Nearly Christmas

Today I separate about twenty photographs from a drawerful in my study. It is almost Christmas and I am making my daughter K an album of her father in these past few years for a Christmas present. Our childhood photographs are still packed away in my garage, I have a host of pictures to go through one day. But I have a lot of recent pictures I know she will not have seen, and I think she will treasure a collection of them.

They are mainly of F and I with friends around the world, a lot from England where we lived for eight years and where F became Commodore of the biggest motor yacht club on the Thames.

I choose happy ones, although F was, invariably, happy. Particularly in England, where he had been born and grew up, and where we had a house a stroll away from Hampton Court Palace, near the moorings of the yacht club - and his boat, Breezing In. This was a forty foot motor yacht made by Oyster, a wellknown company of yacht builders. It had none of the white leatherette/plastic look of the so-called gin palaces; this was a yacht with a motor (two large ones). It had that look of hand crafting in the wooden interior, like a sailing boat, and it was F's pride and joy. He did all his own maintenance on the motors and all the cleaning, washing, interminable polishing and buffing and sprucing up necessary to a boat on the water and it gleamed; a proud boat, a loved boat.

We became interested in the lifestyle of a boat club one day shortly after arriving in England, while strolling along the Thames at Richmond. There were all these people in boats lining the banks, having a good time. F loved boats; he had had a dinghy and a motor boat in South Africa. I had entertained idea of picnics at sea, with beer and roast chicken and hours drifting about on blue waters, but it was not to be. The seas around the South African coast are anything but leisurely and one is hanging on to a rail most of the time, not picnicking. A far cry from the slow moving traffic of the Thames and boats ranging from little battered ones to large, snooty moneyed ones which parade silently up and down the muddy but - upriver - tranquil waters.

Here were all these boats moored, people moving about in the sunshine, laughing, talking and visiting, This appealed. With his usual aplomb F set about a conversation and before long we were invited aboard. Thus begun our love affair with the TMYC and things nautical, Little did I realise that afternoon that this would become the focus of our lives for eight years and the immense fun would be mixed with the stress that eventually cost F a pace maker and inevitable heart trouble.

I sit here at a junction in this narrative. I can go into the TMYC and those unforgettable years - there is a book there - eccentric people and situations for a lifetime, laughter, tears, frustration, idiosyncracies .... but today a distant memory.

Or I can continue with the present and my second Christmas alone. I have not faced up to one as yet - last year, the first one, I spent with B and his partner H in Mallorca, where it was delightful to be with them in such a foreign and infinitely beautiful place. I had no qualms. This year will be full of qualms. I shall miss F's energetic preparation of Christmas dinner - he always cooked Christmas dinner - the feeling of family, the nucleus being F, the frivolity of the decorations, gift wrapping, excitement and the carols that he loved to hear. This time I will be with K and her family - we shall have excitement, gift wrappings, the children and no doubt, carols; I shall love being with them but there will be a ghost behind me.