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I’ve worn a grubby RNLI cap for decades. I sound London, but I was born in Truro and I was a basically feral (Gen X) kid wandering the coast path with a dog until sunset for a lot of my early life. The lifeboats are in the fabric like trawlers and farms and pasties and fish and chips.

This happened within sight of my house when I was nine. I wasn’t there - I was at school in London by then - but Penzance and Newlyn felt it for *decades*. The memorial garden on the cliffs is a hundred metres from where I scattered my parents’ ashes. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penlee_...

The other day someone warned me not to wear that cap because it might be misunderstood. No, I don’t think it would be.

The RNLI is the closest you will ever get to actual Batman. When rescue is visibly, viscerally, obviously impossible; when the water is a smothering, thundering black wall and the wind is screaming straight from Hell; when you are absolutely going to die: someone’s hand pulls you out and you don’t.

I used to live at the other end of these isles in a small community with a famous lifeboat station. The lifeboatmen and women were seemingly ordinary farmers, fishermen, plumbers etc. No hero image. When the beeper goes, they drive to the station and launched the boat.