All at Sea Read online

  Tim FitzHigham

  * * *

  ALL AT SEA

  One man. One bathtub. One very bad idea.

  The FitzHigham Papers: Volume V

  CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  INTRODUCTION

  MUCH SIMPLE PLEASURE All overboard the sinking house – a new Archimedean law – the family.

  CHAPTER ONE

  VIBRATING PIPES Finding money down the crapper – the Navy’s former finest – the loophole in GCSE French – Liza charms a nation.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ROW, ROW, ROW YOUR BATH, GENTLY TO THE SEA Professional Capsizing – it’s not impossible to drown in snow – Jennifer Aniston – the problem with lists – a girl called Betty – Ranulph Fiennes and black tea.

  CHAPTER THREE

  IN A BEAUTIFUL PEA GREEN BOAT A foreigner at the Foreign Office – the Royal Bargemaker – glass hammers and dirty cups – forgetting lest we forget – Llama farming with Duncan – the French change their minds.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  RING A RING O’ ROSES, A POCKET FULL OF RED TAPE The End – the great red-tape race of 2004 – a new ship for Britain – weather windows shut and locked – Matthew Pinsent’s straitjacket – the great bath launch of Richmond.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HE MARCHED THEM DOWN AGAIN Celebrity socks – failure at the sea trial – Neptune is angry – a second sea trial – cows should not go to sea – The End … again.

  CHAPTER SIX

  GLOWERING LIKE THE MOON Enter Andy – more Gallic logic – shock and quell – big ships and naval law – slight problems – big storms, small teacup – warfare of manners – the loss of Bernard.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A MONSTROUS CROW Jobs in Derbyshire – throwing in the bath towel – a mysterious email – a charity auction – international fraud – a festival of darkness – plumbing the depths for tired old clichés – finding Agamemnon.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  PRUNING THE PLUMS Albatross reveille – the loss of Duncan – a lesser spotted Gilmartin – Weetabix and wind – a second attempt – to Gaul via lunch in Soho – a nearly near-death experience – the French flotilla – joining Captain Webb – nether issues – ghostly snoozing – to the Tower.

  CHAPTER NINE

  HUMPTY DUMPTY HAD A GREAT FALL The Confused Kamikaze – from Folkestone to Dover – a sandwich – perilous rocks, gaffer taping crabs and conquering rams gates – a right Royal Navy – the Orient Express – the least convincing yachtsman – a cracking day’s cricket – all out!

  CHAPTER TEN

  SPOILED HIS NICE NEW RATTLE Richard the Third take two – the lightest water man – living a lie – winkles to the rescue – a shortage of vets in Margate – Danger by Royal Command – gates swing shut.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  FOUR YOUNG OYSTERS HURRIED UP To Margate take two – Roman fortresses, sandbanks and seals – explosions and failure at Sheppey – bedraggled of Whitstable – a cunning plan – bathing with dolphins – a very near miss – the Napoleonic invader – Oatesian selflessness.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  MONKEY STOPPED TO PULL UP HIS SOCK The newest Waterman – happiness is an island called Grain – a grave ending – interesting interwebs – blights, ships and lobsters – Denmark and Dickens – a bridge, a queen and a club for eccentrics – the unsuitability of dung – the unhappy boxer.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A POPOMASTICK SCULLER Don’t hit men in glasses – sightseeing through cracked lenses – the home of time – the ancient mariner – the finish line – the world’s largest power shower.

  EPILOGUE

  WRAPPED UP WARM IN THE ODCOMBIAN BLANKET Wrapping string around layers of cork makes a cricket ball – The Queen – ruin and a national bathing museum – Unplugged – The FitzHigham – blessed are the cracked …

  AFTERWORD By Simon Kirby, Managing Director of Thomas Crapper & Company.

  APPENDICES AND PADDING

  Appendix A – A word from Chris Gilmartin.

  Appendix B – The bath and history.

  Appendix C – A cocktail list.

  Appendix D – More bath-based skulduggery.

  Appendix E – Some poems.

  About the Author

  TIM FITZHIGHAM is an unassuming sort of bloke. He likes a beer, gets rather flustered around pretty girls and finds it impossible to hold down a proper job. He had an interesting childhood: a house in Norfolk that sank into the fens, a cottage in Derbyshire with a leaky roof and a worrying ancestry going back to the Doomsday Book. In later life he hindered farming in both Hertfordshire and the West Indies. Now, he’s the Commodore of Sudbury Town Quay in the County of Suffolk – the only landlocked port in the country. He has the ancient title of Pittancer of Selby Town in the Ridings (the only person other than the Queen to distribute money on Maundy Thursday), and is a Freeman of the City of London and the Company of Watermen and Lightermen of the River Thames. He’s set precedents in paper boats, suits of armour and running up volcanoes; although to look at, he’s more like an escaped cast member from the Muppets. Tim is also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a multi-award-winning Perrier-nominated comedian. His shows sell out wherever they appear and have kindly been made ‘critics’ choice’ in various newspapers.

  OH, AND DID I MENTION THE SMALL MATTER OF ROWING ACROSS THE ENGLISH CHANNEL IN AN ANTIQUE THOMAS CRAPPER BATH?

  PRAISE FOR THE STAGE SHOW, IN THE BATH: UNPLUGGED:

  ‘One of the most moving and compelling tales you’ll hear anywhere.’

  Scotsman

  ‘The audience barely stops laughing as FitzHigham narrates jokes at an intense pace.’

  Metro

  ‘Take a delightfully daft idea and add a delightfully posh performer and what do you have? A delightfully nice hour.’

  Evening Standard (Critic’s Choice)

  ‘A must see.’

  Independent

  CONCERN FOR TIM FITZHIGHAM:

  ‘By his own admission Tim is bonkers, which says it all really. But I respect him very much for being who he is, and not at all afraid of it! Tim and I go back a long way, we were pals at junior school, and as he so rightly remembered for a short period of time we had the same shoes. Tim is the kind of person who you would never dream of saying “keep smiling” to … he already is!’

  ELLEN MACARTHUR

  ‘Many people have foolish adventures, few make them so consistently hilarious, all in all the perfect British Eccentric.’

  DARA O’BRIAIN

  ‘When I first met Tim I thought, “OH my God.” Then I got to know him and thought, “Oh MY God.” Then I heard he was writing a book and I thought, “OH MY GOD!” BUY THIS BOOK!’

  NEIL MORRISSEY

  ‘The most heroic achievement since the invention of the “Crapper”. Buy this book! Then read it in the bath.’

  SIMON KIRBY, MD of Thomas Crapper & Co

  ‘There are few people in this life with the drive and the old-fashioned British pluck to achieve something like this. There are fewer still with the wit and charisma to tell their story with such gleeful hilarity. Tim is a rare talent indeed, brave, determined and the very embodiment of the great English eccentric. He is a true adventurer in the Giles Wemmbley-Hogg spirit. May God bless him and all who sail in him.’

  MARCUS BRIGSTOCKE

  ‘This book reveals a hitherto unknown light on the consequences of youthful COLD BATHS … I have read the book which I commend you to do also, preferably in the bathroom!!’

  SIR CHRISTOPHER BENSON, Master of the Company of Watermen and Lightermen of the River Thames 2004–2005

  ‘The fragile spirit of British eccentricity lies in the horned hands of this idiot. God help us!’

  SUGGS

  ‘It’s journey
s like the bath trip that put the Great in Great Britain. This is what we do best. When I first heard about Tim’s bath I laughed so hard I nearly fell overboard.’

  PAUL LUDWIG, Bargemaster to Her Majesty the Queen

  ‘A barkingly mad, noble adventure – a brilliantly told tale.’

  PETER BENNETT-JONES, Chairperson of Comic Relief

  OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  FICTION

  BIOGRAPHY

  VOLUME III: Pig Keeping in the West Indies

  VOLUME IV: Paper Boat

  VOLUME VII: The Man Who Discovered the Kama Sutra

  VOLUME VIII: My Cufflinks Box: Its Vital Importance

  GENERAL

  A Splendid Haul

  Willets and the Dark Tunnel

  Poetry: A Word of Guidance

  Keeping Pig Keepers

  Pennyquick and the Fallen Men

  Black Death in The Family

  The Correct Uses of Gin

  Moses Chamawam and the Great Ice Robbery

  Lepers’ Squints: A Monograph

  Mistakes in Medieval Wool Gathering

  The Conker: A Failed Experiment in Diet

  My Top One Hundred Conker Recipes

  The Decline in Domestic Manners Since 1270

  OTHER PUBLISHED BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR …

  For my family,

  here and gone.

  A blank page.

  Every manual should have one.

  Foreword

  This is the true story of how out of hand things can become from a very simple starting point. It covers the two summers when I tried to become the first person in history to successfully row the English Channel in a bath. I pursued this aim with the innocence and drive of a five-year-old and the mess this created is contained in the following volume.

  I’ve tried to remember the events of those two summers and the intervening winter as well as I can. I may have mixed up a sandbank here or a tide or date there but I’ve tried to decipher my notes of the time (written with very badly damaged hands) to the best of my abilities to capture the story as truthfully as possible. I apologise in advance for any mistakes I’ve made, but the truth of the bath remains, like the trip itself, eccentric. I do hope you enjoy reading it.

  There are a few people to thank, in no order and leaving most of the more important ones out: my friends and other animals. PBJ, Janette, Mary and all at PBJ. Charlie Viney and all at Mulcahy & Viney. Patient Trevor and all at Preface. Jeremy, Karon and Joe. The theatres, kind reviewers and audiences that have kept me out of gaol all these years. The clowns who make it such a joy to make people laugh and have guided me endlessly. The Clan. St Chad’s College. LFH. The team of hardened drinkers who inspire me. The bar staff who inspire them. And, the bath team – this is our story.

  Finally, I’d like to thank the skippers of all the massive tankers and container ships in the English Channel that narrowly missed me.

  Signed under the moon with the ice rapidly melting in the glass.

  Tim FitzHigham

  Tangiers, 1843

  (on 26 February 2008)

  INTRODUCTION

  Much Simple Pleasure

  There are few things in life as good as the warm embrace of a well-drawn bath. Steam swirled soporifically around my nostrils, rising up to form complex weather systems round the dead hanging plant above me.

  I lay back, waves gently lapping the islands of my knees, thinking of the most luxurious bath time I’d been involved in. Easy: a huge bath I’d shared with three beautiful women, playing hunt the soap.

  I was three and they were four, two and one respectively.

  I’d been bathing for many years semi-professionally. It started in Norfolk. I was born in what is now the lunatic asylum in King’s Lynn. There seems to be some confusion about the exact date it changed but at the time I arrived there, I’m told people are fairly sure it was the maternity unit. I was taken back to a large bath in the fen. The fens of Norfolk are a flat land with big sunsets. They were claimed out of the sea by Dutch engineers in the 1600s using clever dikes and are now a slightly tamed version of a swamp. In the 1970s, when I was born, not many people lived there and socially it was still run like medieval England. There was a Lord, who lived a long way away, a Sir, who might live closer or even run things locally and, failing both of these, there’d be a Squire who would run, and probably own, your village. Where we lived wasn’t even a village, it was much smaller and more chaotic. Places too tiny and eccentric to be villages in Norfolk are called droves. Being a really little one of those, it didn’t even have a squire. In the absence of sane alternatives, our happy drove made do with my dad.

  I loved bath time in Norfolk. I was normally found in, what I remember as, a permanently sunlit orchard. I’d be playing, well, more sitting or bouncing, before being taken up for my bath. My mum and I had songs for everything and there was a bathing one, too.

  The Norfolk house we were living in had been gradually slipping into the fen for years. Normally they build houses in the fens on large oak rafts but somehow someone had forgotten this. Many of the walls leaned quite badly and there were rooms that were shut off from us as they’d gone under. Our house was miles inland but sinking fast. When I was two, my sister arrived and joined me in bouncing and baths. I gave her my favourite bouncing chair and Dad converted an old wooden beer barrel into a castle for me. In line with my designs (I was three at the time so they may not have won an architectural award) he even cut gothic windows into it. I moved in with a large ginger stray – a cat I loved called Oscar.

  By the time my barrel got gothic windows, the main house was faring less well. The wall near the main staircase was leaning nine feet to the perpendicular. Dad finally accepted this might be a bit unsafe. Accompanied by much booing and hissing from me we left the bath in Norfolk to sink gently into the fen, along with the house that surrounded it, and moved to Derbyshire. Dad took the large oak gateposts from Norfolk with us and made the dining-room table from them. The bath in Derbyshire was much smaller, more awkward and much, much colder. The countryside was also considerably higher with numerous humps and mountains. At first I didn’t like it and registered my protest by painting violently on walls all over the house when no one was looking. I found hills very frightening as in Norfolk I’d never met them.

  However, over many baths, snow-laden mornings in winter, gorgeous mists hanging over stone walls in spring, warm, sunny summers and golden-leafed autumns I came to love Derbyshire. It was a very happy place. My grandparents on my dad’s side lived there and my granny was one of the funniest, most beautiful things in the world to me. She and her oldest friend Elsie had me in non-stop tears of laughter with stories, songs and jokes. One was all about how they’d been drilled in the war to defend Derbyshire with an antique Gatling gun, no instructions and some rather soggy ammunition. Somehow it went off and the ensuing chaos of the story made me laugh till I hurt. The memory of Granny telling how she and Elsie flailed around behind the butt of this mighty weapon trying to work out how to stop it as it spewed ammunition all over the Derbyshire countryside still makes me smile, even now.

  Derbyshire became too much of a distraction from my baths, so we moved to Hertfordshire as Mum got a post there. She’s a priest and her career has given my dad some great moments. Striding up to people at parties who didn’t know what Mum did, he’d open with, ‘as I said to the vicar in bed last night …’ before looking on at the total bafflement that met him. Now she’s been made a canon it’s led him to a rich seam including anything ending with ‘you’re fired’, many lines involving short or long fuses as required and several others which, if you ever meet him, will not be more than a few seconds away.

  In the holidays I’d go on bathing tours, great plumbing progresses of the country, staying with eccentric relatives who only had outdoor wells, godparents who taught me to surf and debonair great-uncles and -aunts who would take me out for lunch and let me read books.

  Hot steam wrapped about m
y ears.

  Throughout all these holidays and various baths, I’d always come back to the one in Hertfordshire. My parents’ Hertfordshire bath is the finest I’ve ever found. It’s huge and wide and really comfy. Not so big that it’s impossible to keep hot, but not so small that you need a degree in yoga to use it. It has no complicated or ostentatious plumbing; it’s really just solid and decent – rather like my parents. This was the bath in which I now found myself.

  Coming round from dozing lazily I attempted the most complicated of bath-based manoeuvres: letting some water out of the plug while simultaneously topping up the bath with new, hotter water. It didn’t work very well. It never does for me. I lay back into the hot, watery arms and turned my mind to my current problem – a problem that was dogging me with cat-like stealth.

  In 2003 I’d broken the world’s oldest maritime record kayaking down the River Thames in a boat entirely made of paper. I’d discovered the original record in a footnote while reading a book on poets in the reign of James I (or VI, I’m not going to take sides on the issue here). The record had been set in 1619 when the Thames Water Poet, John Taylor, made it 40 miles down the river in a paper boat using two large dried fish for the oars. This record had slightly obsessed me for years. So, during a very wet March, in the worst weather seen on the Thames in 40 years, I’d set out to go 41 miles and raise £500 for a charity called Comic Relief. When I stepped off my 100% recycled paper boat, 384 years after John Taylor, I’d gone 160 miles in what was rapidly becoming a soggy mass of papier mâché held together with gaffer tape and luck. The paper boat finish was televised on four continents and raised in excess of £10,000 for the charity. This was way beyond anything I’d thought remotely possible and ignited in me a passion for boats, water and adventure that I didn’t know I had. Admittedly, I’d always done things slightly differently from those around me, but a succession of teachers, friends and relations had tried to keep this tendency in check. I’d been more embarrassed that I seemed to see the world sideways than proud of it. The triumph of the paper boat was that I normally kept my imagination under wraps. This time I’d let it fly and the results were great.