People...

This piece starts with an accompanying random photo because it's all I had and sometimes is nice to be random. If you know argentine Spanish you may chuckle! Henry is tall, small round face, blue eyes and glasses and buck teeth under an old floppy canvas brimmed hat. A little paunch under his faded green tee shirt and long tanned legs with old blue shorts that had seen many sun drenched days. Tennis socks and black trainers. He's his own man. Henry from Kent, ex school teacher in Canterbury, English lit and language. Henry from Kent talking on the pontoon about the napoleonic forts and submerged Luftwaffe bombers in the mud on the Thames estuary. Henry and I share some time and amble through the town to the ferretaria, the hardware store. Through the hot streets and the humidity, dodging the traffic in the narrow lanes that interlace between the white buildings. Trevor is after a couple of fire extinguishers for his boat and I'm casing the local stores for anything of interest, anything to do with making and fixing and creating. And for me, the ferretaria is up there with army surplus and health food stores as the only shops we actually need on the planet. Pretty much anything else is a waste of time and money! And of course I am like a boy in a sweet shop. There's boat fenders hanging from a gantry, there's rolls of fibreglass cross strand matting, rolls of rubber, glass cabinets with cordless soldering irons and multi meters, racked displays filled with top brand hand tools. There's blocks and winches, there's boat ladders, there's rope and line. There's radios and chart plotters, there's switches and cables, there's lights and poles, there's jackets and hats, there's boots and brackets and springs and rods. I am touching, feeling, looking, gasping, grasping, desiring, tweaking, prodding, exclaiming, and I know that Henry from Kent loves it too. We two, with 112 years between us, are like two boys in our own domain. This is definitely a guy thing! Dave comes from Barcelona and is very English in his way.  Dave did the ocean yacht-master in Southampton and lives here in the marina for the last two years. He is in his late forties, slight of build, a straggle to his hair and eternally young. And, like his girlfriend who is visiting, eternally, permanently stoned. Amiable and animated he tells funny stories with great expressive gestures and suspenseful build ups, worthy of the stage. With laughs and sometimes incoherence, he manages to stay attached to the world. I'm in a strange environment, sitting in the cockpit of his boat, his girlfriend, Dave and I, with a joint there, and beers there, in the humid night there, and remembering my history, be careful I remind myself, because I know what I am like. His girlfriend sits with the look of someone who's flesh is trying to leave her bones ahead of time, her mouth hangs open with the look of the vegetative addict as she draws another marajuanic puff... Dave has an absolute pure heart, like so many people that spend their lives in a haze, his altruism bursts out unrestrained and completely, innocently, spontaneous. He was one of my saviours, a strong hand when my train wreck boat berth was unfolding just two nights ago. If we met outside now, he'd give me a warm embrace. Mel is my guardian angel, the latest of many. Tall, blond, forty five with a tiny hint of  grey. Sharp blue eyes hiding sometimes behind designer sun glasses. Softly and beautifully well spoken, living and working in the islands, in the Marinas, in admin. And I am sure, smoothing creases and easing the ways of the yachts people that come here. We met at my boat and she came bearing gifts of water and local produce and goats cheese and eggs. We sat and talked a while and I took an instant feeling of warmth to her. She has lived and worked here for 20 years, bought up her family here in the local ways. Her calm disposition brings ease and confidence and order. She is on her home turf and I am blessed to receive her hand of help in my time here, thank you Mel 😊 It is night time and at last it is cooler, to everyone's great relief I am sure. I sit below decks writing this, a little moth flies in, attracted by the light on the bulkhead. I look out into the dimness and see the masts of five boats, gentle rocking and swaying as though in their own secret symphony. The old brass clock that used to belong to my seafaring uncle tick tick ticks in the background, and the barometer above tells me high pressure, which I think I already know. There's a dim rumble of traffic in the background on the other side of the water. I look around in my cavern of onions and wood and tools and rescue devices and jars of pickle and books on mechanical engineering and I feel very much at home. Once I lived in a house with leather sofas and sparkly kitchen work tops with wall to wall mirrors in the bathroom and lenkiewicz prints on the walls, and I never felt more alienated. More than ever, I feel like I'm at home now. Home in this body, in this boat, in this world, and like any traveller, like the dusty young wanderer I met on the road in Portugal a week ago, we both agreed with an unspoken understanding, we are both just passing through.