Home is the Sailor

Mike spent a night on the boat last night, while I indulged in Far From The Madding Crowd on TV.  Not a very accurate retelling, but I did enjoy it, and although it brought a lump to the throat, I didn't actually shed any tears!  

It brought back memories of ' O' level English lit and wonderful teacher Miss McKenna.  She rode a bicycle to school, with her cat sitting in the basket on the handlebars, and wore a tweed skirt which was as wide as it was long.  As she came down the hill she had her feet off the bike pedals, in front of her!  An inspirational and charismatic teacher, who told us she remembered Thomas Hardy's funeral, his heart being buried with his first wife, his body in Westminster Abbey.  She had her "girls" and we met in her book room, with the cat, during the lunch hour.  When I left school she gave me a copy of  D H Lawrence's The Virgin and The Gypsy, which I wisely hid from my mother for many years!

This morning Mike moored below the house and came ashore in time for breakfast.  Ollie was overjoyed (as was I, naturally!) and the barking, whining, yowling when he saw Mike approaching reminded me of Jenny Agutter in The Railway Children, when she cries "My Daddy, my Daddy!"  A quick coffee before I left for the shop and two coaches of cruise liner passengers.  Lovely people, mostly British and quite elderly, all very cheery and buying lots of postcards!