Who is Millie?

This was my unnerving thought as I woke this morning. The 1st day after putting the clocks back for winter morning light.

I was unnerved because I was remembering the name “Millie” with the warm affection usually reserved for my dear wife, companion of twenty years guardian of my healthy diet, my moral compass, and, so I thought, my feeble physique in old age, and perhaps I was associating with this name “Millie” a small glow of happiness. Yet as I stirred myself from sleep I had no idea who Millie was. Just a name.

It didn’t take long. Remember this?

https://schnark.home.blog/2022/04/17/i-saw-three-ships/

Dear old Lou at my club has given Millie to me, rent paid for this year in the club yard, and ready and willing to go out on the brine. The gift was announced in June, I think as Lou had heard of my wife’s illness and my misfortune, I was blown to pieces by the gesture and by the warmth and smile of excitement with which it was delivered -“she’s yours” – I was given no choice.

Millie is a Beaufort sailing dinghy, 16’6”, about 5 metres, and built solidly, and heavily out of glass reinforced plastic She is more than I can pull up the slipway, but I have found that with the two to one purchase of a rope and block, the rope tied at one end to a tree and the block fixed to Millie’s trailer, it is within my means of physical strength and weight to pull Millie slowly up out of the water and safely out of the tide’s reach.

Millie is not a boat for sailing alone, except to pick up crew, she is for taking out friends and family on picnics afloat in the creeks, and within four months of the gift i have already managed one such with my sister and her two small boys. Millie acquitted herself well and brought them ashore with dry feet.

But I return to the unease as I woke. Attaching affection reserved for my love of twenty years to this upstart, this girls name of unknown provenance. And maybe it’s ok that I associate the name of this new plaything with my love that doesn’t end in death. Maybe it’s ok that in every moment of happiness she’ll be there, as she is in every moment of sadness. She gave her blessing to my finding new love – a thing that seems as unlikely as it was before I met her. I fear I will scupper the project by thinking, speaking, and boasting about her too much. But maybe it’s really all ok, and one day some sweet floozy will come afloat with Millie and me and suffer the charms of the muddy creeks, and when we put her ashore with dry feet she’ll be so relieved that she might not run a mile.

Now where do I find a floozy?

NB I like the word floozy, and I know it might paint a shocking picture of reckless abandon but I think even a floozy wants to settle down and grow roots, and I need a little lightness of touch. Anyway, I don’t know any, and I don’t think you need to worry about me.