We are about to cross the Irish Sea in a plasterer’s van, a headline about people cheering a lifeboat station closing made me cross, and we have added a tin to the tea towel
Friday, Packing List
Two weeks. I have made a list on the back of an envelope. Leads. Spare strings, lots, after last time. Gaffer tape. The bin bag of shirts. The tea towel. Dee’s fanzine, forty copies, which arrived yesterday stapled slightly wrong and smelling of a school photocopier. Seasickness tablets for the bass player, who gets ill on the Woolwich ferry.
And now a tin. A collecting tin, in the shape of a little lifeboat, which I bought online for six pounds. That is going on the merch table.
I should explain the tin.
What I Read
The drummer has been told one headline a day. This was Thursday’s. It is among NewsThump’s most-read, listed on the front of their site: “‘Patriots’ who insisted ‘All Lives Matter’ celebrate closure of RNLI station dedicated to saving all lives.”
I do not know which station. I have not read the piece and I do not know the facts behind it, so I am not going to pretend to. I am going by the headline, which is a joke, and may be exaggerating for effect, as jokes do.
But it put me in a bad mood for a whole rehearsal. I broke another string. I want to work out why.
What the Lifeboats Are
For anyone who did not grow up near water. The lifeboat service round these islands is not run by the government. It is a charity. It has been for two hundred years.
The crews are volunteers. Mostly. Ordinary people who live in a seaside town and have a pager. A plumber, a teacher, someone who works in the chip shop. The pager goes at three in the morning in January and they get out of bed, run down to the boathouse and go out into the sea in the dark to get somebody they have never met.
They do not ask who it is. That is the whole point. A fisherman, a drunk on a lilo, a yacht full of bankers, a child on an inflatable, a dinghy full of people who have paid a smuggler. Someone is in the water. You go.
It is paid for by tins like the one I bought. And legacies. Old ladies leave it their houses.
I think it might be the best thing this country does. I do not say that lightly. I am not a flag person.
Why I Know About It
My mum’s family are from the Kent coast. My grandad, not the nan in Edmonton, the other side, was crew for nineteen years. He worked on the ferries by day. There is a photograph of him in yellow oilskins that used to be on the mantelpiece, looking embarrassed.
He never talked about it. My mum said he would come in at dawn, soaked, have a cup of tea standing up and go to work. Once, when I was about nine, I asked him if he had ever saved anyone. He said, “We went and fetched a few.” That was all.
He would have gone for anyone. It would not have crossed his mind to ask where they were from. I am sure of that as I am of anything.
What the Joke Is About
As I understand it, the row is this. In the past few years, some of the people the lifeboats pull out of the Channel are migrants in small boats. And some people are angry with the lifeboats for that. They say it is a taxi service. They have stopped giving. Some have shouted at crews.
So the headline pictures the same people who once said that all lives matter being pleased that a station which saves all lives is shutting.
It is a sharp joke and I think a fair one, at whoever it actually fits. I would only add two things.
First, I am sure it does not fit most people who are worried about the boats. You can think the crossings should be stopped and still think that nobody should drown. Most people hold both. My Uncle Pat does. He is cross about immigration morning to night and he has had a standing order to the lifeboats since 1990. He does not see a contradiction, and I am not sure there is one.
Second, stations close for dull reasons too. Not enough crew. A new boat somewhere else that covers the patch. I do not know what happened in this case.
But if anyone, anywhere, really did cheer, then they have not understood what my grandad was for.
The Sea Does Not Check
We are going to be on that water in a fortnight. Three hours and a bit, Holyhead to Dublin, in November, in a ferry with a plasterer’s van in its belly.
I have been on that crossing when it was rough. You go quiet. You look at the size of the waves and you understand that you are a very small warm thing on a very large cold one. If the boat stopped, if you went in, you would have minutes.
And the only thing between you and that is a chip shop worker with a pager in a town you have never heard of.
The sea has no opinions. It does not know your passport. Anyone who has been afraid on it knows that, in their stomach. I think that is why sailors have always had the rule. You go for anyone, because next time it is you.
The Tin
So. The tin is going on the table, between the T-shirts and the tea towel. On both sides of the water, because the same charity covers Ireland as well, north and south. I checked. One service, both countries, all the way round. I find that rather moving.
We voted on it, naturally. The drummer asked if it would “put people off the merch.” The bass player, who is already green at the thought of the crossing, said that if she goes overboard she wants to know she has paid in. Four nil.
I have written a small sign. It says: “They go out for anyone. Stick a quid in.”
A Song, Probably
I do not write many songs that are for things. Most of mine are against. Landlords, the Northern line, a man called Craig.
But I started one on the bus about my grandad. It has four lines so far. It has the cup of tea standing up. It has “we went and fetched a few.” I do not know if it is any good. It made me cry on the 149, which is either a sign that it works or that I am tired.
If it is finished, we will play it in Cork. It is slow. The drummer will complain.
Saturday
The man with the pub has finally sent a number. A hundred euros and “a feed.” I have accepted. A feed is worth having.
I read the London Prat this morning with the tin on the table in front of me. It does this sort of thing well, the stuff that matters under the daftness. Its UK satirical news on lifeboats gets the volunteers exactly, including the embarrassment, and its British satirical news about the Irish Sea ferry has done nothing for the bass player’s nerves. My flatmate’s Bohiney Magazine, for America, she says, has a coastguard with a budget.
Leads. Strings. Tape. Shirts. Tea towel. Fanzines. Tablets. Tin. That is the list. We went and fetched a few.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
