Going About – It’s Cowes Week

There’s not much I miss about corporate life now I’ve retired. Drinks and dinner with my mates Steve and Dee after a day of fraught negotiations with clients is one thing I miss. The annual BT sailing competition is another.

It was held in Cowes the week before the world-famous sailing extravaganza when the yachtie world descends on a very small town on the Isle of Wight. In the world of sport, or anything else for that matter, never do so many visit something so small, inhabited by so few.

In the first few years in my division, I was given the option of taking a boat with some of my colleagues, not many of whom had stepped foot on a racing yacht before, let alone sailed one in competition. We did however have a guy (Mike) who was a sailing enthusiast and he became the skipper. Because of my organisational abilities, or more likely because nobody else could be bothered, I became captain and quartermaster, which involved two key responsibilities; hand over my credit card to cover the insurance for the boat which was chartered on our behalf and to ensure a good supply of easily cooked food and a plentiful supply of beer.

Needless to say, we never did very well in the competitions, generally coming in about 26th out of 28 yachts. This was put down to the fact that most of the time, most of the crew were completely wrecked and didn’t know a spinnaker from a mainsail. Nevertheless our boat was the one everyone visited when we tied-up at night.

When I left the division, I managed to convince my ex-director that providing me with a yacht and allowing my crew to continue to take part was a good move, given that we were extremely good losers. He agreed and for a further 3 years, the yacht was chartered, the mooring fees paid and we continued getting wrecked, however, the rails were coming off, if I can change modes of transport for a second. The crew became even more interested in drinking rather than winching, and sunbathing rather than racing but we still had a blast.

Finally, my ex-director said enough was enough. If we wanted to continue we had to fund it ourselves. The thought of paying £750 for two day’s charter of a yacht became too much for some and the crew started to change. Our skipper left and I, as captain and custodian of the credit card was tasked with finding a new one. I remember some guy calling me when I was in my car one night applying for the job as skipper. He asked what sort of yacht it was and when I replied that it was a white one and that we didn’t anticipate stopping the more social side of the event, he hung up ! The yacht was, as I was to find out later, a Jeanneau 36….so there !

The next few years were a struggle to get crew and to keep our place in the starting 28 yachts as there was always a huge demand for one of the places but we held on until one year when virtually everything which could go wrong, did. We gate crashed the official pre-regatta dinner and managed to get the waiter to bring us 6 cases of Bud which we stashed under the table. This was noticed by the other competitors who couldn’t get a drink but maybe if they had tipped the waiter a tenner like we had done, they would not have gone thirsty ! We hit the starter/judges boat amidships (that means right in the middle) at the start of one race – in yachting, an unforgivable sin. And then the final straw. As we dropped off our replacement skipper at Ryde harbour, we heard someone shouting at us on a megaphone. Turning round we were confronted by the Southampton to Ryde ferry waiting impatiently to get into his berth at Ryde pier. An official complaint was made and that was the end of my racing career however when Cowes week comes round, I start to get itchy feet and start barking instructions to my crew – sorry, family.

Rangers FC…..R.I.P.

It was the great Bill Shankly, ex-manager of Liverpool who once said that ‘Football was not a matter of life and death…it was more important than that’, and in Glasgow that statement is so true.

I cannot recall how I changed my allegiance from Clyde FC to Rangers but it was about the age of 11 or 12 and I also cannot remember if there was any of the usual fall-out when a family member switches from one team to another. However, once I’d switched I did everything to get to every home game at Ibrox, sneaking under or through the turnstiles whenever I could.

I do however remember the glory days when Rangers swept everything before them with the great side which I can still recount today, Ritchie, Shearer, Caldow, Greig, McKinnon, Baxter etc etc. I can remember the signing of Colin Stein, one of the greatest centre forwards I have ever seen. He scored eight goals in his first three games for the club and I was at Ibrox when he faced his previous team, Hibs, and scored a hat-trick against them in his second game.

I remember the interminable trips by car to Leeds and Newcastle to see if Rangers could overcome English opposition in the Fair Cities Cup (the precursor of the European Cup Winners Cup) and watched Rangers fans disgrace themselves as they have been doing down the ages.

Then I got married and found my father-in-law was a closet Celtic supporter and had been waiting for his eldest daughter to marry a football man so he could start going to the football, and that we did, every Saturday. One weekend at Celtic Park when his team were at home and the following weekend when Rangers were at home. It was a thoroughly enjoyable few years but scarred forever by the Ibrox Disaster of the 2nd January 1971 when I was 20 and had attended the game with my father-in-law and brother-in-law Paul whom I had successfully converted to Rangers - one of the few Catholics to support the Protestant team. This is not the place to go into the details of that terrible event in Rangers’, and Scottish Football’s history but I was seconds from death and indeed felt people dying beneath my feet as I was swept over them. 66 people died that afternoon.

On a happier note, Rangers won their first European trophy the following year and my support never wavered. The next revolution was when Graeme Souness took over the side and immediately started signing the best players in the UK, something like Chelsea did a couple of years ago. We won the league nine years in a row and it was magic.

Coming right up-to-date, Rangers were dumped out of the primary European competition last night playing what many regarded as an Eastern-European pub side. That says it all. Tan phoned me to commiserate or was it to gloat and I had to admit to him that the football played by Rangers was so awful that I switched TV channels to watch ‘River Cottage’ which again says it all.

The photograph accompanying this blog is a classic one. Duncan Ferguson, an ex-Rangers player grabbing an opponent by the throat. He was that sort of guy !

Timothy Lewis Cupples

I said in a previous blog that I would write about each of my boys. I will start with the baby of the three – Timmy who is pictured alongside this article. I owe Timmy a lot – a new car to be exact but that has already been covered in a previous blog. I owe him more than that though because he is a credit to himself and his mother, and her partner (now husband) George who formed his character after I’d left when he was only two years old. After that I would see Timmy (and my other sons) every couple of weeks when I would travel up to Glasgow to make sure I kept contact with them. It was tough for all of us but we had some good times especially later on when we all went off on holidays with loads of friends. Even then I could see where Timmy was going – he could, in that wonderful Glaswegian saying, start a fight in an empty house !

On holiday he would fight with his good pal, Jamie (as well with everybody else). On one occasion, we heard a crashing sound from the apartment upstairs where all the boys were living. Timmy was about eight or nine at the time and him and Jamie were arguing about something trivial. Suddenly, this almighty crash filled the air and all the adults ran upstairs to find that Jamie, totally pissed off with Timmy’s behaviour had simply pulled the wardrobe over on him whilst he slept on his bed. It was the only way Jamie could get one over on this little reprobate. I have videos of these holidays and the tapes are filled with me castigating Timmy for this or that, telling him to get away from the edge of a 300ft cliff, telling him to eat his food, telling him to stop hitting Jamie with a deckchair ! Despite this, these holidays were wonderful and the videos are treasured visual memories.

As Timmy grew older it was obvious that he had a particular penchant for getting into trouble, usually not of his making. This worried me as I’m sure it does for all parents, particularly those estranged parents who don’t see as much of their children as they would like. He would get his nose broken by some creeps who had asked him for a light for their cigarette and when he’d replied that he didn’t smoke, they simply given him a good old ‘Glasgow kiss’. This was Timmy’s version !

When he joined the Air Force, he was always in trouble for forgetting to salute higher commanding officers and invariably when I phoned him he was either in the sick bay or at home nursing a broken ankle or a broken foot, caused by him dropping the bombs he was supposed to load onto the jets at his base in Leuchars, Fife.

Only a few weeks ago he was dragged off of a plane coming back to the UK from his mate’s wedding in Cyprus after a bit of ‘horseplay’ on the way out. Timmy reckons it was a case of mistaken identity but nevertheless he was strip searched, banned from the airline for life and had a fund a new plane fare home. That’s my boy ! I used to joke that if they ever sent Timmy off to one of the world’s trouble spots, the war would either escalate immediately he got there or would finish pretty quickly. How prophetic was this ?

His job in the Air Force is usually (he says) one of monotonous monotony. But last year he was sent off to the Falklands where Britain still patrols the skies heading off the Argentinean jets who occasionally stray into’ British’ territory. He was looking forward to it immensely but it turned out to be an extremely barren place and a boring posting…apart from the time when he went into an Army drinking den, the patrons of which did not take too kindly to a poncy Air Force man entering their establishment. Timmy’s story is that two of them ambushed him but he held his own and was put on a charge for beating up two Army commandos, a charge later dismissed on the basis of self-defence.

And so to Afghanistan. Timmy’s philosophy, and one which I admire immensely, is that he would rather, as a single guy, volunteer for these postings rather than have someone, married with a couple of kids, be forced to go. And so he is off to that far off trouble spot in March 2009, followed by a tour of Iraq upon his return. In the meantime, he has done some free-fall parachute jumps and will soon take his HGV licence, presumably so he can move more bombs faster. The mind boggles !

Timmy – you’re a great boy and a terrific son and I’m very proud of you.......but look after yourself.

The Great British Press……………..

I love my newspapers. One of my morning rituals is to sign onto the internet and read these papers in the following order; The Daily Telegraph, The Sun, The Scottish Daily Record. I reckon this cross section of tabloids and broadsheets from both sides of the border gives me a balanced view. I would like to read other papers online but they tend to have a design which just does not appeal. Having said that, the Daily Telegraph has recently changed it’s on-line format and I’m having trouble adjusting to it. If ever the statement, ‘if it aint broke don’t fix it’ is valid, then it is when applied to the nerds at the DT who changed a very readable design. The Sun is a pure rag but I do like my pictures of Brittany Spears and Colleen McCoughlin every morning with my cornflakes. The Daily Record keeps my Scottish roots alive.

It wasn’t always like this. We only got broadband just over a year ago – seven years after asking for it ! Being in the telecoms business I knew that there was a technical reason why we couldn’t have it (distance from the main telephone exchange) but eventually, after a campaign by the locals, we got France Telecom to spend some money and fix the problem. Before that reading the papers was a nightmare. Click on an article, go and make a cup of coffee, come back and see if it had loaded.

Nowadays, switching on the PC and bringing up the daily’s is something of a pleasurable habit. It keeps me out of harm’s way and prevents me being dragged into a bout of housekeeping which J thinks we should share equally now I’m retired. My response is that I have to read the papers so that when we are invited to dinner (not often – see previous blog) at least one of us can talk authoritively on ‘world affairs’.

My take on some recent articles shows that I do not take things seriously. Today there was an article on a guy who had both arms sewn back on after a farming accident. Thing was, they weren’t his arms ! They were from a dead man. Now what if the ‘donor’ was an habitual nose picker….or even worse ! Will these new arms suddenly start doing their own thing at any old time ? When he caresses his wife, to her will they feel the same or will it be like having a new man ?

Another article was about a strange creature washed up on a New York beach. Various theories were discussed about what it was – a dog which had drowned, a shell less turtle, a new species of underwater creature. But as the scientists rushed to the scene some old guy, carted the corpse off and said he was ‘going to stick on my wall’ !! Only in America.

Then there was the ‘disturbing’ article about a UK man who committed suicide by chainsaw. There were few details but what bits did he cut off first ? Couldn’t have been his arms or he wouldn’t have been able to continue ! I know that I could not do this as my chainsaw typically cuts out (if you’ll forgive the pun) just as you are starting. Can you imagine – you’re just about to end it all, you raise the traconneause (as we call them in France), you grit your teeth and then the bloody thing cuts out cause it needs more petrol !

On the subject of death by chainsaw, Julie stays well clear when I get my chopper out. In fact she goes out for the day ever since I showed her an article in the papers last year where some old guy (again in the UK) managed to chop his wife’s head off with a chainsaw in a terrible accident. Apparently he was up a ladder cutting his hedge whilst she was holding it so he would not slip and injure himself. Well, he did slip (so he says) and the chainsaw unfortunately cut his dear wife’s head off as he fell. He got away with it ! Incroyable !