Read Laughs, Corpses... and a Little Romance Page 10

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  I like to think I’m an easygoing chap, but there’s one old grouch in town, Bill Evans, who’s always rubbing me up the wrong way. He’s an oyster farmer with a big oyster lease just outside the harbour, and only last week we nearly had a collision as he came flying out of his lease in his workboat. According to the rules of navigation I had right-of-way, but oyster farmers have their own rule, which says that oyster farmers have right-of-way over everybody else. At the last minute he had to make a sharp turn to starboard to avoid a whack to his boat, which is a lot smaller than Annabelle. This left him right alongside, and he took the opportunity to fling a lot of blue language in our direction, It was returned with great enthusiasm by Jack, who told him to learn the rules of navigation, but padded out with lots of unrepeatable adjectives. I had to pull him up a bit sharply about that.

  To get back to what I was saying, next morning was Sunday, and Sunday means a bit of a sleep-in and a late start for us, which was lucky, as I had a bit of a hangover. We started at 9 a.m. with a ferry run out to the Island and back. Later that morning we had a trip with a bunch of British tourists. For some reason, pommie tourists are very keen on singing songs. They usually start off with “Sailing down the river, on a Sunday afternoon” and move on to all the old numbers like “She’ll be coming round the mountain” and “Roll out the barrel”, songs that I remember from my youth of long ago. As we were coming back down the river I noticed that Bill Evans was close behind us in his workboat. The tourists by then were really getting into full voice, and one over-endowed woman at the stern started them all off singing “Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves”. She was wearing a blouse made from the Union Jack, which seemed a bit disrespectful to Her Majesty. She climbed up on the stern rail, conducting with one hand, and hanging on to the flagstaff that we use to fly the Australian Flag. The flagstaff snapped, and Queen Britannia disappeared over the stern with a mighty splash.

  I jammed the propeller into reverse to stop Annabelle quick smart, and Jack grabbed the lifebelt from the back of the wheelhouse and heaved it to where she had disappeared, but by chance she bobbed up to the surface right alongside Bill Evans' boat coming behind, spluttering and screaming for help. She grabbed the side of his boat, and he had little choice but to pull her in, which was no easy task on account of her size, and he almost capsized. Finally he dumped her in the bottom of his boat on top of all the muddy oyster gear. Now the insults really started to fly, generally involving our incompetence, stupidity and so on, with Bill Evans, Queen Britannia and Jack all yelling at the tops of their voices. Anyway we were just coming into the harbour, so the outcome was that Bill Evans took a very wet Queen Britannia back to the wharf ahead of us. As he pulled away Bill yelled out a parting insult to us. “I should have a bloody payment out of you for this, you stupid bastards”. Jack’s wit didn’t desert him. “You found her floating and abandoned Bill, so you’d better claim the salvage money.” Nicky in the office had a lot of smoothing over to do, and Queen Britannia had to be taken round to the marina for a shower and a clean up.