Oh Boy !

Is it fun having children? I am a bit nervous that it's not...
(Jules)

Off Again

It’s 11pm and the time remaining until I have to get up again is less than four hours -that’s when the whole airport madness starts. In a way, it’s like Christmas, you dread it but you also can’t do without. It’s the summer holidays. Everyone we know has already left or will be leaving shortly.

The countdown is running, carry-ons are bursting with pens, paper, books, ipods and juicepacks (....they won’t make it very far through the airport, but one can always try), suitcases have been acrobatically weighed, lists diligently checked, and alarm clocks woefully set.

Just a few minutes ago, Matt launched a final desperate campaign to take the labtop along after all, but was blocked, since the only way I intend to surf in the next three weeks is on my belly.

But, I’ll keep in touch somehow, because surely Fred will have some insights on Obama’s plight, the Arab Spring or plundering UK kids that are worth sharing...

Jules gets it

I have to make my life a good one, because I have only got this one.

Coming About!

I took this picture of the girls last week. What a fun day that was! I had spent the afternoon training on a bigger boat, a Wayfarer, which to Popeye’s (my instructor) pronounced dismay I kept referring to as the Windfairy - but then, what princess comes up with the names anyway?

I don’t know exactly what made me sign up for the course to begin with. I don’t like boats and I don’t care much about the people sailing them, but I guess wating in a parking lot for the girls to get done was even more dreadful and so I thought, signing up was acutally a good idea.

Four days and a close call with the divorce lawyer later, I would say, sometimes it is worth considering waiting in a parking lot for a couple of hours.

Why Matt had to take me out on the dinghy the day after I got my little certificate, when actually everyone else was taking their boats out of the water, I don’t know. But then, it’s not like he took me for a wee on a leash. I could have barked at him and stayed home, but somehow, I thought, he knew what he was doing.

But then, that would mean taking the mad out of Matt. And without that we probably wouldn’t be sailing together still after twenty years.

These last days...

I have been out shackling halyards, tacking jibs, and cleating and uncleating all sorts of ropes...uh sheets. But even after three days of an intense sailing class, I can't confidently say that I have a secure grip on what I am actually shackling.

When it comes to rigging the dinghy first thing in the morning, I usually excuse myself to the bathroom, because I am afraid I might break something. The other guys - and they are all guys - don’t seem to have that problem. They will shackle, cleat and hoist anything.

The instructor with his tanned lower arms - a blue anchor next to “Hold Fast” tattooed across the left one - is the image of popeyed masculinity, the kind I usually try very hard to avoid. And yet, there I am thrown onto the shores of our village reservoir pretending that I am reviewing my bowline knot just one last time before I too will lay hand on that blue vessel that’s sitting in front of me like a dead moose.

All changes, however, when we are on the water. There I reign, because under the smoldering summer heat I can’t wait to capsize. I don’t mind close contact with that natural element. In fact, I crave it.

And so, once tossed onto the choppy waves, I wield the rudder with fearless aplomb, I holler my carefully rehearsed sailing lingo at my crew, and I pray that just once the boom will knock one of them over while we come about. Just once.