Winter

The days are getting shorter, but dragging. There's not enough natural light to give us energy, but electric light keeps us awake and working when we should be sleeping. The cold and wind and wet keeps us hunched and cowering in hermetically sealed double glazed energy efficient airless houses.

God, I need to go boating. To wrap up against the wind and rain, get the stove going and the hatches open; find the little scraps of sunlight that are left, and breathe the fresh cold air.

Crumbs

If someone told you that in a tiny back cabin, where every inch of space was at a premium, boaters kept an empty drawer purely for the purpose of catching the crumbs after they'd had their tea, you'd think it had to be an April Fool, wouldn't you?

Yet the concept of the 'crumb drawer' lingers on to an extent that I cannot bring myself to say categorically that it couldn't have been like that; only that, given the sense and practicality of boatmen and women, and the care that went into the design of back cabins, I would need a great deal more convincing.

It almost sounds like one of those stories that started as a joke - so absurd that surely no one could take it seriously - and ended up as folklore, and only then as practice. Or perhaps it became known as the crumb drawer (it's also called a knife drawer, which sounds much more sensible) because of the habit of crumbs inadvertently ending up in it.

Still, what do I know. I keep toiletries in my monkey box, not Brasso and rags. They go in the boot cupboard and I keep my boots under the stove. I don't have knives or crumbs in my drawer (though I might keep knives in there once I've got some) but odds and ends of bits of brassware and screws, and batteries and string and stuff like that.

What I can say is that I find myself wiping the crumbs up most carefully before closing the table flap, as the last thing I want is crumbs in my crumb drawer.

Do I really want to restore this boat?

That's what I say I'm doing, if anyone asks. That's what I told the Historic Ships Register: under restoration. But since a brief conversation last week about how to approach the repairs to the counter, now I'm not so sure if 'restoration' is really what I'm about here.

Restore
2. (Attempt to) bring back to original state by rebuilding, repairing, repainting, emending, etc; make representation of supposed original state of (extinct animal, ruin, etc)
(Concise Oxford Dictionary, Seventh edition, 1982)

Now that is obviously what a lot of people have done, and are doing, with historic boats, and I'm very glad that they are, because the results are often stunning. But I'm no longer sure it's what I want to do with Chertsey.

What I said about the counter was this: I'd rather have an honest, possibly obvious, repair than make the whole thing look like new. I think I'm more interested in conservation, or preservation, than restoration.

Conserve
Keep from harm, decay, or loss, esp. with view to later use

Preserve
1. Keep safe (from harm, decay, etc); keep alive (name, memory etc)
2. Maintain (state of things); retain (quality, condition)

I want to preserve what Chertsey still carries of its past, not turn the clock back and turn it into a facsimile - an inevitably imperfect one - of the boat that came out of the Woolwich shipyard in 1937. I don't want to wipe out seventy four years of history; I want to respect it, even revel in it.

That means not adding anything egregiously modern, from electrical systems to plastic washing up bowls, but it also means not eschewing modern techniques and materials to repair and preserve it, while retaining its character. I want to preserve and extend the continuity of its history with a new chapter, not close the book and only look at the cover.

It means not ripping out something from 1970 to replace it with something from 1940 - because I am very fortunate in that little has been added since the seventies - and that was an important and distinctive decade in Chertsey's history that shouldn't be airbrushed out.

I want to keep it alive. Restore it to health; yes, that is the whole point. Restore its lost youth... I think perhaps not. Conserve its past as far as possible, enjoy its present, and assure its future... That's how I feel right now, anyway.