Change of status, and in-marina retail therapy

After seven and a half years, we are no longer continuous cruisers. (Disgraceful types, should be made to pay a lot more for their licences.)
 /wahaha

 We went into the marina office this morning, ostensibly to buy an electric card, and bought a mooring instead…

In truth, we've been thinking hard about it all for a couple of weeks. Although we probably won't get full value for the extra money, the idea of having a place we're absolutely entitled to retreat to in case of ill-health or needing an operation or something was very attractive. We did think about investing in one of the really nice holiday lodges, that would bring 5 years worth of mooring with it, but it would have stretched us just a bit too far, leaving no spare cash in the kitty for winter sun holidays or the like, or even to cover some disaster to the boat.

We get to stay on our existing mooring, which is great as it suits us down to the water. The marina is considering what pay back to offer to those of us who are permanent moorers but are out cruising a lot; we wait to see the result of their deliberations.

Needless to say, we'll still vehemently support the rights of CCers to cruise as much as they like for the same price as the rest of us. And thank heavens we didn't go to Barby Marina!

Having done this, we had a restorative coffee/luxury hot choc in the Willow Tree (we get a 10% discount there, now), met up with Jayne and Stephen and then shopped like mad at the fortnightly mini market. We bought lots of nice meat (and ordered some beef fore-rib and a turkey for Christmas), some veg from the market garden stall, some nice Italian cheese and some Kalamata olives in blackcurrant and rosemary dressing.

Scrumptious is the word I want here.

We've spent the rest of the day recovering. I did a bit more on the Kindle book (it'll be a while yet at this rate) and made up a special ring tone for the Pigotts when they call; a bit of "We sail the ocean blue" from HMS Pinafore seemed appropriate in view of Stephen's nautical past (though he's merchant, not RN).

Then, beset once more by that imp of mischief that's got me into so much trouble down the years, I also carved out a tone for incoming SMS texts from the same track. Now, the arrival of the text will be announced by the phone merrily singing "Ahoy, ahoy, the balls fly free, ahoy ahoy, o'er the bright blue sea".

Wicked sense of humour Sir William Schwenk Gilbert had, and it got him into trouble too from time to time, so I'm in good company.

Elanor's coming to dinner tonight, so I reckon it ought to be lasagne, her favourite, after all the running around she's done looking after our post this week.