Finding A Natural Habitat

In search of a yard with just the right amount of clutter

- Adrian Morgan

Where have all the messy boatyards gone, the ones you used to discover skulking in the marshes or down a narrow rutted lane, dotted with derelicts with wonky ‘For Sale’ notices, fading to magenta on their peeling topsides?

Where are the tarred clapboard sheds with aching rafters, bearing the wooden masts of long-deceased yachts, deep in dust and cobweb draped; the yards with a little office somewhere in the depths, behind a glass door, in which a rusty filing cabinet holds the details of unpaid bills dating back to the 1950s, when Col Meriman-Scott used to keep his Buchanan on a swinging mooring, hauling her every year, and never a penny, even after death, when it transpired he was a retired tax inspector from Hull and the nearest he had come to commanding a battalion was as troop leader of the local Boy Scouts.