Friday, April 17, 2015

The Starling Project - Part 9


It hasn't escaped my notice that there is a bit of a connection between the major operation I am doing on this boat and what happened to me less than two years ago - Major bloody surgery. Like a surgeon I am removing the outer covering so that I can get to the heart of the matter.

As I removed the very last pieces of plywood from my little boat I felt she looked a little forlorn and skeletal with the autumn wind blowing through her bones. As I beavered away planing the last of the plywood from the boats stringers and feeling sorry for the fragile little wooden armature that I was working on some words of Battery Sergeant Major Tudor Bryn 'Shut up' Williams played by Windsor Davies from the sitcom IT AIN'T HALF HOT MUM came to mind. I stopped still, momentarily, "Quite right" I said to myself and just got on with it.

These words got quite a lot of use at the time this comedy series was shown on television in New Zealand and people would repeat them in what they thought was a suitable context  ----- Play the utube video now if you haven't already.
                                
IT AIN'T HALF HOT MUM was a British sitcom about the adventures of a Royal Artillery Concert Party, broadcast between 1974 and 1981, and written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft, the creators of DAD'S ARMY. It was set in British India and Burma, towards the end of the Second World War.

2 comments:

Kate said...

I think it's going to be marvelous when you are sitting in it with a stiff breeze and your t'gallants taut and trim, matey.

Alden Smith said...

Yep, I think you are right. I 'think' (that's a euphemism for 'hope') that I have climbed the mountain and it's relatively all downhill from here on - time will tell.