Og's Blog Pt. 10

Soon after Janice and I became friends, Anna was sent away to a children's home to have her baby which would be adopted. At that time, an abortion for a twelve year old was considered too dangerous.

Janice was upset but found me a small comfort. I would take her out for a drink - she liked sloe gin, Bloody Marys, and vodka and lemon - and to the clubs in Union Street to which she would never have gone even with her girlfriends because it was too dangerous. It wasn't with me. No one even made a rude comment about Janice when I was with her.

I took her, sitting in the sidecar, out to the stables and she taught me how to ride. Although the stables did pony trekking, no pony could carry me. Most of my mounts were shire horses and some objected to being ridden into of pulling a cart. I soon learned that thumping them with a clenched fist between the ears would calm them down although most were difficult to ride for a beginner.

After a few months I was able to help with the pony trekking. The ponies lived in a field about half a mile from the stables. At the beginning of the day Janice and I would go to the field, attach halters, and ride back with a dozen or so ponies each. We would repeat at the end of the day but we would leave our horses' saddles at the stables and ride bareback.

The changeover of pony trekkers was a Saturday. Janice and I would often be called on as assistants until the new pony trekkers became used to riding and didn't need as many escorts. One Saturday afternoon we were taking the new pony trekkers on a short walk around local roads before taking them out onto Dartmoor for some slightly faster riding.

I was leading on my shire horse, followed by about twenty other horses. We were going up a slight hill on a narrow road between stone walls. Suddenly a Mini came around a bend ahead of us at speed. It had to brake hard to avoid hitting my horse. I had to lean forward and calm my horse down because it had been startled by the car and the squeal of brakes. His girlfriend in the passenger seat looked pale-faced at the near miss.

Twenty yards behind the Mini was a passing place. The next one was about one hundred yards behind the horses but there was no way we could get twenty horses and brand new riders to back up. I gestured with my hand that he should back up to that passing space. I could see, but not hear, that he swore. Then he did something incredibly stupid. He leant on his horn for three long blasts.

I felt my horse bunch his muscles underneath me. I knew what he was going to do and there was no way I could stop him. I could hear panicking shouts behind me as the new riders and their escorts tried to calm down twenty frightened horses.

My horse jumped over the Mini. But shire horses are not skilled jumpers. He trailed a large hoof and a dinner plate-sized hole appeared in the Mini's roof just missing the driver and passenger's heads.

I stopped my horse and got off to calm him down. The Mini driver reversed at speed into the passing place, nearly frightening my horse again. I tied my horse to a tree and the other riders went past slowly and cautiously, trying to calm the horses down. The Mini driver was shaking and his girlfriend was in tears. We exchanged insurance details. His claim was rejected when his company received more than twenty witness statements about his actions. He was interviewed by the police who eventually decided not to prosecute him for careless driving but gave him a fierce bollocking.

The pony trekking run from that stable was for adults only. A typical day was a ride to a public house for lunch - and beers, followed by a ride to another public house, maybe the one by the stable at Meavy, for more beers and then back to the stables to be collected by coach and back to their hotel for evening meal and more drinking. They had several repeat customers who might spend the whole week drunk, letting the pony do all the work. The ponies knew the way even if their riders were too drunk to do more than try to stay in the saddle.

Some Saturdays there were classes for complete beginners. They would be shown how to harness a horse and put on a saddle before they went for a slow walk around Burrator Reservoir. That was enough for a first time. Later, after the walk they would go out on to Meavy Down for a trot, a canter, and after a few lessons, a gallop. My shire horse was very unlike the ponies. Think of my horse like a heavy truck and the ponies like sporting hatchbacks. They could start fast and get up to speed quickly and stop in a short distance. My horse took a lot to get moving but when it was going its canter was as fast as the ponies' gallop. But stopping it? They stopped in twenty five yards. I needed over one hundred.

Shortly after Janice and I became a couple I had a health scare. I had severe stomach pains and I was spitting blood. Because I had been abroad - to Australia and in other countries such as Sri Lanka and Egypt on the way back, and the medics had no idea what was wrong, they sent me to an isolation hospital for infectious tropical diseases. Even in the early 1960s they had significant infection control. I was in an air-lock sealed room and everyone entering had to wear full PPE. Janice had to stand outside my window and shout at me.

After a few days they decided that what I had was a small stomach ulcer so they stopped treating me as if I could start a pandemic. At the time I smoked, and patients in a single room were allowed to smoke. I had an ashtray. As I had a stomach ulcer the staff could enter my room without PPE, the only one on the ward of fourteen protected rooms that they could. Most of the staff smoked but I was in the only room that didn't need PPE, and it was possibly the only place in the whole hospital. The result was that all day long at least one member of staff, often half-a-dozen or more, were in my room to have a cigarette, the cleaners, the ward assistants, the nurses and even the consultants. I would give Janice money to buy me cigarettes and now that I wasn't infectious she could pass then through the open window.

A few days after I had been diagnosed with a stomach ulcer, the doctor who was in charge of my case came into my room followed by half-a-dozen trainee doctors. He looked at my overflowing ashtray and suggested that my excessive smoking might have caused the ulcer.

I laughed at him and said that no more than 5% of the cigarette butts were mine. He wasn't convinced until I said I didn't wear lipstick, and if he looked carefully, three-quarters of the butts had lipstick marks. He looked. I was right.

He asked me, as far as I could remember, to detail what I had eaten each day before admission. He and the trainee doctors were startled to work out that I had been eating ten thousand calories a day yet although I was large, heavy and muscular, I wasn't obese. I told him about my weekly physical activities. He suggested that perhaps I should reduce to nine thousand calories a day, but that my diet was dire. A family-size pasty for lunch five days a week wasn't sensible and my diet was unbalanced. He told Janice that if she wanted me as her boyfriend she should try to influence me to eat better.

After ten days of hospital food my symptoms had gone and I was discharged. The doctor thought that my ulcer had been caused by my poor diet and the stress of managing twenty-five young ladies even if I thought the unreliable machinery was more stressful.

Janice ensured that I ate better and that ulcer never returned.

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YMCA and 27 foot whaler

At the time I was very much involved with the YMCA. Through them I was a temporary assistant outward bound leader on Drake's Island and a senior in their gym, often helping new users.

The YMCA bid on an ex-Navy 27 foot whaler surplus at Devonport Dockyard and bought it. It was taken from the dockyard and was now afloat in Sutton Harbour. They wanted to use it to train YMCA users in sailing but they had very few people with experience.

I was in the gym early on a Friday evening when I was approached and asked if I would be part of the crew for the whaler tomorrow morning. I was reluctant but I knew they were desperate so I agreed. When I arrived at Sutton harbour I wasn't impressed with the condition of it, but I was only a crew member, not in charge.

What I didn't know was that the designated skipper was possibly even less experienced than I was, and I was the only other person on board, out of ten, who had done any sailing at all. I assumed, mistakenly, that he would have checked the weather forecast. He hadn't. I also assumed that he, or others, had checked the boat. No one had.

It took us half an hour to rig the mast and hoist the sails. We meandered out of Sutton Harbour with a medium offshore breeze. The skipper's steering and sail orders were unimpressive but we were able to circumnavigate Drake's Island even if sometimes we were all aback and had to row to get the sails to catch the wind. But eight of us didn't even know how to row. They were catching frequent crabs and clashing oars.

I had to instruct them on how to row together and had to shout "In! Pull! Out!" many times before they began to work together - some of the time.

Then the skipper did something stupid. With an inexperienced crew and an untried boat he decided to go out beyond Plymouth's breakwater into the open sea.

The swell out there was making some of the crew seasick. The wind increased dramatically into a full gale. I had to reef the sail down to about half size - on my own because no one else knew how to do it, or were too busy depositing their breakfasts over the side to be any help.

The skipper decided, at last, that we ought to get back inside the breakwater. But he misjudged the turn and we were caught, broadside, by a heavy wave that crashed into the hull. Everyone, including the seasick ones, had to bale frantically. But that wave, apart from filling the boat, had done damage. The whole port gunwale had broken off and was hanging by a few odd pieces of wood. We couldn't use the oars on that side because the rowlocks were not attached to the hull. We had to sail or we wouldn't get back to harbour.

It took another half an hour before we were inside the breakwater and a further hour before we could moor inside Sutton Harbour. Then I looked more closely at the whaler. Both gunwales and the transom had dry rot. We could very easily have sunk.

It cost the YMCA twice as much as they had paid to buy the whaler to get it seaworthy and they employed a competent sail instructor. I never went out in that whaler again.

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I can't write anything about Janice's younger sister Anna, then thirteen, without breaching Literotica's guidelines. All I will say is that young boys were attracted to her like wasps around an open jam pot. Janice, her mother and I had to act like flyswatters and Anna was NO help.

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I used to take Janice out on the motorcycle combination for weekday evening meals. Some of our favourite locations were a pub/restaurant at Bigbury, overlooking Burgh Island, and in Dartmouth. It had to be a weekday because we were too busy at the riding stables at the weekends. Janice and her mother were helping me to eat better, either at Janice's mother's house, or Janice would cook meals for me in my flat.

End of Part 10