We decided to steal the boat earlier that day. We had walked by it and seen the note; the note that said the boat belonged to no-one and that if this no-one to whom it belonged to did not appear to collect it in the next three days it would be sunk unceremoniously out at where the estuary meets the sea. We returned later to where the boat sat amidst the weeds and the long grass, by now it was pitch dark and we had come prepared. Dressed in wooly jumpers and carrying oars (unable to find real oars we used spades. I carried a bit of a floorboard) and plenty of absinthe. Lifting the boat over the locked gate was the hardest part. Then the long lopsided walk to the shore where she was placed gingerly into the water. We rowed laughing into the black past the other boats of the harbour;dark and still and quiet, unmanned and unlaughing like old sentry posts. We rowed past the pier and started for a cove about half a mile away where we planned to hide the boat and fix her up over the summer; varnish and paint the whole thing and maybe add a sail. We were a third of the way across mortimers deep when we noticed that the boat was completely full of water. We paddled for the sand and dragged the absinthe and ship ashore, as we did so the rotten boards of the boat came apart in our hands. So the ship had sunk but it had not been without some sense of ceremony. Later that night we heard drums in the woods and sat by a lonely light on the avenue. My mother saw us all in the morning still soaking and dragging spades. She said we should get ourselves jobs
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.........................................I have been lucky enough to play alongside the likes of Hawk And A Hacksaw, Jack Rose, Chris Corsano, Alasdair Roberts and Viking Moses.
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