When I was a young lad of around 8 years of age, a lot of public parks in England were equipped with small boating lakes. Sometimes the boats had handles that you turned to drive paddles that pushed the boat through the water. Other times they had real oars.
Each such lake was invariably managed by a little old man dressed in an ill-fitting uniform (folks were big on uniforms in those days) who sat on a folding chair outside a small boating hut. The boats themselves each had a unique number on the side.
Sometimes you paid before you went out on the lake, in which case the old guy would use a megaphone to inform you when your allotted time was up ("Number 86, it's time to come in..."). Other times you could stay out as long as you wanted, and you paid accordingly when you eventually decided to return to shore.
On the day in question, my mom, dad, granddad, and myself were out on a daytrip somewhere. I no longer remember where, but I know it wasn't one of the local parks in my hometown of Sheffield, because the boating lake was much bigger than usual and the boats had real oars.
Sometime during the afternoon granddad and I went out on the lake. This was one of the ones where you paid when you had finished having fun. Granddad sat in the back of the boat guiding operations, while I sat amidships working the oars. I don’t remember much about out time on the lake itself... the part that sticks in my mind was when we returned to shore...
As I've mentioned before (and will doubtless mention again), my granddad was in the Royal Navy man and boy. (As an aside, I just discovered that granddad was born in 1899. Good grief... the changes he must have seen!)
So, imagine the scene ... we're still quite away from the side of the boating dock ... there's a medium breeze coming from one direction ... we're approaching the dock at a medium speed from another direction ... and granddad (who has been gauging wind speeds, water currents, and our direction and velocity) issues the command: "Ship oars!"
So I bring the oars onboard and then turn round to see where we're going (when you are the one rowing a boat, you're facing backwards). As I mentioned, we were still quite away from the dock, coming in at an angle, and travelling at a medium speed...
...I absolutely thought that we were either going to hit the side of the boating dock... or that the boat would stop some way off-shore and that we'd have to return the oars to the water and start rowing again... either of which would be embarrassing...
...but the boat was slowing... and the breeze was pushing one way... and the water was moving another... and the nose of the boat started to come around seemingly of its own accord...
...and we ended up with the boat perfectly parallel to the wall... and we literally had just stopped moving as the boat met the dock with a feather's touch...
We got out of the boat and tied it up and walked over to the old guy in charge who had risen out of his chair to observe the proceedings (presumably to make sure we didn't wreck the boat). As we approached, he looked my granddad in the eye and said: "Royal Navy?" My granddad replied: "Aye Aye"
The two men stood there looking at each other for a second, then the old guy nodded once to my granddad, nodded again toward the exit gate, and watched us as we left without being charged...
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