An interview with Noah

When my editor asked me to write a blog about shipbuilding, I panicked. I don’t know how to build ships and according to my performance reviews I barely know how to write. But then it hit me, who better to talk to than the original Bad Boy™ of the shipbuilding world, Noah.

I’ve arranged to meet Noah at cosy pub in central London. Appropriately enough it is called The Ship.

I spot him straight away. They say don’t meet your heroes, but Noah’s first impression lives up to every story you’ve ever heard about him. A bushy, silver beard sprouts proudly from his weathered face. Thick, meaty arms are making short work of the plate of chips in front of him. His robes aren’t dirty, just well worn. There’s an authenticity to the salt stains that hipsters in Shoreditch would kill for.

As I sit down and introduce myself I’m struck by his eyes. They are a haunting, piercing blue. The colour of the sea, I tell him.

It’s not a promising start. But then again Noah is a famously tetchy character, prone to throwing a curse or two around. A TV plays in the corner, showing a newscast. A flood warning at the end prompts a barking laugh from the great man.

“Ha! Floods? These soft twat bags in Gloucester or wherever the fuck they think river banks will burst… Ha. Wouldn’t know the first thing about a flood. Me? Oh I’ve seen floods boy. Believe that if you believe nothing else.”

I move on to safer territory, and ask him why he wanted to meet here — in The Ship. He stares in to the middle distance.

“Ships are the only real home I’ve ever known…”.

I want to challenge him on this point. Noah was famously part of an entrepreneurial group of winemakers, with a start-up vineyard that sold fruity little numbers under the Covenant Wines brand.

“Oh I see. You want to talk about those years do you? The demon bottle and the things it made me do?”

I’ll confess to being confused. It occurs to me, too late, that my research in to Noah could de described as shallow at best. Which, incidentally, is the best kind of water to test a newly built ship on. Probably.

“Well you asked for it.” Noah all but growls this, as he orders a bottle of Malbec to the table. For a man who’s never sunk a ship he can certainly sink wine. Glass after glass pours down his throat, much like the famous deluge in the 6th Century BCE that Noah rode to infamy.

“I didn’t mean to undress… It was just so hot. So damn hot.”

Startled by this vulnerability, but also feeling awkward because I don’t know what he’s talking about and I’m not that comfortable with strangers being emotional or naked, I try to diffuse the situation by ordering food.

I go for a pub classic: ham, egg and chips. I barely have the word “ham” out of my mouth before Noah is on his feet and grabbing me.

“Oh so now you’re going to throw my fucking son in my face, are you? How dare you mention that little ingrates name. I will curse just like I cursed Canaan you jumped up snot rag.”

There is deathly silence across the whole pub, a repeat of the flood warnings the only noise.

Noah releases me and draws himself up to his full height with as much dignity as a pissed old man in a robe can have.

He chuckles to himself and totters out of the pub. His sandals look like they’ve come straight off the catwalks in Milan.

As he exits I realise I didn’t ask him anything about building ships. But maybe, just maybe, I’ve learnt something else. Not about building ships, but about building family.

Or maybe I haven’t. Either way I’m expensing the lunch, so I order another Malbec.

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