LIFE IS JUST A BISCUIT'S TOSS AWAY
by Miles McGrevy
References to GPS, Satnav and MCT (Marine
Computer Technology), ricochet around boatyard and club bar like lead slugs
at the O.K. Corral, so when I was offered complimentary tickets to a
computer fair, a while back, I accepted, albeit with the feigned reluctance
of the final runner in the charity cross-country, accepting an illicit
tractor ride as dusk begins to spread its rosy hue around his rapidly
lengthening shadow.
Now, when it comes to computers, radios or, for that matter, anything else
you have to plug in, I'm afraid I have to admit I've got out on the wrong
floor. If I can't find a simple switch marked 'ON', I'm in deep water from
the word 'go'.
Despite my technically challenged disposition, I ventured forth with the
curious bewilderment of an Amazon tribesman on a cultural exchange, entering
the control room of Cape Canaveral.
I pondered the melee of flashing lights and the deafening din, reminiscent
of the three-fifteen passenger express from Scunthorpe, inadvertently
rattling into a goods siding in the early hours.
Someone, who looked like Flash Gordon, handed me a large plastic carrier bag
which I was, eventually, to need, and more besides, for the shower of
brochures, pens and stickers I was about to collect. 'Flash' slapped a
sticker across my sternum and pointed me in the general direction of the
hubbub. It was as I imagine going over the top at Flanders might have been,
only without the mud.
A tall, skinny individual, with a two-second occulting squint, who had
adopted, perfectly, the pose of a preying mantis, thrust a collapsed
cardboard carton at me, relieved me of a fiver (five pounds sterling) and
slapped another sticker across my chest, all in a single movement.
Then, with a lightning turn of speed, he transformed his sample box into a
sort of pop-up space ship that, if openly carried around the exhibition,
would put you in line to win the latest Decibel Devastator, to ensure your
video games were audibly more enjoyable.
For the next forty-five minutes, I found myself engaged in conversation, in
a language spattered with rams, roms, bytes and floppy's which made me think
I might have wandered into some sort of DADA convention, organised by Luis
Buñuel and the surrealist movement.
When I heard someone mention that he had contracted a virus in his hard
drive, which was proving a devil of a job to get rid of, I decided enough
was enough.
A young lady, sensing my disorientation, uttered those near-obsolete words
"May I help you?".
"Certainly", I replied, dumping my sagging spaceship in her
software, "Which is the way out?".
Going straight to my boat, I poured myself a serious Scotch (whisky) and, as
I sat in the cockpit, idly trying to invent yet another way to tie a
bowline, I began to ponder my mortality.
Could I ever achieve nirvana without becoming computer literate?
Surely, St. Peter wouldn't turn me away if I hadn't got my database and
binary logic in order? I mean, it wouldn't be traditional, would it?
As my mind, full of these bizarre thoughts of the afterlife, became
anaesthetized by Johnny Walker, my light-hearted safety valve came into
play, taking my mind back to a burial, with which I had once helped my
grandfather.
"Charters come and go, thank heavens!" Pops used to say. No two
were alike and ranged from a nightmare day out with the Lower Wapping Boys
Brigade, to a nip across the English Channel, under the shroud of darkness,
to pick up the Patel family, complete with Peter Sellers impersonations, but
this one really took the pickled biscuit.
Old Lieutenant Dawid 'Taffrail' Jones R.N. had recently passed on, or "Coiled
up his cable and gorn aloft" as Pops would put it, and 'Taffrail's wife
had decided that it would be fitting to cast his ashes upon the sea.
At sunset, we took charge of the charter aboard 'Saucy Jane', setting sail
down the Blackwater to get as far out to sea as possible for the service at
dawn. The charter party radiated the sort of cheer that's conjured up by the
sound of the dentist's drill, wafting through the waiting room, and it was a
relief to show them to their berths.
Jacko had taken a fishing party out, the day before, on a worm-drowning
exercise. He was in the fo'c'sle, snoring away in complete oblivion, like a
clapped-out reed-organ.
Mrs. Jones had asked me to find a safe place for the ornamental urn bearing
her late husband's ashes, so I stowed them away in Jacko's cramped little
locker, along with a packet of custard creams I'd brought along for
him.
We crossed the Buxey, headed up the Swin and, with the wind across our
quarter, headed out into open water.
Before dawn, Pops woke me, in the cockpit, with a steaming mug. He suggested
I give Jacko a shake and fill him in on what was happening, while Pops
hove-to.
Our party emerged, dressed in black and with all the solemnity of
train-spotters on a wet Monday afternoon, during a rail strike.
Mrs. Jones' brother, a man of Scottish descent, had brought along his
bagpipes. Now, he took up a position before the mast and puffed away at the
pipes, like Dad struggling with the last of the Christmas balloons.
As the cold October breeze wafted up his kilt, I could see he was having
trouble presenting his credentials.
"Probably due to his frozen assets" suggested Pops.
Eventually, the distinctive, atonal, drone burst forth from the 'agony
bags', shattering the silence with all the subtlety of a novice monk
dropping the dinner-gong down the monastery stairs.
This brought Jacko rattling up the companionway steps, half-shaven and
struggling into a life-vest.
I went below to fetch the ashes. As I emerged through the front scuttle with
the urn, Jacko's jaw dropped open like the tailgate on a dung-lorry.
"Albert" he hissed, frantically whispering something in Pops' ear
that set my grandfather's eyes rolling around in their sockets like
Catherine Wheels, a sure sign that he was thinking fast on his feet.
Meanwhile, over at the rail, the party were just getting to the 'dust to
dust, ashes to ashes' bit.
Mrs. Jones raised the urn over the side, gently inverting it, and out into
the oily black sea flopped half a dozen custard creams.
Jacko had thought I'd brought him along a fancy new biscuit barrel. But what
had he done with the ashes?
Just as Mrs. Jones was fighting to maintain altitude, ol' Pops came striding
out of nowhere, singing 'Amazing Grace' and holding aloft his mahogany and
brass sextant case, full of ashes. Honour was saved.
The piper tried to join in, but the best he could manage was a few bars of
'Loch Lomond' and, eventually, he settled for a chorus of "My Bonnie'.
Flowers were tossed into the drink, mingling nicely with the sprats nibbling
away at the soggy biscuits, as we set a course for home.
The emotion of the moment, along with a round of Jacko's bacon and Marmite
sandwiches, scuppered our charter and they took to their bunks as we headed
into a dead noser.
"What did you do with the ashes, Jacko?" asked Pops, from the
confines of the cockpit.
"Well, I thought it was just dust in the bottom of the tin, so I dumped
'em in the slops bucket, under the galley sink", confessed Jacko,
"but how did they get into your sextant case?"
"They didn't", replied Pops, " I scraped me pipe out and
topped it up with the dust out o' the bogey stove".
Just then, I heard a sound from below that had, by then, become a regular
stanza for the charter party.
Old Mrs. Jones and company were heaving up the contents of their stomachs
into the galley sink and, consequently, straight into the slops bucket there
below.
"What a way ter go" remarked Jacko.
"At least he's gettin' a twenty-one lung salute, yer might say"
quipped Pops, firing up a fresh briarful.
As a mark of respect, from that day on, the little slops locker under the
galley sink became affectionately known as 'Davy Jones' locker!
Pops never let on, to old Mrs. Jones, what really happened, but when she too
passed on and it emerged that her last wish had been that her ashes be cast
as her husbands' had been, there were difficult decisions to be made, to say
the least. Well, what would you have done?
This much I can tell you, Jacko got himself a fine pair of biscuit
barrels!
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