There’s time to go and see Grampy on the way home from school. I take Susie’s satchel and pick up her hand to make her walk faster. Grampy’s house smells of kippers today. So do his hands. Grampy’s fingers are big and lumpy. There is dirt from gardening down behind his fingernails. He makes sss-sss-sss noises between his teeth while he’s winding the seaming twine around the rope. ‘Do you see?’ he says, and holds the end of the rope up for me to look at the whipping turns. Then he shows me the other end of the rope, with the strands coming undone so that the rope is fuzzy instead of smooth. ‘This,’ he waves the untwisted end under my nose, ‘this is what happens if ropes or cables are left with their ends uncared for. They become unmanageable. So, my Treasure, which knot could we use on this end?’ I scratch my heel and pretend to think hard about his question but I decided, as soon as I saw it was a four-stranded rope, I would show Grampy I can do a Royal Crown by myself.
