“We’re gonna need a bigger thread...”
Sometimes in the small hours, a man’s train of thought can run to dark stations, the mind wondering to bleak and comfortless terrains. In such moments our beliefs in the rational and logical can waver, our sense of self cast adrift in an unfeeling and uninterested universe.
I found myself in just such a scenario, around 4pm this Saturday gone. Happy, with the sun shining, time to myself, sitting at the bench with nary a worry in the world. The Orca, about to enter a new and exciting phase of her build, and I, with not even a whiff of the impending cal(amity).
Enter an innocent pot of wood varnish...
And the Orca suddenly looked as though Hooper, Brody, and Quint had suffered catastrophic levels of projectile diarrhoea.
But, like those Buddhist monks painstakingly making intricate mandala sand art just to destroy it, I had to entirely rip out the internal furnishings of the Orca’s cabin.
There was a moment, fleeting but real, where I had the boat in my hands and the temptation to smash it to pieces like the shark did at the end of the movie. But the instant passed, sanity (or what passes for it) returned, and I gently positioned her on the plinth. For that short breath of time, though, some deep lock in my brain snicked open, a primal reminder of just how tenuous our (my) grip on good sense and sound judgement really is.
So, when your little ones misbehave, and you have the urge to scare your children into submission, fill them not with visions of the bogieman, goblins, and the undead. Instead, whisper in their ear...”if you don’t behave the crazy guy who builds the boat will get you...”
