Travel Book for March 2011
A Dip In The Ocean by Sarah Outen
Chapter 1
Portrait of the Rower as a Youngster
‘Life is either a great adventure or nothing’
HELEN KELLER
I couldn’t see any clear water – it was all white behind me and more waves were breaking. I felt a cold numbing fear that I was about to be obliterated. I had just enough time to shove the phone in the cabin and lock the door before throwing myself to the deck, holding on tight to the safety rails.
As I screamed, a bomb of a wave exploded over the boat and my world went white. But it was dark somehow, beneath the water, it was loud and I could taste salt everywhere. I was a rag doll, somersaulting through the surf which was now rushing us along the reef, growing louder and louder. And then I breathed a sweet breath – we must have come back around. I had floated off Dippers on my line and was surrounded by fizzing water while the wave receded. I looked round and saw no one and nothing but surf. I screamed again, and even I struggled to hear it over the sound of crashing waves. Dippers tilted over to one side with the water on deck but I scrambled on board, heaving myself through the safety rails. An oar was broken and the throw line was tangled, but there was no time to do anything but hold on; another wave was on its way. I knew that the reef must only be metres below now and with it certain annihilation.
I remember my dad once compared me to a carthorse. I like to think that this was his way of saying that he thought I was resilient and had stamina and strength, hopefully both in mind and body. I had to be, really; I was the only girl sandwiched between my two brothers, Michael and Matthew, and our family was always on the move, professional nomads of the Royal Air Force. Dad was an officer and so change became the norm for us from very early on as we trooped all over. By my seventh birthday I had already chalked up three infant schools and lived in five different houses in three different countries. Nothing too exotic, mind; Wales is as foreign as I remember, though we lived in Europe for my first couple of years.
The lack of interesting postings was due to Dad’s ill health. In my memory he always had arthritis; it was diagnosed when I was toddling about and he was just inside thirty. Unfortunately it was one of the worst forms of all – rheumatoid arthritis. This causes the immune system to go haywire, attacking itself and wreaking havoc on every joint in the body, causing inflammation, disintegration and degeneration. One of my memories is of him sitting down at the breakfast table with a mountain of tablets beside him, wearing splints on his wrists, and sometimes spending days at a time in bed, too sore to move. Too sore even for a hug. Too sore to do anything but sleep and hope and fight on for a better day. If I was a carthorse, then Dad was a superhero carthorse. When you are fighting pain twenty-four hours a day with a crumbling skeleton, stamina takes on a whole new meaning. In my mind at least, he was as strong as an ox.
Another defining period in my own evolution as a carthorse (remember, we’re thinking resilience and stamina here) is my time at boarding school. When I was seven, one of my RAF friends boasted that he would be going off to boarding school the next year. I was rather in awe of the idea, and thought he must be very grown-up and that I must be missing out on some sort of grand adventure. I started a campaign of pestering to go, too, and the next school year I started at Stamford Junior School in Lincolnshire, sporting a regulation crimson corduroy beret and looking perfectly ridiculous. My older brother Michael joined the boys’ version on the other side of town, with no ridiculous headwear in sight, much to my annoyance. Now, some might recoil at the thought of my cruel parents packing us off to boarding school at the sweet young age of eight and ten, but it made sense. It promised stability in our so far very unstable education; we could also make friends and keep them, settle in, and progress through school uninterrupted for the first time in our lives. My own reason for wanting to go was not at all sensible and based purely on the idea of it being a permanent sleepover, and therefore a lot of fun.
A Dip In The Ocean by Sarah Outen is published by Summersdale (paperback; £8.99). It is also available through amazon.com and all good booksellers.
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