I’ve always been comfortable on boats. Mum told me at a young age that I was made on a boat in Nice. Dad, a lifetime sailor, had dragged her screaming across the English channel to the South of France, and there – presumably while he comforted her WHICH I CAN’T BEAR TO THINK ABOUT OBVIOUSLY – was I conceived. Apart of the all-out vom-inducing grossness of considering one’s parents frolicking about in the act of conjoining their essence, I’ve always found it a romantic tale. I like to imagine “Made in France” like an invisible label on me, like I’m a jaunty summer cardigan. Probably striped. That’s French isn’t it.

Dad joined the Merchant Navy when he was a lad; I suspect to escape boarding school. He sailed around many seas of the world having top larks with lads named Pancho, Ratty, and Edmeades. He loved boats ever after and took great care to instigate the same passion in his choiceless children. My childhood holidays would usually involve being pulled onto some sort of vessel on some sort of water. Yachts, dinghies, rowboats, pedaloes. Oceans, lakes, rivers, ponds. Paper plates on puddles if we really got stuck.

One of my favourite memories of Dad is when we nearly died. We were in Turkey, as good a place to die as any. In the sun, happy. I had just turned 16, he had just turned 50. We went out alone on a tiny two-man bit of scrap and lurched without life jackets out into the Aegean, bound for open seas and adventure. Twenty minutes later I thought my bum was going to fall clean off. Dad had taken us out too far, the feeble boat was only vaguely seaworthy in the shallows, and we were smacking hard against the deep waves, writhing like concrete serpents. I felt a strange mix of terror and elation as we kept on going, still blindly trusting that my Dad, Man of the Sea, would save us before it got really dangerous. Dad could control the waves, couldn’t he? (How magical is that time when you think adults are invincible).

It was the most alive I had ever seen him. I can still see him turning round to me with his hair whipping around his neck, eyes wild and happy, his mouth broad and laughing. I laughed too. Even though I probably already suspected I wouldn’t be able to sit down for quite a while. If we didn’t die.

We didn’t die.

Years later, in an attempt to create quality time while I was at Uni he bought a small four man dinghy called the Sammy Jod. It was four leaf clover green with caramel wood inside. I loved it. But it came too late; I was at Uni in London and didn’t have time for the sea jaunts he thought we’d have. Dad sold the Sammy Jod about a year later admitting it had been bad timing. I always felt like I’d let him down by growing up.

This weekend I went to a boat race held yearly for the last twenty or so years in the honour of the father of one of my best friends, Jack. ‘Welcome Back, You Didn’t Die’ drinks were being held on the big boat HQ of the Essex Yacht Club in Leigh, just a few meters from where the Sammy Jod was moored for its brief year in our family. I wanted to be there for Jack, who lost his father when he was a baby, knowing what that race means to him, and I wanted to go with all my love of boats and dads and water and Jack that I hold in my heart as though that is somehow a transferrable thing that can be of some use. Hearts are sometimes at their stupidest when they’re at their fullest.

But the wind was hard that day and the estuary waters churned around in choppy fashion and the race was called off.

So we had a beer instead and raised glasses of ale to Jack’s father while the wind carried on its amiable tyranny outside. Even though the fleet of pretty boats were not put to full use, it was as though the elements that make them move, the power of the wind and waves were talking and saying hello, like two fathers shaking hands.

 

Lads on a boat, being lads. That’s Dad at the back with the ears. He got those pinned in the 70s. Lad.

Mum & Dad by some boat or other, maybe in Nice. Ugh. Maybe I’m in there.

After we’d come back, just about alive. Turkey 1996.

Jack teaching me to play ukulele that one time when I thought being able to play Somewhere Over The Rainbow might make me a better person. I’m sorry, Jack.

 

Sometimes I’m like a ruddy xylophone. Strike me right and I will emit the note you want. It’s annoying. I wish I was less predictable, not set to a spectrum of choosable tones. Clonk. 

I am aware of it in films, I am aware of it in music, I am aware of it in emotive speeches or compilations of ‘best moments’ of anything or edited clips of people winning awards or dairy cows dancing when they’ve been set free. Especially dairy cows dancing when they’ve been set free. No matter how much my brain is computing bad dialogue or emotional manipulation or schmaltz or somesuch and I feel I should be cerebrally more present to examine or dissect or counter, strike me right and you’ll get me. I am yours. I’ll feel it. I’ll let you have it. Especially if my hormones are at play. (They’re the real boss of us really, aren’t they?)

 

I went to a Burt Bacharach evening with my mum and step-dad the other night. I went with duel expectations. Half of me thought that a tribute night would make me a bit twitchy and want to throw maltesers at everyone’s eyes, seeing if I could stop an entire song with one well-aimed ping, and half of me was like “if they do that song from My Best Friend’s Wedding I’m a frickin goner.”

 

I went with love in my bones. Not just people love from seeing friends in the day and being out on a date night with my mum and new dad but that sort of naked tiredness that makes you feel stripped back like a twist of live wires. That feels like love. Because you’re open. Because I am a wise old bird now I drank wine, because that’s always the best way to whack a cork in the emotional orifices. Nice one, Hasler. I sat in the dark next to my Step-Dad and my Mum and settled in my seat for some good old songs.

 

The man who started the singing was very West End Theatre. He had one of those little half-smiles people do to the side like they’re allowing the sparkle out of one half of the mouth because they want you to have some razzmatazz fun, but keeping the other side straight because they also want you to know that actually life is very serious and a bit sad and here’s a lovely song about it all. Half-happy, half-wise, half-consoling. That’s a smile of three halves, it’s not even mathematically possible, but that’s what you get when you are trained in Musicals. Sense goes out of the window.

 

I liked it when the ladies sang best. They were curvy and loud and skilled and in sequins. They made me want to wear a dress and heels. I beamed at them owning their fulsome women’s bodies, wiggling and owning it, the soft meat of living, and wishing I felt similarly about mine. Maybe I’ve just not found the right dress.

 

While I kept chuckling at the showy showmanship of it, I realised halfway through that the seats were rocking back and forth, because we were tapping our feet. I was cast back to when I used to go to Rock n Roll nights with my Dad. Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Billy Fury. He’d tap his feet so vigorously the whole row would rock back and forth. Half of me was embarrassed and half of me was glad those old songs brought him to life. And here I was with my Mum, listening to songs we loved and tapping our feet. And I had tears streaming down my face because I’d had wine and felt love and they were singing What The World Needs Now and I’m a stupid xylophone and I’m sort of fine with that because maybe being a bit malleable means you have that something to give.

I’m always galled by how much of life revolves around money. Acquiring it governs most of the hours of our waking life, and a great portion of our physical and mental wellbeing depends on its constant acquisition. It never lasts. It goes too quick. It is our master and we dance for it like dogs on our hind legs. When it dries up or we go through a bad patch the rest of our life falls into chasing more and it slips from our fingers too quickly yet again. And though we can be highly productive and resourceful when we don’t have it, the human nature to thrive on the basics kicking in like fierce creative survival, it is most commonly a thorny bind that leaves us feeling impotent, trapped, sad, and anxious to our bones.

It digs us in our swollen pride when we don’t have enough money. We feel like failures while we might actually be heroes, like we’re letting our families down – and it always feels like the wrong people have too much of it. We can’t help but compare ourselves to others and it chokes us.

When I was a kid and we’d just moved to Southend after my parent’s divorce, aside from dealing with desperate sadness, my mum really struggled for money. I remember counting pennies and old ten pence pieces out of an old bottle almost as big as my little sister, onto the kitchen floor in little piles. A little rush of excitement coursed through me if we came across a twenty or a fifty. I don’t remember many pounds. I learned to count better by using coins. I liked making the piles neat. I didn’t know that this was borderline poverty, I just thought that it’s what every family did before they went shopping.

A few years later Mum asked me to accompany her to the funeral of an old man named Charlie Jones. I remembered Charlie Jones only with a vague affection; I hadn’t seen him for years. While sitting in the hard pews of the church, Mum turned to me and told me that not only had Charlie Jones been a caring uncle type to her while she was a troubled teen though no real relation, but that when we moved to Southend in the snowy winter of 1985 he had occasionally turned up unannounced at our door with bags of meat from the butchers. He knew we were struggling and he made the journey from his own home a good few miles away in Billericay to make sure we didn’t go without. Accepting his help as a newly single parent must have been painful, and the gratitude immense. I just thought he was nice; I didn’t know he was keeping us from going hungry. I sat through the funeral service with my eyes brimming and my heart thundering for a man I barely knew. I’d never known what we owed to his kindness. The eulogies of Charlie Jones that day glowed like stained glass lit by a new light.

I was reminded of this period in my life when I went to a fundraiser for Southend Food bank at the brilliant Railway Hotel this weekend. No money was donated, but a minimum donation of three cans was asked of the audience. Bands played for free. The floor of the room next door to the gig filled up quickly until you could barely move for tripping over carrier bags filled to bursting with tins of soup and beans and tomatoes, jars of sauce, packs of rice and pasta. Staples that could be transferred to the Southend Food Bank for sharing amongst families who desperately need help.

Sam Duckworth and a gang of other musicians played in the next room. Sam is a prominent voice at the moment on how we might make changes to the things currently making us feel powerless in the world and he peppered his set with passionate patter. While he played, songs about anger and hope and our town, lyrics like old friends, I thought of the bags full of shopping. I thought of the people struggling, and I thought about how many people need the voices of others, and the kindness of strangers. My heart swelled at the small differences we can make even when we haven’t got much ourselves. My tummy’s been filled by kindness in the past; my heart is filled similarly now. I want to do more.

The Food Bank raised 221.8 kilos of food in one night at the Railway.

Click here for more information on how to donate to Southend Food Bank.

 

Pic nicked from the lovely Ramjet Steve of cracking band T-Bitch.