Maddie’s World
In her weekly column, Maddie Grigg shares tales from her life in rural Dorset . . .
IT’S good boating weather and we’re down at West Bay, making the most of the sunshine. Mr Grigg has been here since early this afternoon, when he took his small boat Osprey off its mooring and on to the pontoon in the outer harbour.
Now we’re here, all that Mr and Mrs Champagne Charlie and I have to do is to step aboard.
We come armed with sun cream, non-alcoholic beers and bags of fish and chips from one of the nearby kiosks. Then we have our supper aboard Osprey before setting off between the two crowded piers.
The scenery along this part of the Dorset coast is spectacular, as you’ll know if you ever watched the hit ITV series “Broadchurch”.
From the sea it’s even more amazing, and I have one of those moments of “How lucky I am to have this on my doorstep” as I look at the shore.
We pootle along towards Golden Cap – the highest point on the south coast, although greenery is obscuring the cliff’s peak of golden sandstone – then head slowly back, trawling lines behind us in the hope we might catch a mackerel or two.
“Bubbles, you need to pull the line backwards and forwards through the water,” Champagne Charlie says to his wife.
She doesn’t look impressed. “If you’re such an expert, why don’t you do it?” She hands the line to her husband and gives her arm a rest.
Mr Grigg passes me his line then reaches for his rod. The three of us are fishing from the stern and not one of us gets a bite.
Champagne Charlie points to a boat a little way out.
“We should go where he is,” he says to Mr Grigg.
“What makes you think he’s catching anything?” I say. “He’s probably thinking he should be fishing where we are.”
Then Mr Grigg’s fishing rod curls up like the back of one of those devil’s coach-horse beetles. The line goes taut.
“I’ve got something,” my husband says, a look of exhilaration on his face. “And it’s a whopper.”
Just as he reels it in, the curled-up rod springs back and the line loosens.
“The blighter!” he says. “I almost had it there.”
“What do you reckon it was?” Mr Champagne Charlie says.
“Something pretty big,” Mr Grigg says.
It reminds me of a scene from “Under Milk Wood” and I imagine my husband hauling up a whalebone corset like Nogood Boyo.
“A mermaid, probably,” I mutter. Mr Grigg glares at me. Anxious not to hurt his feelings, I say, “Or at least a cod. Yes, probably a cod.”
We head back into the harbour and discuss our fishing expedition outside a local hostelry, where we bump into a family of four from Lush Places.
Mr Grigg and Champagne Charlie regale them with tales of the ones that got away.
“It’s a bit boring, if you ask me,” Bubbles confides, while our other halves invent names of fish I’ve never heard of.
“Why do you think I don’t go out in the boat very often?” I whisper.
Whether it’s a woman thing or my boredom threshold being on a par with a threeyear-old, I don’t know, but I don’t find going out in the boat very interesting.
“What’s that you’re saying?” Mr Grigg says as he breaks away from the conversation with the Lush Places family.
“We were remarking on how much we enjoyed it out there,” Bubbles says quickly.
“Good,” Mr Grigg says. “We’re going again at the weekend. You can come with us.” n