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| Sunset on the beach - Wells, North Norfolk |
In July this
year, barring the sudden end of the world or a fatal accident, I will be
thirty. It is a significant milestone and I am rushing to acquire children and
a mortgage in the next few months so as to satisfy some of the legal
requirements of becoming a grown up. One of the more exciting things about
approaching the end of your third decade is that you have an excuse for a good
knees-up. I don't normally make much fuss about my birthday but this year it
would be a shame not to.
My Easter escape was a long weekend spent with family in Wells-next-the-sea on the North Norfolk coast, where there is an old Dutch sailing
barge moored in the quay. Built at the end of the 19th Century, this
rugged vessel has seen more than a few adventures, carrying cargo between
Holland and the Baltic and rescuing Jews from Nazi-occupied Denmark during the
Second World War. Now permanently moored by the quayside, it serves as a bar,
restaurant and live music venue, where you can slurp ale to your heart’s content
and go hoarse wailing along to Bruce Springsteen covers played by local
bands. Experiencing a eureka moment that places me among the greatest thinkers
of any age, I realised that this would make a fantastic venue to hold a special
event all about me.
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| The Albatross, moored in Wells |
With this is in
mind, my dad and I set out to meet Captain Ton Brouwer, boss of the Albatross
and all-round salty seadog who had been at the helm back in 1996, before
conversion to boozer, when she made her historic trip from Wells to Rotterdam
as the last sail-driven cargo ship in Europe. My dad, who runs the European arm of an American technology company, plans to hold an ‘away
day’ on the Albatross for his staff, so he would no doubt be enquiring about the
availability of interactive whiteboards and video-conferencing facilities.
We negotiated our
way down the steep stairs into the former cargo-hold, me silently awarding
myself brownie points for going down backwards, facing into the stairs, the ‘proper’ way, while my dad awkwardly clambered down facing
forwards. “ Wouldn't last 5 minutes in a North Sea squall” I thought to myself,
before a more pressing concern struck me; if Captain Ton was to witness this un-seamanlike behaviour he was bound to add an exorbitant Landlubber Tax to any hire charge levied. Luckily, he wasn't there but arrived
shortly after.
Meeting the Salty Seadog
Captain Ton
Brouwer is a man in his late fifties who face possesses so much character that
looking at him is mesmerising, like staring into a fire. Each wrinkle on his
forehead holds the intrigue of enough briny escapades to stop a sea monster in
its wake. His long grey hair is swept back from a balding dome and over an
unusually flat skull. I hoped that this cranial misshaping was due to an
incident on the high seas when some brigands had attempted to maroon the
Captain, whacking him over the head with an oar in order to do so.
The three of us
sat around a battered wooden table, Captain Ton looking like a Dutch seafaring
Fagin in an old navy blue pea coat and striped woollen scarf. His deep set eyes
were guarded by overhanging brows, a facial formation presumably exacerbated by
long weeks spent at the helm of his ship squinting into sun reflected off the
water. He shhpoke shhlowly in a heavy Dutch accent, pausing occasionally to
suck saliva through the wonky, discoloured pegs that used to be his teeth. As
we hunkered there, in the metal hold of the 114-year-old ship, with nautical
charts covering the walls beneath the brass portholes, I imagined I was
plotting for a great adventure. I began to daydream about sailing off to
plunder treasure from a foreign fleet, returning triumphant to celebrate in a
tavern, with tankards of grog and a wench on each arm. This fantasy was
shattered by the voice of my dad.
“Good, right,
so…about this meeting. Do you have broadband down here?”
“We have a
shhextant and on a clear night you can navigate from the crow’s nest using the
stars.” This is what I hoped Captain Ton would say. In fact, he responded with
the rather more mundane:
“You can
shhumtimes pick up the wifi from the harbour master’s office”.
My dad mulled
this over, clearly concerned about what effect the
lack of internet access would have on a business strategy session. I broached
the topic of hiring the boat for a party, on a Saturday night in mid-summer.
Captain Ton gazed at me for an awkwardly long time. I felt like I was being
dragged into the whirlpool of his eyes to be baffled by the mysteries of the deep.
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| A strange man on the deck of the Albatross |
“Oooh, July”, he
exclaimed. “That’s the middle of the holiday shheason. It’s going to be very
expenshhive.”
I nodded at this
while at the same time imagining that it couldn’t really be all that expensive.
The bar area is not so big and the drinks are cheap. I was confident that the
fee would be reasonable and we could proceed with plans for the boat party. The
Captain did not have the figures to hand and would have to do the sums before
getting back to us, so we exchanged numbers and clambered back into daylight
and onto terra firma.
24 hour party people
That evening,
with our large appetites brought on by beach walking sated, my dad, my auntie
and I decided to venture back to the Albatross to catch My Cocoon (indie rock
and pop) in action. Moored between the fishing boats, with lights twinkling on
her masts, the Albatross looked full of romance. We climbed down the steps and into the bar where My Cocoon were
in full swing, with tipsy revellers swaying to the strains of Fleetwood Mack.
Ibiza it aint. We furnished ourselves with a round of whiskies and squeezed
in next to some particularly high-spirited ravers, one of whom was stifling a
huge yawn as we sat down.
The whisky and
conversation flowed and my auntie and I were engaged in a particularly
meaningful chat when Captain Ton came down the steps (forwards, the shame of
it) into the bar. In the time-honoured fashion of a proprietor, he made the
rounds of the regulars, shaking hands and exchanging a few words. But, with the
noise from the band and the Captain’s Dutch accent disguising his words, it was
clear from the confused looks on the drinkers’ faces that they had no idea what
he was saying. Cue much awkward grinning and embarrassed nodding. The
conversation could have gone something like this:
Regular: “Nice to
see you, Ton. How are you?”
Captain Ton: “I’m going
to shhmash up your car and drive it into the bay”
Regular: “Yes, of
course. How wonderful!”
Soon, the Captain
spotted us and came to sit beside me. He had done some number crunching and it was far more
expensive than I had expected to hire the whole boat. This was disappointing
news but, the Captain explained, there was a more reasonable alternative; to
hire part of the deck for the afternoon and half the bar, which he could
reserve for us, in the evening.
“Sounds good”, I
told the Captain, as the father and son fronted band cranked up the Saturday
night flavour with one of The Boss’ greatest hits. “And what can you do in the
way of food?” I imagined my over-refreshed guests tumbling over the side of the
boat due to lack of sustenance. It’s important to have food.
Snack Happy
He then began to
describe in great detail the array of snack platters that are available for
parties, while intermittently sucking back the spit that was pooling between
his mangled nashers.
The small platter, he began,
consisted of mini-pancake wraps served with various Mediterranean delights,
including hummus, halloumi and marinated peppers. I was happy about the
inclusion of pancakes; they are a speciality of the Dutchman’s daytime kitchen,
and many a happy family can be spotted on the deck of the Albatross munching on
the foldable treat. And most people like hummus, or would discover a taste for
it after several hours spent drinking in the sun.
That should have
concluded the food part of our conversation, but there was more. Apparently the
Captain had not yet finished regaling me with the full extent of his party
nibbles armoury. As my auntie began to nod off next to me, the Dutch Fagin ran
through more options. Sandwiched behind a table, with my slumbering auntie on
my right, I was captivated by the enigmatic Captain. He lulled me into a trance with his ramblings and as I strained
to hear him over the band I was powerless to hurry the conversation on or bring
it to a close.
“And then we have
the medium shhize platter which consists of shhumm mini-pancake wraps with
shhum hummus, you know, maybe shhum halloumi. And we can do also maybe shhum
nice peppers.”
I nodded, dumbly,
not really taking in the repeated information but staring, now at the Captain’s
large hands as they made pancake-wrapping gestures in the air, and now at his deeply
lined face that told a thousand stories. He plunged on, like the Albatross on a
high sea.
“But allsho we
can do the large shhize platter where we can maybe make up shhum nice
shhnacks with shhum peppers and hummus and some delishhus fried halloumi.”
Again his fingers danced through the air, “and serve it with some lovely
mini-pancake wraps”
This truly was a
descent into madness. Why was he repeating himself over and over with
descriptions of larger and larger plates of food? I was being wilfully led into
a smugglers cave of bite-sized insanity and had to extract myself or be lost
forever. I used a pause in the conversation to thank the Captain, wake my auntie,
shake my father from his Dad Rock reverie, clamber up the stairs and hurry away
into the night, before there was any opportunity for the Captain to describe
the king size platter.
We strolled back
to the house along the quayside under the stars. The strains of Pink Floyd’s
‘Wish You Were Here’ floated over the water from the Albatross, tempting me
back like the Siren’s call leads ships to wreck on the rocks. Both my dad and my
auntie were intrigued to know what the Captain and I had been talking about for
all that time.
“Mainly hummus”,
I explained, “but we're on for the party.”
THE END
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| The scum at the edge of the ocean |
