Write and hold on
Writing at sea is a whole new world of adventure, or even endurance. One hand types while the other firmly grips the table. It’s like doing a Pilates class on top of a speeding train while trying to tie your shoe laces. Gone is the cup of coffee that so often graces a writer’s table. The pencil and notepad beside the laptop, also conspicuously absent. Neither would last a minute on a lean like this. Each sentence is hard earned, every paragraph comes with a badge for effort. A chapter? Break out a bottle of the good stuff! But I’m in a kind of grove, perhaps inspired by everything outside the window. Ocean swells pass beneath us on their way to break upon some distant reef. Incessant trade winds rise and fall, rarely by more than a knot or two. The sun shines and sparkles in our wake, while two seabirds - who I swear have been with us since the Kermedecs, keep an eye on our passage from above. Privately we call one Norman and the other Daphne after Libby’s late father and mother. I’m sure in a month or so we’ll visit their gravestones in West Sussex to place some spring flowers there, and to thank them for their watch.
Ironically, as I write and hold on, England must be close. Just now we crossed a red line on the ship’s chart plotter saying FRANCE.
On y va!
