The bottle of Doom Bar ...

One evening last week, Anne poured me a bumper of Sharp's Doom Bar - 

She was making a vegetable curry, slicing up savage onions with her shining knife - 

As I sipped the dark ale, I imagined a sand bar, uncovered by a falling tide - clouds hid a crescent moon - a noble sailing ship had run aground - rockets were being fired from the slanting deck - 

I thought of the wreck of John Wordsworth's East Indiaman, on The Shambles - 

I loitered, drone like, in the kitchen, leaning against an oak work top - 

I studied the label of the bottle - 

I read - Where the River Camel meets the Atlantic Ocean on Cornwall's rugged North coast, a sandbank, centuries old, known as the Doom Bar protects and calms this beautiful estuary - Sailors respect the Doom Bar knowing it to be unforgiving if met with haste or arrogance - 

 

There was a moral here, I thought, but one not just for mariners - 

How many Doom Bars face us, I wondered, unmarked on our charts, hidden by calm waters - 

20.28

December 13 2014

The Old School House

East Stoke