How to Break our Hearts.

I’m back from working in France, and I had a much more positive blog entry in mind than the one I’m going to write, but that’s life I suppose. Having been back for over a week, I’ve been on board our boat several times since returning. But on arrival to work early Saturday morning I was greeted by the sight of this.

And this.

(I know, the bronze needs a polish)

Some poisonous vermin have vandalised Wendy Ann 2. My mind managed to flee through violation, shock, anger and resignation even before I called the police, which was more or less straight away. After speaking to them I let the Harbour Board know what’d happened and it wasn’t ‘til I got off the phone to them that I cried.

The little wankers- for I’m fairly sure the culprits are likely to be a group of males between the ages of say, twelve to fifteen (and we know what boys of that age like to do when left alone), smashed one of the engine room skylights and threw a shoe (??) through the hole, they also tried to break two of our engine room portholes, the ones we spent a fortune replacing glass on. Luckily the glass we used was 1/2 inch thick toughened stuff so although I think they used a piece of scrap metal bar which was found at the scene, they only managed to severely crack these. The engine room is absolutely covered in broken glass from the skylight, I’d only tidied the place up on Wednesday for god’s sake and I know the vessel needs ventilation but this is just not the way to get it. But the damage is going to cost money to fix and of course take precious work time away from real progress. Before you ask, of course we’re insured, but that’s not the point.
I mentioned tears falling already. What upset me was that whilst the authorities were sympathetic, a lack of witnesses and so on means that the likelihood of catching these brainless, selfish fucks and holding them to account is unfortunately close to zero. The police eventually called back and declined to visit the scene to dust for fingerprints or even just send a uniformed bobby down to show a reassuring police presence, a response which I was (shall we say) disappointed by, and I was eventually asked to take the items that may have fingerprints to the local copshop. So much for the community policing pledge boys.
Stupid thing is that apparently there’s an increasing problem with this sort of thing locally but the sergeant I spoke to tried to feed me the excuse that ‘it’s a long drive round to that side of the river’ when I suggested that a regular, visible police patrol just might begin to serve as a deterrent to idiots. It isn't, I do it all the time and it takes less than five minutes. I listened agape to this feebleness, before being subjected to a couple of horror stories (break in to yacht club and theft of distress flares, theft and burning of vessels etc) by the same sergeant. He seemed slightly mollified when I explained that this was really not what I needed to hear right now, before going on to politely suggest that maybe the local constabulary should try actually doing something rather than scaring the shit out of people who were already trying to deal with having just suffered a crime, but I doubt that I made any difference whatsoever. It’s a shame, because Littlehampton is a nice place full of decent people, but naturally now my faith in it all is severely shaken.
Inevitably, the upset gave way to anger and I knew I’d be in trouble unless I let the whole thing go pretty quick, for I found myself glaring accusingly at every gang of teenagers that wandered past the vessel on the way to the beach, which was not only unfair, but unhealthy too. The damage is so wanton and pointless that it near breaks my heart to think of it being done. I don’t expect kids to have any idea what it means to dedicate every fibre of your being to saving an old boat for over half a decade of your short life, but I would hope them to have enough basic respect not to smash it up for the fleeting, destructive fun of it. Call me naïve, but clearly I have hoped in vain. I keep telling myself that it could’ve been worse, and might be if it happens again.
The only thing to add is that we won’t be beaten by nasty setbacks like this, we’re tough, adult people who are blessed with the resource of fortitude; so all the upset and anger of Saturday will only serve to make us more determined to get somewhere this summer, I promise. It's only glass, and glass can be replaced, but unfortunately faith in oneself and human nature cannot.

Anyway, by the time the phone calls and so on were all done I’d lost a fair few hours. I decided to cheer myself up by doing something really, really satisfying- so I spent the rest of the weekend installing the oak ceiling in the wheelhouse, which meant working past ten at night for two nights. It looks brilliant, but it deserves to be unsullied by the filth of what’s written above, so I’ll give it a blog entry of it’s own, next.