THIS IS A TEST BY SARA DIXON

Small dogs often enjoy sitting high up

BY the way it is pronounced I’m not sure if I should be jiving on the water.

I think the wind is in my ears – pulling away the correct sailing terms.

For heeling, the term for the boat diagonally pitching into the water at one side I’ve been hearing keeling.

The bow, the front of the dinghy, has become the prow.

I’m surprised Sam’s patience has not been worn thin by my strange demands.

“Don’t talk to me,” I tell him in an emphatic way. “My concentration is being broken.”

He has told me to look up at the sail to pull it tight as we zig zag across the lake.

On reflection how on earth is he supposed to teach me if I demand he doesn’t speak?

The problem is my concentration is so fragile sailing and chewing gum at the same time would prove a difficulty.

Last week we sailed at 90 degrees to the wind back and forth across the reservoir as I learned tack, turning the boat with the wind to the side of us.

This week he is checking my tacking is good before he teaches me to jive? No Gyb.

After ten-minutes on the water he tells me, “Right, you’ve got tacking down.”

There is one major problem though. I can’t stop tacking. Turning the boat this way and that, when I don’t need to or don’t want to. I’m am squiggling us across Stoke Newington West Reservoir when I should be sailing the dingy in a nice straight line turning only when we approach the sides of the reservoir.

“You get it right and then you lose it,” Sam gently tells me in the classroom after our on-the-water lesson. I sit on a plastic chair toes pointing downwards, my shoes squisherly wet to the point of drip-dripping on the floor. I’ve over steered the boat so many times the sides became deeply submerged in the water.

On a white board he’s teaching me about the wind and how to position the boat for maximum effect. The physics of sailing after my physical lesson.

“I get it straight and then I lose it…” I think. He’s right. I don’t know why I do that I’m definitely sure I cannot blame Sam for talking as I try to sail, that would be like blaming the faults of my overthinking-can-only-do-one-thing-at-a-time brain on my instructor.

The strange thing is I get the most complicated manoeuvre down pat in three goes.

I’m gybing like a good-un.

Sam has taken me to shore to learn how to do this. My ego is glad to hear he does for everyone.

Gybing is when you turn the boat when the wind is behind you. The sail slackens as you gently push the tiller across the boat while you are poised in the middle ready to shift sides as the boom and the sail bangs across the boat.

The stronger the wind the bigger the bash.

Thankfully he has taken us to a not so windy point of the lake so I can practise my gybing without the big bash.

I think it’s meant to be complicated but I find it so simple, so easy, crouch in the centre of the boat. Push the tiller over to the other side wait for the boom to go over, cross over to the other side at the same time as the sail while you keep facing forward and sit on the other side of the boat.

How can I do this yet get confused by sailing across the lake?

female plumbers are on the increase

Cornwall plumbers live an idyllic life

With the demand for women plumbers on the increase and the prospect of a healthy salary, it’s no wonder women like Lorraine Dotchin have had a career change.

Two years ago, Dotchin, 49, was an IT manager for a large law practice but she now runs her own plumbing business.

“I saw a point coming when I could have a career change,” she explains, “and I had some experience with installing the network infrastructure at the law firm’s building, which meant working with plumbers, electricians and plasterers. I always had an interest in plumbing. I’m not blazing a trail or anything. I knew there weren’t many women in plumbing, but that didn’t put me off because I knew I wanted to do it.”

Dotchin looked into studying plumbing at her local college in Burnage, Greater Manchester, but found herself at the bottom of a waiting list. “They wanted me to wait six months and take a ladies’ plumbing course for amateurs,” she says. “They didn’t really get why I was there. Once you’re over a certain age, the chances of getting onto a college course are basically nil. Part-time courses in plumbing have three-year waiting lists in Manchester.”

The Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering (IPHE), the UK’s professional and technical body for all plumbing and heating professionals, blames long waiting lists for a proliferation of under-skilled plumbers trained, for instance, by franchises offering six-week plumbing crash courses to career changers or others eager to get out to work just a little too quickly. As a result, many properly qualified plumbers find the majority of their jobs involve rectifying the poor work of the inexperienced. The correct training, says the IPHE, can take anything up to three years.