Oars and Plumbers

Looking through the water from my rowing boat

The rivulets slip easily, silently - silky threads, dripping softly into the dark sea water from the tips of my honey coloured oars.  Dip, pull, lift, dip, pull, lift.  The water gurgles lightly at the little bow, forms a small wake at the stern which is easily reclaimed by the smooth curves of the gently rolling swell cradling us on its sympathetic surface. 

I like rowing.  Here within the encircling arms of Millport Bay, I can pull fast and strong till my breath comes in gasps, and the water froths astern, or I can drift calmly wherever the currents take me. 

It was here, as a little girl of 5 or 6, that I learned to row.  Mr. Brown taught me. 

My father’s best friend, but much older than him, Mr. Brown had a rugged, friendly face and pure white hair usually tucked beneath a tweed skip bunnet (cap).  I think his eyes were bright blue, but I could be wrong.  They were certainly kindly.  He had been a plumber to trade, but now retired, he lived in a house in Glasgow with a long thin garden filled with plump vegetables, and indoors a plump wife swathed in a floral apron and residing permanently in the kitchen, or so my childhood memory informs me. 

Millport Bay

Once each year, when we were on holiday in Millport, Mr. Brown would come to visit, and my sister and I would get our annual rowing lesson.   Mr. Brown was an expert.  He told us how, as a little boy, he and his brothers rowed across the Clyde from Langbank, about two miles or more each day to get to school and back.  The image of Mr. Brown as a little boy was beyond me to grasp, but my imagination placed him firmly in a boat full of school bags and lunchpacks, rowing to school, complete with white hair and skip bunnet.

Down the rough grey stone jetty, we wait in the queue to hire our heavy wooden rowing boat.  Once we’ve boarded it in wobbly uncertainly, Mr. Brown places my sister and me on the central thwart, and sits facing us.  We each grasp the seemingly immense oar in both hands, and he then folds one of his huge, strong, warm plumber’s hands over both my childish fists, his other over my sister’s, and off we go.  He teaches us how to push while he pulls, to pull while he pushes, how to steer by using the oars separately, or backwards.  

I’ve been able to control a boat confidently ever since, confidence drawn from the memory of his powerful hands safely over mine.

My current boat is a little blue and white fibre glass cockleshell, named Forget-me-not, and with good reason.  My memories have now translated the little girl learning to row into the young mum, visiting my parents who lived at that time in the tiny village of Minard on Loch Fyneside.   We’d pile into the car, drive the long and twisting route up Loch Lomondside with Ben Lomond towering across the still grey waters ('Mummy, are we there yet?'), over the Rest and Be Thankful mountain road (rock falls were not infrequent  from the often mist wrapped steep mountain slopes above – my father’s car was once hit by a huge boulder that came tumbling, bouncing down the precipes), through Inverary with its grey fairy tale castle of spindly turrets ('Daddy, are we there yet?'), at last arriving at my parents house, white painted, dormer windowed, staring out across the silver loch to the peaks beyond ('Gran!  Grandad!  We're here'). 

One day, I and Douglas, then about 6 - tufty blond hair and big blue eyes - went wandering along Minard's stony beach.  We came upon some small boats, drawn up on the grass for the winter.  One was the wrong way up, full of water, its keel bending ominously, its coaming twisted off.  We ran home, found a bucket, and bailed her out, our fingers red and cold.  The lady in the village shop thought it belonged to an Englishman who had used to live in the village, but had now gone south, back home. The man along the road might know.  He did – said he’d phone him.  Maybe we could buy it?  Hardly any chance we thought.  The kids were small.  Money was tight.  Owning our own rowing boat could only be dream. 

Next visit, Douglas and I went back to ask.  Yes he’d spoken to the man who owned it.  If we wanted it, we could have it for free.  Running home excited.  The whole family helping carry it onto my parents’ sloping lawn. 

And so Bill repaired it.  My father made two beautiful oars for it, honey coloured, varnished wood, so shiny they felt like glass to the touch.  They still do.  We called her Forget-me-not.  We rowed the dark waters of Loch Fyne in her.  We took her to Orkney when we lived there, and rowed with the seals from the beach at the back of our house.  Then to Millport, where she was shipwrecked in a storm, where she was stolen and found abandoned on the rocks, where she tipped me into the freezing sea near the pier one day.  And where now I sit in her, watching the rivulets  slip easily, silently - silky threads, dripping softly into the dark sea water from the tips of the honey coloured oars my father made.