Happy New Year, Blue Planet!

It's that time of year again when Fiona and I tend to flit around among the divers members of our scattered tribe. The actual Christmas holiday we have spent with my sister and her husband near Poole in Dorset. Yesterday, Boxing Day in England, St Steven's Day in Ireland, despite the lowering grey sky and spells of chilly drizzle, we crossed the harbour entrance on the chain ferry, thus making the startling and abrupt transition from the urban sprawl on the north side to the wild Hardyesque country to the south.

   The 'Isle' of Purbeck has featured in my mother's family for generations, and my father also loved it more than any other place. With the threatening sky keeping the usual holiday hordes at bay, we walked along the shore of Studland Bay, admiring the Ballard Down that Dad loved to walk along and the fine trees standing tall and stark against the chasing clouds, all so evocative of England at its poignant best. There also is the bunker where King George VI, Churchill, Eisenhower and Montgomery came early one morning in 1943 to watch the lads training for D-day. We had lunch in a wooden hut, the Middle Beach Cafe, which very likely started off as a Nissan hut to accommodate the crew of the nearby gun emplacement. We had delicious crab-cakes with a pleasant bottle of wine, served on simple formica tables with wooden benches,  and enjoying the view across to Old Harry and the Isle of Wight, the great white cliff of Freshwater Bay behind the Needles coming and going in the rain showers.

Lunch in the Middle Beach Cafe.

   
   Actually the Middle Beach Cafe is threatened with demolition, on the supposed grounds that it is in danger of falling into the sea. My brother-in-law Martin, a specialist in such matters who has known the area for many years, reckons there is no fear of it for many more years to come. I suspect that maybe there is some other agenda at work, and this is the kind of affair that gives concern about rising sea levels a bad name. Incidentally, Martin reckons the handiest way of measuring such things is to track what is happening to the bottom of storm beaches, where the stones meet the underlying sand.

   That whole area of Studland was laced with barbed wire and mines, when in 1941 my Dad in his officer's uniform was fortunately able to be at hand to drive my mother through the road-blocks from Swanage to hospital in Bournemouth for my sister's birth. They called her Joy. 

   So, I understand how deeply the world wars shaped  imagination of the older generation in England, and how difficult it is for them to accept the prospect of being caught up in any dynamic pan-European project, especially one led by Germany. I believe it to be the case that the Germans themselves are nervous of such a role. A good New Year's resolution for us Europeans is to keep on trying to let the Brits know that we need them, precisely for their historical role as a counter-weight to any Bismarkian or Napoleonic tendencies on the Continent!

   Television time over the holiday has been spent watching the BBC's Blue Planet series, with its stunning photography of marine life. It promises a whole new awareness of the sea, of its wondrous life and the threats it faces; and with that awareness, raises the hope that we will find ways of responding adequately, and indeed joyously. This will require unity of purpose; but who could look at those images and not respond? We have to at last rise beyond fighting the battles of the last century, and bring the same grit and determination to combating the present threats we face!

   In the spirit of a humble and joyous 

contribution to that same revolution in awareness, I would like the 'Anna M' to continue to take people sailing with dolphins and whales, as she has been doing for this last 20 years.  There is no quieter, more natural and less intrusive way to do it than in a wooden sailing boat! So allow me to recommend our Fundit campaign, to help pay for her current renovation. Here is the link, and do please send it on:-

https://fundit.ie/project/restore-the-anna-m-1