Hunched & sprawled under Hungerford rail bridge, within a stone’s throw of Whitehall’s Downing Street, there is a specialist shop selling the technical kit that sailors and divers need. Just to visit such a shop as Ocean Leisure enlarges your soul and enables you momentarily to join the tribe it serves and represents.

As when you go away to boarding school for the first time, you get a list of what’s going to be needed in your new life. It fills you with an excited mix of trepidation and expectation, fear and joy, as you visualise the use of the unfamiliar items.

Transformation of my hand

With the willing advice of a young man made wise by the stored experience of generations of sailors I chose these gloves to fulfil the second last item on my list. They are beautiful objects to the technical eye, protecting the palm and gripping digits from rough ropes, yet leaving the sensitive finger ends unencumbered. Designed to perform well when wet, they won’t fall off because the velcro strap can be tightened as needed.

In the olden days, when a sailor on shore leave was caught by the press gang he might pretend with the ready invention and instinctive role play needed for his main occupation that he was a gentleman, and therefore not subject to be impressed to serve in HM ships. The seasoned petty officer, serving perhaps under a lad of good family in nominal command of the press crew, would then ask this ‘gent’ to show his hands. In those days these meaty appendages would be deeply and indelibly engrained with the tar that was used to protect all hempen ropes from rot by the salt water environment. With these gloves I could easily pull the wool over this Petty Officer’s eyes, if indeed the elegance of my turn of phrase had not instantly caused him to tug his sparse forelock in apology for the roughing-up that I would already have suffered!

The other item needed to complete my list was footware. On board Kay Sira, it was explained, we would go barefoot. Even this remark makes me tingle with expectation of the feel of the well-cared-for wood of the decks. But on numerous expeditions to wild beaches we would need to be able to jump into the sea with everyday agility, regardless of  sharp shingle, urchin spines, and sea snakes. With the help of the young man I was nudged towards these:

A technical shoe designed to leak and not fall off

You might think that the bit of aged leg you see is apparently superfluous to the info provided, but no. I have included a view of the scar left from the operation needed to mend my fibula with a plate of titanium and seven screws.

As I have said, it was the period of enforced idleness resulting from this accident that led me first to dream of this seatrack. And now this doom is nearly upon me – gulp!

There is one screw in my leg for each of the seven seas on which I shall now be a wanderer.