Comparisons, comparisons...

This morning, as I was cleaning, scraping rust and repainting the crew seats in the lifeboat, an Italian couple came to have a look round. He boarded with alacrity; she, very sensibly, took one look at the yawning gap between the superannuated gang-plank and the boat and decided to stay on the dockside.

The chap was full of intelligent questions and very curious. Last stop on the look-round was the engine room. Here, he was strangely unimpressed, whereas most people are quite overwhelmed by the sight of two monstrous twelve-cylinder turbodiesels in a confined space. He seemed to know something about motors, however, so I asked him whether he had a motorboat.

Yes he did, he said, on the river Po: a racing boat powered by AlfaRomeo engines. He had taken part in the annual Po race, all the way to Venice. How long had it taken him, in driving time? A mere three hours. I calculated he must have been skimming along at between 130 and 140 kms an hour. Good job he didn't hit one of the many supermarket trolleys thrown into the Po.

Beats the lifeboat's 46 kms an hour, by a considerable margin, but I'm not sure he'd like to take it out in the seas we get here.