Avon Calling

When our son was in his teens and at school, and also in his holidays from Uni, he worked as a "boat boy" on the rowing boats in Stratford.

This was a much coveted position amongst local lads - out-doors, great fun, reasonable money, and a chance to chat up some of the prettier visitors to Stratford.

Today we headed down to the boating company where he used to work, and he met up with an old friend of his that he hadn't seen for some time, and who now manages the boat company.

Our son asked if "Big Bertha" was still there. I thought this a little tactless in front of his wife, but it turned out that Big Bertha is a very large rowing boat, that would be capable of taking all four of us adults plus the two youngsters.

I think it was harder work rowing than he remembered it being in those halcyon days of summer. We zig-zagged along the river until both he and Clive were exhausted, then we wove our way back again.

A few years ago he told some friends from Edinburgh about the trick the boat boys used to play when visitors handed them a camera and asked them to take their photo. The boat boys used to line up the Holy Trinity spire with the top of the person's head so it looked like they were wearing a massive cone.

A few years after telling our friends this story they sent us a cutting from a Scottish newspaper, with a photo that a reader had sent in because the photo that they'd had taken in Stratford made them look as though they had an ice cream cone on their head.

“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” (Wind in the Willows)