Monday 3 September 2012

Interred

This weekend we buried my dad's ashes in the family plot in the Rosary Cemetery in Norwich. It was a sad and beautiful day, but not without some funny moments. The ceremony was conducted by a Church of England Canon, and that meant I could get a very old joke out of retirement for the day: "He's been fired!"

One of the tributes came from a woman who was a typist in the 60s and had typed up one of my dad's cruising logs. Copy typing is a boring job, and boat logs aren't much more than a list of positions, distances and brief comments about sea, weather, vessel and crew. However she described this particular job as an exciting page-turner. I haven't read it, but I'd like to think it's a kind of predecessor to this bolingblog. If I ever find it I hope to publish it on the internet as "bolinglog".

There was another story about one of my dad's genuine log entries, from a different boat and a different decade. It said "Collected inflatable rubber dinghy from Mr. Reid. Rather old and flabby".

Richard "old jokes home" B

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