After 9 months of plain sailing,

the master and his attendant crew entered the area of storms.

In that vast place,

their tiny wooden craft was sea-tossed,

and thrown from wave peak to wave trough innumerable times.

When, eventually, the craft had miraculously reached beyond,

they found themselves becalmed upon a mirrored ocean,

where there was not even a breeze.

Like the ship of the Ancient Mariner,

there was grave concern amongst the sailors;

and the relief felt from passing through the storm

was replaced by a dread of another kind.

Water rations grew scant, food was turning away from being edible, and all seemed about to be lost.

Until the master’s wife gave birth; which was a bit of a surprise, as no one had known she was pregnant.

“It is a buoy, your grace!”

“I am not, ‘your grace’, I am just the master of this vessel; but, I think that Grace will be a good name for our child.”

“It’s a buoy! You can’t call him Grace.”

“We can call him what we wish – Grace is a name that shall befit his style and grace.

And so it was that Grace was named, and grew to be the son that his father, Muriel, had always wanted.