Paddy Macklin

Captain Bungle’s Odyssey is published by Podkin Press and was launched this week at the Royal Thames Yacht Club. Three hundred and seventy-nine days at sea is an incredible achievement in itself, but I was especially interested in the fact that Paddy found time to do 100 squats a day, and in clement weather in the tropics, and 32 circuits of the deck, which is approximately half a kilometer. “The only clue I had that humanity existed was the radio.” While navigating in the Pacific he listened to Radio Cuba, and when sailing in the Atlantic it was mostly religious programs. Good for you, Paddy; 379 days without porn and crappy gossip news about ghastly celebrities must cleanse one’s soul as well as one’s body and mind.

Lance Macklin and his sisters are now gone, but Paddy’s generation continues with the heroics. I have not remained close to Cristina but recently saw her on the cover of Quest magazine, a New York glossy, and she looked fine at seventy. Ironically, I write a column in Quest since 15 years and was pleasantly surprised to see her looking trim and well. Paddy Macklin, her nephew, is another story altogether. He is a real Sir Galahad, like his dad, in that old-fashioned eccentric way of Englishmen before they became slaves and took orders from Brussels.