Today it was Sunday and as such, being the good Christian boy that he was, Gulliver didn’t open his antiques emporium for today was a day of rest. The Bible said Sunday was a day of rest, so who was Gulliver to argue with the word of God who said you had to keep the Sabbath day holy. However, rest is not always forthcoming, or at least it isn’t if you own a dog; a dog you could set your antique time piece by, for at precisely eight o’clock Greenwich Mean Time, Beagle wanted to go out and answer the call of nature. Gulliver also knew it was precisely eight o’clock Greenwich Mean Time because his antique grandfather clock told him as much, as did the call of nature, i.e. the dawn chorus. Sometimes Gulliver referred to this time of the day as ‘stupid o’clock in the morning’ for obvious reasons! Every time the grandfather clock struck it reminded him of his grandfather and what he said to him as a boy. ‘Gulliver,’ he’d say, peering over his half-moon spectacles studiously, ‘Gulliver, you can do anything you put your mind to, anything, nothing is impossible as long as you believe. You’ve got the whole world to explore and with Old Father Time on your side the only limit is the limit of your imagination, and with an imagination like yours, well, unlike the speed of light there simply is no limit!’
The trouble was, Gulliver was having trouble believing, for his imagination which once took him on unbelievable mind-boggling adventures, was being strangled by reality. How he wished he was a boy again and he could relive some of his childhood, but that wasn’t possible. Old Father Time was no longer on his side and one day in the not too distant future they would no longer even be on speaking terms. And when this day came what would he have done with his life, what would he have to show for the time he’d spent on God’s flat earth?
Today was a typical Sunday and as such, like every other Sunday he could ever remember, it was dull and overcast and he felt listless. Gulliver wondered why Sunday was called Sunday as the sun never shone on this day, not in actuality or metaphorically. On a Sunday Old Father Time had taken a leaf out of the Bible, putting his feet up reading the Sunday Times and taking a well-earned rest. This, according to Gulliver, was why a Sunday dragged interminably. Every second seemed like a minute, every minute seemed like an hour, and every hour seemed like a day. It was as if every time Old Father Time dozed off to sleep, his bored mischievous Time Apprentice would pickpocket his fob watch from out of his waistcoat pocket. Then he would literally rewind the clock so a Sunday appeared to last for ever and a day.
Gulliver often asked himself, how long does a Sunday last? He would have liked to have asked Einstein but he knew he would have told him, time was the greatest illusion of them all, which in all honesty wasn’t a great deal of help. Gulliver had heard of string theories regarding the universe so figured the answer must be, how long’s a piece of string?! And although Gulliver was good at drawing figures, he couldn’t add them up for toffee, or add up the price of toffees in a jar either, (although technically they were out of the jar at the time he had to add them up). Now that last sentence might seem like gobbledegook to you, well, that’s because it is!
I was only yanking the chain of your fob watch like Old Father Time’s Time Apprentice! It was just that Gulliver used to work in a sweet shop when he was at school, or at least in the school holidays, as working in a sweet shop when you should have been working out Pythagoras theorems was frowned upon by the education board, his headmaster and his parents, although not necessarily in that order. However, if you held that last line up to a mirror it would be in the right order, you do the math… okay I’ll do it for you: Pythagoras x Da Vinci = Alice Through the Looking Glass!
As far as Gulliver was concerned the only good thing about a Sunday was it only came round once a week, which was scant consolation for Gulliver at this precise moment in Greenwich Mean Time. Quantum mechanics was certainly hard to quantify, Gulliver thought wistfully. As Sunday went on for ever and a day, perhaps this day of all days would be the perfect time to set aside for the reading of Stephen Hawking’s timeless classic, A Brief History of Time. Yes, I think it is fair to say it wasn’t a quantum leap for Gulliver to make this connection. Gulliver had plenty of time for Mr Hawking, however, he found this book to be anything but brief and furthermore, it had far too many words in it that he could not make head nor tail of!
‘Okay, okay, Beagle. You don’t have to scratch the remaining paint off the inside of the front door!’ Gulliver said as he wiped the sleep out of his eyes as Beagle completely ignored him.
‘That was quite a dream I had last night, old friend,’ Gulliver said to Beagle, who looked up at him with his big doleful brown eyes. Eyes which seemed to say, I know, because you kicked me off the bed three times while you were doing your Walter Raleigh impersonation, chivalrously upholding Queen Elizabeth I’s good name as you single-handedly fought off the Spanish Armada.
Gulliver opened the door and Beagle flew off down the street towards the harbour as if he had just been let out of a dungeon where dragons weren’t the only thing to put the wind up you. Gulliver knew Francis Drake once sailed a ship called Dragon and that the Spanish saw him as a magical dragon, who at times seemed omnipresent like God or the Gods. Beagle was no longer in the first flushes of youth, more like the third, although he was still very much young at heart like his owner.
‘Don’t go too far, Beagle. I want to see you’re not getting into any mischief!’ Gulliver said as he locked the door behind him and set forth upon his travels. These travels normally meant a walk that took him and Beagle around Brixham, which passed the Golden Hind and the fishing boats in the harbour\marina, past the statue of Prince William of Orange, The Berry Head National Nature Reserve quay, around St Mary’s Bay, past the cave to Sharkham Point and then back again. This was quite a trek, especially if the wind was in your face, which it always seemed to be, and as you turned around the wind would turn around with you. Probably one of Thor’s little jokes, the God of Thunder; well, you know what the gods are like, they do like to play their little games. Mind you, what a Norse god was doing in this neck of the woods was hard to imagine but Gulliver appeared to be able to imagine it!
Gulliver often imagined Sir Francis Drake riding round Brixham harbour on a penny-farthing on a Sunday along with William of Orange, which was a most curious thought and a very strange one to boot!
Suddenly Gulliver felt a chill as if somebody had just walked across his grave and he wouldn’t have minded but he wasn’t even dead; dead tired, yes, but not dead, certainly not dead in the water as he couldn’t swim to save his life.
By the time he’d reached the harbour, Beagle was sniffing around the replica of the Golden Hind. Both Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh had lived in Devon at one point in time, that time being the sixteenth century, the golden age of Queen Elizabeth I.
As a boy the Golden Hind had seemed big to Gulliver but now it appeared small, it was almost as if it had shrunk. Of course he knew he had grown bigger but not to such an extent that he was now a giant like Lemuel Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels appeared to the Lilliputians, after all, Brixham was hardly Lilliput! Gulliver was surprised how small the Golden Hind was, he couldn’t believe Drake had sailed it so far around the globe; it seemed like a strong wind would literally blow it over. His mother was always telling his father that as a young child he was so frail a strong wind would blow him over, that was before he filled out and became averagely built.
But that was the thing about those old boats like the Golden Hind, Nelson’s Victory and Darwin’s ship, The Beagle, they were as sturdy as an oak tree, mind you most of them were made out of an oak tree so that wasn’t too surprising.
An hour later both man and dog had walked as far as both man and dog had wanted to walk, as the two travelling companions stretched their legs and as Old Father Time appeared to stretch time well beyond its natural limits. So they both turned at Sharkham Point and headed back to the harbour. By now the weather had changed; the clouds were as dark as he could ever remember, it was as if a magician had draped his black cloak over the small fishing port of Brixham and extinguished all light. For a few seconds Gulliver entertained the thought that perhaps he had been swallowed by a giant whale like Jonah and was now ensconced within the walls of its ample belly. Never mind about the whale’s ample belly, with middle age just around the corner it was just a matter of time before he had a belly every bit as ample as that of a whale!
The sea, which had previously been as calm as a mill pond, was producing white horses which seemed in somewhat of an agitated state, almost as if they had been spooked by a rattle snake. Thor, the Norse god of thunder was no longer sighing gently but blowing out his cheeks in frustration. Gulliver was happy to have the cobwebs blown away as long as the spiders which had spun them ended up on Mars and he didn’t! The ancient mariner would have loved this weather, Gulliver thought to himself as he turned the inside of his collar up to protect his face and neck against Mother Nature’s sudden mysterious sea change.
Then around about Cod’s Rock, which was some way out to sea, something caught Beagle’s eye. Something in the dark greenie-grey murky waters seemed to be beckoning him towards it, compelling him like the alluring mermaid-like sirens in Greek mythology had done to many a sailor, only to have their hearts and their ships smashed against the rocks for their troubles. Beagle raced into the sea as if Gulliver had thrown a stick in that direction wanting him to fetch it, it was a game they had played ever since Beagle was a very young puppy. Beagle loved the water and unlike Gulliver, could swim like a fish, like a dogfish in fact. Gulliver wasn’t big on jokes, inside his head he was funny but unfortunately, as soon as he opened his mouth he wasn’t!
Gulliver’s grandfather had a lovely gentle sense of humour which, when you were around him, lapped gently against you like waves lapping at the shoreline. Unlike his father’s sense of humour and personality which was like a tidal wave which swept over you and dragged you under. Actually his father’s personality was so overpowering it was like a tsunami. Gulliver often thought maybe that’s why he was so reserved.
‘Come back, Beagle, it’s too rough!’ Gulliver shouted as the wind blew the words back into his mouth.
But Beagle didn’t come back, instead he went out further; it seemed this invisible stick was always just out of Beagle’s reach.
And then Beagle vanished under the waves; it was as if Neptune had pulled the waves over his head as much as to say, ‘It’s time to rest your weary head on the sea bed, old boy.’
Gulliver panicked, Beagle was gone and if he didn’t do something quickly he would be gone for good. But Gulliver couldn’t swim, no matter, a dog was a man’s best friend and he couldn’t let his friend down in his hour of need. Gulliver hadn’t even got time to strip off to his underpants so he simply removed his shoes, ran into the sea fully clothed and dived in. Within no time at all Gulliver, like his trusty companion Beagle and all those aboard the Marie Celeste, was lost to the mists of time.
It was odd, as soon as Gulliver disappeared underneath the unwelcoming waves, the wind died down, the dark clouds passed and the sun came out of hiding.
The water was dark; Gulliver couldn’t see in front of his face. It felt like an ice bath although it was the middle of the summer. Gradually, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could just about make out a figure that was falling towards the sea bed. Gulliver was sure it was his beloved Beagle. Gulliver knew he couldn’t turn back now so with great fortitude he dived down further, deeper, deeper still; now he was swimming like a fish. Now that wasn’t right, swimming like a mermaid, although a merman might have been a better description in the circumstances. Circumstances which didn’t really lend themselves to humour, but the mind was a strange thing and even in the darkest of times humour came to the fore. And then another dark-humoured thought followed on closely behind the last one. He had always wanted to be buried at sea, but not yet, the timing wasn’t right, he was halfway through a stock check and he hadn’t even read the Dead Sea Scrolls. Gulliver was the sort of meticulous person who hated to leave a job half done.
He must concentrate, he told himself, he couldn’t afford to black out or all would be lost for him and his loyal companion for he would literally be lost at sea. Gulliver could feel his lungs fit to burst; it hadn’t really registered that he was swimming, although, perhaps he wasn’t, perhaps this was a dream more like a nightmare in which he was drowning! Don’t give up. Remember what grandfather said – ‘You can do anything if you put your mind to it’. Gulliver could see his grandfather in his head telling him as much as he stood on the Golden Hind, he couldn’t have been more than seven at the time, perhaps eight; in truth his early years had rather got lost in the sea mists of time.
And then his thoughts started to drift from one thing to another, drift like the Marie Celeste on a becalmed sea as a song from his childhood started to play in his head – row, row, row the boat gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily life is but a dream. Now his head was swimming, unfortunately his body wasn’t, then everything went black.