The Boat Show, London ExCel Centre
Gimme a free ticket, and I'll go anywhere - which is how I ended up at the Boat Show the other day, where 'Save £23000' signs on boats makes you perk up and look interested.. until you see that it's still over quarter of a million. Slightly beyond my pocket.
This is a pretty new venue for the BS - and it was full and bustling and bursting with thousands of ways to spend HUGE amounts of money. And funnily enough - or maybe it's because I was brought up in the days of wooden boats, frugality, roughing it, spartan attitudes - I found it all rather overblown, too clean, too shiny, too high maintenance and very far removed from 'proper' sailing. Daytime jaunting from marina to marina, maybe, but not really 'me'.
A bit later on, I listened to a couple of saily talks by well known saily journalists, on the main stage. 'Look!' I nudged a neighbouring woman. As the journos left the stage, they were replaced by lightly-clad young ladies prancing up and down the catwalk. But we were looking at the quantities of gents of a certain age, crowding to get front row seats ...
Oh, and there were some very cute muscley young men strutting their stuff - I can window shop, can't I?
Brilliant acrobats after that, and a couple of people on those high stilts - amazing!
Later on, feeling I ought to make some contribution, I splurged on a sandwich and a couple of magazines for a quid each. SUCH a cheapskate!
I met up with some fellow posters on a saily forum, and as usual it was fun putting faces to names; had a wander round the stands, a mooch through some books - one with a propped up recipe book, a basket of apples and an untethered pot of herbs on its cover - a million ways to make your boat homely. Given the thought of the French canals, the little Dutch cruiser, sunshine, wine, olives and chilling, I was very tempted. I've also thought about a narrowboat - and yes, I'd have a herb box.
This is a pretty new venue for the BS - and it was full and bustling and bursting with thousands of ways to spend HUGE amounts of money. And funnily enough - or maybe it's because I was brought up in the days of wooden boats, frugality, roughing it, spartan attitudes - I found it all rather overblown, too clean, too shiny, too high maintenance and very far removed from 'proper' sailing. Daytime jaunting from marina to marina, maybe, but not really 'me'.
A bit later on, I listened to a couple of saily talks by well known saily journalists, on the main stage. 'Look!' I nudged a neighbouring woman. As the journos left the stage, they were replaced by lightly-clad young ladies prancing up and down the catwalk. But we were looking at the quantities of gents of a certain age, crowding to get front row seats ...
Oh, and there were some very cute muscley young men strutting their stuff - I can window shop, can't I?
Brilliant acrobats after that, and a couple of people on those high stilts - amazing!
Later on, feeling I ought to make some contribution, I splurged on a sandwich and a couple of magazines for a quid each. SUCH a cheapskate!
I met up with some fellow posters on a saily forum, and as usual it was fun putting faces to names; had a wander round the stands, a mooch through some books - one with a propped up recipe book, a basket of apples and an untethered pot of herbs on its cover - a million ways to make your boat homely. Given the thought of the French canals, the little Dutch cruiser, sunshine, wine, olives and chilling, I was very tempted. I've also thought about a narrowboat - and yes, I'd have a herb box.
posted by susyrosy @ 2:11 pm
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