Tag Archives: friends

It takes all sorts

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You think it’s all over… it is now!

Today it was time to say farewell to Queen Anne. She has been our home these past three and a half weeks, so it’s a little sad that this is the last of my Captain’s logs!

We woke up just in time to see us passing under the lights of the Golden Gate Bridge, before falling back to sleep.

I have to confess, I’ve always said I didn’t want to go on a Cruise. I thought it would be too many people, too organised and too claustrophobic. But after a trial trip just over a year ago, to see the northern lights in Norway, on Cunard’s Queen Victoria, I discovered the boat very rarely felt crowded and there was plenty of space to get outside into the fresh air on deck.

With a good number of ‘sea days’ on this trip, we’ve made the most of onboard activities and entertainment. The pools and hot tubs were a good way to meet people, who wouldn’t recognise you later with clothes on! One of them was an American ex-pilot come sports car collector with a fine white moustache, whose wife had died from what he described as “the Chinese virus.” I spotted this smooth talker with various ladies over the weeks and also had to bite my lip as he explained why Donald Trump would put everything right that had gone so wrong in America. I did note that a cruise might be a good way to find a new partner if you were looking for one… although the romance might only last the length of the cruise or less!

You’re never going to hit it off with everyone you meet, but on this trip we’d met some real gems.

There was a retired New York cop, who always sported a jaunty red and white neckerchief, and had the best religious jokes ever. He was always ready with a new one each day, which he cheekily slipped in before the Lord’s Prayer at the regular Christian gatherings. He was sorely missed when he got off at New York.

Happy to accommodate the ex copper’s jokes was a down to earth Greek Orthodox priest who was on board with his mother. He gave us lots to think about as well as passing on the same advice which he gave his parishioners if they were having a hard time: “You get on with your stuff and let the devil get on with his stuff!”

I also developed a bit of a crush on two Aussies, who ran a course onboard looking at memoir writing. Richard Evans, former politician turned author, sported the most outrageous shirts and provided the perfect foil to the banter from his colleague and wife, Dr Julia. I loved their honesty, humour and the simplicity and clarity they bought to the training sessions, which were simply inspirational. No one who took part will forget their mantra that, “we all have a story to share.” Check out

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Finally, we have bid a fond farewell to a beautiful Yorkshire couple, who we’ve shared lots of laughter and stories with over the past few weeks. However, as they will be going right around the world with Queen Anne, they should be well placed to send reports on any developments with the ‘suspected stowaway’…

Meanwhile, San Francisco here we come.

Where am I?

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Do you ever have that feeling of waking up and wondering where you are? It’s happened to me on and off over the years – sleeping in strange beds and plenty of unfamiliar rooms for a variety of reasons!

Although we’re always on board the same boat, outside the locations change and so do our neighbours. The other day I woke up to the sound of New Zealand accents on the adjacent yacht and popping my head out on deck, I was greeted by a friendly voice, “How are you this morning?” A few days earlier it had been German accents and before that French.

Our neighbours over the past few weeks have been varied and many. It’s been one of the many joys of this extended trip, getting to meet so many sailors from different parts of the world and often mooring up beside them again at different anchorages and greeting them like old friends, sharing stories of where we’ve been in between and what we’ve seen, along with the inevitable sailing nightmare tales! They’ve also been on hand to help with ropes and getting moored in harbours in various strengths of wind, everyone has been helpful and kind.

The other morning I woke up in the saloon of the boat, as the cabin had got too hot in the night. I couldn’t remember where we were and even more confusing was hearing the twang of “Kiwi accents” again. I’d forgotten that having left this friendly family behind a few days earlier, we’d found ourselves moored next to them again the previous afternoon in a new location.

I’ve loved the friendliness of fellow sailors. The other day, the skipper of a boat anchored across from us in a bay swam over to chat about our sun canopy. He explained how he and his wife had sailed here from Brittany. We talked about our Devon flag and places he loved in England, especially Cornwall. When left he said, “We’re practically cousins!”

In our favourite port on the island of Alonnisos we found our new neighbours were a couple who’d been stranded in Australia during lockdown, and their lovely wooden boat had been damaged, but they hadn’t been able to get back to it. He was a native greek with a shock of white hair and he and his Australian partner shared tips with us on easy meals to cook on board along with sailing tales from around the islands. We nicknamed her ‘Shirley Valentine’ and wished them well with their boat rebuilding in the coming months as we upped anchor and set sail again.

Today we chatted with our new Danish neighbours about places to visit and last night we were back onboard yacht Zigzag – sharing a few glasses of wine with a Cornish couple, we keep meeting up with and who are now anchored a few metres away in this idyllic bay.

When we swam before breakfast this morning, it felt as if we were in our own giant swimming pool. Even in the deep water around the boat the seabed was so clear you could see each little pebble and rock far below.

As we move into the twilight of our time in Greece, for now, it’s clear our little boat is in need of some repair work. Over the past few weeks we’ve both become intimately acquainted with a sponge and bucket that has been filled up daily after each trip from water leaking down below! I’m thinking of buying one as a reminder of the adventure.

In the meantime, I’m gazing across at lush pine trees lining the shore above a bank of white rocks reflecting in the sparkling water. Apart from the heat and the temperature of the water, we could be anchored down the Fal in Cornwall! And I’m reminded that we have plenty of beautiful places to rediscover on our return home.

I’m also wondering how strange it will feel sleeping in a real bed that doesn’t rock and has space to move, or taking a long shower without being worried about using too much water.

But I may well wake up in a couple of weeks and wonder where on earth I am!

Incognito angel to the rescue

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It was the kind of anchor drama I’d been dreading. The man in a snorkel mask treading water by our boat said the words neither of us wanted to hear, “It’s stuck hard, I can’t move it. You’ll need to get professional divers.” A neighbouring skipper had volunteered to dive down and see if he could free our anchor, now stuck six metres down wedged under, what looked like some kind of metal frame.

Less than an hour earlier we’d arrived at the distant marine reserve island after a six hour passage in pretty heavy seas and gusty winds. We were already tired. The waves had mounted steadily during the course of the passage. At their height we were being pushed, tipped and rolled around, with four metre waves breaking onto the boat. We were both completely soaked after an hour or so and I wished I hadn’t bothered with shorts and T-shirt and stayed in a bikini. After we’d put in another reef, we settled into the lurching and rolling motion. I was glad the trip across wasn’t any longer, because although we were making great progress at 7.5 knots, six hours in a rolling sea felt quite a while!

After we’d dropped anchor at the island in a quiet bay, there was yet another semi daunting task to be completed. Due to the location and wind direction we needed to take lines ashore to tie us to the rocks. I was dreading this, as on previous Mediterranean holidays it’s been a task for “the boys” – this time it was down to me to paddle board over with lots of rope, negotiate the spiky rocks and sea urchins, and worst of all tie bowlines to make everything secure. (I’m only good at these 70 per cent of the time!)

Sometime later, after swearing, “I’m never doing this again”, “I hate doing this” and “I can’t do this”, and then the inevitable sea urchin encounter on my left hand… I swam back to what I thought was a secure boat, at last. But a final check of the anchor had almost been the final straw, when we saw, instead of wedged in the sand, it was jammed under some iron debris on the seabed.

Tension was rising. We were in a nature reserve at the north end of the Sporades islands, it was beautifully quiet and remote with no phone signal whatsoever. So, how would we call for divers? And what would it cost to free our anchor? The skipper took the paddle board ashore and climbed a nearby hill in search of phone signal. There were plenty of bleating goats, but still no signal. His face was grim when he returned to the boat. There were various options to consider, none of which we wanted to do, involving leaving the anchor and returning with divers, deploying a kedge anchor and trying to free it ourselves somehow… a few prayers were said.

The answer came quite quickly in the end in the form of a “Greek angel” called Nasos.

Nasos, a skipper on another yacht in the bay, was woken up from an afternoon rest by his crew, who’d been alerted to our dilemma and plea for help. It wasn’t long before he was alongside in his dinghy, snorkel and flippers to the ready.

“Where have you come from?” He asked.

“England,” we said!

“No, today I mean!”

We explained we’d sailed from Halkidiki and he was surprised, as he’d also sailed across from the same port an hour earlier. He said we must be tired, as it has been quite a tiring crossing.

“I will try and help you,” he said. “ Are you with a flotilla?”

“No,” we answered. “We’re on our own, that’s the problem.”

“Don’t worry,” said Nasos.“ You are not alone anymore, Nasos is here. We will solve it together!”

What a lovely thing to hear!

A few minutes later after carefully examining the anchor position through his mask he dived down. Very soon after he reappeared and said the magic words, “It’s free!” He explained the anchor had dragged and been caught in what was actually an old bed frame on the seabed and he had been able to yank it free.

We were so relieved and grateful, but as we’d only just met him and we were all wearing very little, we couldn’t hug and kiss him, instead we gave him a bottle of gin! Nasos, the incognito angel, even helped us re-anchor and re do our lines without too much stress. What a difference it makes when you have a “friend” to tackle a problem together.

After a restful and peaceful night on anchor we went to thank Nasos again and enjoyed real Greek coffee and sweet treats on his boat with his crew. We laughed about being caught by a bed and wondered how it had ever come to be on the bottom of the sea in such a remote place.

I’m not sure what to rename this little bay. It could be ‘Bedframe Bay’ but perhaps ‘Angel Bay’ would be more appropriate? We hope to catch up with Nasos again before he heads back north, if only to find out what other “angel missions” he’s been called to 😉.

The beginning of the end?

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“Season of damp grey mistiness
Close bosom friend of the hidden sun. 
Conspiring with him how not to bless, 
the miserable people who round the pavements run.
Desperate for warmth and blue sky…”

I may not be Keats, but if he’d written about January instead of Autumn, it might have gone like that… a bit!

January has to be one of the most depressing months of the year. Christmas is over and I haven’t even seen a snowdrop yet. However, I am one of the chosen few to have a birthday this month. It’s not the best time of year to celebrate, but as this was a significant round number I decided to give it a try, with a lot of help from family and friends.

Ever since the first lockdown I have been spoiling for a party. As the youngest of five, I evolved into a bit of a rule-breaker. It’s just a modus operandi which I slip into as soon as someone lays down a rule. It must have started young, because I remember being told not to climb the high brick wall around our garden and walk along it. But there it was, a rule to be broken, and the result was a nasty fall into the bushes with scrapes that wound right round my torso. My mother said, “I told you not to climb on the wall!” It’s hard to explain why that sounded like an invitation to the seven-year-old me.

It was even worse at secondary school where there were dress codes laid down rigorously about not rolling up shirt sleeves and doing up your top shirt button under the tie. But if you were wearing a tie, who would know if the top button was undone? The headteacher apparently, who had eagle eyes and caught me offending on all counts, repeatedly. Somehow, I managed to escape expulsion – just!

So fast forward a few years and Covid strikes with its rules and lockdowns. I have honestly done my best to keep the rules, mostly. I understand why they are there and have attempted to comply with the important stuff. But the lack of freedom, isolation and list of what wasn’t allowed over the past two years has made me crave company and fun and yes, a party.

So, when my family asked what I wanted for my birthday, I said, “A party!”

The planning began and invitations were sent – the future was looking bright – not orange. Then Omicron landed and I felt that cold trickle of disappointment slide down my back again – yet another fun event cancelled. Covid strikes again!

But there is a God. He made January after all and gave us the resources to develop vaccines and so after a few wobbly weeks, the party was back on.

There was shopping to be done, table plans to be drawn up, cake makers to be chivvied. We hit a few speed bumps along the way. There was one memorable moment in a supermarket, when the card machines had gone loopy, just as we were trying to pay for two huge trollies piled with food and drink. One of them had to be wheeled into the cooler, while I trekked to a cashpoint, meanwhile the car had run over time in the carpark. “You couldn’t make it up,” said a voice beside me.

One of the funniest cards I received on the day summed it all up!

But it wasn’t all problems. The venue was pretty perfect. All the family remembered shoes – even if some were the wrong colour. Guest arrived on time from almost every corner of the UK, including Ireland and Wales. We didn’t need to call on Jesus to turn the water into wine because there was loads and we even toasted Her Majesty with glasses of port.

At the end of the evening, I felt like my party shaped vacuum had been well and truly filled to the brim. I had hugged (because we’d all done lateral flow tests!) laughed, listened, gossiped, giggled, and sometimes just watched my nearest and dearest in animated conversations or tirelessly moving between kitchen and table with delicious food and drink to keep the party going.

So misty, miserable January has turned out OK this year. The party actually felt a bit like the end of a long diet, having been starved of all the things I love, I have finally been able to sit down to a truly delicious meal of friendship, family and just being alongside people without masks. I am really hoping this is the beginning of the end of covid rules and lockdowns for the foreseeable future. Whatever happens next it has been a good way to begin 2022.

Who’d marry a soldier?

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Guess who?
… Makes friends easily, adaptable, well travelled, independent, decorator, gardener, mechanic (when necessary), single mum (frequently), tough, fiercely loyal, wry sense of humour, expert gin & tonic maker, resilient, always hopeful – a lover of life.

My dictionary definition of an army wife, in case you hadn’t guessed.
I’m proud to be one of this diminishing breed, whose other characteristic is being a ‘pack animal’. Army wives are there for one another. When the going gets tough they stand alongside each other’s families supporting one another, sometimes emotionally but also practically.

Some of my best friends are either army wives or ex-army wives. The experiences we went through together as we waited anxiously for news from war zones or coped with being a lone parent far from our families, drew us close. Those bonds aren’t easily broken. That’s why writing a book with one particular army wife was the natural thing to do.

I first met Brenda Hale when she was a Sergeant’s wife while we were posted in Germany and our husbands were on an operational tour in Northern Ireland. Our children were born within a few months of each other. Brenda put me to shame in exercising back to fitness after giving birth and supported me in trying to run chaotic Sunday school sessions at the church on the barracks. In those years, although we worried for our husbands on operations in Belfast and Bosnia, I could never imagine what lay ahead.

One sunny August morning in 2009 I found my husband hunched at the foot of the stairs, shocked by the sudden death of a great man and a good friend. Neither of us could believe that this giant of a man had been taken away and his family left devastated. The harrowing news stories on the death of more soldiers in Afghanistan had become more personal than ever.

Some days later sitting at a table in an airport I still couldn’t take in the fact that the woman beside me had lost the love of her life, the father of her children and her best friend. How could this have happened?

It’s been a privilege to retrace the journey which the Hale girls have been on, through writing I married a soldier with Brenda. As she says, we’ve shared both tears and laughter as she has recalled wonderful moments, along with the most painful times.

If you’re looking for an inspirational read that gives you a real picture of life for army families, you’ll enjoy I married a soldier published by Lion Hudson. It tells the true story of how one very special army wife found a way through an event that threatened to crush her. This is a story of hope and faith beyond grief.

What are the chances?

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There are some moments in life that remain etched in your memory. We might not realise until something triggers that vivid picture, as if a film is replaying a scene in slow motion. For me it was a friend posting a photo of their mother on Facebook…

It was winter and I think it was raining. I was sitting in the concourse of our university building. It was a general meeting/hovering area with low vinyl covered seating arranged back to back in two squares. Long windows looked onto the railings which my bicycle was locked against, wedged in beside a string of others, and beyond that loomed the concrete slab of the student union. The college shop, jammed with stationery and sweets, framed one end of the space and a wide corridor was on the other side. It was a good place just to ‘hang-out’ if you’d had enough of the library or wanted to meet someone or kill time before a lecture (pre mobile phones).

As ever my canvas bag was bulging with folders and notepads and because it was nearly the end of the day I was thinking about mustering up the energy to go out into the cold and cycle home. An older lady in a long dark pink coat and white hair caught my attention in the corridor. She had a large handbag clutched against her and paused to look across at where I was sitting. I smiled absentmindedly at her but she looked passed me and continued down the corridor studying the various notice boards lining the walls as she walked. A couple of minutes later I slung my bag across my shoulder and headed down the corridor towards the main entrance. As I rounded the corner the same lady appeared again. She’d obviously come in a complete circle around the quad. This time I smiled properly and asked her if she was lost.

“Emm,” she hesitated. “I’m trying to find someone from the Christian Union… do you know how I would find them?” I was surprised and nodded saying I was actually a member, which seemed quite a fortunate coincidence. She looked relieved and started to explain how her daughter was a student at the university and she wanted us to pray for her. She’d come in especially to ask for us to pray. She told me her daughter’s name and then which course she was on. At which point I took a step back… she was on the same course as me and in my year. The lady reminded me of my own mum, but it wasn’t her very traditional shoes and winter coat, it was something in her face and her eyes that shone out. She was here because her daughter meant so much to her that she had come to find a stranger to pray for her.

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I was quite amazed and moved. The next day I related the story to some of my Christian Union friends. I did pray for her daughter, but without much faith that it would do any good. This student was not someone I could really see myself befriending. I’d told my friends she was a lost cause. She was a wild firecracker who rushed in and out of seminars or lectures, wavy blonde hair flying around her, always in a rush. She cracked loud jokes and boasted about boozy nights out and her current boyfriend’s antics… who from what I could gather was some kind of bank robber. Poor lady, no wonder she wanted us to pray! I kept my distance.

Some months later I was choosing modules for the next two years and found myself in a small tutor group with this same girl and three others. We would have to work together in the coming year on a joint video project, which would form a major part our year’s work… I wasn’t looking forward to it. I felt I was the one in need of prayer now. Somehow the two of us always ended up being thrown together against my choice, but over the coming months I began to see another side to this brash confident student. As we lugged heavy video cameras around south London and I struggled to keep up with her striding pace, or we sat munching eggy rolls in the Union snack bar something thawed between us. We became friends.

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It was this same girl who a few months later hugged and listened and cried with me in the weeks after my mother’s sudden death. Together we crushed giggling into a phone box in deepest Devon to phone respective boyfriends on a summer camping trip with my recently bereaved father. On graduation day we posed for photographs next to each other outside the Albert Hall and then months later she bundled her essential long black skirt into my bag as I headed for Morocco. On the morning of my wedding we sighed as she helped me into my dress and she teased my dad, in a way only she could get away with. This same girl is married to an inner city vicar and has spent her life building a church and seeing amazing miracles of faith and healing. It seems incredible that my meeting with her mother in a university corridor so many years ago turned out to be the start of something I could never imagine. Was that a coincidence? Or was it an answer to prayer? Whatever you think… thank God for mothers who never give up praying for their children.