Snatched

If you don’t ask, you don’t get – that’s a maxim by which I try to live these days. As an adage, it’s advice you hear all the time, but it’s not always that easy to follow is it? Sometimes - by asking directly for what you want - you risk getting a slap in the face with a wet kipper, but in my view that’s still better than being left guessing about whether the answer to your question would have been 'yes' or 'no'. So these days I don’t bother with any pussyfooting – I just come out with it and ask for what I want on the premise that if I ask often enough, I may just get it eventually.

Trouble is, the answer is invariably negative. I must be asking the wrong people I suppose but that’s always been my problem – the wrong people are (in my opinion) always the right people. I guess the real 'right' people just don’t interest me, unless we’re talking politics (which one should never do of course).

I’m rambling on because I’ve broken a rib and the pain is sending me delirious. I did it yesterday when I was out sailing in ferocious winds. We capsized badly, broke the mast, and I was thrown into the freezing water with such force that I caught my ribcage on the gunwale as I went. The whole episode was a bit crazy because we had to wait about thirty minutes before the rescue boat arrived (we no longer had means of propulsion, having no mast), during which time the boat was almost completely under water (and we with it- we'd climbed back in at this point). When I was finally transferred to the rescue boat I was trying to throw a line back to the stricken boat but my crewmate dropped it, whereupon it snaked into the water and immediately became wrapped around our propeller causing our engine to stop. So, now the rescue boat had no means of propulsion either and we were all adrift in a 40 mph wind, heading for the weir. Dangling by my toes from the back of the boat, I managed to untangle the rope from the propeller, re-start the engine, and we were on our way to safety. Nothing to write home about I know, though my ribcage is still killing me and I can barely sit up.

It’s a good job, after all, that I’m not in the throes of some passionate affair. Thrashing around in bed with someone would no doubt put unnecessary pressure on my thoracic region and presumably turn pleasure into pain. And we wouldn’t want that, would we?