For reproduction rights see copyright notice
We went to the sailmakers to see what they thought about repairing it, but it was obvious there wasn't much point in trying. The ammount of work involved would cost much more than the sail was worth. And anyway, once it had started rotting, the whole thing was likely to just fall apart at any time. We certainly couldn't afford the more than two hundred quid a new one would cost, so the situation looked quite hopeless.
A few days later, we found another sail. A spare foresail from a bigger boat which my mother had sold a while before. Just out of interest, we compared the two and found there was very little difference in size or shape. We took the foresail into the sailmakers to get them to convert it, which would be considerably cheaper than getting a new one made. After that, we decided to put the old one on the boat and use it till the wind ripped it too much to use any more. We thought we might as well get the last little bit of use out of it.
*-*-*
Meanwhile, i was starting work on producing a new issue of the Spunk Archive. Spunk is a library of anarchist literature on internet. It's administered by a collective of people who are scattered around the world and who communicate by email messages. The collective makes all its decisions and discusses issues relating to running such a library by sending email messages to a system that distributes copies of the message to everyone else in the group. In that way, there's a sort of permanent running collective meeting happening, where anyone can chuck ideas or thoughts in at any time of the day or night, from anywhere in the world, and they can be read by everyone else in the group next time they check their email.
At that point there were nearly a thousand files in the archive, but it hadn't been updated for over six months and there were lots of new submissions waiting to be processed and added to it. There was nobody else who was willing or able to do the job, so it looked as if it was my turn. I won't go into the technicalities of the job, i'm sure you're pleased to hear, but it's a very similar process to putting new books into a public library. The new files have to be given a number, categorized and added to the catalogue with a description of what they're about. Most of them also need a bit of editing work to clean them up and make them easy to read. It's quite a long job and it can be hard work. And i only had a limited ammount of time to do it in as i'd be leaving the country towards the end of November and i wanted to have it finished and out of the way at least two weeks before that.
*-*-*
On Sunday, the eighth, i went to the White Horse pub in Maldon High Street in the early afternoon to meet Terry, my oldest friend, who was usually in there at that time on a Sunday. The weather had suddenly turned hot again. The sun was out and brightening up everything in sight and it was quite warm enough to walk down there in shorts, t-shirt and bare feet. I'd met Terry when we were in the same class in the second year at secondary school, when we were about twelve, twenty five years before. We didn't see much of each other any more, as we lived on opposite sides of the planet, but when i was back in Maldon, we usually went out and had a few drinks together now and then.
I spent a pleasant two or three hours drinking pints of Murphy's stout and talking to Terry and his brother-in-law. Terry's working on a local farm nowadays and we had a good chat about growing things and environmentally friendly agriculture, which is something i'd never discussed with him before.
Eventually everyone else left the pub and the landlord decided to close up. It had only been a couple of months since the licencing laws had changed in Britain, allowing pubs to stay open all afternoon on Sundays and of course they're very slow to adapt! At least we weren't chucked out till about four, which is much better than the old Sunday closing time of two o'clock. Terry and Tom went off home for dinner and i decided to take a walk down the quay and have a look at the water.
I tried to have a pint in the Queen's Head, which is right on the quay, but amazingly they were closed too, so i ended up going for a walk along the river and standing for a while watching a big group of swans and ducks swimming about, obviously enjoying the sudden improvement in the weather.
For some reason, i decided to walk back towards the quay. I was a bit pissed and in a wandering mood and i couldn't think of anywhere else to go. Not far from the quay i ran into Hilary, another old friend of mine who i hadn't seen for ages and had been trying to track down. She was with a group of half a dozen or more people who she'd been at the pub with. They'd all been away sailing on a barge the previous week and were about to head off to their homes again.
I went round to Hilary's with them and hung around there for a while. Hilary told me that another friend of ours, Paul was down from London for the weekend, which was good as i'd been trying to get round to seeing him for a long time. I ended up going out on the piss that evening with Paul and getting seriously drunk.
The next day the tide and the weather were right to go for a sail. It looked like it could be the last opportunity of the year and miraculously neither me or my mother had anything else we had to do. This time we finally made it. Three months after starting to work on the boat, we managed to get out for a sail. I could hardly believe it!
We put the old sail on and got it rigged up in a dodgy sort of way and off we went. Paul came along for the ride and so did Rosie, my sister's three year old daughter. The boat looked a right state as we tacked up the river into the wind. The sail was full of small holes, the ropes were all unraveling at the ends, due to never having been properly spliced and there was a small hole in the side of the hull which i'd filled before we painted it, but had knocked out again when i put the new seat in a month before. But it sailed. And it was a perfect day for it. Although i didn't feel in anything like the perfect condition - due to a heavy hangover from the previous day's heavy drinking.
We ended up sailing the mile or two up the river to Maldon, where we parked up at the quay outside the Queen's Head and went in for a pint or two. My sister met us there with her two youngest kids, Megan and Stuart. Rosie and Paul jumped ship at that point, leaving me and my mum to sail back down to the Basin on the ebbing tide.
*-*-*
So we'd finally got a sail in after all those months! We had another one a few days later too, but high tide was much later and it was a bit too windy really. We had Anna, James and Jenny, my sister's three oldest kids with us and we were out till nearly dark. It looked like that would probably be the last time we'd go sailing that year as it began to get really cold not long after that and going sailing in freezing weather isn't my idea of fun. People do it, but they're crazy!
*-*-*
Saturday the 21st of October was the Anarchist Bookfair at Conway Hall in Holborn, London. I went along with thirty or forty copies of "Message Sticks In Cyberspace - An Anarchist Guide To Computer Communication", which i wrote. I also typeset it, printed it, collated, folded and stapled it myself. And i was selling it myself too. I got rid of almost all of them, although i gave five or six away.
I helped out with the European Counter Network stall, which had a couple of computers set up and some literature, including contraFLOW, which is a paper they publish. There were lots of other stalls, all selling all sorts of different books, magazines, badges, t-shirts, posters etc. There was also a vegan food stall, which got a lot of trade from me, and a bar, which didn't do too badly out of me either!
It was a good afternoon and i met quite a few people - some i knew and some i didn't know.
*-*-*
Towards the end of October i began to get this sinking feeling that it was time to get my shit together and get ready to leave the country. I wanted to go around the 22nd of November, which was new moon and i wanted to fly directly to Kerala if it was at all possible. I began to phone up travel agents and it began to look a bit difficult. The route i wanted was London to Kerala to Penang to Australia - i would find a flight to Vientiane when i was in Malaysia.
But this wasn't as easy as it might have been. It was easy to get a flight from London to Delhi to Bangkok to Australia, but i really didn't want to go to Delhi or Bangkok. Delhi was much too far away from where i really wanted to go to in India and there was no way i was going to do that trip by surface. I really hate Bangkok and wanted to avoid it at all costs. It was the easiest place to get to Vientiane from, but i couldn't help that. I'd rather have gone somewhere else where it was more difficult than've had to spend any time at all in Bangkok. Penang seemed to me like the best place, it's closer to Vientiane and airfares are cheaper than Kuala Lumpur. But Singapore would probably do if it had to. But it wasn't looking too easy to find a flight that went from London to southern India at all, let alone one that went on to Penang and then Australia.
I was beginning to go a bit crazy with all the hassle when i suddenly remembered i'd been thinking it would be easiest to fly to Columbo in Sri Lanka and then get a flight from there to Trivandrum in Kerala, at the very southern tip of India. Why had this gone out of my head? So i started checking out this route and, yes, it was exactly the right one to go on. Air Lanka flies to Columbo and then on to Australia via Kuala Lumpur. Perfect, specially as they also do a flight from Columbo to Kerala, which fits in really well with the one arriving from London. I would have preferred Penang, but i'd certainly settle for KL.
I finally worked this out about three weeks before the date when i wanted to leave. There were seats on the Columbo flight, no problem, although Columbo to Trivandrum was full, but i'd probably get on that one too without any trouble. If not, i'd just have to spend a day or two in Columbo, which would be interesting anyway. At this point, i still hadn't decided where i wanted to fly into in Australia. It would either be Brisbane or Melbourne. There were advantages in both really, although Melbourne would mean a lot less travelling in the end, as i would be heading north quite soon anyway, because it would be starting to get cold in the south by the end of March.
The plan at this stage was to spend a couple of months in Kerala. Then on the new moon in January i'd fly to KL, where i'd find a flight to Vientiane, where i'd stay until the new moon in February, when i'd fly to Melbourne - thirteen moons after i'd left Wyndham twelve and a half months before. The biggest problem was that i didn't know the dates of the new moons in January or February. I'd have to find that out before i made my final flight bookings. That could be a bit tricky - although there must be some next year's diaries out by now, surely.
*-*-*
I began to look back over my stay in Britain. I'd been there a long time, but i didn't really seem to have done anything much. The time had gone so incredibly fast, it was almost impossible to believe it had been four months since i'd arrived from Mexico. Six months since i saw Nicki last. And eight months since i left Australia. I'd be glad to get back there, i felt.
When i left Australia, it had been with thoughts of finding another country to live in. I was sick of Australia, or rather, i was bored with it. Now, as usual, i felt different. I was looking forward to getting back, although i had a lot of travelling still to do. I wasn't that concerned now with finding somewhere else to live. In fact, i realised that i could probably never live anywhere else permanently. I'd really come to appreciate the freedom i've got in Australia and the luxury of living in such a beautiful and uncrowded country. It was always possible that i might find somewhere in Kerala that would grip me and refuse to let me go and i would have to stay there for the rest of my life, but i doubted it. India was always probably the best possibility for me to be able to live in, but it seemed unlikely that it would prove to be the place i set out to look for. I felt certain that the place i was looking for was the place i'd left eight months ago, and the place i would be returning to in four months time. However, as always, time alone would tell...
When i finish writing this, i'm going round to my sister's place, it was James's birthday a few days ago and he's having a party this evening. It's Halloween today, and the thirty-first of October. Tomorrow it'll be November - the real beginning of winter in Britain. I'm two thirds of the way into my journey and, although i've been quite static for a while now, i'll soon be on my way once again to an unknown place and an unknown fate. I'm looking forward to getting on the move once again.
click here to go to the next chapter