Setting off from Salters Lode in a grey drizzle my progress down Well Creek was better than the outward journey, the weed-cutters have been out. Almost stopped at Glady Dacks Staithe, didn’t need to stop but what a wonderful name, Glady Dacks sounds like a character from a Thomas Hardy novel. It wasn’t until Upwell that I picked up my own clumps of weed so I stopped to remove it. Laying flat on my not very flat stomach, sawing away with the bread knife I heard a clunk and saw my mobile phone sitting in the amongst the soggy gunk in the depths of the bilge, it had fallen out of the pouch in the waterproofs. Oh dear I said.
Onwards towards March: the wind turbines loom out of low cloud, their blades turning tiredly. The drizzle is turning into proper rain. It seems my waterproof isn’t. I have plenty of time to formulate a plan for the retrieval of the phone. I’ll get a small fishing net and scoop it out of the bilges, remove the sim card and put it in an old phone. I have to keep smiling and waving at all the fishermen lining the bank so there must be a fishing tackle shop in March. I can find lots of fish and chip shops (the inhabitants of March must live on fish and chips) but no fishing tackle shops. I do find a launderette and spend an entertaining time watching two young men try to work out the mechanics of washing clothes. ‘We should never have left home’ says one starring a large pile of wet and tangled garments.
In the end I buy a cheapo long handled brush and pan from Thing Me Bobs, saw the end off the pan so it fits into the bilge and hey presto I have retrieved the phone. The old Nokia, me and the sim card are reunited and it feels like old times. I never did like the other phone, it was a replacement for an HTC that I dropped in a puddle and it was horrible. Keypad too small, switched off for no apparent reason froze when it felt like it and the battery had the life-span of a fruit fly. If it starts to show any signs of recovery I’ll just sling it into the bilges again.
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