It was a beautiful
morning. The sun was shining, birds were
bursting their lungs and everything in the garden was growing like mad. It was
a day for activity, exploration, and aesthetic pleasure from the landscape. In
short, it was a day for doing something.
I drove the car containing the little black spaniel down to Cove, in Berwickshire. I’d been
there before. It’s a tiny hamlet perched
high on clifftops, looking out over the vast expanse of the German Ocean. It feels like any day now the houses will
simply slide down the cliffs a hundred feet into the sea. There’s a car park for a dozen cars and a
vertiginous path leading to the bay.
This is reached by way of an uneven and pitch-dark tunnel hewn through
the cliffs. To a claustrophobic like me,
walking through it was an unnerving experience, although there was always the
comfort of a pin-prick of light at the far end. In such places I tend to recall the time I was
stuck in a lift on a red-hot summer’s day in Croydon, with twenty other people
who thought they were about to meet their maker until we prised the lift doors open by brute force and fell out into the foyer.
The dog and I passed through the portal into the sunlight and into an exquisite little bay, bounded by ancient rocks. On one side of the bay, there is a man-made harbour of stone and at it an old man was busily engaged in doing something to his boat. Apart from him, and a woman sitting in the garden of one of two houses nestling snugly against the cliffs, there was no-one else around. The old man’s hair was snow-white under his jaunty sailor’s cap. He looked like Captain Birdseye. He was bending low in the fo’c’sle of his dinghy. He held a screwdriver in one hand and a hammer in the other. By the cut of his boat, it appeared that these were the only two tools he was likely to need, for it looked as if it might be powered by a Morris Cowley engine, circa 1926.
Beyond the harbour wall, there was not a single craft on the vast expanse of ocean, which, as far as the eye could see, was dead calm. The sun shone on the gentle waves, refracting the light into a million pixels of colour. The dog and I climbed the steps cut into the harbour wall and walked past a score of lobster-pots piled high against the harbour wall. The path was narrow, and there was a drop of fifteen feet into the sea. Suddenly, breaking the silence, Captain Birdseye hailed me.
“Can you do me a favour?”
“If I can.”
“Are my keys in the van?”
An ancient pick-up truck stood at the foot of the road leading back to the hamlet. It had once been black, but was now mainly rust-coloured. The keys were in the door.
“The keys are in the door.”
“Can you throw them down, please?”
I looked at the distance between the old sailor and me, and remembered that I could never hit a set of cricket stumps from a distance any greater than three feet, let alone drop keys into the prow of a boat fifteen feet below with a lot of deep sea around it. He didn’t look as though he owned a spare set.
“I think not,” I said.
“What’s to be done, then?” the old sailor asked.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll hide them under the driver’s seat. No-one will find them there.”
I couldn’t imagine for one second anyone wanting to steal that old rust-bucket, but I moved aside three empty tins of Tam O'Shanter pipe tobacco and an old fish-and-chip wrapper, and duly hid the keys.
“That’s it done.”
“Fine. Thank you. Saves me coming up.”
The dog and I walked on, up to the alternative route to the hamlet. Whatever the ancient mariner did with his hammer and screwdriver must have worked, for ten minutes later, as I climbed wearily upward, I saw his little old boat chugging out of the harbour and into the wide blue ocean. It looked like a fly in an Olympic-sized swimming-pool.
“Sooner him than me,” I said to the dog. Whilst it is true I get nervous on the North Shields ferry, I just wondered what might become of him if his ancient engine stopped wheezing and he was left adrift, becalmed, left to the mercy of the unpredictable tides.
He must have had the same thoughts himself, for he promptly turned the boat round and headed back to the safety of the harbour. He had sailed a matter of three hundred yards.
We finally reached the hamlet. I had scarcely seen any views so remarkable, or vertiginous. I learned from a plaque at the end of the single street, that Cove had once been quite a tidy herring port. At its peak, the place housed over fifty people and not all of them were smugglers. Indeed, eleven of them died on the night of the great storm of 1889, which claimed the lives of 129 fishermen from Eyemouth, many of whom met their end in full view of their families waiting on shore.
We drove home past the bloodied remains of a red deer that an inconsiderate lorry had slaughtered in the early hours of the morning. A motorway sign read ‘High risk of deer on the road.” I guessed the lorry-driver hadn’t read it.
The dog and I passed through the portal into the sunlight and into an exquisite little bay, bounded by ancient rocks. On one side of the bay, there is a man-made harbour of stone and at it an old man was busily engaged in doing something to his boat. Apart from him, and a woman sitting in the garden of one of two houses nestling snugly against the cliffs, there was no-one else around. The old man’s hair was snow-white under his jaunty sailor’s cap. He looked like Captain Birdseye. He was bending low in the fo’c’sle of his dinghy. He held a screwdriver in one hand and a hammer in the other. By the cut of his boat, it appeared that these were the only two tools he was likely to need, for it looked as if it might be powered by a Morris Cowley engine, circa 1926.
Beyond the harbour wall, there was not a single craft on the vast expanse of ocean, which, as far as the eye could see, was dead calm. The sun shone on the gentle waves, refracting the light into a million pixels of colour. The dog and I climbed the steps cut into the harbour wall and walked past a score of lobster-pots piled high against the harbour wall. The path was narrow, and there was a drop of fifteen feet into the sea. Suddenly, breaking the silence, Captain Birdseye hailed me.
“Can you do me a favour?”
“If I can.”
“Are my keys in the van?”
An ancient pick-up truck stood at the foot of the road leading back to the hamlet. It had once been black, but was now mainly rust-coloured. The keys were in the door.
“The keys are in the door.”
“Can you throw them down, please?”
I looked at the distance between the old sailor and me, and remembered that I could never hit a set of cricket stumps from a distance any greater than three feet, let alone drop keys into the prow of a boat fifteen feet below with a lot of deep sea around it. He didn’t look as though he owned a spare set.
“I think not,” I said.
“What’s to be done, then?” the old sailor asked.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll hide them under the driver’s seat. No-one will find them there.”
I couldn’t imagine for one second anyone wanting to steal that old rust-bucket, but I moved aside three empty tins of Tam O'Shanter pipe tobacco and an old fish-and-chip wrapper, and duly hid the keys.
“That’s it done.”
“Fine. Thank you. Saves me coming up.”
The dog and I walked on, up to the alternative route to the hamlet. Whatever the ancient mariner did with his hammer and screwdriver must have worked, for ten minutes later, as I climbed wearily upward, I saw his little old boat chugging out of the harbour and into the wide blue ocean. It looked like a fly in an Olympic-sized swimming-pool.
“Sooner him than me,” I said to the dog. Whilst it is true I get nervous on the North Shields ferry, I just wondered what might become of him if his ancient engine stopped wheezing and he was left adrift, becalmed, left to the mercy of the unpredictable tides.
He must have had the same thoughts himself, for he promptly turned the boat round and headed back to the safety of the harbour. He had sailed a matter of three hundred yards.
We finally reached the hamlet. I had scarcely seen any views so remarkable, or vertiginous. I learned from a plaque at the end of the single street, that Cove had once been quite a tidy herring port. At its peak, the place housed over fifty people and not all of them were smugglers. Indeed, eleven of them died on the night of the great storm of 1889, which claimed the lives of 129 fishermen from Eyemouth, many of whom met their end in full view of their families waiting on shore.
We drove home past the bloodied remains of a red deer that an inconsiderate lorry had slaughtered in the early hours of the morning. A motorway sign read ‘High risk of deer on the road.” I guessed the lorry-driver hadn’t read it.
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