Well after a while I got a visit from a surveyor who prodded me with his screwdriver, looked at my bottom and went away shaking his head.


Next thing I knew a crane came and hoisted me out of the water and took me away to be spruced up at Princes boat yard at Pun Mill. The luxury of being out of the water and in a nice dry shed again was unbelievable, and the surveyor came to see me quite often leaving instructions for Mr Prince to follow regarding my treatment. It appears that my new owners had the means to spare no expense in reviving me, so I thought here is a chance of a lifetime to get back into tip top order.


Mr Prince and the agent obviously thought so too and kept telling my kind and generous new owners that I needed a lot of extra care and though expensive it was provided. In fact I liked it so much in the shed I didn't want to leave, and call me a malingerer if you will but I made up lots of aches and pains that I didn't really have just to stay in the warm dry boatshed. The builder and our agent loved it and rubbed their hands!


I had expected that Lil Cloud and Dirk would have wanted to dress me themselves in my new coat of lifeboat livery, but true to form they let the boat builder do it for them, clearly Lil Cloud and Dirk were happy to spare no expense as far as I was concerned. How lucky I felt!

All good things must come to an end and after five months in intensive care I was deemed fit for work again, wheeled out of the shop and craned back into the water. I was back in my element. Lil Cloud and his good lady were there to watch the launch  with Lil Cloud puffing away on his pipe and looking so proud. But where was Dirk I wondered as the onlookers dispersed?

I was awakened a few days later by the familiar stench of pipe smoke from Lil Cloud and a voice wrapped in a strange accent that was going to become, oh so familiar to me in the time ahead. 

"eeh by gum Cloud tha's med a gud job onnit."  I looked up to see sticking out over the quayside the toe caps of a huge pair of rigger boots, probably size14 I would have thought. Sticking out of these boots was a gangly ungainly looking man about 6ft 6 in height and obviously the owner of the voice responsible for the afore mentioned words. Perched in his head was a fur hat of the type used by the red army with the earflaps crossed over the top. His name was Wesley Mint though on account of his height and accent he was known more commonly as            Big Wessie!

He was Lil Clouds new right hand man and had come to help deliver me to my new home in Scarlington, but still no sign of Dirk.

With a CRASH Big Wessies size 14's landed on my poor deck, shaking the ariels til I thought they would come down "Eeh cum on Cloud ah cant wait to get  dahn  t'river" he said.
Lil Cloud fired up the engines "Cast off forward" he said in a very nautical manner. I was impressed.

"Which ones Cloud, the front ones or the back ones?" asked Big Wessie. I was unimpressed! But at least we were off on our way at last.
                                                                                   
                                                                                             
                                                                                                   Billy Inkwell Ashtray