'In the last period of its life, The Boat was used as a children's playhouse in my niece's garden. Then she moved. I haven't asked what happened to it. I don't like to.'
The name of dad's boat, that is. Or, as we would always call it, 'The Boat'.
His magic ingredient was black Bostik. If a boat got holed, a patch of canvas with a few smears of Bostik would put things right. In these canoes we children would ride out over the waves into the sea, because what today would be seen as a health and safety risk was back then simply adventure and fun.
I think everybody in the locality knew he was building a boat in his garden. The glue for the project was Aerolite, which came in two parts. One was the sticky gluey stuff, and the other was a thin spirit which had to be applied to one of the wooden surfaces separately as a hardener. The catch was that if you left it too long the hardener would evaporate before the join had been completed.
As it neared completion a reporter from the Star came along. In his write-up he said The Boat was called Seamen. In fact the model name of the boat was a Seamew.