Day 20 → A hobby of yours
A hobby I love - Sailing!
I am not very good at it if left to my own devices without my dad to help me, as I tend to not get on very well with the wind.
I've done a RYA Level 1 sailing skills thingy, when I was younger, and I can more or less keep a topper upright (although turning it over can be quite fun as long as you are wearing a wetsuit/in warm climes...) but I can't win any races. I've mainly done sailing on various English puddles in Hertfordshire and am quite experienced at ditch-crawling on the Norfolk Broads (as it is lovingly referred to), but I have also hitched rides clinging to the mast of my dad's laser in the sea in France (where the other sailors he did some races against (and won) called him 'L'anglais' and I also went for a cracking holiday off the Greek Islands when I was 17 which was awesome.
When at school I co-owned a Mirror Dinghy with a friend, called Jabberwocky, which was good fun, but my dad has always treated sailing like driving with me - ie. pushed me out in the vehicle and wondered by I didn't automatically know how to drive it without being taught. This meant I had a tendancy not to understand how to steer anywhere that wasn't 'where the wind wants me to go anyway'.
(To be fair no one taught me to swim and I don't really understand what's to learn, unless you have some phobia to overcome - it's kind of trial and error isn't it? Child enters water, moves their limbs around, quickly realises what keeps them up and what doesn't?)
He did teach me to row that way - showed me the actions then pushed me out in a boat on Alexandra Palace lake, aged 3 or 4. It was obvious that complaining wasn't going to get me back to shore and I would actually have to row. Which worked.
Anyway, I love any form of mucking about in boats, as Ratty from Wind in the Willows would say. Swallows and Amazons is pretty much my favourite childhood film and I love floating on water, basically, in various forms of weather. When I was 13 I went sailing on the Scottish lochs with my dad and grandad and got to experience not showering for 6 days and sitting in storms - fun times! There's a hilarious photo of me somewhere in full waterproofs on a deck in the rain looking utterly dejected.
Tip: when going under a low bridge, lie on the front of a boat and look directly upwards to see the sky suddenly appear! Really fun and I'm not quite sure why...