Book II. Beyond the Judicious Retreat.

Horseshoe Cottage was a great delight in those weeks of fine weather, and the bay was actually warm enough to enjoy swimming in. This warming climate admittedly has its advantages for some of us. I helped

Ger Kavanagh to finish plastering the outside of our new extension, and then it was time to head for Nazaré and another stint on the Anna M.

Arriving in a heat-wave.

The next and final item on the agenda of fixing the hull had to be tackled, and accordingly I dived under the cockpit floor. There were plenty of nasties there, and the decision was soon taken to rip the whole cockpit and steering out so that they could be tackled properly.

It was rather easier than tackling corruption under the floor of the Church, it has to be said, despite the Master's warning about certain people being cast into the sea with millstones round necks. Still I can't help throwing in my comment that the element of hypocritical hysteria in the stories about things that happened mostly half a century ago is somewhat given away by the fact that they are cast almost exclusively in terms of paedophilia, whereas in the majority of cases it was a matter of homosexual relations with young men. Did anyone ever notice any discussion of the borderline and distinction between them, or of 'the problem of homosexuality amongst the Catholic clergy', in the Irish Times or the Guardian?

The weather became cool for Monday morning, and Stephan Colsman showed up to my delight. He is a joy to work with and very steady, and was refreshed after taking a small boat down through the inland waterways from Germany to Marseille. The cockpit was soon torn apart, also the last remaining rotten ribs, and now at last the Anna M was on her way back to health and strength again. I have well over 2,000 copper nails driven in through the new ribs, with Stephan riveting them on the inside.

It is an odd thing how these cups of suffering have to be drained to the dregs! That lovely cockpit with its beautiful old wheel! We all like to hang on to our illusions, stick to the easy way out, as long as we possibly can. There was a copy of War and Peace in the Calypso when I sailed to England with Alec, if one may talk of 'sailing' when there are always two diesel engines thumping away beneath the floor, so I beguiled the boredom with rereading Tolstoy's epic. I actually enjoyed it more than I did 54 years ago, when I considered his work somewhat heady in comparison with Dostoevsky.

If, in Jungian terms, human perception occurs by way of the four modes of intellect, intuition, feeling and sense, then I suppose those artists will appeal to us most whose work agrees with our own makeup; still, the more they can bring them all into play together, I would say the greater the result, even if so many people these days just don't seem able to cope if they can't put things in their tidy boxes. As a novelist, Tolstoy is perhaps a bit heavy duty in the intellect department. However, I mention him because his portrayal of General Kutuzov and his tactics struck me forcefully; he overcame Napoleon's Grande Armée in the course of much judicious retreating, including even the abandonment of Moscow, much to the consternation of the Tsar and his court in St Petersburg. I somewhat sillily compare it to my abandonment of Anna M's lovely old cockpit, steering wheel and all. It will be gracefully retired on the wall of our new room, and the old boat will find herself being steered at the flick of a button.

Yes, I have been thinking about it long enough, she is going all electric. If I don't do it now, I never will; a case of the old man in a hurry. But it also happens to be a case of a planet in a hurry. At long last it is getting difficult not to be thinking, if the house burns down, and we ever happen to be in any way called to account, what did we try to do about it? Alright, there are always plenty of excuses for sliding out of responsibility. I myself tried not to face the Anna M's need for a drastic overhaul as long as I possibly could; however, I did so before she sank; better late than never!

Indeed, we all have our constraints. One interesting question for me just now is why those Lynch electric motors, if they are as good as they seem to be, are not already much more widely used? Perhaps it is just to do with the fact that Cedric Lynch was a bit of a maverick and eccentric, didn't have the right qualifications or hit the right buttons as he threatened to cut rather a lot of ground from beneath the great capitalist corporations of this world? A bit like the way the drugs industry reacts to homeopathy? But then some people just can't cope with things that come by way of a different mode of perception to what they are used to; they can't even cope with different languages to their own!

To what extent are such blockages maintained and indeed reinforced by certain powerful interests? I think for example of Brexit. I wonder in whose interests it may be to maintain ways of thinking that have led to so much misery in the past, to people maiming and killing each other in vast numbers? Well, here's to all the people who prefer sharing their gifts, listening to each other's languages and enjoying each other's company! There's plenty of that about Nazaré,

Nazare market

which I do enjoy, even if it is a bit too crowded this time of the year. I generally say it's the cars rather than the people who do the damage. It has to be said that I am looking forward to taking that Sherkin ferry again shortly!