By HILARY GAVIN
I’M FEELING rather nautical today posting my weekly round-up of Facebook social media posts on my WordPress website.
As you can see I’m sharing the image on a Regeneration greetings card of a painting by Christopher Wood who was befriended by the Between-the-Wars artist Augustus John.
By doing so, I’m aware that the Tate in London hold the copyright for the image so I’m hoping they don’t mind me giving them some free promotion – after all, there are worse crimes in the world.
To be honest, I was hoping to post a photo taken of me on a Sunsail yacht competing in the Round-the-Island Race off the Isle of Wight in the year Greece hosted the Olympics in 2004.
At this point I should confess that I’m not a salty sea dog – in fact, I’m very much a landlubber as I only have to look at water to feel sea-sick. I’ve got no legs for sailing at all so I hate long sea voyages and luxury cruises don’t appeal to me.
Mind you, this painting of Dieppe Harbour by the late Christopher Wood delights me because I have fond memories of day trips from Newhaven to Normandy both as a teenager on school trips and later on booze cruises to buy French wine.
We had great fun masquerading as wine buffs, talking to shopkeepers and locals in our Franglais and enjoying long lunches in inexpensive French restaurants. I wasn’t vegetarian then so I’d often plump for delicious seafood platters.
Anyhow, I’m not going to dwell on my ferry trips to northern France – and my later voyages from Bournemouth to Santander on mountain-biking expeditions to Northern Spain in this blog post but I hope to recall my memories of them some time.
At this point in time I’m being nautical because I’ve been recalling my Around the Island Race adventure on a press trip for The Sun tabloid newspaper in 2004 when I joined a small band of female travel writers and novice sailors.
Please feel free to correct me, but I think I’ve mentioned this jolly before in a previous blog extolling the virtues of the unsung heroes and heroines working in behind-the-scenes production roles in newspapers and news websites.
I know the year was 2004 because the British Olympic Sailor Shirley Robertson showed us the ropes on the Solent on a calm day before we tackled the race in Force Gales winds on the day of the event and I literally turned GREEN!
We were all sea-sick as an all-female crew and our local BBC South news captured us on film that day as my shipmates retired below to sleep it off while I heroically kept winching the sails until we returned and moored up at Cowes.
Our skipper Honor and her Second Mate (if that’s the correct term) were very professional that day but I have to confess that I couldn’t walk in a straight line back on shore for at least a week if not a bit longer! I suffered!
So, why am I mentioning Cowes and the Isle of Wight, you may ask? The simple answer is I’ve been hearing a lot about the island recently and how lovely it is to visit on a short break or for a day trip. I’ve always enjoyed my adventures on the island and I like their garlic and tomatoes too – if I can afford to buy them.
As you are aware, I know very little about sailing but I do know enough to realise that skippers need to know their onions, to borrow a slang term, navigating narrow shipping channels in The Solent en route to Portsmouth and Southampton.
I’m also very aware that I’m showing my ignorance as someone who likes keeping their feet – and body – dry on terra firma. I should say that my late Dad, who didn’t suffer with sea-sickness, had “a wreck” moored up at Dell Quay in the Fifties but he gave up sailing because my late Mum suffered on the water like me.
As a child growing up in the Sixties and teenager in the Seventies, I didn’t socialise with “the posh kids” who belonged to the elite sailing clubs in Chichester Harbour such as Bosham and Itchenor.
Too rich for my blood, so to speak. In any case, sailing never pique my interest to any great extent.
Saying that, the stories of the Owlers and the history of smuggling on the Manhood Peninsula, in Selsey and Chichester Harbour are intriguing me at the moment along with The Fox custom ship that policed the English Channel in search of contraband off-shore in Napoleonic and Georgian times.
So, this neatly brings me back to my weekly round-up of Facebook posts because I took some arty shots of Birdham Pool Marina (if that’s what they call it) at twilight the other day when the stillness there was deafening (see below).
As usual, I had intended to embed my Facebook posts from last week in this WordPress blog post but I’ve decided against it because I want to get out in my garden this afternoon to plant vegetables.
Anyhow, by now you should know where to find my Hilary Gavin’s Local Reporting Commentary page on Facebook – so take a gander at it if you’ve got spare time to sit, read and ponder.
In summary, I mention the roundels on the Bingo Hall in Bognor Regis and on the wall above Henry Adams lettings agency on the town’s London Road and the old 1930s Odeon cinemas. I’ve got a couple of gardening updates and I’ve reposted a Poetry Changes Lives recital by an elderly gentleman who – like me – is a devotee of this genre of literature (if that’s the right way to describe it?).
I marked Shakespeare‘s “birthday” and St George’s Day on April 23rd, 2026 last Thursday with a clip of The Times newspaper’s interview with musician Billy Bragg when I listed my five items to sum up Englishness. Naturally, the British sense of humour and sit-coms on telly topped my list.
On a more serious note, I reposted our MP Jess Brown-Fuller‘s campaign to make social media safe for children, teenagers and young adults online and I fully back her bid to take online chatrooms to task over ID age vetting.
Sadly, I should say that money is tight for me at the moment – as it is for so many other ordinary British folk – so I didn’t feel in the least bit embarrassed claiming my £5 bag of fruit and veg from the Grub Club at Hunston Village Hall last week.
If you’re not aware of the Grub Club, it’s a joint venture run by Hunston Parish Council and the UK Harvest charity who salvage supermarket produce that would otherwise be destined for our food waste bins. You can, of course, find out about this venture by visiting my Parish Council News Facebook page.
Finally, I rounded off the week with a gripe about sports and golf booking apps which crooks use to launder money and I invited readers to take a different slant on empowering employees to take a stand against tyrannical Big Business by reminding them that they can, and often should, question their bosses.
If the history of Britain, and Trade Unionism, has taught us anything – it has shown us that there is power in numbers but that power MUST be just and not power-crazed in itself.
Righto, that’s enough. Off outside now to tend my garden.
By HILARY GAVIN
Copyright Sunday, April 26th, 2026
(Please feel free to browse through my website to find blog posts that interest you.)
PS: Apologies for the mistakes in my initial drafts of this post. I’m afraid my blog post felt somewhat of a chore yesterday because I was keen to get out into my back garden. Hilary
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- From landlubber to sailor: My sea misadventure at the Isle of Wight
- Weekly round-up: Managing life without a viable printer at home
- Adventures in Amsterdam on my 1984 stopover to Cold War Berlin
- Weekly Facebook Round-Up: Law, order, and personal Insights
- Isn’t it time to change? My weekly news round-up is challenging you to ask whether the “law is an ass!”
Hilary Gavin
Freelance Journalist & Writer
T/A Business ‘n’ Commas (sole trader)
6 Southover Way
Hunston
CHICHESTER
West Sussex
PO20 1NY
Tel: 07940 444664
Email: grumpywoman@hilarygavin.blog
Copyright April 27th, 2026
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