Hoist the sails

Cavan Calling/Steph Booth: We have recently been visited by the friends our sons refer to as the Glossop posse: Edith, Frank, Betty and Brian.

Our friends thought I was beginning to develop an unhealthy obsession with crumpets and decided they needed to check out my state of mind. They discovered Tony and I are very happy in our new home - and quickly understood why. They enjoyed the walks, the beach, the wonderful fresh air and meeting some of the people we have got to know here.

Like many of our English friends they don't know Ireland well, if at all, and were anxious about issues such as where we shop and where I can possibly get my hair done. They feel the latter is a critical issue and were concerned I may have let standards slip. They need not have worried. I have a very good hairdresser in Enniskillen, Clive Alexander, who not only cuts hair beautifully but also manages to make me laugh with his stories and gossip. Important skills for a hairdresser, I always think.

Tony suggested the visit of our Glossop friends would be a good opportunity to invite our parish priest, Father John O'Donnell, for dinner. After the shenanigans of the priest's last visit, Tony hoped we would be able to demonstrate our behaviour could be civilised and even marginally sane. I baked a ham, and I'm pleased to say the meal went well. Everyone seemed to have a good time. Perhaps because, before she retired, Edith was a deputy head teacher of a large comprehensive school she's very curious about people and bombarded Father John with questions. This was how we discovered he is a member of the Irish Olympic Committee and had travelled to Athens this summer. The conversation moved on to holidays in general and then, because my friends had been to Sligo and Rosses Point earlier in the day, to Irish emigration and the Titanic. Edith wanted to know where the stopping-off point of the Titanic was before its journey across the Atlantic.

This gave me the opportunity to tell the story of when I was in Woolworths in Glossop and the video of the film Titanic was on special offer. As I paid for my goods the woman behind the counter tried to interest me in buying one of the videos. I declined, saying I knew how it ended - they all drowned. The words were barely out of my mouth when a young woman, also working behind the counter, began to wail. "Oh, no! How could you do that? I've just bought it and now you've spoiled the ending for me." I was stunned and looked at the woman who was serving me. She shook her head in silent despair.

As Tony is from Liverpool and I am from Manchester, our families inevitably have seafaring connections. My grandfather Herbert Venning was a cook in the merchant fleet. Tony's father, George, sailed out of Liverpool. He was in the merchant fleet during the second World War. His ship was torpedoed at the beginning of the war, but George lived to tell the tale after surviving in a lifeboat. My eldest son, Tom, has carried on the seafaring tradition. He is an officer in the British merchant fleet.

My own efforts with boats have been extremely limited: I used to be quite good at rowing. But Loch MacNean is leading me into temptation. I would love to go sailing on it. I have a romantic notion of acquiring a wooden dinghy, like that in the children's book Swallows And Amazons by Arthur Ransome. I would travel to the farther shores of the loch, imagining I were a great adventurer in the mould of Mary Kingsley, the Victorian explorer. It is impossible, though, to envisage Tony as Sir Richard Burton. He would be more like Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen. I think I would make a passable Katharine Hepburn.

The more likely scenario is that I would take a picnic and a book and, when I became tired of reading, would lie in the boat, staring at the sky and allowing myself to drift. There are only two problems with this daydream. I don't own a boat, of any description, and even if I did I would have no idea how to sail it. I don't know if there are any sailing schools locally. Perhaps I should ask around.