they could learn together, neither of them would have the edge of experience over the other.

Before they’d even sorted out where they were going to live, they bought a 16’ clinker-built sailing dinghy. She was kept on a mooring beneath Hammersmith Railway Bridge.

At weekends they learnt to time their sailing jaunts with the tides, occasionally having to traipse through the squelching mud of the Thames to get to or from their boat. Another time they were the wrong side of a bridge at the wrong state of the tide, and had to lower the mast to get through.

Soon they bought a trailer and took her down to the Medway and started to spend weekends exploring the river and creeks. They bought Lilos to place either side of the centreboard casing and spent nights aboard, not the most romantic of sleeping arrangements. Dad built an oak storage box to put in the bow, to keep their groceries in.

Then they towed the dinghy further afield, down to Fowey, then the next year, to Salcombe, in Devon. ‘Meg’ was lying on a mooring there. She was a pretty wooden 1904 built 21’ Bermudian sloop, and she was for sale. One day Mum and Dad were sitting in their boat at a mooring nearby. They watched a man of about 80 trying to sail ‘Meg’ off the mooring on his own, but they could see that he just wasn’t agile enough. He saw them and rowed over. He offered them a sail if they would help him as crew. Maybe he thought that he could encourage them to fall in love with ‘Meg’ if he wooed them with her sailing grace.

A couple of day cruises on her later, they made an offer to buy her. They did indeed fall in love with her. The old man accepted their offer of £450, and included in the deal was the tender, a lovely little sailing dinghy.

Their first boat, the 16’ dinghy was sold and went to live with a houseboat on The Thames, back to her roots.

So this was how it all started, where the pathway to a whole way of life began, together, as equals, on a boat, learning and exploring and growing together.

This was as far as we got last night. Mum went silent. She’d had enough interrogation for one night, and as I said, maybe it’s too soon to cause pain with those carefree early memories of fun times with Dad brought to the forefront like this.