Modern classic, swollen head
Practical Boat Owner|Summer 2023
The many perfumes of Memory Lane
MaRabelo
Modern classic, swollen head

The sun is up and the breeze is fair, and we are heading for the water again, the struggles of the yard forgotten -
No they aren't. The events underlying Marcel Proust's horrifyingly long novel came back to him when he tasted a sort of French bun soaked in tea. Now, a whiff of diesel takes me back to the battles of the winter.

It started down below. During the very rainy months it was resolved to paint out the forepeak, using a white gloss designed for terrestrial bathrooms and guaranteed not to harbour nasty black mould. Slopping this stuff on in a confined space led to internal vistas of the kind enjoyed by the heavily opiated poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in which Alph the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea, followed by a headache and a craving for air you could breathe without having to chew it first.

This story is from the Summer 2023 edition of Practical Boat Owner.

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This story is from the Summer 2023 edition of Practical Boat Owner.

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