Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Delta Del Dept. - Flotation Is Groovy

Delta Del poses in front of home, yesterday

I think [muses Delta Del - Ed.] my interest in the floatin' life really began when I was a zygote [at left, yesterday - Ed].  I suppose there was the water chute ride that propelled my spermy self to it’s eggy destiny, but I can barely remember that.  It was certainly a thrill, but over all too soon.  As a zygote, the time for childish thrills was behind me, while ahead lay many a challenge.  But that’s a story for another day.  Suffice to say mama’s waters eventually broke, and I surfed that break all the way to the beach.

Fast-forward fifty years.  Springtime in Northamptonshire and at Braunston marina a re-formed zygote is shopping for boats.  I had decided that the floatin' life was the life for me.  I needed to get back to the river.  I’d been a teenage angler, a failed fisherman in fact, interested in rivers not fish.  It’s not that I don't like fish, in fact I think they’re super-cool.  I gave up fishing exactly because I like fish.

Back then I used to get up at 4 a.m. in June just so I could sit by a mirror-calm lake on a perfect English summer morning, a tranced-out trippy hour or five, rarely interrupted by any annoying fish-type action.  I also had a friend with a tidal mooring and a small sea-going boat down on the South coast.  The Solent at dawn on another of those mirror-calm summer mornings, an amazing place to be.  And in August 1970, against strict instructions from his mum, we took the boat through the mirror to the Isle of Wight.  But that’s a story for another day.  Suffice to say we didnt make it to the festival site because moon turn the tides and, anxious not to be late for our tea, we had to surf that break all the way back to the mainland beach.

Boats and water played an important part in my early years.  As a teenager I became obsessed with the philosopher-poet James Marshall.  His assertion that floatation is groovy sparked a lifetime of personal experiments, some involving boats.  I can confirm that floatation is indeed groovy, although working at low tide on Bournemouth beach, summer of ’72, I failed to find a single jellyfish prepared to back me up on this.  One did try to sting me with a story about their grandmother needing an operation, but I saw right through them.  And on the subject of tricky sea-creatures, low tide in Ocean Beach, San Diego, summer of ’97, I met a Californian mermaid.  Right this way, she smiled.  And lured me into El Niño’s salty embrace.  They said it’s impossible for a man to live and breathe underwater.  They were right.  I tried it once, briefly, it didn’t work out.  But that’s a story for another day.  Suffice to say a friendly incoming wave broke me free of Niño grasp and mermaid spell, and I surfed that break all the way to the beach.

Never did see that fishgirl again, though I went lookin for her almost every day that summer.  She’d be right at home here with me now in England, swimmin alongside my narrowboat throwing cute dolphin shapes and slappin that pretty little tail.  Actually quite a large tail, half of her body in fact.  But kinda cute and real trippy when the light hits the scales.  Me and that mermaid we’d cruise along fine at a dreamlike pace.  That’s narrowboat pace, like walking without moving your legs, or your fish half, an almost frictionless glide.  Time to space out and wonder at the mad proliferations of summer or the frosted perfections of a winter landscape.  A journey that by car would take a couple of hours, by boat might take a couple of weeks.  And what’s the hurry?  Narrowboats move at 18th century speeds, past 19th century industrial architecture, through 21st century cities and back out into a world of heron and pike.  In the clear waters of winter, when few boats move around to disturb the sediment, I see the pike waiting and watching among the reeds.  And as I float by, the pike stares back, with classic you-lookin-at-me? insolence.  I watch the heron’s throat bulge as a less formidable fish realises just how bad things have suddenly become.  I spot a grass snake swimming across the river, it’s head held above the water, it’s movements unchanged as it glides from the water up the bank and into the fields.  I see this stuff because I move at snail’s pace, and like a snail I take my shelter with me.  I don’t visit London, I live there for a week or three.  One day I walk from my home to a blues club in Soho, a week later I walk from that same home to a village shop in sleepy Oxfordshire.

In fact these days I have a mooring in rural Wiltshire and spend most of my time there, having spent the previous ten years constantly on the move.  And the water-gypsy lifestyle aint all dreamy perfection.  There’s work to be done, wrestling with manual swing-bridges and leaking locks, hauling on mooring ropes against wind and river currents, winter hands frozen rigid trying to remove discarded allsorts wrapped around the propellor, humping sacks of coal and cylinders of gas, emptying containers full of piss and shit, dealing with junkies hanging around city locks, dodging missiles aimed by bored youths.  But in the end, floatation really is groovy.  And so I took to the water like a duck, and like my father before me.  He was a wartime mariner, a mechanic on aircraft carriers.  There was an album of photos, taken by him on his journey home from the western Pacific at the war’s end.  I was fascinated by it.  A big, padded, important, grown-ups’ album, full of ships and boats and grinning sailors and foreign lands and seas.  And back home from the war, daddy had gotten lucky on dry land, found a job fixing sewing machines in a factory full of ladies working sewing machines.  Maybe a dozen male engineers and labourers, and fifty bored females with unreliable machines needing constant attention.  I stand before you today as proof that he surfed that break all the way to the beach.

[Floatation compilations to surface in comments section later - Ed.]

25 comments:

  1. We are truly not worthy. Screed for th' ages from th' IoF©'s very own Jack Aubrey. He'll drop the linkage when he drops anchor.

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  2. I lived in England in the early 60s and often stopped to admire the narrowboats, thinking I'd like to explore the canals.
    I just did in your story.
    Thanks, Delta Del.

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    1. My narrowboat story - back in '70, a bunch of us "Art School" hippies rented a boat on the Norfolk Broads for a week. It slept - wupes - berthed - four, so the other four of us had to wait until the boat got out of sight of the yard before getting on. The mixture of herb and nautical ignorance was as potent as you'd expect. We were approaching a waterside pub, about ten boats parked - wupes - moored at the bank, people on board relaxing with drinks, nice peaceful sunny day. "First Year" (as he was known - don't ask why) was at the steering thing, and he managed to sideswipe every single craft. The rest of us helpfully dove inside when the scope of the disaster became evident, ribs cracking with laughter. Ah well. But I'm pretty damn sure none of us noticed anything of the natural world that Del paints so vividly here.

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    2. Small world, Mr. Pune, I lived in England for a few years in the 70s.

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    3. My timing was superb, Babs. Flower power. Beatles et al. Carnaby Street....

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    4. My timing was off, Slade, Mud, Sweet, Gary Glitter, platform shoes, and tartan bell-bottoms.

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    5. And this was why, at the time, my pals and I were listening almost exclusively to U.S. music. Somehow, pop music didn't evolve in the way it did in the U.S. Panto Pop (as I prefer to call Glam Rock) was the nadir of pop, made me physically unwell, and still does.

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  3. very, very cool from a vaguely 4 or 5 Guys(tm)(c)(r) adjacent fella

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    1. Anyone who lurks, comments, or contributes screed is by definition a 4/5g© - that's what the Guy Counter in the sidebar is for.

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  4. Thank you for that, Delta Del -- it's really good. I like all of it,
    but I love the fifth paragraph, including that great sentence about
    the different (so to speak) time zones.

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  5. Thanks for your comments and here’s a recording of my BBC Records LP ‘Narrowboats’. It has traditional canal songs and spoken reminiscences from working boat people. The last of the working narrowboats were still active in England in the 1960’s when this LP was issued.

    https://workupload.com/file/ehE39S8YvDB

    And here’s a collection of Jimi tunes with connections to water, including of course splendid versions of Power Of Soul …

    https://workupload.com/file/7NfuYGRkEyC

    Float on!

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  6. Nice screed Delta Del, and thanks for the linkage, I'm sure I'll enjoy the bbc Narrowboats, and Jimi - I've just realized I have no Jimi in any digital format!!!

    The jellyfish Bournemouth beach’72 incident, was that when hundreds were washed up onto the sand? I seem to remember that vaguely.

    We live in a crazy fast paced world and your floatin' life must allow you to escape it. I used to attend the Cropredy folk festival (near Banbury) regularly, and would always walk along the canal admiring the narrowboats there, in fact spent much of my time in The Brasenose, Red Lion and The Bell pubs there, and increasingly less time in the festival itself.

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  7. That was a superb read, Delta Del!

    I've watched a few shows on Amazon Prime, about narrowboats in England: "Cruising the Cut", "Britain by Narrowboat" and "Travels by Narrowboat". Something I found interesting watching the shows, and as you wrote: "...past 19th century industrial architecture, through 21st century cities and back out into a world of heron and pike..."

    Thanks again!




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    1. Babs - Off topic, bit late, but I listened to your BB King live linkage recently, very good indeed, thanks.

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    2. Glad you like it, Bambi!

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  8. A lovely fish tale! The photo montage triggered a vague recollection that Vivian Stanshall once lived on a boat. I had imagined it as a narrowboat, but was surprised to discover today that The Thekla was a cargo ship large enough to house a theater. The list of actors and musicians who performed aboard "The Old Profanity Showboat" in Bristol harbor in the 80's is impressive, and it later became a venue for rock bands and the Bristol trip-hop scene.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thekla

    But that's another story. Sorry to digress from Del's adventures on sand and surf, or his encounters with jellyfish, gypsies, and watery tarts.

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  9. Great essay! would you be a water sign??
    seems you otter

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  10. Lovely storytelling! Glad the fair winds and tides have brought us together to share it here on the IoF (which I'm thinking might be located somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle?). Sounds like a grand adventure -- float on! (And your dad sounds like the lucky chap indeed; we got to opposite problem here).

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    1. Bermuda Triangle? You might have just answered several questions.

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  11. Well if I ever despair at how boring and nondescript my life has been I simply have to come here and enjoy vicariously the picaresque adventures of the four or five guys (tm). Kudos to you, Delta Del, and kudos to all who vigorously contribute to the eudaemonia of the hallowed Isle!

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