Church Group
Page 9
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The next morning I woke up aching but optimistic about the new day. Following Al on his bike, this time also in shorts and a t-shirt myself, we found Ship at the end of his back garden. He’d already taken the cover off the boat and was stood looking up at it, a pipe hanging from his lips.
“Morning Boy. Are you all ready for another day’s work then?” he asked us.
I’d barely gotten out of bed and had heavy arms but was still totally truthful when I replied, “Can’t wait!”
“If you’ll follow me then,” he said, climbing the ladder onto the deck. “And Daisy if you don’t mind the intrusion of these two young men.”
I assumed Daisy must be the name of the boat, or Ship had gone senile in the night, he was old enough. Either way I followed Al up the ladder.
Ship handed us a bucket of gloves and cleaning products, and scouring pads that mums use in kitchens.
“You’ll be cleaning her today, these dark green patches you see, down here.” He pointed.
“Is that from the sea?” I asked.
“Oh no Boy, it’s a long time since she’s seen the sea. No that’s from being out in the weather.”
Ship got down slowly onto his old knees and began to show us what to do, spraying some fibreglass cleaner on first then scrubbing the green marks with a scouring pad.
“You might need to go over the same area more than once,” he said, as nothing happened to the marks he was scrubbing. “That’s fine, just keep going until it’s all gone.”
He slowly stood up again, his old legs taking a while to do what he wanted them to. Then he turned to us one last time as he climbed down the ladder. “That’s all there is to it then Boy. If you need me I’ll be in the house.”
We got straight to work, just like the day before, in an effort not to be shown up by one another. Though try as we might, the green marks just didn’t want to budge. I carried on regardless, and eventually found a technique that worked. All you had to do was keep on scrubbing the same spot until it felt like your arm was going to fall off, ignore the pain and continue until your arm actually did fall off, then use your other arm to hold your severed arm in place while you continued scrubbing and you’d just about clean one small spot the size of a two pence coin. We had a whole bloody boat to do.
When Ship came out a few hours later we were in agony, it hurt to lift the triangular cucumber sandwiches he’d brought with him.
“You seem to be getting on alright so far,” he said, surveying our work.
“I thought we’d have finished by now,” Al replied.
“Scrubbing the deck?” Ship laughed. “There’s many a seaman out there who wishes it was that easy, that’s why it’s used as a punishment.”
I could remember people in cartoons being forced to scrub the deck on television, I hadn’t made the connection until now though.
“How long do you think it will take us to finish cleaning the whole thing?” I asked.
“It will take as long as it takes, you might be done by the end of the week,” he replied.
It was only Wednesday, I couldn’t imagine another two and a half days of doing this, surely it wouldn’t take that long?
It turned out we were both wrong. By the time we’d finished we were coming to the end of our second week.