Dockside
Birdie, rest a little longer,
'Til little wings are stronger,
So she rests a little longer,
Before she flies away.
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Tennyson,
Sea Dreams
Not far from the Tower of London, a few hundred yards at most and flanking the old city, there is a small marina, and actually, as marinas go, it's a decent one. A bit of a chore to get to -- fighting mad tides up the Thames and all -- but I'd heard it was worth the effort. Anyway, with winter coming on fast I needed to find a place to sit-out the cold, and, not speaking Dutch and my French ludicrously unused for decades, London seemed an interesting, even a safe choice.
I was wrapping up my summer sailing through the Baltic -- alone, as had been my choice of late; after crossing the Atlantic in June I spent my first week in Scotland, crossing west to east through the Caledonian Canal, then crossed the North Sea to Denmark. From Copenhagen I sailed up the east coast of Sweden, and near Stockholm entered the Gota Canal, where we (that is, the boat and I) sailed through pine forests and fairy-tale villages for a ten days before emerging on the southwest coast of Sweden north of Gothenburg, and quite near the Norwegian border. We found time to drift westward, to Oslo, but as our days grew shorter and the breezes cooler it was becoming apparent that the time to head south was upon us. I considered Norway but soon knew that was out of the question. Shoveling snow off the deck just to climb down to an ice covered dock, then marching off through knee-deep snow in order to pay two hundred grand for a beer? No; Oslo was nice, but not that nice.
All that needed be done, really, was to make a simple decision: London, Paris, or Amsterdam. So? Flip a coin? Nope. Draw straws? I didn't like the odds. How about pure self-centered fear of being lost on a subway at three in the morning, and having to rely on language skills last seriously exercised when LBJ was in office?
Fear wins every time. So yeah, three cheers for intestinal fortitude.
With that decision out of the way, I found myself motoring up the Thames in late September and locking up into a marina that was not yet -- thank you, God -- full; I signed a six month lease and set about cleaning up the boat. This meant getting her ready for winter, and being in the middle of London without a car promised to make this thrilling endeavor a royal pain in the ass.
You take a lot for granted when you live shore-side. Water, electricity, fuel for heating and cooking -- these things are all handy, indeed readily available and right there whenever you need them: you're either hooked into the grid or these things are delivered right to your door, and you rarely question their availability. Not so when you live on a sailboat. Not so at all, even on a good day.
So, yeah, life is radically different once you cut the industrial umbilical, and just to spice-up your life a bit, once you leave North America you find you can no longer simply plug into the nearest outlet and charge up the batteries. No, the electrical systems overseas are totally and destructively incompatible with our own. Alterations and modifications need to be made, and these take time, and, well, cold weather is always in the back of your mind -- and all this time money makes this whooshing sound as it's sucked out of your jeans. But it's little things like this that makes cruising such an interesting pain in the ass, and therefore, or so I've been told, worth the effort. Everyday is full of unexpected surprises. Some are even more surprising than others.
The marina in old London is almost completely surrounded -- and closely so, I have to add -- by large buildings, not to mention the aforementioned Tower of London, which is, as I've added, literally just a stone's throw away. Apartments, restaurants, businesses of every kind -- all a big city's amenities just a stone's throw away, and right there outside your companionway. If you've thought of living aboard as an exercise in nomadic isolation, well, no. I suppose it can be once you leave a city behind, but life in a big-city marina is often the exact opposite of isolation. And September marked one full year living aboard, so I was (somewhat) used to this conditional definition of privacy. Let me explain.
While making the boat ready for her Atlantic crossing, I spent a couple of months living right under the patio/deck of a Hooter's restaurant; and this restaurant was about a quarter of a mile from the end of the local airport's runway. A typical Friday evening was interesting, to say the least, and in any number of oddly amusing ways -- not least of which was the constant noise that accompanies large numbers of drunk men pursuing large-breasted waitresses dressed in shiny spandex leggings. Jet's are always coming and going too, their whining roar coming in waves every two minutes, typically accompanied by Madonna belting out 'Like A Virgin' over and over and over again, and all week long, too. But of Friday evenings there were about fourteen hundred stockbrokers and construction workers up there, all tossing down Budweisers and chicken wings on the terrace -- just above my boat. And all of them, each and every one of them, trying to talk their waitress -- that cheerfully harrassed girl with the gazangas just marginally smaller than the pointy end of the Hindenburg -- into a quick trip to the head...for a quick lesson in sword swallowing.
So, if you would, please, try to play this out in your head: jet approaching, engine noise building to a roar as the aircraft passes just overhead -- and, oh yes, for an extra-added thrill, imagine a 757 passing about forty feet above the top of your boat's mast -- then the noise fading, fading, and then -- 'Like a virgin...ooh...for the very first time...ooh...ooh...'; the testosterone on the terrace is sloshing all over the place while reaching critical mass (think: China Syndrome, industrial reactor accidents, etc.), so with beer bottles clinking, chicken wings flying (over the rail and onto the deck of your boat), and all just in time for the next jet to come roaring just overhead, you're sitting in your bunk at midnight, too pissed off to even think about spanking the monkey, when a half eaten chicken wing makes it's down the overhead hatch -- and lands right on your face.
Say what? You know how you'd feel right about then, right?
Unfortunately, I'd signed a three month lease, and so to this day whenever I hear 'Like A Virgin,' I instinctively duck behind the nearest large fixed object or simply run like hell, knowing an incoming barrage of chicken wings can't be far off.
London, I assumed, is not Florida.
No, London is louder.
And the people talk funny.
And this came as something of a surprise to me. I'd visited before, so thought Londoners (all toughened by the blitz and having watched Margaret Thatcher on television for a decade) were still a rather placid lot. You know, gray-faced men wearing bowlers, carrying umbrellas and briefcases down to The Tube, riding with stoic faces out to anonymous red brick houses in towns with names like Last Farthing and Clinched Buttock, all quiet and orderly and pleasant.
So sorry, Mr Yeats. Things fell apart. The center did not hold.
When I first arrived in London and turned into the marina, I saw a Hooters and instinctively ducked. Fortunately, however, I was assigned a space well away from that august establishment. As I tied off in my slip, I could barely hear Madonna.
I was safe. Or so I thought.
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As it turned out, I was now downwind and in the flight-path of a new, rather upscale French bistro. Nice Mediterranean terrace, nice menu, nice tables on a nice stone patio overlooking my nice slip in the nice marina, nice big umbrellas shaded the patio on sunny days while really nice candlelight cast cool shadows on everything at night; an undoubtedly nice string quartet played sumptuously nice music somewhere distantly in the shadows. A very Nice establishment, if you get my drift. You could buy a nice new Volvo for the price of a nice dinner up there, or so I soon heard.
So, my first night in London I was confronted with either Hooters or the Nice Place. The thought of eating wings again weighing heavily on my mind, and being a modestly adventurous sort, I thought the French place was more my kind of place. Perhaps in time I'd be pelted with snails swimming in garlic butter, but so what. Garlic, I assumed, had to be better than Tabasco.
That's how life goes when you jump out of your routine and into the fire. How do we get used to choosing between bad and the unknown. And how do we grow comfortable with such lousy points of view.
Well, enough philosophy.
No, let's talk physics for a moment.
Yes, Physics. You remember, of course, that heat rises? Well, odors don't rise, as a rule, they sink like a stone and spread like lava, and I assume garlic simmering in white wine and butter has a specific gravity somewhat heavier than plutonium. Quail turds in a tartly amusing glaze of delicately expressed panty-liners with pommes et raw sewage? Nope, that's heavy too, sinks like a real big stone.
And the point I'm trying to make here is...?
Well, the French place I was so innocently close to cooked all night long, and everything coming out of that kitchen smelled divine. Really great, as a matter of fact, and trust me on this. But, ah, physics! All those heavenly smells, all that garlic and wine and butter -- and all so delicate and rich and of so immensely heavy -- was destined to fall. Fall into whatever lay below. Which in the instant case was right into my boat. And not to labor a point here, but the odors sank right onto my bunk in the forward cabin. And even more directly to the point, right down onto my shiny bald head and up my twice-broken but still imminently functional nose.
Which wasn't really such a bad thing that first night, and perhaps not even for the first week after my arrival. I got used to flaming goose turds ala orange, and even the linguini in a delicate limburger cheese sauce. No, really; I did. Then one night the garlic, the fennel, the basil -- all of it swarmed and attacked like a herd of mad penguins and in pure panic and desperation I sought out some hippie hideaway off Piccadilly Circus and stocked up on incense.
Patchouli, sandalwood, essence of camel crotch -- anything, really, to fight the nonstop wave of nouvelle cuisine that was bombarding me all evening, every evening -- save Monday. Big sign out front: Closed Monday. Thank God. They were, however, open for lunch weekends. Life here should have been grand, yet here I was, drowning in a white wine and garlic cream sauce. I walked down sidewalks and labrador retrievers started in on my ankles, and when I rode on the tube people started sniffing the air, wondering just who or what the hell had crawled on board.
And you'd think the food, rather the stench of this place, would have been enough torment, but oh no, not on your life. This place had so much more to offer. On the pleasant, rather too warmish Indian summer nights the south of England was enjoying that year, everyone, it seemed, wanted to sit outside on that nice stone patio. And who could blame 'em, really. Not me, certainly. It was -- dare I say it -- very
Nice
out. So all these Nice people have been working all day, go to their Nice homes in the evening and change into Nice clothes, dump on liberal quantities of Penhaligon and Chanel or, for all I know, a little Eau de Muskrat, and head out for a Nice dinner -- right over my bunk.
Know what?
Perfume, cologne, eau de whatever? It sinks. Sinks like the bird-turd in a martini.
Sautéed snails testicles and l'eau de muskrat; from five to midnight -- the only reprieve coming from passing thunderstorms and the odd cold front. No way to escape the fumes without shutting down the hatches and port-lights and turning on the a/c, and that was where the incompatible electrical system bugaboo came into play. It was going to take time to get all the pieces of the puzzle sorted out and functional, so come 1700 hours it was either close down and steam in a patchouli-soaked mist -- or go for a stroll. A nice, seven hour stroll.
London's a fun city, especially after a year sailing, for taking a stroll. Let's just say I enjoyed those little walks a lot and leave it at that, and every time I walked by that bistro I cast little sidelong death-rays as I walked by.
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