Released from treatment.

Life before and after sailing : life ‘BB’ and ‘AB’.

Having spent most of my life being seriously interested in something – for instance most of my adult life,post schooldays, has been best defined by one obsession after another – and all of them to do with something in the outdoors. As of this year iv’e spent most of half a century being first a rather poor climber and mountaineer and then more slowly a gradually but accidentally competent sailor : as I said, at length, in my previous post, that’s now mostly all over so of course i’m left wondering which way my interests and enthusiasms might go next.

Right now ?….so far this week (it’s Easter as I write) we’ve taken one boat down to the river at Cotehele quay and stowed it alongside the racing gigs and another boat is off site as I clear it’s space for a builders skip : I can’t book a skip of course until everyone is back at work and by that time it looks like i’ll need a week just to muck out the clay pile that used to be about a third of my workshop floor.

I’m taking the rest of the day off my excuse being that I was knackered after a week of digging- this morning I was trying to level the trench which, so far, accounts for about a quarter of the total area : while iv’e only dug out a quarter of the total volume that has to go that volume has expanded to fill several builders bags outside and most of the remaining floor space inside the workshop. This week iv’e been thinking about the job almost in mining terms so most of the time i’m digging down through Granite or concrete to get to the hard clay layer and a lot of next week will be the harder and dirtier physical effort of mucking out the hole.

The work that i’m doing now I estimate is going to take me another couple of months, and that’s just to get to the stage of having a mostly level starting point, after that of course it will probably take me a couple of weeks to barrow in the hardcore and sand – and then level that with a whacker’shaker plate. I hope to get the new floor laid and the new roof installed right at the end of summer because then my winter project will be to line the place and fit out as a (hopefully) warm and dry workshop – a dry and warm workshop will be a first (at least for me) and should make it possible to work whatever the weather.

The big question though : what next ?

In my previous post I said that I had ‘a bit of a sad on’ about having to retire from sailing – in fact I was a bit dischuffed, as is said in Jackspeak . By contrast, this week i’m almost happy to say that I feel as though iv’e kicked the habit but, like an ex smoker or former alcoholic I haven’t found something to replace my enthusiasms with – well, not quite although I do have a few ideas.

This week the feeling isn’t that of me moping around having a good old maudle (poor me !) : in analogy mode i’m the recovered alcoholic (boataholic ?) who’s just walked past the pub, heard the blokey banter, sniffed the stale beer and cigarette smoke and instantly decided that what I really really want is none of that. Once again, in analogy mode, i’m glad to leave boats and sailing behind (and this week – especially some of the people) but I would like to hold on to the enthusiasm even if’s one that doesn’t revolve around boats and sailing.

For a sniff of a hint about my future I take a leaf out of my late mother’s playbook : from having no real hobby interest as a working adult she suddenly took an interest in high end embroidery and quilting – she was so into it that she enrolled on a City & Guilds embroidery course which was basically designed to turn out highly competent hobbyist/workers trained in the arts and skills of ecclesiastical robe making. One of the last things she talked to me about was that she really disliked that aspect of the course because, she said, it concentrated on a too narrow range of skills and techniques. The last embroidery work of hers that I saw was a fabric based version of some of the Anglo Saxon jewels found in the Sutton Hoo dig and that was itself based on taking the skills of embroidery into a more three dimensional form – almost like some forms of model making.

Now, a few weeks ago I totally dumped several posts that had been sitting in my drafts file waiting for completion and editing : just for the record the first was to have been about starting an exercise program post stroke and in the second one I was kicking around the idea of taking up some version of model making as therapy for my missing fine dexterity. I was a model maker throughout my kiddiehood and teenage years although I gave it all up abruptly as soon as I discovered coke and whores (women, motorcycles and beer actually but not necessarily in that order).

Given what i’m doing in the (ex) workshop right now you might well agree that an exercise program isn’t something that I really need : right now a work session is only an hour but it’s hard physical work so it seems to me to have a high exercise return. Late last year I did also try to do some fine work requiring manual dexterity and it didn’t go well : I not only couldn’t sit in balance due to my lack of core stability but when it came to fine 12v wiring I couldn’t make my fingers work in the way I wanted so maybe some creative hobby/therapy is the order of the day.

Iv’e been following all manner of hobbyist sites and one that particularly appeals is a bloke that makes figures out of clay over wire armatures and iv’e already had some useful chats with him online – here’s the kind of stuff he does : (another thought is to have a go at sailing ship models)

I should say something about blogging and writing, after all I have, kind of, learnt the basics of writing through being a blogger. Author Stephen Fry once described blogging as “Graffiti with Punctuation” and I was always amused by that and often refer to myself as nothing but a Graffiti Artist and most days i’m not so sure about the punctuation and grammar. I have had several tries at starting a novel, maybe have what I think is a great idea but run out of enthusiasm very quickly : right now there is one proto book in sections on my desktop and several blog length story sections where iv’e had a try at something and mostly what they tell me is that I don’t have the right stuff to be a novelist.

One of the funniest parts of that, at least to me, is that one potential story line out of one book that never made it (one of the several I have started) is that it seemed to need a sex scene so I had a go at writing one – in fact had several tries at it and it came out as either corny or porny – embarrassingly bad !. As actor Tom Hanks once said (as Forrest Gump)….that’s all I have to say about that.