I have hit my mid-30s with a thud and picked up various pretentious hobbies, as if driven by biological imperative. Any given Sunday, you might find me pickling some onions to go with the meat I am smoking while a vinyl record plays. How quaint. What a chore of a person I am.
One of these afflictions that has come about in what is either the middle of a short life, the end of a very short life, a quarter of the way through a remarkably long one, or somewhere in-between, is an appreciation for simple design. This is a slow-burning understanding for most people, as we realise that the everyday objects we have become accustomed to in our world are not inherent but rather expertly crafted, often perfected over generations, and now taken for granted. There is perhaps no greater example of this than the glorious object we know as the schooner.
