Met five of the seven-man lifeboat crew at Spurn. The coxswain, Dave, made me a cup of coffee. A very small cup of coffee. The cup was pink. Apparently it was once used by the Duke of Kent on an official visit. I told Dave that next time I would bring my own, much larger, less effeminate mug. They are a nice bunch of blokes and as unique as you'd expect a small group of hard-working life savers to be. The play won't be a David Hare-esque verbatim account of their lives, rather just something that attempts to capture the spirit of what they get up to. They don't like talking about the rescue missions that have unhappy endings. Which is fair enough - if it was me I wouldn't like talking about them either. They said some interesting things that will prove helpful at tomorrow's meeting and for the play and, after promising that I would now become their stalker and be returning regularly - adding that I would be familiarising myself with their wives - I left them to it. They had been out at Grimsby all night - apparently they move the boat across the Humber whenever it gets choppy as it's impossible to get on board at Spurn in severe weather conditions.
There was an inordinate amount of dead rabbits on the three mile winding road that leads to and from the RNLI jetty. After swerving round the rabbit carcasses, giving way to every oncoming vehicle and realising that I had inexplicably invited myself out to sea on the lifeboat in the coming weeks I decided to reduce my heart rate by looking at the wind turbines at nearby Out Newton on the drive home. When I pulled the car over to take some photographs the car was assaulted by a yapping golden retriever who must work for Powergen or something. I swear it was barking "no pictures!" at me.
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