Sunday 3 May 2015

Flexible plans

Yesterday went better than I'd dared hope, considering that at one point we had Bruce, Sheila, Peter, Katie, Elanor, Graeme, Daniel, Alex and Sally in the boat and that only one of these was a dog. The boys and dog really behaved themselves, too, which made it all so much easier. They're growing up, of course, which is at once the best and the worst thing about kids (though not perhaps dogs).

Katie stayed long enough to witness our wills, after which she went off to rejoin a friend and visit the shops on the Boardwalk. Peter seemed remarkably relaxed about this, to his credit. He then spent a long time with us going through all the stuff and we spent a lot of time signing our names and writing in the date. Finally it was all done and we could relax with cups of tea and allow the boys out from their room where they'd been reading and doing puzzles for over an hour.

After Peter left we had a family session until Elanor and Sally had to go, then settled down to an evening en famille. Graeme brought us up to date with his plans for the year and we had a generally high old time of it. They had to leave quite early this morning, as Dan had a party to go to. Since then we've been considering our options.

Plan A had been to polish the port side of the boat tomorrow when the weather looks quite pleasant and travel into Derby on Tuesday morning, returning via the dentist in the afternoon. This would give us time for the Ocado delivery tomorrow and for Sheila to get the laundry completely up to date before we left the marina on Wednesday. The only thing is, the forecast for Wednesday doesn't look too encouraging and that for Thursday not much better. In particular, there's a fair bit of wind scheduled.

So instead, if Ocado arrives in decent time, we'll polish the boat and then pull out onto the towpath in the afternoon, travelling to Derby from there. That way, the wind will be less of a problem as we'll already be out on the cut with no serious manoeuvring to do.

So this afternoon we've been getting the boat ready for serious cruising, tidying up in the engine room as well as turning out and sorting the radio cupboard storage, filling the water tank to the brim and getting ahead with the laundry. We've also fitted in a quick bit of shopping and a walk round the marina to dump the recycling.

Setting out to do this last I realised that I was missing my change purse. On calling into the office Jules was able to return it to me. Mick from Inheritance and Chestnut Lodge had found it by the pedestrian gate (where it must have dropped out when I got my key fob out) and handed it in.

Many thanks Mick, another helpful boater!



 

1 comment:

Jo said...

There now! We were in the office when Mick arrived with your little black change purse. The consensus was it belonged to a bloke since there was nothing in it other than change - no bus ticket, paper hankie, fob for a supermarket trolley, scrap of paper with a phone number/email on it ......