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Sea Change. Ian Dickens
Читать онлайн.Название Sea Change
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781843589693
Автор произведения Ian Dickens
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство Ingram
There were still inevitable concerns, and over Sunday lunch we began to touch on the issues. How would we pay for the trip? How would the mortgage be met while I was away? What would the separation do to our relationship? How would the children react? What if I fell overboard and didn’t come back?
While I had already been rumbled by Holly, twelve-year-old Michael was out doing what twelve-year-olds do. Riding bikes, kicking balls, swinging from trees and dreaming up far-fetched games that were acted out on the village green in front of our home.
He arrived back for lunch, breathless, wreathed in sweat, and headed straight for the sink and a glass of frantically gulped water. Like Holly, he took in the concept with an easy acceptance and, as the debate continued, the materialistic thrills came into view.
As I shared the route, savouring for the first of many times ‘Portugal, Cuba, the Galápagos, Hawaii’, Holly interrupted me.
‘Does this mean we can go to Hawaii?’
‘Quite probably, yes,’ I guessed, and that was it. As far as my children were concerned, the trip was a definite, and she drifted off into planning bikinis and the bags required to carry them.
Michael held out a little longer and my travel itinerary continued through Japan, China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore, Mauritius, Cape Town, Salvador, in Brazil, and New York.
One leg away from returning home, he too had found his own Eden, becoming instantly smitten with the idea and wondering whether Nike Town should be the first port of call or perhaps it should be the Empire State. Whatever, it would be vital news to airily lob into the classroom on Monday morning, despite my dire warnings to say nothing at this stage.
I noticed that Anne, trying her best to be hard-nosed about the travel prospects, had visibly wilted when I had mentioned the Galápagos Islands.
But until I had a place on board there was little point in going any further. I had no idea of the criteria the organisers were looking for, and might well find myself on the receiving end of a reject letter saying, ‘No mid-life-crisis candidates required. Good luck with the rest of your life up a dead-end street. Kind regards, Sir Robin Knox Johnston.’
Stopping the conversation now would also allow me to open another bottle of red, put the globe on the table for an in-depth study, find where the dog was hiding and tell her it was safe to re-enter the house.
I decided on one thing, though. Should I get a place, I wanted to start and finish the entire race on board the yacht. I had to complete the journey and deal with all the challenges it had to offer. The sensible option (which I had hardly taken in from the ad) of doing a six-week leg, taking the time off as holiday and funding it by cashing in an insurance policy, was far too practical. If you mean to do it, then it should be all or nothing and the difficulties placed in the way would all be part of the challenge.
If we were going to worry the bank and the mortgage company, then let’s really give them something to fret about.
I filled up Anne’s glass, the children went in search of the atlas and Raggles settled back down in her basket and nodded off to sleep.
Clipper Ventures, true to their promise, sent through a pack of information and an application form a couple of days later. Meanwhile I had been to the website and was already hooked by the adventure. I really did hope that Sir Robin, the man at their helm, had a soft spot for middle-aged businessmen trying to find more from life, because I now wanted this very much indeed.
Anne and I filled out the forms, thinking long and hard about the testing questions that asked for a very honest, warts ’n’ all opinion about myself. These were clearly the ones that would give an insight into my personality and provide clues as to whether I was made of the right stuff.
We agreed that a cheeky response was the best approach, and that summed me up anyway. If they were looking for a bunch of military-style squaddies, with fun and banter banned, then perhaps the event was not for me.
I stuck it all in an envelope with a good-luck pat and Michael hurtled across the green on his bike to the postbox, demonstrating a fearful disrespect for the laws of gravity and tyre adhesion.
When the post arrived a couple of days later, among the envelopes was one with a Clipper Ventures postmark. Not an A4 folder full of information this time, just a simple regulation envelope with what felt like a single-page letter inside.
Suddenly I was sixteen again, looking at the faces of my parents, knowing that the O Level results would either thrill or disappoint. The affected lack of interest, the studied indifference from around the breakfast table, belied the nervous anticipation in the room. As in the days of exams, I wanted to run and hide under the bed or lock myself in the loo before reading if Sir Robin had made the grave error of deciding I was not even worthy of an interview.
First I opened the bank statement and the long line of numbers adding up to one big OD suggested that knuckling down to earning more cash was the sensible option for the next few months. Or decades.
Reader’s Digest offered an escape route in the next envelope, advising me that I had been selected to win at least a million. There was some tedious small print regarding the purchase of a book that detailed fascinating facts about ‘healing plants of the world’. So confident were Reader’s Digest that the money was virtually mine, I wondered if Lloyds might take the ‘YES’ sticker as down payment against the overdraft, and was tempted to stick it to the bank statement before posting the whole lot off again.
The third envelope could wait no longer, so I opened the life-changing communiqué and read its content. Never has anyone been happier to receive an invitation to the small market town of Olney and have the potential of adding £23,000 to their bank-account burden. While Anne, Holly and Michael whooped their enthusiasm, I too had to admit to feeling just a trifle happy. After all, with Healing Plants of the World in my bookcase, my financial problems might be well and truly solved for ever.
On the train to King’s Cross I dreamt of what might be. The problems at work that had been getting me down so much were suddenly hugely diminished and I realised how badly I wanted this new chance. The fields of Bedfordshire gave way to the suburbs of north London and, as row after row of terraced houses crept by, I was off in a frenzy of escape, in the midst of a sun-kissed distant ocean with dolphins splashing all around. The whole idea was wonderfully romantic.
The romance continued when I offered to kiss Clipper’s marketing manager.
We met a week later in a small industrial estate on the outskirts of Olney, in an office about as far from the sea as it was possible to get. Sitting nervously in the company’s reception area, eyeing a couple of other candidates suspiciously, I wondered how to approach the impending grilling. Here was yet another new experience for a man who thought, rather too arrogantly, that he had experienced most of what life had to offer. My interview technique had become decidedly rusty and I had no idea of where the probing questioning might go.
In the end it turned into a really good chat, which I enjoyed hugely. After an hour in which my technique had included a mild dose of pleading, the interrogator looked at his watch, snapped his pen shut and uttered the immortal line, ‘Thank you, we’ll let you know.’
I was completely in the hands of someone else and it left me feeling distinctly uncomfortable.
A couple of days later another letter arrived from Clipper. It contained three paragraphs, the most important of which started with the word ‘Congratulations’.
If I was ecstatic, so too was Anne, even though she was entering the foothills of a deep journey of discovery. Ever practical, she was acutely aware of the potential pitfalls that lay on the paths