Timothy Owens,

20 Braytoft Close,

Holbrooks,

Coventry, CV6 4ED

(01203) 680670

Phthrrt number 107 is here! Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the Doormat!

Many thanks to Nick and Rebekah for hosting us in Burnham for the weekend - it must be something to have to cater for all those children. Daniel must be easy by comparison. Thanks to John(?) for the trip out on the Crouch (that's a river, in case you didn't know) in a yacht. When Nick mentioned a river trip, I thought he meant one of them diesel powered chug-chug thingies with a frilly canvas roof and plenty of jam scones. I didn't expect a real boat ("Ready about - DUCK! Winch! No, other way! Ouch! That was my knuckle! S'alright, I've got a few spares. Tea? Er, hang on a bit while I avoid this sandbank. Left a bit. Bit more. MORE! No, right! Arrgh - the winds changed! Yes please, a cookie would go down nicely. Now, where was my tea?" and so on.) Yes, I'd love to go out to sea - less things to avoid!

The car is still in action, and took us down to Lands End without a whimper (though the brakes squealed a bit down all them hills) It has a novel mechanism for illuminating the dashboard light, involving a carefully measured physical shock applied to a certain corner of the fascia. And it's only got one reversing light. I'm told that's normal.

A letter from Nick:

I did promise to do a writeup!

We had a successful sailing trip up the Crouch, up almost all the tidal reaches. None of us had sailed before, but we soon got the general idea of tacking, enough to zig zag upstream with noisy chaos at the tacks. Bronwyn provided endless cakes, fudge and doughnuts and tea, and the skipper's 4 year old son even managed a treacly speckled brew, to the horror of his dad.

The boat wasn't exactly a racer despite its entry in the Transatlantic, but turned out to be larger than the river boats and very comfortable, with 4 berths, bog, big galley (well, pokey with an unbelievable number of cupboards), seats and rooms all over the place. Sort of a marine caravan for messing about on the ocean. It had apparently been used for drug smuggling, and was impounded by the coastguard, so it must have plenty of convenient little cubbyholes with funny smells. We passed the British entry for the Whitbread round the World race, with a huge treble braced mast, long, sleek and dreadfully expensive. Thankfully we avoided tacking through it.

Tacking was fun. We had two teams on each side, with one person hauling and the other winching on each team. There was only one winch handle, so we passed it back and forth with the request "Handle?" ... "Handle." After a while we got bored of that and someone said Mozart instead. Before we'd finished going upstream we'd gone through every classical composer we could think of, and were plumming the depths of Zigue Zigue Sputnik and Graham Kendrick.

I never realised how long the Crouch tidal reaches are; I suppose that's why the Dengie is so cut off. We went about 12 miles inland and stopped at a yacht club, which was a bit tricky as our ocean monster made short work of the dainty dinghy moorings. We ended up tied across another boat and went in to eat. The skipper's son mixed ketchup, mustard and salad cream on his chips before running off to play on the shore leaving us to look at his uneaten impressionist pallette knife creation. Eventually after an incredibly cheap meal and overpriced coke and lemonade we wandered back down the jetty.

Coming back with the wind and tide was a doddle; the skipper had a kip downstairs, most of us sunbathed and one lazily flapped the wheel to keep the jib full. At one point the wind turned and there was a mad panic, flapping sail and the poor skipper ran out half asleep to find why we were lurching and shouting. We sorted the sail out, and he guided us through the yacht park (bit like a car park except you can't to 3 point turns). We decided to ride the tide and explore the seaward end, lazily watching the shore whizz past.

Eventually sense took over and we turned about. We should have parked. Now we tacked desperately against a full tide, but despite a perfectly trimmed sail, the shore moved slowly backwards. The skipper pointed out that the buoy I had been heading for for half an hour was getting smaller, and started up the engine. Three point turns no problem. For experienced sailors anyway. 'Back a bit... aargh stopstopstopforward... where's the hook gone backbackbackSTOP! er forward...' etc.

You are all invited to a second trip sometime; next time we'll study the tide tables and go out to sea!

NickO

And a letter from Trinidad. I've been following their progress round the Carribean with interest:

Greetings from Trinidad! I am just ploughing through a rather long email backlog and found this old Phthrrrt! so though I would drop you a line. [What a sentence to make a Postgrad burst with witty one liners!]

I don't know where you got to with our news - it's a while since I wrote a missive to Phthrrrt! In fact, if this turns out reasonably you might want to Phthrrrt! it (has anyone actually conjugated Phthrrrt!?) So, I will waffle for a while, until I run out of inspiration and hopefully you will pick up something coherent from it.

As I said, we are currently in Trinidad having been to Miami, Bahamas, Jamaica, St Lucia, St Vincent, Guyana and Tobago since returning to the English-speaking Caribbean in May. We go from here to some of the islands that just got battered by hurricane Georges, Dominica, Antigua, St Kitts and then to Barbados for Christmas. Ministry in the Caribbean is hot. I can't understand why so many folks get 'called' here as I would rather have a frosty morning or two than this perpetual heat. Never mind, I guess that some like the doss as you just can't do much during the day. Apart from the heat the locals are rather keen on books. We have sold over 50,000 here so far and people are still coming.

Peter is growing well. He is still around the 95 percentile on the growth charts - this is good as it means that he is well nourished and is on course. The down side is that when you check a local growth chart he should be about twice as old as he is. We have actually been quite embaressed a few times when seeing a local 'baby', around the same size as Peter, to find out they are three years old compared to Peter's 13 or 14 months! He is very cute and sucessfully steals the hearts of around 99% of the people he meets.

Rachel & I are doing ok. Life as a family in leadership is a challenge. My work consumes my days (and some evenings too) and family then takes the early evening. By 8pm we are usually free but whacked! I have put together a portable email system that interacts with the ship one without trashing my business acount so I can now stop anywhere and type. I just need to plug in to the network to send and receive occasionally! Rachel is still full time mum although she gets 1.5 hrs to herself each morning when Peter goes to the play area. She will start some part itme teaching in Jan when Peter's play area hours are slightly longer.

Ok, as promised, the inspiration is waning so I will stop there.

I look forward to hearing from you some time. Let us know how you are getting on.

God bless you.

From Colin, Rachel & Peter