Special Day

I’m almost certain that the opposite sex don’t like to be reminded about their yearly special day.  For this reason I ensured we had an isolated rural mooring well away from civilization (well as far as you can get in England).  Unfortunately this plan quickly fell apart in the morning when the youngest son phoned to wish his mother a happy birthday and then asked where I was taking her for a meal.  Obviously he is single.  No married man would make such a fundamental error!   I now couldn’t plead ignorance, which left me scrambling for a solution.  Fortunately I had a backup with the last one of these in the freezer.

Jan did offer to share, but I unselfishly declined.  Because it was her special day I didn’t involve Jan in today’s final 250 hour engine service.  This freed up time for her to continue deep cleaning the interior.  Of course I didn’t let her do all the work, generously assisting by emptying the content of the vacuum cleaner cartridge into the hedgerow.  Jan did get to eat a delicious evening roast dinner.  Cooking it herself to avoid food poisoning.

A number of boats have passed by us today, the most interesting of which looked like it was trying to moor opposite us on the off-side.  The steerer was really struggling, and then we realised it was a short boat towing a longer boat that didn’t have a steerer. Both boats were slightly aground.  Eventually he managed to get back in the middle and moored just beyond the next bridge.

Actually the boats moored breasted up just beyond the bridge and on a bend.  This created a few problems for two hire boats that met at the bridge.  Neither knew what to do and there was five minutes of indecision before one boat hesitantly manoeuvred around the breasted boats and entered the bridge hole before passing the opposing boat.  All good fun!