All at Sea Read online

  Bath water nibbled seductively at my earlobes as the problem raged round my head. I was reflecting, with all the brilliance of a cracked mirror, on how to follow up the adventure in the paper boat. The problem was: what could I do next? Anything seemed possible but I just couldn’t decide what. If the world was my oyster, I was having difficulty opening the shell.

  The paper-boat adventure had been a hugely successful, joyous trip into the absurd. It had combined the three things I loved most: outdoor adventure, raising some cash for a cause and making people laugh. It had challenged me and taught me something new. Before the paper boat, I’d never been in a kayak and certainly never dreamt I’d get to take one the whole length of the mighty River Thames. However, when the journey finished, it had left a hole.

  To that point, I’d spent my life wandering around bumping into experiences, feeling a bit lost and trying to find something useful to do. I’d made a career out of temporary jobs, while I tried to escape towards doing something in comedy or acting. I’d been lucky; I’d loved it all (with the possible exception of a very brief, dyspeptic spell cleaning drains with no proper equipment).

  Trying to find something to do in life had in itself been a great life. However, in the wake of the paper-boat trip it now felt something was missing. Being out on the water in the middle of challenge had made me smile and, desperate as a frisky bullock demanding entry to a pasture of cows nine months before the calving season, I wanted more.

  Legend records a graveyard where elderly elephants instinctively go to lie down and die. Similarly, whenever I need to think really hard, I always head to my parents’ Hertfordshire bath, draw it and lie down. Many of my best and worst plans had come to me in the bath that now cosseted me. I looked up at the dead plant in the hanging basket for inspiration: none came. And the bath water had got cold again. With only mildly less success than before, I attempted to top up the bath again.

  What could I do?

  I took a sip from the now warm glass of gin left on the table next to me. As I reached over to put it back, it knocked against the bath. There was a muffled thud. It was as though the bath had spoken. I tapped it again. There was a cast-iron work of genius nestling beneath my buttocks. I’d do something with a bath. People always seem to be sitting in bathfuls of beans for charity: no challenge there.

  Then in a flash it hit me. I could row it. A Noël Coward song about a man rowing an India Rubber bath across Lake Windermere ripped into my head.

  Like Archimedes before me, in that instant, I discovered something that I wanted to do. I would take a bath, put oars on it and row it across the English Channel. I felt called, driven, motivated. I would become to sanitaryware what the Wright Brothers were to aviation. I would be the Captain Webb of baths. Synapses in my brain snapped and whirred into life. Fireworks of ideas shot out of the bath and bounced off the walls in the tiny bathroom. I was hooked.

  I’ve become aware over many years and countless projects that I have the potential to become a little obsessive about things. It’s something I’ve always tried hard to control, so now, when an idea comes to me I normally give it ten minutes’ thought to try and talk myself out of it. Within ten short minutes, the bath plan had totally taken hold. This idea was not only a goer, it was a belter.

  I burst into the drawing room to see my parents not even sketching; they looked up, shocked. I left the drawing room and returned to the bathroom. Putting on a dressing gown to cover my nudity I left the bathroom again and re-burst into the drawing room. ‘I’m going to row the English Channel in a bath for Sport Relief.’

  Mum sat looking a bit stunned. Dad responded first, ‘Well, your great-grandmother was the first lady to swim from Folkestone to Dover, or was it Dover to Folkestone … or perhaps it was Ramsgate?’

  ‘Really, Dad?’

  ‘Yes she was called Lilius; although in the draconian times when she did it, swimming costumes were so big she probably floated most of the way on an enormous pair of bloomers. Still if you make it, it’ll be another first for the family.’

  Dad smiled, Mum still looked a bit shocked. I closed the door and triumphantly dripped back to the bathroom, leaving my parents feeling much, I suspected, like a less mathematical version of Mr and Mrs Archimedes.

  A litter of questions popped up. I had no money to fund the project and above all, didn’t have a spare bath. My first attempt to get one was not a resounding success.

  ‘Dad, you know I need a bath to row the Channel …’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘Can I borrow the one in the bathroom?’

  ‘No.’

  CHAPTER ONE

  Vibrating Pipes

  ‘I climbed Mount Everest – from the inside.’

  Spike Milligan

  Back at my desk, problems and questions carpet-bombed me. I didn’t know anything about the sea, would that be important? Would it be possible to make a bath really float? What was the procedure for rowing the Channel? Was there anything legal that had to be done? These and many more questions entered the fray until the dogfight of problems diving and weaving above me had developed into a real scrap.

  At the time I was working off and on in a temp job for the civil service. After work one night, I met up with an old friend called Jack. I’d been trying to keep the bath idea a secret, as I didn’t really have much of a clue how to proceed at that stage, but seeing Jack I suddenly blurted out, ‘I’m going to row the English Channel in a bath for Sport Relief.’

  Jack looked on wide-eyed, similar, I imagine, to a frog that’s swallowed a wasp. He rallied and in a voice pitched much higher than his normal one responded, ‘Off you go then …’

  Sipping his beer, his eyes relaxed and the incisive brain I’ve always rated him for hummed and revved into a higher gear.

  ‘How are you going to pay for it?’

  ‘Erm … I hadn’t really thought about that in huge detail.’

  ‘I’ll get you a list of bathroom companies. One of them might sponsor it.’

  With Jack-like efficiency the list arrived the next day. I started at the top and began phoning bathroom companies. No one was interested. A third thought I was mad, another third that I wasn’t serious and the third third thought both.

  My phone rang, it was Jack: ‘Have you got the list?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been phoning them all day. It’s not going very well …’

  ‘Have you got to the last page yet?’

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘Have a look at the “T” section.’

  ‘Oh my … are they still in business?’

  ‘It seems so – I think they might be the ones for you.’

  ‘I’ll give them a ring …’

  I put down the phone and picked it up again immediately. The ring tone on the other end seemed to take longer than a BT engineer but finally a female voice answered, ‘Good afternoon, Thomas Crapper and Company, how may I help you?’

  Stifling a giggle, I put on the stentorian voice I’d been perfecting in tests for the civil service, ‘I’d like to speak to someone in charge …’

  ‘I’ll put you through. May I ask what it’s about?’

  ‘I’d like a bath.’

  After some holding music, rather pleasingly Flanders and Swann, a soft midland accent rolled into my ear, ‘Good afternoon, Warwick Knott, General Manager, how can I help?’

  ‘I’d like one of your baths please.’

  ‘Certainly, what sort of bath would you like?’

  ‘A strong one; I need it to withstand the English Channel.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’d like to row the Channel in it.’

  ‘Oh good … I’ll put you through to the Managing Director.’

  After more Flanders and Swann, a clipped officer’s voice arrived with martial precision at the end of the line, ‘May I help you?’

  ‘I’d like one of your baths please.’

  ‘Certainly, what sort of bath would you like?’

  ‘A strong one; I need i
t to withstand the English Channel.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’d like to row the Channel in it.’

  ‘Very funny, Ronnie, I’ve really got to go, I’ve got quite a lot to get done this afternoon. Goodbye.’

  The line went dead. I paused. Who was Ronnie? I picked up the phone and dialled again. The same female voice answered.

  ‘Good afternoon, Thomas Crapper and Company, how may I help you?’

  ‘It’s me again, I seem to have got cut off, please can you put me through to the Managing Director again?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘And tell him I don’t know who Ronnie is …’

  The officer’s voice came back on the line.

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought you were a friend of mine. Now what can I do for you?’

  ‘I want one of your baths to row across the English Channel to raise money for a charity called Sport Relief.’

  ‘That was what I thought you said the first time …’

  I waited for another rebuttal.

  ‘If you’re really serious about this, I think you’d better come and see me.’

  ‘Perfect. How about the day after tomorrow? Where are you?’

  ‘Just outside Stratford upon Avon.’

  Two days later I drove up to Stratford, looked at the instructions I’d been given, then left Stratford and headed south. Somewhere on the way I missed the turning. Somewhere on the way back I missed it again but on the third time found the understated gateway I was looking for. I drove up the track. On the left was a cricket pavilion and in front of that, following the original designs laid down by God, a pitch. To one side of it were cricketing nets and a tree: so far, so perfectly English. On the right of the track were fields with a stream running through them and various sheep masticating nonchalantly and discussing the effects of unexpected car arrivals on ovine digestion.

  Pulling into the car park I was unable to park. Baths overran all the parking spaces. There must have been 200 parked there in all. I’d reached the bath version of the Promised Land. Over the other side of the baths, ahead of me and slightly to the left, was a double gate to some sort of stabling. To the right of the gate, another smaller drive and a large rhododendron bush, was another smaller building. A plum-coloured sign announced to the world that this was the head office of the world’s greatest bathroom company: Thomas Crapper & Company. Crapper’s Head Office was as eccentric and beautiful as you might expect. Beneath the sign was the main entrance. Either side of the door, where other lesser companies would have stone lions, bulls or other animals proudly standing rampant, stood two massive, stunning Victorian urinals. The overall effect was clear: you have found the HQ of an ablution legend.

  I rang the bell. A Bond girl answered the door. I took a guess and assumed her to be the owner of the voice that had first picked up the phone.

  ‘Good afternoon, Thomas Crapper and Company, how may I help you?’ confirmed it.

  ‘I’m here to see the Managing Director, it’s about a bath.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, he’s out for lunch at the moment … oh, no wait, here he is now …’

  I turned around and saw, coming down the drive towards me, a bearded man, in his mid to late thirties, riding a penny-farthing bicycle. One enormous, oversized wheel at the front, one tiny one at the back, seemingly added as an afterthought – they are lethal death contraptions, famously fiendishly difficult to ride. The bicycle we now know as normal, with two wheels of the same size, is actually called ‘the safety bicycle’ and was invented due to the huge numbers of penny-farthing-related deaths in the Victorian era. The most experienced person I’d ever seen on a penny-farthing was an old photographer in Derbyshire. He used to wobble round the village fêtes and garden parties of my youth in an entirely unconvincing manner. However, riding down the track towards me was the apotheosis of penny-farthing riding. This was a steady, commanding performance. The bearded man even took the speed bump at the end of the track without flinching. In that moment I knew we’d get on.

  He slowed down and dismounted with episcopal serenity and, holding the penny-farthing in one hand, extended his other to me.

  ‘You must be Tim. I’m Simon Kirby.’

  We then entered the lavatorial equivalent of the old curiosity shop, and turned right up a staircase. At the top was a tiny office engulfed by an enormous desk. Simon sat on one side of it and I squeezed in behind the other.

  ‘Now, what do you mean you want to row the Channel in a bath?’

  ‘Just that. I want to try it to raise cash for a charity.’

  ‘Seriously, are you serious?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Right! How can we help?’

  I outlined what I wanted from Simon and he agreed with all of it.

  ‘I’ll do some maths and be in touch. I’m supposed to say, “I only wish I could come with you in the bath”, but nothing would make me want to do that.’

  With that he gave me a tour of the offices and various sheds of the Crapper empire before I left for the drive back to London.

  Driving back, it dawned on me I needed to make a very important call. A significant problem had been growing steadily in my mind: I knew nothing about the sea or anything to do with maritime navigation. It was becoming obvious to even my very dim intellect that this would be something of a handicap so I’d need help.

  I picked up the phone and dialled the Royal Navy and by mistake got put through to an Admiral, Rear or Vice – I’m not sure which. Several members of the family had been in the Navy and I’d always been taught that it was naval courtesy when talking to a sailor to start the conversation with the question: ‘How are your futtocks old man?’ I had no idea what a futtock was but did not wish to be discourteous so as the voice on the end of the telephone said ‘Hello,’ I launched in.

  ‘How are your futtocks old man?’

  There was a wheezing chuckle before the voice said, ‘At their furthest reach dear boy, at their furthest reach.’

  I paused. Now what? I was having a conversation that I didn’t understand a word of. ‘I need advice on rowing the English Channel.’

  ‘Then I’d say you’d come to the right place.’

  After this slightly odd beginning, our conversation went amazingly well. We really got on. I inferred that the man on the end of the phone had actually, or was soon to be, retired from the Navy but seemed very keen to help. Then came the awkward bit. We’d been talking for about half an hour about wind, sea and currents, none of which I’d really understood, and still I hadn’t mentioned the bath. I really needed this man’s help so didn’t want to scare him off but I also had to tell the truth. Finally I took the bullet squarely by the horns.

  ‘This boat that we’re talking about trying to get across the English Channel … I should probably tell you, it’s a bath.’

  The line went dead. I’d really blown it. I’d lost him. I was just about to hang up when the line crackled into life.

  ‘Well, same rules of navigation apply dear boy, I’m on board.’

  I now had an Admiral (Rear or Vice) (probably ret.) to help. Later that week I was with another old sailor and told him I’d used the question, ‘How are your futtocks old man?’

  Instinctively he replied, ‘At their furthest reach dear boy, at their furthest reach.’

  I looked at him, with much the same ranid expression Jack had used in observing me earlier in the month. ‘That’s exactly what he said.’

  ‘Well, it’s a bit old-fashioned but he said it because it’s the correct naval response to the question, “How are your futtocks old man?”’

  ‘That’s fantastic but what does it actually mean?’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing, Tim, nobody actually knows.’

  There it was: an almost forgotten Britain in a nutshell. The Admiral and I had just begun a conversation with phrases that neither of us understood but that both of us were too polite and locked in etiquette to admit we didn’t understand. The bath project was going to be grea
t.

  The Admiral (ret.) suggested I find someone else to advise me as well as him. He had to be away quite a bit over the next few months and would be uncontactable. During these times he wanted to be sure that someone would be there to help me. This was a great idea; the only question was who? Someone would have to take me from a total maritime novice to being capable of taking on the Channel. They would need top naval knowledge and the patience of a saint: two qualities very rarely compatible.

  Thinking it through over the next couple of days, a single name bounded into my head. I’d known Dominic Hurndall for years. He had been in the Navy and risen to the rank of Lieutenant Commander before leaving to attend various top-level beer-based discussions with me at university. At college, Dom was something of an enigma. While I’d spend summer holidays playing around, losing temp jobs and teaching, Dom would go back into the Royal Navy and protect my freedom to do so. He made me laugh with tales of windsurfing gone wrong and his determined attempts to take up the trumpet. However, when it came to maritime stuff, Dom was the most knowledgeable person I knew.

  In distinguished competitions he’d raced against my friends’ older brothers. They all rated him as a truly great sailor. Once, he successfully skippered a boat to victory in the prestigious Fastnet Race.

  The fact Dom had an ability, consistently proved at college, of being able to calmly explain stuff to me without wanting to throw me out of a window was also truly important. It was becoming very obvious that without Dom, I’d really struggle on the bath trip. I picked up my phone.