A Batch in a “Bach.”

But perhaps you prefer “baching” to yachting. Ignoring the organised sports, baching is the most disorganised of disorganised pastimes. To get the full flavour of baching you hire a bach as big as a piano case and fill it with three times as many people as it will hold.

Every bach designed to house six people has sleeping accommodation for three and will hold fifteen. The other dozen roll themselves in the window curtains and toss for the softest floorboards. In good weather, however, it is possible to open all the windows so that they can sleep with their non-breathing ends in the open air. By this means it is practicable to accommodate twice as many people inside as it would be if they were inside. In the morning the chief fun is in trying to get on your socks without poking your neighbour's eye out.

Meals are fun too, because, even if there were anyone willing to cook, the stove isn't. Bach stoves are always like that. The previous bachees invariably have removed the essential parts for fishing-line sinkers; and even if they hadn't, there is always a magpie nesting in the chimney—if there is a chimney. But fancy cooking on a holiday! Mother declares that she has been cooking all the year and doesn't intend to do any now—even if she could.

Everyone agrees that it's up to the tin-opener and it's certainly stiff luck that there's no tin-opener. Furnished bachs never supply tin-openers; it would make baching too easy; so bachees usually live on sardines because every tin of sardines has a key which will open three tins out of every ten. The Sardinians are evidently a nomad nation of bachees who recognise that the tin-opener is mightier than the stiletto.

But how close the bond of fellowship in a bach! So close that when you dress in the morning you have to watch out that you don't put your leg in the wrong pants; and each bachee has to stick a pin in his foot to make sure that it is his before he pulls a sock on it.