Pssst… (I’ll come to that later). Who has not heard of Captain Tolley’s Creeping Crack Cure, and before any of those who haven’t started sniggering begin to do so, it’s a thin solution in a white bottle, with the image of an old sea dog, and instructions how to run it into those annoying seams in wooden decks that, no matter what you try, always leak – invariably over your nose at night.
And it works, to an extent. Not for gaping fissures, through which you can see the stars. We are not talking about a caulking compound. It does, as that annoying cliché goes, what it says on the tin, namely creeps into cracks, and cures leaks, and each batch is made, personally, to a secret formula by Captain…
