I outline, not your typical school outline, but sometimes bits and pieces of conversation, events, notes, etc, which I erase as I move along, so the total word count both shrinks and expands unpredictibly, sometimes so that even I don’t have a real sense where I am. Stories take as many words as it takes to tell them, and while I have an idea how long a book should be, density also affects it. Now we’re down to almost no outline left, and things happening that were intended to happen, without more outline getting written. We’re getting fairly close to the end and I know what the end is, but this one has just worked out oddly, a story that’s going to answer some puzzles and give you others…
You may wonder why the word count inches along and then flies toward the end…
by CJ | Sep 6, 2016 | Journal | 41 comments
41 Comments
Submit a Comment Cancel reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
You are such a tease! 😉
Sounds wonderful!
Tease? I don’t think so. Instead, an accomplished seductress. With smiles and hints, she lures us closer, calling forth from each of us our dreams. She fulfills those dreams, but leaves us still wanting more; dreaming again. She smiles.
The important thing is that story is happening. That’s all I need to know.
I have Convergence on pre-order. Not that I’d be, y’know, eager or anything. I read Visitor out of order, but loved it.
I’ve resolved to take some time out to *read* each week. I may have finally reached that point where once again I crave reading regularly. Not sure yet how regular this will be, before I’m back to old habits, but I do hope eventually. I have a seriously teetering To Read Pile, fiction and non-fiction, ebooks and pbooks (printed books). (Not that I expect pbooks to catch on as a term.)
—–
My computer acteth up most grievously. Today, I am pulling files off it, zapping things out, in preparation for a trip across town in a few days, in order to sacrifice it up to the techie demigods for repairs / cleanup, whatever it be. I am quite unsure if they offer a trade in towards a new one, or if I could swing the price difference with credit / financing / monthly payments at a rate I can afford to pay back. So at most, I am hoping for the repair plus maybe a RAM upgrade. (I have the RAM, but the blasted case is sealed so the customer *cannot* add/change RAM. Peculiar to a few models, older or more recent, plus, alas, mind.) I also suspect maybe a USB bus problem. If I can get those done, plus get whatever the slowdown is, fixed, that’ll be good enough. If I can at all squeak by with a newer, faster, more RAM computer than I have now, and aye, afford it, then I’ll be one happy guy. — I don’t expect the trip to the service techs at an Apple Store until Monday, though.
Freakin’ slow as molasses computer is driving me up the wall. Virus scanner swears it’s clean. Sure hope so. Sure would love to know what’s wrong, to fix it myself. But I’m expecting the boys and girls in the Apple polo shirts will have to read its entrails and do the deed.
Stay tuned for more.
Hard drive defragmented? How often do you perform a cold boot on the computer? Sometimes, that is all it takes to clear out the RAM, at least, on older OS platforms, it worked. Once in a while, I still do it for my computer, as well as the router.
I really hate it when manufacturers make it difficult for the owner of the computer to do anything to upgrade it themselves. It’s probably why I prefer desktop/tower computers over laptops, because they’re more flexible in their configurations, and I can stuff 3 or 4 hard drives in there and still be able to work. Plus, upgrading RAM is easier.
This acts as much or more like RAM and the processor being bogged down, too full and too much to do, more than disk-bound by a hard drive about to go bad, or overcrowded. But uit cold be all three working together. I sually keep my data on an externa HD or a flash drive, so there wasn’t a lot on the boot drive to clear, but I still need to clear history, etc., before taking it in.
Defragging: You know, as near as I can tell, the Mac’s OS is supposed to take care of that in housekeeping. (I don’t find a command for it, but yeah, most HD’s do.) It’s a 1TB drivr, with 20GB free before I pulled things off, now almost 21GB free, before having it remove a couple of movies in iTunes.
And blast, it’s slow and buggy. I’ve rebooted several times today. It could be memory or the HD or both in combo. — Generally, I cold boot each time I get on and shut down entirely when I end for the day, but also, I usually shut down for lunch and supper, and my wake/sleep hours are always odd, so I may cold boot 2 to 4 times total in a 24 hour period. I’m used to needing to do tht in the old days. It’s been a very recent thing for me to leave the computer on during lunch,etc.
Much of my time toay has been waiting on the machine, with a few reboots because it seemed to actually hang. (But it’s taking a very long time with everything.)
So I’m still expecting a trip to the tech svc. ppl on Monday.
New wrinkle: A while back, I had completely wiped my iPad2, and apparently, I didn’t put in some of the settings whenI redid it. It’s now complaining, but I can’t get to what I neeed on the desktop machine to make the iPad2 happy. Always something.
Once I get one or two more thnings tonight, in about 20 more minutes, I’m declaring a night, with no Apple or Windows logos in sight until tomorrow.
I might have enough done I can take it in tomorrow, but I am expecting Monday, so I can find out more. — Any typos you’re seeing are because I’m typing ahead of the screen redraw and input. Plus, by now, my eyes are too tired. Will be off the computer in about 20 min. though until tomorrow. (Unless I wake really refreshed meantime.)
Planning to read a real printed book tomight to relax. Maybe Tripoint. Havne’t read it again in a long while. Think I’ve only read it twice before. — CJ’s books, I often reread. Many other writers’ books, I don’t reread often, if ever, even though I like them.
Can’t recall if I bought the first Patrick O’Brian Aubreay / Maturin (Master and Commander) book in ebook. Think this weekend, I want to restart it. … I loved the movie, but didn’t get through the first book because of life’s events at the time.
Sometimes a really overloaded hard drive can slow things down simply because the read and write heads are having to play hopscotch searching for any vacancy. One that’s overdue for de-frag means things are written in really inconvenient places, which also slows down the hunt for sectors. If you look at your disk space via Control Panel (assuming Windows) it will tell you the percentage free, and if it’s under 10% the disk is stuffed.
There’s another problem inherent in Windows architecture: apps, even web pages, are allowed to install “helpers” of various sorts. Installed, and left there. Removing the app isn’t a guarantee that all the helpers will be removed. So they stay there, being run even if they’re no longer needed, getting in the way, chewing up machine cycles.
I repeat: Microsoft’s customer is NOT you, the end user. It is the application developer! (S)He gets whatever (s)he needs. You get the consequences.
For example, websites send you cookies, right? Is your browser configured to accept cookies? Probably. You probably have thousands of cookies. One of the fields in a cookie is who it gets sent back to. Cookie bakers often are lax about who. They may even set “third party” cookies. Think about all those advertizers populating all those webpages, even cycling through every few seconds! 😮 When you visit a page your browser sends ALL the cookies matching that “domain” back. My browser is set to “Ask me every time” and with that I automatically “Deny”, unless I definitely intend to have a permanent business relationship with that site.
Back in the days of Win95, the consensus opinion of the “professional nerds” I knew was: “Once a year it is a good idea to wipe everything but your personal files and reinstall the system from scratch.” It was possible 20 years ago.
And of course, there is another option! 😉
‘Twerea Mac computer, but now it is, temporarily a big doortop, until I get it in to be fixed Monday. I am guessing the internal HD went down for the count. The RAM likely needs an upgrade, which I have, but this model won’t let the customer get into it, evn for RAM. the processor is likely OK, but slow these days.
I’m hopng for a repair, or else a trade in and affordable payments on a replacement newer model. I should know either Monday afternoon or Tuesday what my luck will be.
Meanwhile, making do on my old 2010(?) Win7 laptop/ Ugh, keyboard,and gettting used to Windoze again.
Ooh, enticing! Considering some of the explosive revelations we’ve already gotten in the most recent book, I can’t wait to see what you have up your sleeve…
Heh.
This is just between us friends, these days I’m kinda glad I’m an Aspie! It’s a spectrum but I don’t have strong group-association needs. As I check my morning news sites, these days people clearly are saying and doing any damned thing in the service of “our side winning!” Are you familiar with the term “Pyrrhic Victory”? Trouble is, when they go down in flames, they’ll drag all of us with them. And if they’re defeated in their immediate goal, they’ll be back even more extremely!
Here’s an interesting article about English. The author claims we all use some unwritten rules, except they are written in his book. For example, he claims, “Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac. It’s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out.”
I’m not sure I agree, though some words must be kept apart, like green and silver, since together you’d probably read silver as a color and the pair as a particular shade of one. More generally, you have to make sure sequential words are taking as modifying the ending noun, not the subsequent adjective. So maybe, “A lovely old French little silver rectangular green whittling knife.” Or am I a maniac?
He also notes it’s always i-o: tick tock, clip clop, ding dong.
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160908-the-language-rules-we-know-but-dont-know-we-know
Sorry, you are a “maniac” here, at least to my ears. It definitely sounds better as “lovely, little, old….” I didn’t get past “little” coming after “French” in your example before feeling it sounded wrong. I’d come across this unspoken, adjectival order rule a couple days ago too (reposted on friends’ Facebook pages from a blog) and was quite intrigued. I’ve long known there is a inherent adjectival rule in English but never could suss out what it was.
You can change the order, but it changes the meaning. Moving anbadjective “out of order” implies a relationship between the displaced adjective and the one preceding it.
A lovely old little silver knife means its lovelyness is related to its age, it’s lovely because it’s old. A lovely little old silver knife is just lovely by itself, for the object as a whole with all these separate attributes.
At least, that’s the way my language-sense interprets this!
Also, in your example, French silver reads lke a pair to me, because of watching some antiques shows and vaguely remembering that the rules for silversmiths (as to qualities of the metal etc.) were different in different countries. It’s not a strong enough connection to overrule the knife being French completely, it kind of overlaps (because a French silversmith using the French recipe for tablesilver would most likely make a French knife – though it might be Quebequois or something like that).
So probably the kind of knowledge people have about possible combinations plays a part in the way these adjective strings are read by different people.
Someone else commented to me that putting nine adjectives to one word was just daft. I would tend to put a comma between French and little. Part of the problem is we tend to drop commas; if we don’t, it’s never ambiguous. How about, “A lovely old little silver rectangular green French whittling knife”? (Or do the French have a peculiar whittling style?)
I think one problem is that lovely is an adverb while everything else is an adjective. So how about, “A beautiful old French little silver rectangular green whittling knife” or, “A beautiful old little silver rectangular green French whittling knife”? In this case, I think some commas to break it up and make it easier to parse might help.
Um, I’m going to disagree with you. Not all words that end in “ly” are adverbs. “Lovely” is an adjective, according to my Webster’s dictionary, and that’s the only part of speech it lists. It modifies “knife”. Unless you’re going into archaic terminology, “French” isn’t a noun. As I was taught way back in the 1960s, even if you said, “He’s speaking French.”, there is an implied noun, such as “language” which “French” would modify.
“Beautifully” IS an adverb, however, as it describes and modifies a verb, adjective, or another adverb.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lovely lists it as both. When we’re getting into human interpretation, looking like an adverb may disturb things?
And here’s a little puzzle. I bet CJ knows.
What word meant clockwise before we had clocks? And counterclockwise/anticlockwise?
Anticlockwise is widdershins.
In Scots Gaelic, it is Tuathail and Deasail (ooh, and I think I am forgetting how to spell the words. Tch tch tch!) But I presume you want English: rightwards is a substitute for clockwise and leftwards for widdershins..
Sunwise is the one I know. (“Widdershins” sounds like it would be “against the sun”, anti-sunwise.)
If you’re pagan, usually it’s deosil (clockwise) and widdershins (counterclockwise). Both had to do with the perceived movement of the sun, east to west.
Interestingly, Deasail and Tuathal (Scots Gaelic spellings), while they are translated into English as Clockwise and Anti-Clockwise, etymologically mean Southwards and Northwards. In Scottish Gaelic environs (including the Edinburgh University Celtic Dept. classes when I was studying there), you always took turns Deasail or clockwise, for example when it came to going around the table translating out loud a passage of a Gaelic poem. I still find myself very uncomfortable taking turns clockwise, because of those days.
Well, and there’s port and starboard…
I was thinking of deasil and widdershins. Sunways is another, but than only works in the Northern hemisphere. When I was in Australia, I had to constantly remind myself which way sunward was–not South!
The wind veers deasil and backs widdershins. I think that’s old land and age of sail usage. Of course, cyclonic and anti-cyclonic just relate to English developing in the Northern Hemisphere.
Port and starboard are mostly about the sides of the ship, so something on the port side of the ship is always portside; the direction of the ship or which way you’re facing doesn’t matter. A complication is that at some times in history to turn to port was to move the tiller to port, which moves the rudder to starboard, which moves the stern to port, and the bow (and eventually the ship) to starboard. Confusing. I suppose that’s why the naval commands refer to the rudder, like, “Right standard rudder.” Righting the ship is getting it on an even keel (reducing roll–heeling or listing–to something acceptable).
Sailing, you tend to ask/announce, “Ready about!” for a tack (turn to windward) and “Jibe ho!” for a Jibe (turn to leeward); that’s for full turns: for minor adjustments, you tend to use windward or leeward. In a square-rigged ship, tacking is still tacking, but they don’t jibe, they “wear”, come around something like 2/3rds of a circle, heading directly downwind for a bit; slow, but safe and easier on the ship.
Yes, tacking is where you are able to turn the ship through the wind directly in your face; having the wind directly in your face on a square rigger and getting stuck that way is called being taken aback or ‘being in irons’ and is hard on the ship. Wearing is where you turn the ship with the wind at your back all the time; it’s gentler on the ship but may take longer to get you where you are going.
You can still be in irons in a fore-and-aft rigged ship, though it usually takes some doing and I’m not sure doing it by intention counts. I’ve luffed a modern sailboat, just for grins, to box-haul it: that’s heading into the wind until you’re stopped, gaining some sternway with the rudder amidships, and pushing the stern out with the rudder until the sails fill. It’s hard to think of a time box-hauling would be useful, but it’s good to know how your boat behaves in all circumstances. Since I’m not used to weighted keel boats, I’d want to do it, given room, to judge how much momentum the boat kept.
Backing a sail is getting the wind on the wrong side of the sail, even a jib which doesn’t really have a wrong side, commonly by holding it on the wrong side instead of hauling the sheet to the (new) leeward side. It can be used to help complete a turn when you’re in danger of ending in irons, perhaps due to very light, irregular winds.
Backing and filling is alternately backing a sail to stop the ship and filling it to start moving again, more or less staying in one spot. Metaphorically, it’s to be indecisive.
A square rigger can be taken aback under almost any circumstances if the wind shifts enough. As long as the sail unintentionally fills on the unintended side, you’re taken aback. Also a metaphor.
The Titanic sank because of confusion between tiller orders and rudder orders, according to the granddaughter of the only senior officer to survive. She says that her grandfather lied to the inquiries into the sinking, because otherwise the insurance wouldn’t have paid out and the White Star Line would have gone bankrupt. The secret was kept in her family until a few years ago.
The story is that the Titanic used tiller orders, but the helmsman had recently come from another shipping line where he had used rudder orders for years. When the iceberg was sighted, the officer of the watch gave the command, “Hard a-starboard”, which under tiller orders meant that the wheel should be turned to port. But the helmsman, from habit, turned the wheel to starboard, and the Titanic turned towards the iceberg, rather than away from it. A large ship like the Titanic turns very slowly, and it was a couple of minutes before the error was noticed. By then it was too late.
Titanic sunk by steering blunder, new book claims
The great-granddaughter of the helmsman strongly denies this, and says, “He sailed the Titanic for four days before the accident, during which he did shifts of four hours on, four hours off. He would have steered the vessel during these times, so been familiar with the systems.”.
But this doesn’t seem to me to follow. When he was steering under normal circumstances in the open sea, he wouldn’t have received commands like ‘port’ and ‘starboard’ at all. He would have been given a course to follow, a compass bearing. So even though he had been on watch for four days, the encounter with the iceberg was probably the first time he received this kind of order.
Interesting. I wonder if countermanding the order was the best choice. I suppose we’ll never know.
He might have been steering by direction when they left port – they’d certainly want to be careful getting through the Channel and out into the open Atlantic, and compass wouldn’t have been so useful there.
Walt and others into sailing may enjoy the Swallows and Amazons series of books – children’s books, but very readable by adults, and all about sailing small boats. The author, Arthur Ransome, was an expert sailor himself. I think I’ve mentioned the books here before. Written and set in 1930s England.
The most tense and exciting book is the seventh in the series, “We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea”. Four children, ages about 9 to 14, end up on their own on a small unfamiliar sailing cutter in the North Sea. First in heavy fog and shoals, and then in gale-force winds at night.
What makes it so good, besides the quality of the writing and the details of the sailing, is how real the children are. They are not little superheroes. They are frightened, some of them are seasick, they disagree about the best thing to do, and they make serious mistakes. But in the end they know enough about sailing, and are resourceful enough and do enough right, to get through the experience.
I’m going to try to post the first chapter. I hope it won’t be so long that it gets caught in the spam filter.
I loved reading this series as a kid and, yes, this particular book really sticks in mind.
We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea
by Arthur Ransome
Chapter I – A Bowline Knot
John was at the oars; Roger was in the bows; Susan and Titty were sitting side by side in the stern of a borrowed dinghy. Everything on the river was new to them. Only the evening before they had come down the deep green lane that ended in the river itself, with its crowds of yachts, and its big brown-sailed barges, and steamers going up to Ipswich or down to the sea. Last night they had slept for the first time at Alma Cottage, and this morning had waked for the first time to look out through Miss Powell’s climbing roses at this happy place where almost everybody wore sea-boots, and land, in comparison with water, seemed hardly to matter at all.
They had spent the morning watching the tide come up round the barges on the hard, and envying the people who kept putting off to the anchored yachts or coming ashore from them. Then, in the afternoon, an old dinghy had been found for them, and now they were afloat themselves, paddling about, admiring the yachts in the anchorage.
It was getting on for low water. They had watched the falling tide leave boat after boat high, but, as Roger said, not exactly dry, on the shining mud. On the hard, men were walking round a barge that had been afloat in the middle of the day, and were busy with scrapers and tar-brushes. A clock chimed six from among the trees on the further side of the river. The river, wide as it was, seemed almost narrow between the bare mudflats, but a tug, fussing down from Ipswich, set the moored yachts rocking as it passed.
“Almost like being at sea,” said Titty.
“Gosh! I wish we were,” said Roger. “Which boat would you like to have?”
“The big white one,” said Susan.
“But look at her long counter,” said John. “I’d rather have one with a square stern, like a quay punt. Daddy says they’re twice as good in a seaway.”
“What about the blue one?” said Titty.
“Not bad,” said John.
“She’s got a proper capstan on her foredeck,” said Roger. “I wonder if she’s got an engine.”
“It’s the sails that matter,” said Titty.
“Yes, I know,” said Roger, “but all the same an engine’s jolly useful.”
John rowed a little harder to keep up against the tide.
“Now, for instance,” said Roger, “you’d be jolly glad if we had one.”
There was nothing to be said to that.
“What’s written on that buoy?” said Titty.
John glanced over his shoulder, and pulled harder to have a look. Close to them a black mooring buoy with green letters on it swung in the tide.
“Goblin,” said Roger. “Funny name for a boat. I wonder where she is.”
“There’s a boat coming up the river now,” said John, “but she may be going right up to Ipswich …”
“Her sails are a lovely colour,” said Titty.
A little white cutter with red sails was coming in towards the moored boats. Someone was busy on her foredeck. As they watched, they saw the tall red mainsail crumple and fall in great folds on the top of the cabin.
“There’s no one at the tiller,” said John.
“I say,” said Roger. “Is he all alone?”
“He’s gone back to it now,” said Titty. “He’s heading straight for us.”
“I bet this is his buoy,” said Roger.
“Look out, John!” cried Susan. “We’ll be right in the way.”
John pulled clear of the buoy, and watched, paddling gently so as not to drift down river. More and more slowly the little cutter came towards them. Staysail and mainsail were down. Only the jib was pulling, out on the bowsprit end. It certainly looked as if there were no one aboard except that big young man, whose shoulders were so broad that no one who had not seen his face would have guessed that he had only just left school to go to college. He was standing up, steering with a foot on the tiller, with his eyes on the buoy ahead of him. Suddenly, when he was still a few yards from it, they saw him stoop and then run forward along the side deck. The jib was flapping. The young man had grabbed the boathook and was waiting, ready to reach down and catch the buoy.
“He’ll just do it,” Titty said almost in a whisper.
“Beautifully,” said John.
“Oh,” gasped Titty. “He can’t reach it.”
Perhaps the ebb pouring out of the river was stronger than the skipper had thought. The wind had dropped. Under jib alone the little cutter had been moving very slowly. Now, with the jib flapping loose, she lost her way. Just as the young man reached down with his boathook she stopped moving. He made a desperate lunge for the buoy but the boathook was an inch too short. He tried again and missed it by a foot. Already the tide was sweeping her back.
“That’s done it!”
He was looking quickly round. There were moored yachts on all sides. He grabbed at his jib, but must have seen in a moment that he could not get his ship moving fast enough to save her from drifting down on a big black boat lying astern.
“Hi! You!” he shouted. “Can you catch a rope and make it fast to that buoy?”
“Aye, aye, Sir,” shouted John.
“Sit down, Roger,” cried Susan.
“Duck your heads,” said John.
A coiled rope was flying through the air, uncoiling as it flew. John caught it and gave the end to Roger. Three quick strokes brought their dinghy alongside the buoy, which had a rope becket on the top of it.
“Shove it through,” said John urgently … “A lot of it, and give me the end.”
“Aye, aye, Sir,” said Roger. He pushed the end of the rope through the becket and passed it back to John, who had pulled his oars in and was waiting with a loop in the rope. He took the end from Roger, passed it through the loop in the rope, round the rope itself and back again down into the loop, and pulled it taut all in a single movement.
“All fast,” he called, and hurriedly pulled the dinghy clear as the young man began hauling in hand over hand. In a moment the buoy was up on the foredeck, and the young man went on hauling in the buoy-rope, wet and thick and green with seaweed. A few yards short of the black boat the Goblin had stopped going astern. She was coming forward again.
“He must be jolly strong,” said Roger.
“I say,” said John, “she’s got a square stern.”
“Goblin,” said Titty, reading her name.
Breathlessly they watched. The end of a rusty chain was climbing out of the water. It went aboard over a fairlead at the stemhead. A yard … two yards … the Goblin’s skipper was making it fast. He stood there panting. Then he stooped, and pulled on something at his feet, and they saw the jib roll up on itself like a window blind. He stood up again, looking from boat to boat and then down at the four of them in the dinghy.
“Narrow squeak that was,” he said with a slow grin. “Jolly good work on your part. Who taught you to tie a bowline knot?”
“Father,” said John.
“He’s in the Navy,” said Roger.
“Lucky for me,” said the skipper of the Goblin. “I’d have been in a proper mess if you’d fumbled things just then.”
He stretched himself, dipped a mop over the side, used it to wipe his hands, black with mud from the mooring chain, and began to tidy up. John, with a steady stroke of his oars, was keeping close by. All four of them were watching. It was almost as if they had come home from sea themselves. They watched the skipper of the Goblin make the tiller fast. They watched him clamber forward again and turn the staysail into a neat sausage, drop it through the forehatch and disappear after it. They watched him come up again, not out of the forehatch but into the cockpit, lugging with him a huge pair of crutches, like big wooden scissors. He opened the crutches and stood them on the after-deck. Just as he went forward to lower the boom the crutches slipped. He came aft and balanced them once more.
“Shall I come aboard and hold them steady?” said John trying not to sound as eager as he felt.
“Wish you would. Your dinghy’s got a fender round it? Have to look out for the paint.”
John, careful not to bump, laid the dinghy alongside. Roger and Susan hung on to the Goblin as he climbed aboard.
“Good,” said the Goblin’s skipper. “You can let her swing astern, so long as you keep her clear of the Imp.”
“That’s the name of his dinghy,” said Titty, looking at a tiny black pram dinghy that had been towing after the Goblin.
“Is she the Imp because she’s black?” whispered Roger, “or does he have her black because she’s an Imp?”
John, standing in the cockpit, was holding the crutches in place. The skipper at the foot of the mast was slowly lowering the boom. John guided it between the jaws of the crutches.
“Say when,” said the skipper.
“Now,” said John.
The end of the boom dropped another six inches into the jaws of the crutches, and John, hauling in the slack of the mainsheet, made it fast as the skipper came aft.
“Hullo,” he said, “you’ve been in a boat before.”
“We’ve only sailed very little ones,” said John. “By ourselves, I mean.”
“Let’s have those tyers. Starboard locker … Just by your hand.”
John found the bundle of tyers, like strips of broad tape. He joined the skipper on the cabin top. Together they pulled and tugged at the great heap of crimson canvas. “Hang on to this for a minute … Hold this while I get that lump straightened out … Pull this as hard as you can …” Gradually the mainsail turned into a neat roll along the top of the boom. Each bit, as they got it right, was tied firmly down.
“Hullo! Is that the last tyer? There ought to be one more.”
“Is this it?” An eager voice spoke from the cockpit. Roger, standing on one of the cockpit seats, had the missing tyer in his hand. Titty was in the cockpit, too, and even Susan, who had had doubts about it, had not been able to stay behind. You never knew what Roger might be doing, and she had thought it best to follow him.
“When did you come aboard?” said John. “I say, you don’t mind, do you?” he added, turning to the Goblin’s skipper.
“He said we were to let the dinghy go astern,” said Roger. “So we did.”
“The more the merrier,” said the young man. “Plenty of work for everybody. All those ropes on the cockpit floor to be coiled.”
He put on the last tyer and, followed by John, went forward to tidy up the foredeck.
“I say, just look down,” said Titty.
They looked down into the cabin of the little ship, at blue mattresses on bunks on either side, at a little table with a chart tied down to it with string, at a roll of blankets in one of the bunks, at a foghorn in another, and at a heap of dirty plates and cups and spoons in a little white sink opposite the tiny galley, where a saucepan of water was simmering on one of the two burners of a little cooking stove.
“Look here,” said Susan. “Hadn’t we better get on with those ropes. We oughtn’t to be here at all really. We’re going to be late for supper …”
One by one they disentangled the ropes from the mass on the floor of the cockpit, coiled each one separately and laid it on a seat. Meanwhile John and the skipper were busy on the foredeck, closing the hatch, coiling the buoy rope, throwing overboard handfuls of green seaweed, dipping the mop over the side, sousing water on the deck and sweeping the mud from the mooring chain away and out of the scuppers. In about ten minutes nobody could have guessed that the Goblin had only just come in from the sea.
“This water’s nearly boiling,” called Susan, who had been admiring the little stove.
“Turn off the juice,” the skipper called back. “Turn the knob to the right. No need to let the water boil. It’s only for washing up.” He was standing on the cabin top, reaching up to the screens on the shrouds, and presently John and he, one with a big red lantern and one with a big green, came aft to the cockpit.
“Well done,” he laughed, looking at the neat coils of rope. “Shove them into the lockers out of the way.”
“Sidelights?” said Roger.
“Yes. Empty, too. They burnt out this morning, but it was light enough then, so it didn’t matter. I ought to have brought them in, but forgot.”
“Gosh!” said Roger. “Were you sailing in the dark?”
“Left Dover two o’clock yesterday,” said the skipper of the Goblin.
“He’s been sailing all night,” said Roger. “Did you hear?”
“All by himself,” said Titty.
The skipper looked at his mainsail, at the halyards, at the decks. “She’ll do,” he said. “Now I’ll just get through the washing up. Rule of the ship never to go ashore with washing up undone. And then …” he yawned and rubbed his eyes … “I’ll see what the Butt can do for me by way of breakfast …”
“breakfast!”
Susan, Titty and Roger all exclaimed together.
“But it’s nearly seven o’clock. Haven’t you had anything to eat all day?”
“Biscuits,” he said. “And a thermos full of hot soup that I’d made before starting. But I never thought I’d be so long.”
“We’ll do the washing up,” said Susan. “It won’t take us two minutes.”
“Come on, then.” He stifled another yawn. “I never refuse a good offer.”
Down they went into the cabin, climbing down the steep steps of the companion, between the sink full of the things to be washed up on one side, and the stove in the little galley on the other.
“There’s an engine,” exclaimed Roger, looking in under the steps. “Look here, Titty, that’s my face.”
“Sorry,” said Titty, who had reached down with one foot and found Roger’s forehead with it instead of a step.
“Come along you,” said Jim. “Into that corner so that the others can come down. You can look at the engine afterwards.”
“I’m going to sit next to it,” said Roger.
Presently they were all in the cabin, sitting on the bunks, peering forward at two more bunks in the fore-cabin, looking at bookshelf and barometer and clock, at the chart on the table, and at a big envelope labelled “ship’s papers.” The owner of the Goblin stooped down to reach into a cupboard under the galley. He brought out a handful of dish-cloths, emptied the saucepan into the sink, sloshed in some washing soda out of a tin, and then made room for Susan, while he put away the Ship’s Papers, cleared the chart off the table, and spread in place of it a wide strip of white, shiny American cloth. As fast as Susan washed the things they were dumped on one end of the table, seized by one of the wipers and, when dry, put at the other end.
“You people don’t belong to Pin Mill,” said the young man, who seemed to touch the roof of the cabin when he was standing up looking down at his busy helpers.
“We only came yesterday,” said Roger.
“Stopping long?”
“We don’t know yet,” said Titty. “But we probably are. We’ve come to meet Daddy. He’s going to be stationed at Shotley and that’s quite near.”
“He’s on his way home from China,” said John.
“He may be here almost any day,” said Susan … “Roger, that mug isn’t half dry.”
“He telegraphed,” said Roger, giving the mug another wipe. “He’s coming overland to save time.”
“We’re going to meet him at Harwich.”
“By yourselves?”
“Oh no. Mother and Bridget are here too. We’re all at Alma Cottage.”
“Miss Powell’s? You couldn’t be in a better place. Look here, what are your names? Mine’s Jim Brading.”
“Walker,” said John. “This is Susan. This is Titty. I’m John …”
“And I’m Roger,” said Roger. “Does your engine really work?”
“Jolly well,” said Jim Brading, “but I never use it if I can use sails instead.”
“Oh,” said Roger. It had been all very well for John to say that sails were the only things that mattered, but this last term at school Roger had once more begun to think a good deal about engines. He had a friend who thought about nothing else.
Titty had been making up her mind to ask a question.
“Do you live in the Goblin all the time?” she said at last.
“Wish I did,” said Jim. “I’m going up to Oxford in another month. But I’ll be living in her till then.”
“Do you live at Pin Mill?” asked Roger.
“Only in Goblin,” said Jim. “Pin Mill’s her home port. She’s always here when we’re not cruising. I’ve got my uncle coming on Monday and we’re going to have a try for Scotland. He always likes to start from Pin Mill. I’ve had her down in the South the last ten days, but the man who was with me had to go back to work.”
“What’s the furthest you’ve ever been in her?” asked John.
“Uncle Bob and I took her down to Falmouth and back one year.”
“We used to sail there with Daddy when he was on leave,” said John. “But only in an open boat. We never had one we could sleep in.”
“Like to spend a night in the Goblin?” said Jim, smiling.
“Rather,” said everybody at once.
“I don’t see why you shouldn’t,” said Jim. “No. Not there. Let’s get by. I know where the things go. Every plate has its place and each mug has its own hook.” He worked his way past the table while they pulled their legs out of the way.
“We’d love to come, if only we could,” said Susan. “Oh, I say, John, just look at the clock. Miss Powell’ll have had supper ready ages ago, and we promised we wouldn’t be late.”
Jim’s broad back was towards them as he stowed away the things in the cupboards under galley and sink. He slammed the doors to, latched them and turned round. “Well,” he said. “That’s that. Many thanks. Now for shore and breakfast. But what do you think? If I told your mother I wanted a crew for a couple of days? I could cram you all in, if I slept on the floor.”
“Oh gosh!” said Roger.
But at that moment they heard voices outside and the splash of oars.
“They’ll be aboard here, Ma’am.” It was Frank, the boatman, who had lent them their dinghy.
“Oh, I say,” said Susan. “Mother’s had to come off to look for us.”
Everybody jumped up.
“John! Susan!” That was Mother calling outside.
“Ahoy, Roger!” That was Bridget’s shrill yell.
For a moment Mother and Bridget and Frank, the boatman, had been lying alongside what had seemed to be a deserted ship, except for the two dinghies astern. Now, one after another, Roger, Jim Brading, Susan, Titty and John came climbing up out of the cabin.
“I do hope they haven’t been bothering you,” said Mother to the skipper of the Goblin. “You know,” she added for the others, “I didn’t mean you to go and make a nuisance of yourselves to strange boats.”
“We haven’t,” said Roger. “He’s said ‘Thank you’ several times. He’s even asked us to come and be a crew.”
“They’ve been no end of a help,” said Jim. “They’ve moored my ship, and done my washing up, and I’ve been very glad to have them.”
“His name’s Jim Brading,” said Roger, “and he’s sailed her from Dover since yesterday.”
“By himself,” said Titty.
“Single-handed,” said John.
“Then he must be very nearly dead,” said Mother, “and not wanting four of you getting in his way.”
“Did you have a good passage, Sir?” asked Frank.
“Not enough wind,” said Jim. “And a good deal of fog by the Sunk.”
“He hasn’t had anything but soup and biscuits since yesterday,” said Susan.
“He’s going to have breakfast now, at the inn,” said Titty, “just when we’re going to have our supper.”
Mother looked at Jim. She liked what she saw of him and knew very well what they wanted.
“Our supper is waiting for us,” she said, smiling. “If he’d like to come, you’d better bring him with you. Miss Powell’s sure to have given us more than enough.”
“Do come,” said Titty.
“Please,” said Susan.
“We’d all like you to,” said John.
“I expect there’ll be soup,” said Roger.
“That’s really very good of you,” said Jim.
Frank pulled for the shore, so that Mrs Walker and Bridget might go on ahead and tell Miss Powell they had a guest. The others climbed down into their dinghy and followed, giving it up to Frank who waited for them on the hard. Jim, close after them, paddled ashore in the Imp. They watched him haul the Imp a long way up, because the tide had begun to come in again. Then they walked up the hard with their new friend in the midst of them, like four tugs bringing a liner into port.
Well, shucks! This isn’t one of the books you can get as an e-book from Amazon, and the other Arthur Ransome e-books are more expensive than actual physical ones 😛 I read Swallows and Amazons when I was a little sprat, but didn’t have enough context to enjoy it properly, being very much a landlubber.
There seems to be a Kindle version on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Didnt-Mean-Sea-Godine-Storytellers/dp/B00MU6CSMU
I’ve always loved those books, and ‘We didn’t mean to go to sea’ was my favorite too, closely followed by ‘The Picts and the Martyrs’. I’ve got almost the whole set as ebooks from Kobo (except Missee Lee and Peter Duck which I didn’t like), as well as the old paper set that belonged to my dad first. Thanks for bringing back the good memories!
I’d say that The Picts and the Martyrs is my favourite. It has the best humour of all the books, and the final chapters are hilarious. We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea is the most suspenseful, but I enjoy Winter Holiday and Coot Club more, and find them more re-readable.
When you read Coot Club again, take a look at this website. It has many photos of the Norfolk Broads from around that time, and you can see most of the places described in the book as they were in Arthur Ransome’s day.
I agree that the two meta-fictional books, Peter Duck and Missee Lee are the least interesting.
The 1974 movie is not too bad, and may be a good introduction to the series, but the movie released this year doesn’t seem to be very good.
Thanks for that. I’m in the middle–well, approaching the middle–of re-reading Patrick O’Brian just now.
I was looking for a suitable spot to park this, and didn’t want to detract from other threads. If it’s not appropriate, go ahead and delete it or move it where you think it needs to go. I had posted a similar entry a couple of weeks ago, but the spam-eater got it, apparently.
Both CJC and Jane have WordPress websites, and my regional kendo federation’s website is also a WordPress site. The kendo club to which I belong has a website that was written a long time ago in a format which requires me to use a specialized editor. Unfortunately, that also means that I have to lug my laptop around, or else wait until I get home to edit the website. On top of that, I am the only one who has the necessary editing software to make updates, so my alternate webmaster is pretty much just sitting there with nothing to do.
I decided when the club objected to the amount of money we were spending on our current hosting service and for the returns we were getting, that it was time to either scrap the website, or else move to a new host. I did some research, found a hosting service that charges much less than our current service, and offers a lot of support for WordPress, to boot.
To that end, I needed to get WordPress savvy, and that’s was a challenge. Friends offered to do the website for me, but that doesn’t teach me anything. Their justification is that it would be too complicated and take too long to teach me. So, I decided to enroll in an online course at the local community college. So far, I’ve completed 8 out of 12 lessons. The course is self-paced, but lessons aren’t released until a certain date, and only on Wednesday and Friday.
I’ve been working not only on the class project – a fictitious pet shelter – but also my club’s “new” website in preparation for moving the domain from the old hosting service and format to the new hosting service and WordPress format. I’m not quite where I want to be yet, but we’ll have a link to our Facebook page (problematic for me, as I’m the Administrator for that page, but I’ve deactivated my Facebook account.), and I plan to publish our site in a directory that will allow Google and other search engines to list it. I don’t know if that will cost extra, but haven’t gone that far. It’s in an upcoming lesson and it hasn’t been released yet.
If you’re curious to see what the fictitious website looks like, it’s at [URL=http://josephc1.sgedu.site]Joe’s Fictitious Website – Pets To Go[/URL]
I don’t know if I’ve posted this elsewhere (yes, I did, now that I recall). I don’t have any issues with feedback, but please bear in mind that this is being done exactly as the instructor has set it up, so that when I compare my site to the site he’s using as an example, I can see where there are problems. He updates the site when he releases a lesson.