All at Sea Read online

  It didn’t seem to matter how many times the above details were explained to me, I could not get it right. Somehow the blades contrived to be feathering when I was trying to catch or I finished as they were at the recovery. Sometimes it was the boat that would make things difficult by demanding my attention at the top of the stroke when I was administering to the finish. Through all these problems I never once blamed my tools.

  Once I went out rowing on the coldest day of the year. I kicked snow off the landing stage where they launched the boats. It went into the river in snowball-sized lumps and sank in snowball-sized lumps. Never before had I made it back to the bank without capsizing but my coach thought that this would be my great day. I had managed eight strokes without capsizing the week before (my personal best) and so everything seemed in my favour. It really was freezing cold and there wasn’t another boat out that day. I could see my own breath as I pulled out into the centre of the river. I took a couple of strokes and didn’t capsize. Just six more and I’d equalled my personal best. The river was racing, carrying me with it. I felt the boat run underneath me, this was how rowing was meant to be. The water made a pleasing sound as I successfully managed another one; in a flash I’d strung an extra three together before attempting the tricky seventh stroke.

  With the poise of a prima ballerina I gently rotated the boat just less than 90 degrees right to hold it half above and half below the water’s surface. I paused long enough to wave politely at the bank before serenely flipping it the remaining 90 degrees and slipping under the icy water. I gulped for air; only ice came. I was upside down, still attached to the boat, racing downstream in freezing cold water. Would I drown first or die of cold? I managed to get my head above water, gasped down air and swam desperately for the bank.

  Clearly worried about me, my coach shouted from the bank, ‘Go back for the boat! Don’t come back in without it!’

  I’d forced that normally mild-mannered man to hit the tone of a drill sergeant. I was too cold to argue so turned back to get frostbite and fetch the boat.

  ‘If you can find the blades too, that would be good, only with you learning to row we’re getting short of them in the boat house!’

  I got the boat and one oar back to the bank but was really cold. I knew it was serious when he looked and me and said, ‘I think you’d better get back up to college and hope the hot water’s on …’

  I didn’t hear the rest of what he said. I knew where I should be: safely in a hot shower, wrapped up in a bosom or buried beneath a mountain of towels. Mainly, safe on land.

  That evening, as I went into the dining hall, the rest of college laughed. The clear imprints of my bare feet in the inches of snow formed a path running up from the riverbank to the college. They stood out like neon monuments to stupidity beside the many sensible shoe and welly prints coming home from lectures. It was now commonly known that if there were footprints in the snow, I’d been learning to row again.

  When you win a regatta the boat club lets you keep your oars as a mark of respect. It’s a big honour. At the end of that year as a mark of irony the Boat Club Captain presented me with a broken oar simply for having survived a capsize on the coldest day of the year. Embarrassingly, following that there was even a college fourfn1 named after me. The ‘Higham First Four’fn2 was the slowest crew on the river and finished triumphantly last in every race. I hate irony but I was never even good enough to row for them.

  That night I sat swathed in blankets, my still-numb feet in a bowl of hot water, as close as it was possible to be to my radiator. As I drank warm Coca-Cola that night (we were told this prevented the Weil’s Disease, rife in the riverfn3), I mused that it might have been better if I had died or drowned earlier than face the ignominy of my failure.

  If my life had been a Hollywood movie I would have turned it round the next morning, learnt to row, trained to ‘Eye of the Tiger’, won the Henley regatta and married Jennifer Aniston with Adam Sandler gurning in the background. It wasn’t Hollywood. I continued to capsize for three more weeks before I gave up rowing for ever, invented drinking croquet and discovered alcoholism.

  Sitting at my desk, I snapped out of the reminiscences of a capsize ninja. The campaign of problem carpet-bombing stepped up another gear. The terrifying memories of my career as a serial sinker reminded me that there was a problem to climb bigger than the Matterhorn: I couldn’t row.

  I started a list, as there were now so many problems I began to run the risk of not even being able to remember them. Forgetting my problems would in itself be a problem. I put ‘Having too many problems and forgetting one of them’ at the top of my new list. Underneath this I wrote, ‘No money to fund the project’. Beneath that I wrote, ‘Not speaking French well enough’. Next on the list was, ‘A total lack of even basic knowledge of the sea and maritime matters’. Finally, shuddering, I added, ‘I can’t row’ before slumping back in the chair.

  I’ve never liked thinking about problems. The main reason for this is that, like a mummy rabbit and a daddy rabbit who love each other very much, when you have two problems very often they suddenly become six. Sure enough just as I was thinking this, a sixth major setback popped out: I was chronically unfit.

  I’d had a brief moment of sobriety and fitness during the paper-boat challenge. This was largely inflicted on me by my loving cousin and had been a short flash of sunshine in the violent storm of my utter unfitness. Also, if you’ve never rowed, you are unaware of the very high level of fitness it requires. Rowers are among the fittest athletes on the planet. This problem was serious, what was I supposed to do?

  Jack had now left frog-like shock far behind him and swung into action.

  ‘I’ve found you a rowing machine, you know one of those training Ergo things, at nearly no cost …’

  It belonged to a girl we’d known from university who was going abroad and couldn’t take it with her. She was a great rower at college and also very beautiful. I get terribly shy around beautiful women and had always found her impossible to talk to. Still, beauty is dulled by age, I thought as I rang the doorbell at her flat in Clapham. Besides, I’d grown up, so wouldn’t be shy this time.

  When the door opened the eyes that met mine beheld a stammering, nervous apparition that looked like the logical result of breeding a Fraggle with What-A-Mess. They blinked, opened again and managed to mix bemusement with a slight giggling twinkle. If anything she’d got more beautiful with time.

  ‘Oh, hi Tim … it’s upstairs.’ She looked at me as I stood stammering on her doorstep. ‘Come in.’

  We dismantled the Ergo and I took the first bit down to the car. We agreed it would be called Betty. Arriving back at the top of the stairs to fetch the second bit she looked thoughtfully into the distance.

  ‘So, Jack says you’re going to row the Channel. That’s a really tough challenge – personally, I don’t know anyone who’s managed that.’

  ‘Erm … neither do I, really.’

  ‘I don’t remember you being much of a rower at college – in fact Tim, did you even row?’

  ‘No,’ I lied.

  Thank goodness, she’d obviously left before I took up sinking. I hate lying but thought it was better to leave her with the impression that I was someone with great rowing potential, untapped at college, rather than embarrass myself further with the truth. The door closed on the stunning eyes and I tried to cram the second half of the Ergo into the back of my battered car. At least I now had something to train on. That had to be a step in the right direction.

  Driving away, this one positive soon turned negative. I was the worst rower in the history of my college with the balance of a cowpat (in the words of my long-suffering coach). Yet insanely, now I thought I could take on the trickiest single-seat rowing challenge in the world.

  The car turned into a rabbit warren as another problem surfaced. I needed to find someone to foot the bill for Jack’s ‘nearly no cost’ and help pay for the Ergo. The Thomas Crapper money was specifically tied up in bathroom products and I’d budgeted nothing for training costs. Bother. Getting out of the car I pulled out my list and wrote ‘Hopeless at budgeting’ underneath ‘Chronically unfit’. On the plus side, both of these qualities do qualify me for one thing: being Chancellor of the Exchequer.

  After unpacking the Ergo, I arrived back at my desk and pulled out my phone.

  ‘Hi, is Kenny there?’

  Kenny was the kind newspaper editor who fought so hard to help me with the paper-boat project. The paper boat almost failed to happen several times and Kenny had been instrumental in making sure it came off. Through these trials, including my rotting skin and near death, we’d become great mates. He’s got a brilliant sense of humour and is the only man I know who is merely four generations removed from a caveman (his ancestor was a nook-dwelling highland shepherd). I felt sure he’d help.

  ‘You’ve got another plan? Oh good …’

  He managed to say ‘oh good’ in a way that combined several emotions: the first, ‘not another of your plans, Tim, the last one almost got me sacked’; secondly, ‘it’s bound to be a cracker – what’s the plan this time? Paragliding strapped to a piece of toast?’; and thirdly, ‘of course I’ll be involved – what do you need?’ That’s the thing about truly great friends, you know what they mean and can always rely on their help.

  ‘Fancy a beer after work?’

  Over a few of London’s finest we laughed about the paper boat. If he’d not decided to edit newspapers, he’d have been writing jokes. At one point only two people thought the paper-boat plan could work and both of them currently sat either side of the pub table.

  ‘So what’s the plan this time?’

  ‘I want to row the English Channel in a bath.’

  ‘Of course. What do you
need?’

  With a dry smile, little chuckle and sip of beer Kenny had joined the bath team. Over a couple more beers we discussed the various things I’d been putting in place so far before Kenny said, ‘Why stop there, Tim? Why not row it all the way to Tower Bridge? In fact, I bet you one pint of beer you can’t make it from France to Tower Bridge in that bath.’

  His words were strangely reminiscent of the ones that had almost got me killed in the paper boat but, thinking only of beer, my brain knee-jerked into a response so quickly that it kicked logic in the crotch.

  ‘You’re on!’

  In my head and not having checked the charts, Tower Bridge didn’t seem that far away from Folkestone, Dover or wherever it was that you stopped when you’d rowed the Channel. I pulled out my list and wrote, ‘Check where the Channel finishes’.

  Later I would discover that in just two ill-chosen words, I’d lengthened the aim of my journey by 170 miles to win a single pint of beer.

  Over the next few months I embarked on a gruelling drive to get fit. I looted bookshops and read tonnes of books on fitness. One advocated, ‘Always run in trainers’; another, ‘Find some comfy boots’; a third, ‘Never run in boots’. Spurred on by this clarity I read a fourth, ‘Cycling or swimming is good, running is not.’

  In darkened corners of bookshops all over the place I found books on rowing technique, too. They seemed just as unified in their thought. One, ‘Sliding seats are a must for long-distance rowing’; another, ‘Never use a sliding seat for long-distance rowing.’ A third, ‘Meat cleaver blades are best for rowing at sea’, and a fourth, ‘Meat cleaver blades are very damaging to your back over long distances, this is especially true when rowing at sea.’

  As well as being confused by general fitness and rowing books I also read books on diet. The first one said, ‘Always start your day with a bowl of cereal’; another, ‘Never eat anything but fruit before midday.’ I decided these books were cunningly designed to make me stay in bed till after midday, on the phone to a broker buying shares in a cereal company. I was stumped. No two books had the same advice.

  There’s a senate of faceless and formless beings that always get quoted by others when the quotee needs validation. This senate is known simply as ‘They’. They say ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’ but the same also seemed to be true of too much opinion in a field that demands more clear research. I’d taken to eating both cereal and fruit before midday just to be on the safe side.

  I sat in the old barn at my parents’ house looking at the piles of totally confusing and expensive books (I hadn’t budgeted for them either). If there’s no clear lead on how to get fit, there’s no wonder we have an obesity problem in this country.

  I gazed over at where I’d proudly assembled Betty the Ergo. During all the months I’d been reading about getting fit, Betty had been sitting unused. I was becoming PhD-level educated on the confusing subject of getting fit but had absolutely no practical knowledge. To think this over further, I went to the pub.

  That Thursday night I was going to stay with my friend James in Putney. Jimmie is a very safe bet to talk to about fitness as he regards any form of physical exercise at best as insulting and at worst permanently damaging. As often happens in families, his brother is a super-fit soldier. Jimmie had just got back from weeks away touring as an actor and as usual was full of great stories. After a good night drinking and nattering we went back to his flat. Following more laughter and a nightcap I dropped into bed. I was sleeping in the room his older brother had stayed in a few days before.

  I woke up the next morning with a hangover they wrote about in the Bible and, through eyelids lined with sand, glanced over at the bedside table. On it was a book called Fit for Life by Sir Ranulph Fiennes. This was one fitness book I’d not read.

  With my head beating like a marching band and Jimmie groaning in the room down the corridor, I slowly began to read the first chapter. Midway through, I suddenly got the urge to make a cup of hot tea with lashings of milk and sugar. Then following the advice in Fit for Life Chapter 3 about having as little milk as you can and no sugar in tea, I took the milky sugared tea back to the kitchen and made the first cup of black tea I can ever remember having.

  I poured in the water. Steam rose off the nefarious dark brew below. Tentatively I lifted the cup to my lips. There are people who would rather lose a testicle than drink tea black and I was among them. I took a slurp. It wasn’t too bad, but hard to tell with just a slurp. I blew over the surface of the tea then took a bigger slurp. Like a wine connoisseur I swilled it round my mouth to try and work it out. It was much more bitter than I’d expected. A third gulp passed my lips. My mind was made up. I liked it. It felt somehow pure. In just three sips of tea that book had struck more of a chord with me than all the others put together. Like St Paul on the road to Damascus, I’d been transformed, only in Putney with a huge hangover.

  As I went back to bed with my gorgeous black tea and read the rest of the book, the single chord turned into a number-one hit. It’s a regime suggested by a man I’ve always admired. This gave me inspiration through example. It’s also a very practical set of guidelines and suggestions. It gives you advice to achieve whatever stage of fitness is appropriate to you. The main thing I liked about it was the suggestion that you should find what works for you and, most importantly, stick to it.

  Finally, with Fit for Life manacled to my side, I started training in earnest. I only realised the terrifying level of my chronic unfitness when I started to train. Betty the Ergo was an incredibly cruel mistress. I started gently. I’d arrive in the old barn at my parents’ and spend some time stretching. Then I’d spend time begging Betty not to hurt me too much, before mounting her and doing 3,000-metre distances. It may sound like a lot but 3,000 metres is a relatively short distance. It’s the blink of an eye to someone seriously wanting to row the Channel but I wanted to build up my ability to do this and not pull any muscles, tendons etc before attempting longer distances.

  I didn’t have rower’s shoulders, or, in fact, strong shoulders of any sort, and my lower back wasn’t used to Ergos – this is traditionally the area that gets a lot of punishment in rowing. So many people I knew had started training on macho impenetrable distances, pulled something in the first week and had to give up rowing for ages. To keep any hope of rowing the Channel alive, this could not happen to me.

  After a while I progressed to 6,000-metre distances. At this point I added weights, more stretching and running, to build all the various muscles and support the Ergo training. Betty was the most unflinchingly vindictive of women. I discovered quickly that one of the main challenges of an Ergo is mental.

  Finally, I was up to pulling decent times at 10,000 metres with running, stretching and weights. This was the regime I kept up, pounding away as much as possible to try and maintain the level of fitness I’d achieved. At the time I was working in another temp job at the Foreign Office in London in an attempt to pay off various booksellers. I had to leave the house at 6.30 a.m. and arrived back in at 8 p.m. It was one of the more demoralising things to come in from a full day at work and realise I’d got 10,000 gruelling metres to pull on the Ergo.