Tuesday 29 May 2007

Getting ready for the show, and Day 1

There's so much to cover, since I've not been able to find time to post over the weekend, that I'm going to do it in two bites, one today and hopefully one tomorrow.

Thursday 24 May

This business of waking early is getting almost tedious - we were up and about by 6.30 again. To fill in time before the shops opened, I checked the state of the internet connection. At first I got a GPRS connection on T-mobile - later in the day that disappeared, and I had to pay Orange another quid. This proved to be the pattern all the time we were at Crick - must just be a very weak T-mobile signal here, and of course the show puts a lot of demand on all the mobile signals.

Sheila did the washing up while I walked into the village to get a paper and some bread. We polished the port side of Sanity and her stern bulkhead, on the same basis as we did the starboard side. That is, I used my left hand to wash the dust off, and to do some polishing off, while Sheila did the tough bit putting the polish on, thus sparing my right arm. While we were doing this, Fair Fa' came past with Pat and Sheila Campbell on board.

To our surprise, the next boat past was Waimaru - apparently John and Nev have decided to come to the show.

I set off to walk up the towpath to help John and Nev moor, and in fact caught up with Fair Fa'. There were a lot of moored boats by now, all the way to Bridge 15, about 20 minutes walk away from the footbridge into the marina. We made an attempt to moor Fair Fa' just through the bridge, but she couldn't get close enough, and Pat and Sheila decided to go on to Yelvertoft. Because the canal bends round so much, it's feasible to moor there and walk back over Crack's Hill, along the bowstring of the curve, as it were.

Meanwhile, Waimaru had managed to squeeze into a space just before Bridge 15. After a chat with John and Nev there, they walked back to Sanity with me for a cup of tea, and to see Sheila, who had been steadily boat cleaning all the while.

After dinner we went to have a drink on Autumn Years with Graham and Carolann, and their friends John and Jo off Acen. This took up the rest of the evening - in fact it was gone midnight before got back to Sanity.

Friday 25 May

We woke feeling remarkably well, considering the late night - a bit dehydrated perhaps, but nothing worse. We both went to the Co-op to stock up in anticipation of being busy over the weekend. When we'd got back to the boat last night, I'd missed a call from Chris on Shimshams, the other Braidbar that is joining us for the show. He'd been moored with yet another Braidbar, Farne, who hadn't got a booked mooring, and they were wondering how bad it was. I gave him the glad tidings, though in fact Farne had already left.

Back at the boat we cleaned and sorted the inside, with some reorganisation of cupboards so that we can now store the beer out of sight - until now it's been living behind my chair in the saloon, which did look a bit debauched. The weather was cloudy but reasonably warm though the forecast for Sunday and Monday is a bit worrying.

Braidbar arrived just before lunch. She looks absolutely beautiful. We had a bit of bother getting her into her berth, as there was a squatter on it, but he moved off soon enough and Iain demonstrated his boat handling skills pulling her back out of the slot he'd used temporarily, turning through 90 degrees and slipping into the right one.

There followed an afternoon of polishing everything in sight, starting with the outside of the boat - waxing the paintwork and then polishing the brass, then moving inside. The Gardner 2LW in the engine 'ole looks splendid, but has lots of copper and brass to be dealt with. All this hard work was constantly interrupted by folks stopping by to see the boat, so it was a good session.

After dinner we went over to the bar for a drink with Chris and Lizzie off Shimshams and Des of Farne. Elanor and then Stuart turned up, and we took them back to the boat to get them sorted.

Saturday 26 May

Up early, of course, and a quick trip into the village to get the paper, which I was able to do at the PO, which is nearer the canal than the Co-op in Crick. The temporary bridge into the show site was still locked up, which was a bit of a problem as Stuart needed to get to his car in the traders car park to get some things he'd brought for breakfast. Being a wrgie, this wasn't a mega problem, however - he climbed up the side of the crowd barrier and so onto the bridge.

We did the same thing at 8.30 to get to Braidbar and give her a quick final polish. The forecast is that this is to be the last decent day, weather wise, so we're expecting lots of folk. The Brycelands had booked a space for a gazebo, which we'd erected yesterday, but the allocated slot was round a corner out of sight of the boat, and useless. In the end, we got permission to move it, and so we had to half dismantle it, lug it round and put it all back up again.

Because of the length of the queues, the organisers opened the show early at 9.30. You can do without this sort of thing as an exhibitor, but fortunately we were ready in time.

There followed several hours of non-stop talking and walking through the boat. The high spot for me came in the afternoon. I was showing a couple of blokes through, one of whom was already a boat owner, and the other was a prospective buyer. It was only as I finished that the penny dropped that this was Johnnie Walker, the Radio 2 DJ. He came and had a look at Sanity as well. He'd been seriously impressed by Braidbar, as pretty well everyone has been. In fact he said to Iain "You are the Bruce Springsteen of boat builders" (I'm not absolutely sure how Iain took this - he's more like a Crowded House man)

Elanor and Stuart had done a brilliant job of getting Sanity ready to show, and were sitting reading when we got there. After I'd finished, Stuart said to me "Do you know who that was?" - I think he was more excited than I was, and had been the only one of us to recognise the guy from his voice.

We kept busy until six, when we closed the doors on the boat and had a well earned glass of wine. The wind was starting to get up, so we secured everything as best we could, taking down the chairs and table in the gazebo and so forth.

Sheila and I crawled back to Sanity, where Elanor and Stuart cooked us a meal - spaghetti carbonara and steamed green veg, which was delicious.

To be continued....

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