Charles is a friend of mine.
He owns a yacht that he built himself. He wears clothes that he makes himself. He provides food that… well, we’ll come to the food.
Charles (I hope he won’t mind me saying) is one of those blokes who just lives.
If he needs something he makes it. If something bothers him, he decides that it’s not worth worrying about. If help is required, he’ll ask, but won’t feel exactly comfortable about it, and doesn’t get upset if it’s not forthcoming.
I like Charles.
I wandered over to see him the other day, and there he was in his newly-made waistcoat, stitched together using material with an aboriginal design that he’d purchased on one of his trips to Australia to see his son.
In London, you would pay an absolute fortune for this waistcoat. It’s a one-off. You’ll never see another like it. But to Charles it’s simply his waistcoat. Something to wear when the sun is out and there’s no need for a shirt.
Around these parts, he’s known as Captain Jack, after Johnny Depp in his role as Jack Sparrow. Olhao’s ‘Captain Jack’ wears waistcoats, he wears a straw hat with dangly bits, he wears cut off jeans. To me, he’s simply Charles.
He has another skill to: he likes to write
Check out ‘The God Blogs’ if you want to see what God is thinking these days – and it’s not what you’d expect! I think Charles may have had a few beers or maybe a few glasses of wine when he’s written some of his stuff, but that simply adds to the legend that is Charles.
During the lockdown, I’ve tried to see him at least every week or two. Why? Because I enjoy his company and I also want to make sure he’s OK. He’s in his 70s and self-sufficient. He probably doesn’t need anyone to make sure that he’s OK, but it’s always good to visit him.
Anyway, when I go to visit, I fill my blue cooler with beer and a couple of ice blocks and wander round to where he lives on his boat – in the local boatyard.
Charles would love to be on the water, but he’s also a pragmatist. He’s been trying to sell an apartment that he owns in Spain. This would give him the money to purchase what he needs to go to sea again (he told me what he needed, but being a landlubber, it went in one ear and out the other!) but there have been legal issues. It seems that he’s now overcome these, so fingers crossed! But he won’t set sail unless it’s safe to do so.
Whenever I get to the boatyard, obviously, I never step on board without Charles’ say so. If I know nothing else, I know not to step on board someone’s boat without being asked. But 9 times out of 10, I don’t even need to let Charles know I’m there. Ziggy his dog will be sticking her head over the edge of the boat, yapping down at me, shortly followed by Charles shouting:
“David! Come on board!”
Ziggy is a good guard dog, but as soon as I’m on board she simply loves a scratch and a stroke. She’s great.
Anyway, recently, Charles has had a few issues with adding posts to his blog. Maybe he can write what God thinks, but his omnipotence (or maybe omniscience?) is severely lacking when it comes to technology!
But I say that in jest.
To be honest, I’m amazed that Charles has the wherewithal to do half the stuff he does online, which is why I’m happy to help. He may be in his seventies, but he’s still happy to listen and learn. I hope that I have half the faculties that he does when I’m his age!
I’ve been over to help him on several occasions, but we often don’t get as far as we like. We’re too busy talking, or Charles isn’t sure about the password or I have no idea what I’m doing. Any excuse I suppose, but usually we’re soon reduced to having a drink and talking bollocks!
But it doesn’t seem to matter. We both know that we will get it sorted one day and that the godblogs will eventually be there for everyone to read.
So we sit, we chat, we have a couple of drinks, I try and sort some of Charles’ technology and we eat.
Whenever I go around, Charles seems to feel obliged to feed me.
And this is where we get on to food.
He has a fat fryer on board, he has a small barbecue, he’s even talked about setting up a smoker. As I said, he’s very self-sufficient.
Recently he seems to have fallen in love with pork scratchings. We spoke about them a while back, and I’m not sure whether that conversation started it, or whether Charles already had pork scratchings on his mind. Whatever the truth, they’re bloody lovely! Belly fat from a pig, dropped into a fat fryer on a yacht. It sounds like a recipe for disaster to me, but nothing could be further from the truth. As I said, they’re bloody lovely!
He also likes to barbecue small sausages when I’m there. Nicely spiced, he buys them from a supermarket 300 metres from his yacht. They’re bloody lovely too!
But the last time I visited, he pulled out his ‘piece de resistance’. It was a triumph!
“David, do you like mussels?”
“Indeed I do!”
“Big ones?”
“All the better!”
“OK,” he said and wandered inside his yacht coming back with a large glass jar, full of something.
“I got these mussels recently. They brought a boat into the yard and I simply scraped the mussels off the keel.”
I told you that he makes the most of everything.
“I then marinated them in a bit of chilli and garlic. Lovely!”
I looked at the jar. It was packed to the brim with huge mussels, sitting in a rather murky liquid.
‘Mmmmm….’ I thought.
Two problems: firstly, the marinade looked a bit dodge and secondly, I had no idea how to get the mussels out of the jar.
The second question was soon answered.
Charles swivelled round and grabbed something off the shelf behind him.
“Spokes from a bicycle wheel! They make great skewers!”
This I had to see.
He wiped the two spokes off with a cloth, handed one to me, and stuck his own into the morass of mussels, pulling one out, a big fat one, skewered.
He slipped it into his mouth.
“Mmmm… great!”
At that point, there was no turning back. He passed me the jar, I took my spoke and I skewered a great big juicy mussel too.
‘In for a penny, in for a pound…’ I thought.
And bloody hell! It really was lovely! Fat and juicy and beautifully marinated, with a hint of chilli and a touch of garlic.
Stunning!
I had another. Just as good and realised that you can never tell a book by it’s cover.
With Charles, that really is the truth.
When the shit really hits the fan, it will be people like Charles who survive, because he simply knows how to live.
Most of us don’t.