SWMBO and the kids had left to spend a month in Italy, trailing behind them dark mutterings about the fate that would await me if I allowed work to prevent me from joining them for Christmas. So, having been a good boy and gone into the office on Saturday, what better way to pass a Sunday than to go down to Southampton and check on the boat for the first time since September?
Work had been especially heavy throughout the autumn, coupled with which I had picked up some kind of chronic cough which kept me close to the office or home. Now, feeling increasingly on the mend, I realised that this was the one and only chance I was going to get. As an added bonus, the movie Deep Water was showing at the Harbour Lights cinema in Ocean Village, so I could kill two birds with one stone and catch the movie too.
Normally, I get the train to Southampton and take the pushbike to reach the marina from the station. For whatever reason, I chose to take the car. Big mistake. The traffic making its way south-west out of central London was horrendous. I found myself in a seemingly endless snake of traffic making its way through Battersea at two miles an hour. I was just debating pulling a U-turn and heading over to Waterloo to do the sensible thing, when I drove, at a heady 10 mph, over the kerbs of one of those silly little islands that they put in the middle of the road for no apparent reason. I winced as first the front offside wheel, then the rear one, graunched over the curb which felt like it was at least six inches high, and crashed down on the other side. A grumbling noise and a floppety-floppety sensation confirmed my worst fear. Oh for pity's sake. I pulled the Alfa over onto the pavement, carelessly scattering the pedestrians who seemed to feel that they had some right to be there, and sure enough: the front was completely blown, the rear badly cracked and scarred.
Out with the jack and the space-saver (almost flat, another fine example of Italian car servicing only a few weeks ago) and whipped off the flat and replaced it with no trouble (we're self-reliant, us yotties). There was no point crawling on to Southampton on a deflated spare, and anyway the rear tyre wasn't safe, so I managed to find the nearest Kwik-fit and emerged, just as it was getting dark, £190 poorer.
Expensive game, this sailing.
Anyway, I did get to see Deep Water, at the Curzon Soho, and very good (and deeply moving) it was too. Try to see if it if you can. A tragic tale of an inexperienced sailor's compulsion to push himself to the verge of bankruptcy and beyond for the sake of...here, hang on a minute!
