So Jeremy has been here for the last 2 weeks and it has been great.

Just what I want to do on my holiday

He has been the key influence in the resurrection of Dileas. He moved tons of sand and provided huge doses of muscle.

We go diving. This is my Dugong persona.

He prowls the reef

These are happy Okinawan fish welcoming Jeremy to their part of town.

Anyway his flight leaves at 18:30 on Saturday. We hurtle down in the truckette, as the pig liver car is in repair mode. The truckette on a freeway is like flying a Sopwith Camel, lots of  noise, shaking, groaning and vibration. All good, I drop Jeremy off in good time and camel it back home. As soon as I arrive I get a call from Jeremy saying that the time on his ticket was wrong and the flight left at 13:30. I put on the flying suit and goggles and thunder back to the airport. Sure enough the time on his ticket is 18:30. Someone has messed up big time. We rattle and roll home to drown our sorrows. Next morning it is back down the freeway again. The truckette loves this. Air China are very nice and Jeremy  is booked Naha, Shanghai,Beijing Frankfurter, Geneva. I know he got to Frankfurter but haven’t heard if he has got home.

Jeremy is admirably stoical about this inconvenience. Most people I know er like me, would complain, whine, and go on and on and on and on at some poor airline rep. Good show Jeremy – thanks for all the help. Come back soon.

On Jeremy’s last day we make a final assault on Dileas. Many thanks to Sakurai san who explained my predicament to some of the movers who um move stuff around the university. They volunteer to move the boat.

Yoko comes too with the most amazing cat I have ever seen. The cat is a Maine Coon who sits happily in her basket except when she feels like a little stroll. The cat is very placid and Zen as are all Japanese Maine Coons.

Yoko takes a Main Coon for a walk by the shores of Tancha Bay.

Yoko with cat

Anyway , we manage to turn the boat on its side.

Sideways

We then spend a lot of time, energy and sweat getting Dileas righted to her natural position.

on her bottom again

We then manoeuvre, cajole, winch, tug, push, heave. Dileas has put on a lot of weight due to intercutaneal build-ups of sand, but we manage to get her out of the slough of despond.

Hooray, Dileas is free! Whether she will ever breast the waves again is another matter.

She looks fine from this angle

Resurrection men, woman and Main Coon

An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!

So Ian and Ann come visit.  Much delighted though I be by the visit of my brother and his wife, when I see them – I see only muscle.  I can press gang them into working on the rescue of Dileas.

Family down the mine.

We dig out all the sand from inside and around the wreck. I say we but it is essentially Ann, Ian and Jeremy, as my knee condition gives me the pink slip.

Bien ficellé

We wrap Dileas in a complex rope bridle designed by Ian and the time has come for the big push er no pull. We purchase a winchette and little by little, inch by inch by inch, we pull Dileas from her bed of shame.

What people do when they come to Japan

So we move Dileas about 4 feet forward and feel that the back is broken. Although defeated by darkness, with a stronger winch and a few more horribly bemuscled friends, I feel that Dileas will be freed enfin. Thanks Jeremy, Ann, Ian.

We also have a  party with prized old and new friends.

Dileas, pronounced Djeelas by the way, is in agony. She lies, deeply wounded , wedged in a secret passage. I initially thought that a few of us could probably work her free and so we set about it on my first evening back from Freeeance.

For some reason she would not budge.

Forget it. We could not move her at all. It soon became clear that the poor boat is not only badly beaten but is also filled with about 20 tons of sand.

I reckon that if I can lever up her bows a few inches using a long lever, following the famous adage of Archimedes, “Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world.” then we can start shoveling out sand from underneath.

Sakurai san finds me a perfect metal pole for a lever and more importantly, Jeremy arrives from Geneva. I now have a lever and muscle. My knee condition is a big drawback as I have difficulty crouching and lifting.

Long Toed Stilt. You can actually see their middle long toes. Well I can. The ring indicates that the bird came from China. Maybe on the same flight as Jeremy.

It’s great picking people up from the airport as there is the amazing stinking pond hard by. I always stop and see what is going on.

This old airport gets me down

Anyway, Jeremy and I attack the shipwreck. We lift the bows and start shoveling. We move tons of sand but find no buried treasure.

Pieces of eight.

And you never saw me take snuff, the reason being that in my snuff-box I carry a piece of Parmesan cheese–a cheese made in Italy, very nutritious. Well, that’s for Ben Gunn!”

Clowns to left of me
Jokers to the right
Here I am, stuck in the middle.

I can see clearly now. Moving Dileas is going to be a project for the next few weeks / months. Once out from between Scylla and Charybdis, we have to get her back to the house some 300 meters away. How?

Oh no!

Sitting in the lounge in Charles de Gaulle  on my way home, I get this.

“The peak of the typhoon last night (it went straight over us) coincided with a high tide. There is sand over several low-lying parts of the road this morning.

That being the case, I thought I’d better go and see how your boat fared. The first bit of bad news is, it was no longer there―nada. We had pulled it as far up into the gap as we could and chained it to the rock. Well, the chain was still there…

So, I walked a bit further down the beach and, lo and behold, good news! There was your boat, firmly jammed into that little crevice that leads to the next beach.

The next bad news: it had clearly had a very rough night, and it is going to take a lot of work with a sander and a fiberglass repair kit to make it seaworthy again.”

Hot tears drip onto my keyboard.

Notwithstanding, had it been me who pulled Dileas up into Dead Man’s Gulch, I would undoubtedly have done a much lazier job than my friends and the Typhoon would have blown her off to Bali.

Oh dear,oh Dileas.

Cha b’e là na gaoithe là nan sgolb.

I want to live in Sandy and Zandra’s chateau for ever. I could hide Steerpikely in one of the top bedrooms and no-one would ever know I was there. I would sneak out early in the morning and snuffle around in the forest, rubbing loam and pine needles into my naked body. I would read and write and play with coloring books in the evening, sitting  beside a wood burning stove, drinking fine wine and gorging myself on the produits de la belle France and laughing with the Mac Gillivrays.

The little window top right would be my room

You may think it is a pool but in fact it is full of brine for steeping jambons

Zandra photobombed by badger

Minimalist

We go to buy food, we eat gloriously, we see a Bonelli’s Eagle.

Happiness and Joy

Selle de Chevreuil

Zandra is a ceramicist.

This one of her Bulls

Bliss

So I am in France, which is a very beautiful country to look at.

The Sweet Baby Jesus Gate in Rians

Huge Typhoon headed for Okinawa.

My hotel room

Annecy

Eat my lunch

Itinerant Cheese Woman

So this is turning into an epic. I have to be in the south of France for 30 minutes on Tuesday morning. I start by changing flights to avoid typhoon heading for Okinawa. I am now in Tokyo in the middle of the typhoon I was escaping from. This morning I head out for the station to catch the Narita Express train to catch my Paris flight. It is still pouring with rain but not windy. I hobble for miles through corridors,tunnels, underpasses and the like.  This is Tokyo so there squillions of other hobblers. I finally find an information desk, “Narita Express wa doko deska?”

“Oh good morning sir, I am terribly sorry that all trains to Narita have been cancelled due to the typhoon.” says impeccably made-up and presented young lady in surprisingly equally impeccable English. What typhoon? It is raining but no wind.

Anyway it turns out that if I go to Nippori there may be trains from there to Narita.

I stand on a platform that has Narita written on it for a while. Nothing happens. I phone Naoko who sends a text in Japanese explaining my problem. This I show to an attendant who says “Hai , Narita starship, platform 15.”  I get there to find signs saying Narita Starship cancelled because of typhoon.

Things are looking bad and even if I get to Narita, what are the chances of the flight taking off?

The cry goes up “Last train to Narita!” I scramble aboard wide eyed and breathless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg8DhjQOtzM

actually this is better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMyNcMG7Ryk

Last train to Narita.

This seems to be a local train and stops at about a million stations but eventually gets to the airport.

I am now in the lounge with lots of others. All flights are either cancelled or delayed except to yes you guessed it Paris! I really am a very lucky person.

Hooray!

The Japanese of course are impeccably calm and smiling throughout this difficulty which would send most nationalities into baying for blood mode.