CLIVE GAMMON
Living on the coast as I do, it is only natural that I should spend a good part of August in spasmodic, seething rages brought on by the clowns that visit our part of the country at this time of year, chiefly the ones who drive along the narrow lanes at 15 mph under the impression that these are some kind of viewing tracks rather than highways. ' Dogs ' we call them, the expression originating with one of the children. Many of these dogs tow nasty plastic boats, their hulls moulded to give the impression that they are clinker-built, and have the idea that they are entitled to launch them anywhere and drive them around (no other verb is possible) so close to the beach that at times I have seen them scatter bathers.
Mostly, of course, the rage goes unassuaged, though I like to think of future big-end failures in the cars that labour along in too high a gear for their speed, and on the beach I am always alert for the crunch of fibre-glass on an inshore rock. But the other evening there came a rare and rich application of balm.
There were four of them involved, two women in playsuits and a couple of men in what they imagined were striped Italian fishermen's jerseys. They had towed their plastic ' cruiser ' right on to the beach, unshipped it and got it afloat on a falling tide. They played about in it for a while, swerving around at high speed a couple of hundred yards off the shore and then, bored presumably with this limited exercise and fearful of venturing farther out, decided to come in. They beached it clumsily in the light surf, almost, but unfortunately not quite, causing it to broach to, and the women were left to hold it steady, bows-on, while the men went for the trailer. It got adrift from them once but squealing, not very gaily now, they managed to grab it again.
It took all four a sweating halfhour to get it on to the trailer and to their credit none of the bathers who had been insulted by the noise and petrol fumes offered to help. The tide having dropped a good deal, the boating party was then faced with manhandling boat and trailer over some low rocks which had been exposed, before they could regain the car. This provided a further twenty minutes of mirth, but the finale was far, far better.
Having hitched up boat and trailer, they had to cross perhaps a hundred yards of sand before reaching firm going. And they almost made it. They were only ten yards short of the road when their wheels began to spin and dig in. I suppose a tractor came down and hauled them out eventually. I didn't wait to see since I wanted to nourish in my memory those flailing, useless
wheels, the bafflement of the Mr Toad • faces of the crew, their silly boat behind them. All this, I'm aware, may sound very illnatured, but there is more to it than simple irritation. I'm sure that in ten years' time people will scarcely credit that once it was possible to buy a boat and a powerful engine and take it to sea without an hour of instruction, without holding a licence. Many owners of such boats and engines shouldn't be let out on the park lake with a hired dinghy. The ones that hang about inshore, especially those that tow waterskiers, pollute the pleasant seaside air and are a serious hazard to life. In recent years, horrific accidents have happened to children in this country when they have got in the way of a ski-tow. These idiots also clog the lifeboat service, the ones who can't sail, never listen to a weather forecast, can't fix a plug in an outboard motor, think that they can row an inflatable against wind and tide. There was almost a 10 per cent increase in calls on lifeboats last year, and the kind of weather we have been having this summer makes it a sure thing that there will be an even bigger increase in 1971.
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