"Salcombe 19" drabbles by Neville Hunt

Beached

Salcombe 19 #4

We’re sitting here exhausted
My lovely wife and me
Exhausted on your holiday?
That isn’t meant to be!

With our lovely family
Down here this year too
Dealing with a lot of noise
A helluva hullabaloo.

Some of them have gone now
School has called them home
The other ones are up the street
In a cottage of their own.

We always dine so well here
What the kids will eat
Pizza, pasties, fish and chips
A carbohydrate treat!

But even if the cuisine.
The dizzy heights don’t reach
We all have had a lovely time
Playing on the beach.

Odd bod

Salcombe 19 #3

Today was Salcombe Gig Regatta. Cornish pilot gigs were traditionally fast, sleek, 6-oared rowing boats taking pilots to board visiting ships. Yesterday the estuary was invaded by such gigs. There must have been twenty or more, taking turns to race up and down the estuary.

Familiar early morning or evening sights here are teams of six men or women training in all weathers. Each boat designed for six hardworking, toned, super-fit rowers, plus, and I wonder why, one lazy little git at the back, looking the other way doing nothing except shout abuse at the other six. Odd!

The Pilgrimage

Salcombe 19 #2

On annual pilgrimage are we
South southwest with the family
With blow-up boat, a son and daughter
Just itching to get on the water
Their families love Baba’s ferry
To take them ‘cross the estuary
Filling the boat with buckets and stuff
Until I tell them “That’s enough!”
Back from the beach it’s ices all
“Lick them quick or drips will fall!”
Little ones with messy faces
Having fun in this great oasis
A place of memories galore
Next year we’ll be back for even more!
(The only thing to spoil the view
Is windows streaked with seagull poo!)

Solo but nono

Salcombe 19 #1

He was always there... at the back of the beach, alone. Then he would race his dinghy, alone. A Solo class, of course. But that was decades ago. Today, we revisited ‘our beach’, the one that gets cut off... reserved for people like us, with boats. Not strictly ‘ours’, but... y’know!

We saw him again today, alone, at the back of the beach before the race. Virtually unchanged, slightly older, but still as creepy! Years ago, there was a murder in Salcombe. We all thought, erroneously it seems, the murderer might be him. But you shouldn’t judge people on appearances!