William Shepherd

It was a cold night but I kept warm enough. Besides I have company...a mouse. This is not the first time. But this is the first time that I have had a clean mouse onboard. There are no signs of his droppings anywhere. Connie was the official ratcatcher aboard Vemara. I never had a clue what to do. I remember on one occasion Connie had caught a mouse by his tail in one of the overhead nets. She had a carving knife in her hand and was using this to trap the tail against the side of the cabin.

It was three o'clock in the morning. 'I can hold him! You kill him!' she whispered at me. Goodness knows why she was whispering. Perhaps she wanted to catch the mouse unawares and thought it best if he did not know our plans. Connie was a country girl. I'm a townie. She could do things like this. I didn't know where to start.

But I can follow orders. So following instructions I went to fetch a saucepan. Then I did something wrong and he got away. We got him a few nights later...in a mousetrap. We had been recommended all sorts of exotic bait like chocolate...and had tried them all. But in the end it was cheese that worked best.

After booking a rental car from Practical Car Rental in Fairlight for the next Radcon Planning Committee meeting in a couple of weeks time and leaving a message about a computer monitor for sale in the Friday Ad I started into town for the Ashford train. I got a lift from the moorings with Chay Cole who features in one of the more dramatic episodes of Creaky Tales. As the train was pulling into Ashford International railway station Heidi called in a new Good Yacht Guide order. She was on her way to London and we needed to get approval for the credit card payment.

I was in Ashford all day, spending seven pounds for two hours of internet access and also doing an hour at the library typing up letters for posting recorded delivery to Mr and Mrs Roud. The rest of the day was spent at Starbucks, planning weblogs 45 to 50.

The alternative movement has trouble with Starbucks. The problem is their development strategy. They smother a limited geographic area with Starbuck Coffee Houses, eliminate the competition by increasing market share in total while reducing market share per coffee outlet. Then once everyone else has gone bust they send in the accountants to rationalise their monopoly coffee shops operation. Wal-Mart operates in much the same way. But they are ideal for people like me who want to hire a desk or an armchair for a couple of hours. The rate is £1.45 and for that you get an enormous mug of excellent Fairtrade coffee.

A new innovation in the Ashford Starbucks was Poetry Reading on the first Saturday of each month at 7pm. Admission £2. The 3rd edition of Starbuck's Poems to Drink Coffee By was lying on one of the tables. Here are some of the titles: Because of Love; Footfall to Heaven; The Wall; Under the Bonnet; A Musical Dream; A Moment; Scales: Obsession; Kent Rain; Hands; New Life; Dragonfly and Ode to Bureaucracy. It made me think of Nicholas Albery.

Nicholas was an amazing person who died tragically in a car accident a few months before he was due to join us for the first Radical Consultation in September 2001. He had agreed to chair the Radcon Any Questions public meeting that opened the conference on the Thursday evening. His achievements are legendary and there is a webpage devoted to them on the www.cesc.net website…just put “Nicholas Albery” into the search engine. I had another reminder when my daughter and I were having a farewell drink with Ellie Clegg the night before I left Llangolman. It turned out that Ellie had been there in Frestonia in those heady days when this area in West Kensington made its unilateral declaration of independence. Nicholas Albery was the driving force behind this creative alternative political stunt.

I had a call from my daughter as I arrived at Rye Station. She had received calls from a car rental firm and somebody selling a computer monitor. After a few moments' thought I realised that the diversion must still be on my mobile phone. Sure enough my incoming calls were being diverted to the Llangolman landline answering machine if I failed to answer my mobile. I altered the settings and arranged to pick up the computer monitor from Bexhill the following day.

It was after dark when I got back to the boat...I have put a lock on the cabin door now. Tonight I lit the fire. But with no radio or CD Player there was little to do so I went to bed at nine and read for a while by candlelight...a John Grisham from Rye Library.

A road sign outside the Yarm Preparatory School up in the wilds of the Anglo-Scotch border country has been causing much amusement as it read Grammer School Lane. Eventually it was replaced by a new sign that read Grammar School Lane. Headteacher Gillian Taylor remarked that if the council wanted any help in spelling she was sure the children could help. The council blamed the sign manufacturer Select Marketing: 'Our order for the sign was correct.' So that's alright then. Craig Atkinson the marketing director of the sign makers put out an official statement: 'This has never happened before. We apologise to all concerned and are putting procedures in place to make sure it doesn't happen again.' Like what? Schooling? Lynn Truss the author of Eats Shoots & Leaves will be delighted by the furore.

Connie used to plan her life around her summer cruises in Vemara. When her son David got to school age she had to modify this annual scheme but the principle remained intact. This made it easy for her to slot back into the old routine after she divorced and her son was living with his father. Dad looked after the school runs during term time and David stayed with Connie on her boat in Rye or Boulogne at weekends…or flew out to exotic places like Gotland, Brittany or the Channel Islands to join Vemara in the summer holidays.

Up until last year my daughter planned her annual life around summer music festivals. She was running a stall selling Indian silks. A friend of mine who was seventy earlier this year suffers from rheumatism. He plans in terms of the winter months…November, December, January and February. The last place he wants to be during the English winter is in England. This year he has been living in Vietnam. Other winters he has been in New Zealand. He seeks out warmer climes in the winter but for the rest of the year he likes to be in England.

Heidi works part-time for East Sussex County Council. She plans in terms and school holidays. In term time her life revolves around Rye Harbour. But with her schooling duties taking up just two days a week she has the flexibility to drive over to Robertsbridge and takes the train to Lewisham where she lived up until the end of 2004. Here she meets old friends, goes to the theatre, art galleries, restaurants and so on. She has a couple of places she stays over. Half term and the Christmas, Easter and Summer holidays are seen as opportunities to get away and do something more adventurous. Before Christmas Heidi was working on her project with villagers in Lwala on the shores of Lake Victoria for ten days.

Temperatures on Planet Earth have been static over the past eight years according to Professor Bob Carter.

When two people become a couple one of the first problems to deal with are conflicting calendars. Our problem is conflicting planning paradigms. This is something else. I do indicative planning...see weblog for 29/1. My paradigm does not mesh easily with Heidi’s. To me the answer is obvious. Heidi should give up her two-day a week job and set herself up as an ownworker. So I have pushed a number of opportunities into her path during the past nine months. But so far only the Good Yacht Guide has looked promising. Heidi also thinks the answer is obvious. I should behave like a normal person, get myself an apartment in Rye and reorganise myself into her paradigm. Unfortunately this to me is the wrong solution to the wrong problem...and would breed new conflicts.

This morning we agreed we had reached an impasse and were just making each other’s lives a misery and decided to break up. I think there are a couple of other things going on...one of which is the mismatching of our material situation. Heidi has a house while I have had little interest in acquisition over the past twenty years. Been there, done it...and given it all away to my ex-wife. This has changed now I have a chance of winning Heidi’s hand. Anyway the die is cast...at least until the next text exchange.

So the day started with the break-up of my marriage...long before the wedding...and then got worse. The curse was working itself out. In mid-afternoon matters were brought to a head with Mr. Roud when he turned off the electricity to the boat. There was an altercation. He told me to get myself and the boat off his moorings. I refused and told him there was something called due process and he had better follow it...adding for good measure that freezing a tenant whose rent and electricity was paid up until the end of the year not only constituted harassment but also attempted manslaughter.

At Ryesingers practice in the evening I was welcomed back like the long-lost prodigal son...a nice change after having been called everything under the sun earlier in the day. It was not worth lighting the coal stove when I got back to Vemara at ten so I got into my pyjamas, put on my dressing gown and crept into my sleeping bag. The boat looks nice by candlelight. It was a cold night outside.