HAPPY BIRTHDAY MEL

I know this is late but I hope you get it anyway :)


Meanwhile, on the joys of canal holidaying:-----
to start with, my internet connection is on the blink
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They are of course, very joyful. (Canal holidays that is, not blinking connections) However, on this (upcoming next week) occasion, there are flies in the ointment. Mainly that all the people who were going to come with us have backed out. We have one couple for 3 days and then for the rest of the week there's just us chickens (not at all the spring variety) and a fifty six foot boat. (oh and the dog)
Barney assures me that there aren't very many locks. However, his idea of not very many and mine differ widely. I think here will be a lot of locks.
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I foresee miles of trudging and heavy winding and general struggling. and not many opportunities to take pictures.
I could of course leave all the locking to Barney but I don't actually like steering. It's a bit like playing second violin in an orchestra. Miles of emptiness verging on boredom and then lots of sudden, difficult, urgent concentration. (first violins get to play the tune a lot, very high and soulfully and all that, while seconds get to fill in the extra notes that the composer wanted, to make the harmonies work so they often don't make a lot of sense on their own and very rarely sound like a tune) This is why I abandoned playing in an orchestra!
Furthermore, once you have been left with the steering thingy in your hand, you can't escape until some one comes back and relieves you. And then there's the whole business of turning round. Boat steering being the way it is, you have to do everything back to front. And they don't have brakes you understand, you slow down and stop by reversing the engine.
Oh and boat steering and braking are not responsive. You have to plan a turn minutes before you get to the point where you want the turn to happen. Whole minutes.* Also, nearly all turning round comes in multiples of points. In a car you might have to do the occasional 3 point turn to prove you can do it without hitting the curb. In a boat, all turns come in points of three or four or twenty and usually involve wedging one end of the boat against the bank while dragging it's back end round with the engine in reverse. Or is that forward? And turning the rudder ...which way was that now? Not the way you would expect. Or maybe this time it will be the way you expect only by now you can't remember if you've learnt what to expect or you're having a reversal and you're back to expecting a car style response. Sometimes, while doing this you also have to throw a rope to the person on the bank...simultaneously.
Then the urgent moment is over and on we go at a stunning 2 or 3 miles an hour for the next several miles.
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Basically, the thing about boats is, the more the merrier. More people to steer and wind locks and more people to shop and more people to cook. And some one to talk to when you've upset the steerer by complaining about the bumps when they hit the lock or the bridge!

Oh and more people to make tea!!!!
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You will have noticed by now that my first response to any new situation is to list, comprehensively, all the bad things about it.
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Actually, experience has taught me that canal holidays are always fun.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing in the world, like messing around in boats :) I just make a point of being ambivalent. Since I'm neither amphibious nor ambidextrous.

*Whole minutes when you'd rather be pointing a camera than a boat.
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Update: One of the drop outs may have dropped back in :)
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I think I'd better try and post this!

OK, so it's 08.11 on a Sunday morning

And everything was packed up ready to go late last night.

The rain is falling steadily but quite gently.
I've made soup and coffee and packed a dozen plastic sacks and a quantity of plastic sheeting and everything.
Can't help wondering what exactly constitutes weather bad enough to cancel the event! Because if the event had been cancelled, I could still be asleep in my warm bed.

So I am just a tiny bit peeved when a phone call comes to tell me that this is exactly the sort of weather that's bad enough and the event is cancelled. I just wish they'd got up as early as me and looked out at the rain before I got to this stage.
Oh well. Next week at Oxford Market then. I don't think they cancel that except for hurricanes and blizzards...No, don't say it! I absolutely refuse to tolerate hurricanes and blizzards in June. (Or indeed to toerate them which is what I typed first by mistake. Spell-check thought I ought to have typed 'toe-rate'. Picky! Anyway I refuse to toe-rate it either so it had better be sunny and bright.)
I was going to take a picture when I set up but fortunately decided to have a dry run at home last night so this is how it was going to look. You have to imagine the park railings behind the red blanket and a plastic sheet draped cunningly over the top (or suspended from the trees above with little bits of string and selloptape). Oh and a soggy, plastic shrouded figure, clutching a cup of soup, next to the stall)

Thing is, now I will be able to join Barney and all my other Bampton friends in a field in deepest Oxfordshire in time for the Sunday afternoon campers' BBQ on the field. Isn't that wonderful! And then I can spend a wet afternoon dodging in and out of tents and huddling damply in the pub, later. This will be at least as much fun as sitting in the rain, with my feet in a plastic bag, wondering how to stop drips from going down the back of my neck whenever the member of the public turns up to buy a card :).
Ah well. Soup and a sandwich for breakfast and a quick shower before packing up all the stuff we forgot to pack for camping and unpacking all the stuff I packed last night! Present wrapping for Youngest (her birthday always falls on a Bampton weekend so it's always a bit of a puzzle, how to celebrate it. Possibly the best ever was the time Nigel blew up 15 balloons and tied them to her tent, all secretly, so they were all there when she woke up).
I imagine that the campers are busy at this moment, frying up an enormous breakfast for er, 17 I think it was going to be this morning and dashing from tent to tent with cups of tea and coffee.

Just a few more pictures
Of Mr Drake....trapped in the lock with our boatMrs Duck and family, anxiously awaiting his escape (yes, it's alright, he did escape, though seeing as how he came into the lock riding cheekily on the front of the boat he was lucky beyond his deserts to do so)And in case you haven't heard quite enough about water.......
Hey, I just realised that now I won't have to spend all next week frantically replenishing stock. Or I can spend the week making more cards with different pictures. Got some ideas :)

See you soon. er, keep dry!