As a Christmas present from my grandparents in 1979, the three of us (big brother, me and little sister) each got given a boat to float on the local boating pond (a two foot deep, 12′x12′ concrete hollow) on the top of a hill overlooking Port Erin and Port St Mary, near their home on the Isle of Man.

There was nothing especially fancy about these boats. They were not remote controlled or swanky. They were powered by being tugged along on a piece of string, puffed by the occasional gust of wind and (if the towline was dropped) often retrieved from the middle of the pond by hurling stones near them, creating ripples big enough to send them over towards the edge, from where they could be rescued with long sticks (and occasionally, wet legs).

My brother was eight, and his boat was a white yacht, about a foot and a half long, with real string rigging and thin cotton sails, and a boom which even vaguely moved (though of course made no difference to the motion of the boat whatsoever). He called her Endeavour, which was a very boy thing to call a boat.

I was six, and my boat was a replica lifeboat, just under a foot long, with miniature portholes and flotation on deck, and even a little hook on the back to be able to tow other boats safely home. I called her Mermaid, which was a very girly thing to call a boat.

My sister was only three, and her boat was a little red moulded dinghy, about seven inches long, and made of heavy plastic. When put on the water if floated for about eight seconds before diving to the bottom of the pond where it stayed. Binnie’s boat wanted to be a submarine.

The sound of childhood trips to the boating pond will forever be the sound of plastic scraping on concrete, chchcc-hchch-hchch-cccrrrcc-crrrrrxxx-xxxhhrhrrrhrrr-rcrcrcrccccc-cccccc-rrrrrrrrrr as Anna dragged her boat across the length of the pond, scraping along the bottom, barely visible beneath two feet of murky water. Anna called her boat Sinky, which was a very sensible thing to call a boat that behaved so strangely.

All this is by way of introduction. My sister used to live on a tiny island off the west coast of Scotland, where she was the craft worker in a retreat centre, helping people to paint celtic knots on stones, mostly, and doing lots of other creative things (like helping teenage first-time transvestites adjust their balloon breasts).

And in 2001, finally she’s started her own weblog - more of a site for ocasional ramblings, actually - called little.red.boat.