Folks,
I would like to apprise you of an odiferous epilogue to the Journey of the Womble, and, by juxtaposition, illustrate just how cushy my wife has it (for the time being).
Last Saturday, we eventually put Womble in her home berth at the Rudder Club on St. John's River. During this operation, I noticed that the water in the dinghy was a little pongy. Determining the source of this to be birdy poop, I gave her a thorough scrub-and-wash-down before deflating and packing her away, prior to spending a couple of hours more swabbing the decks of Womble. 'Er Indoors was, appropriately, resting at the bar during this time, doubtless encouraging me in spirit, but offering some feeble excuse about lumpiness for her physical absence.
Upon transporting the dinghy home in the car, we noticed that aforementioned pong persisted, so I left the dinghy out in the garage to air out. However, by Wednesday (last night) it was apparent that the non-intervention tactic was not discouraging the formation of foul fumes, so I humped the sweaty lump of rubber out to the back garden and proceeded to unfold it, revealing a quite astonishing variety of unpleasant odours - imagine if you will a witches brew of guano, dead cat, fish guts and pond scum.
Since Claire wasn't home yet, I had no choice but to face the olfactory challenge myself. I wrestled gingerly with the floorboards, trying to avoid splashing my best (only) jeans with the rank slime while holding my breath, and eventually prised them up to reveal the source of the malodorous miasma - a two-week-dead, slimy-six-inches, decomposing filet-o-fish (possibly too rank even for MacDonalds to use). At this point, dear Claire deigned to help out by waving a video camera at me and making fatuous and unconvincing noices of sympathy, like "Chuckle, giggle giggle, snort". Then she ran away...
As a final insult, we missed the rubbish pick-up this morning, and have to keep the bloody thing for another week! On the sunny side, it might just last long enough for me to show the in-laws...