Chapter 21

I'd screwed up again hadn't I? I might be good at building electrical circuits - faster, with fewer repairs to do and fewer mistakes missed than Dad but still I'd blown up on the job I was being paid to do. Admittedly if I never built another electrical circuit I wouldn't miss anything about it but the money, but I'd allowed my perfectionism to get out-of-hand, in a way creating the opposite situation to when doing the unpaid things in my life.

It might have been odd that I'd needed some sort of permission at the start to allow myself to dance and get into 'model mode' but that permission had worked and once started I'd come to enjoy them more than most would have done. Now it seems it was time to give myself permission to stop working myself into a sweat over the electrical circuits: to be satisfied with less than perfection as long as it was good enough for Dad who was the electrical designer and Bill whose boat it was to be (and who was paying the bill).

On the television behind the bar was the chancellor of the exchequer, probably pushing the idea of freeing the banks of restrictions if I'd understood recent economic moves at all. Was it the right thing to do? Did he have a special understanding of economics or the present economic situation that made his decision better than someone else's or a decision made on the toss of a coin? In my position as a Non-Executive Director of Arianrhod Development it might sound authoritative if I told people through a blog or newspaper letter that the chancellor's decisions were wrong. If however they knew me as Venus, the tantrum throwing lowest of the low in the boat building world, they would simply laugh at my economic ignorance. What about as internationally famous model Venus Williams or billionairess Venus Williams… ? Was the whole decision making adult world populated by actors who'd given themselves permission to act rather than experts? Are they one and the same thing - merely human?

Back home I spent some time with Dad, first apologising, which seemed a good start and then getting him to agree to pay me the same rate to help Jack with the woodwork as he had been paying me to work on the electrics. A concession I made was to finish Dumblebit's wiring as long as I could drop doing the wiring on Dad's other jobs - his concession in return was to try to get Ian to teach me to weld stainless steel so I would have some variety in my work and an extra skill. By anyone's standards Dad is far from being chauvinistic or insecure - he'd stood by me when even Mum was thrown by my changes; he loved to dance and rarely drank but it was fun to see the surprise on his face when I said I wanted to learn to weld - of course unlike me he had not regularly watched throughout childhood the video of Alex(andra), the dancing welder in the movie Flashdance.

Maybe I'd needed a major emotional shakeup as after that blow-up I felt more relaxed at work and more confident about giving some input to the layout of bits and pieces aboard. My woodwork and metalwork became an unexpected success as it turned out I had the good eye for 3-dimensional shapes and the steady hand necessary for building boats that have many curves and few right-angles.

Outside work as well, my personal style was evolving and becoming more confident which drew unexpected attention. My second modelling assignment was for a specialist in dance and evening wear and held right here in Cardiff with 3 models and 15 photographers. Think less a modelling session, more an occassion likely to attract attention under the civil disorder laws. I hadn't helped things when through my connection to Litara I tried to get Kelly an opportunity to work as a makeup up artist… Kelly got her opportunity at the expense of Litara turning up with Jean Luc and his camera.

Then without Litara's keen eye maybe nobody would have noticed the presence of Philip, the photographer I'd met in Bristol, who I'd invited to meet me at the end of the session so that we could afterward join the gang, including Evan, for a night out. Philip being a 'chancer' spotted an opportunity and arrived first thing in the morning to talk his way into being allowed to photograph the whole session, unpaid, in return for the designer, who was also there, having first refusal on the photographs at a very reasonable price…

As I suggested, it was creative mayhem but I loved the clothes which ranged from from romantically floating to downright sexy. Even I was surprised that a dance-wear designer's range extended so far as to include costumes for pole dancers - yes there was a pole set up for our use but I was unable to persuade Litara, winner of Grandma Tina's hen-night pole-dancing competition, to demonstrate how it should be done until she had made every photographer swear to keep off their cameras - which limited my opportunity for blackmail to my own cell phone which she had forgotten about!

Such was the exuberant mood the session produced that afterwards all of those who didn't have trains to catch stayed with us into the evening once 'my gang' turned up and somehow, without paying entrance, we all ended up descending onto the upmarket club where Serena and I had downed the slime-ball on our last visit. I got to show off my new colourful jacket and leggings that I'd bought at large discount from the designer and, if I'm not mistaken, Philip got Evan.

The unexpected success? Seven days later my photo was splashed all over the local paper as the most colourful character prominent in an article highlighting the Cardiff Club Scene!