Sunday 6 February Mansion House

Dinghy pret a porter

Take a domestic seamstress, a domestic sewing machine and add an industrial refit job to get frustration and fruity language. As Amis wrote “Pain only has one language. Bad language.” The new dinghy we bought when we were in Auckland is a foot shorter than our old deflatable and far more beautiful. My task today was to re-tailor the cover from the old dinghy to fit and protect our new one. This entailed shortening and making new openings to accommodate handles in different places. The difficulty came from the thickness of materials to be sewn and the unweildliness of a heavy piece of shaped canvas. David helped lifting and turning but 4 hours of sweating, pulling, jammed needles and patience went out of the port hole.

Job done and it was a good job. The fit was perfect and our shiny, new tender was transformed into Jackster's familiar green and black clad dinghy looking too scruffy and too distinct to be removed without owner's permission. He's protected from the damaging rays of the sun by SUV50 total block, from sharp shells, rusty nails on dinghy docks by the black rubber and dirty feet and scratching scuba gear by canvas.

When I've forgotten the pain of the first remodelling I'll go back and close the original handle holes with green fabric and add flaps to cover the rowlocks.