Category: Uncategorized

I’ve been reworking my story lately. I’ve decided to do it as a short story. I’m not happy with consistency of it, in keeping with what I now know to be the rationale to it, but I have a beginning, middle and end. I will be pleased just to actually finish one of my stories. This means I’ve been doing lots of typing. I’ve been using the laptop quite a bit and I realised I actually prefer the layout of the keyboard. It’s not something I’ve ever considered. I just muddle through with the touch typing, losing my place on the home keys every now and then. The laptop set up had a big red button in the middle of the keyboard so you stay centered. Once the idea took hold that you can get a better keyboard I had a look.

Look at this beast I’m trialing as we speak.

A clear division of hands, curved to fit the shape of your hands, and built-in wrist rests. When I get the hang of this I’m going to be way better. The one problem I’ve noted, being self taught, is that I use the wrong hand for the B. I keep trying to reach my right hand over and I’m hitting the N. It will probably be a good thing when I correct it.

He was dead!

In a frozen, frantic, second he took it all in. His own face reflected in Kasabian’s mirror sunglasses. (How was that his face? He’d never seen it before.) The pistol in Kasabian’s hand. (Who was Kasabian? Why had he shot him?) The realisation he was a second from death. (Who was he?) His lifeless fingers falling away from the pistol in it’s shoulder holster (Why did he have a pistol? Human life is sacrosanct, he could never kill someone.) The deck of the boat rising to meet him as his body fell limp.

A frenzy of information assailed his mind while a mania of questions threatened his sanity.

It’s taken me 5 weeks, and so much more trouble than I ever anticipated, but yesterday I finally got my boat on the water. It took me ages to work out how to rig it. The ones at the club already have all the lines (ropes), blocks, and fittings attached, it’s just a matter of putting it all together. I got mine out from under it’s boat cover and it was a bare mast, boom, and a bag of different lines. I finally got it together (not quite right, it turns out, but enough to work.) When it’s all at rest it looks fine, it’s not until you examine every inch of it closely, by assembling it, that you notice the flaws.

The sail is shot. It’s old, old, old, (which I knew, and was OK with, it’s only for learning) but when I put it on the mast I saw the sleeve that fits over the mast is ripped. Two 3″ rips, quite close together, so it’s only a matter of time before the middle bit rips and then it’s a huge tear. That’s annoying. I’d previously read that because they are a one design boat, if you get a seaworthy Laser of any age and put a new sail on it you will have a boat that’s at least 95% as good as any top of the range new one. So, it was on my to-do list, if I liked the boat and stuck with it. The state of the sail has forced my hand a little early.

Some of the lines are a state. One is the wrong size, most are tired, some fraying at the ends, or in the case of the bungee type line (shockcord) that holds the daggerboard (the small keel thing that you can raise or lower to suit) the outer has totally separated and it only has the internal strands of elastic holding it together. Less than ideal.

It’s all gone pear shaped since my last blog.

It took us 6½ hours to get to Inverness on the way up. On the way back, due to it being Friday, it said 7½ hours on Google maps. Bad to start with. Then the satnav diverted us to avoid horrendous road works on the M74. But that lead us through a gridlocked town centre instead. We were both getting stressed out. Then I saw I sign for the M74, thought it couldn’t be any worse, and took it. We queued to get on to the slip road, then found out the southbound slip road was closed so we had to go north back to the beginning of the roadworks again. Another disaster ensued. In the end, with a 20 minute stop for the toilets and a brew, and another stop to fuel up, it took us nearly 9 hours to get back.

It was awful. Like a really bad day at the office but worse because at least that’s just me, with Wendy in the car, who isn’t used to spending all day frustrated and raging, I was stressing over her stressing. So that was terrible.

We made it to Inverness! Wendy was having a bit of terror when I suddenly questioned whether the insurance worked the same on her courtesy car. If they had only insured her to drive, without me as named driver, she would have had to drive the six and half hours here. No, it’s all the same, I’m good to drive.

It’s a nice car they’ve given us, a ’20 plate Skoda. Wendy hates it. Since passing her test she’s only driven her Mini, so going from a diesel 1.6 to a litre petrol, with a different bite on the clutch and a slightly different feel, and having to do the adjustment on fast, very bendy, wet, unfamiliar roads is a bit much for her. I reckon if she’d have just been trundling back and to to work, cutting her usual groove, she’s have been fine and really quite liked the Skoda.

I drove us here, we went into Inverness to pick up my race pack for the marathon then we drove to our holiday chalet. It’s really nice. Comfy, quiet, and has heating, which is an imperative as we’ve gone from long, long, warm summer into a cold, wet Scottish autumn. It’s weird though. They’ve got underfoor heating. So it takes hours to warm the pipes up and for the heat to get the room toasty, then suddenly you are lathered, you turn the heat off and it takes many hours for the pipes to cool and stop roasting you alive. Not an ideal system, really.