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.
Graeme Sandford 