Wednesday has been a good day

Had a giggle this morning when I looked at the weather app on my phone – Derby UK 11 degrees and cloudy, Wellington NZ 10 degrees, partly cloudy.  Is it summer here? Is it winter at home?

OK, so the pumpout was not hassle free but we did get through it with some help. We made an error in reading the instructions - the very first instruction isn't part of the bulleted instruction list, so we missed it out, our bad … A couple of minutes into pumping out, the machine stopped sucking. Damn and blast. In the end, while I went down to retrieve the dried washing from the laundry (50p for 25 minutes in a big industrial dryer – excellent value, and I did wash my hands first, by the way), David went back over to the shop and got another token (for free). The guy came over a few minutes later to serve us with diesel. It turns out that the last person who pumped out didn't use up all of their 9 minutes, so the initial pumping we did was on their token, and our token didn't register. We learned a thing or two from the diesel chap though - first, it takes a while for the pressure to build up in the hose; second, it helps if you dunk the pump head into the cut to suck up some water and then put it in the outlet. What I learned for myself was to be wearing jeans that don't matter - there is a lot of kneeling involved and when it's raining the jeans get soaked!

I am sure the contents of the tank were of greater quantity than the food and drink we’ve consumed, so why aren’t we losing weight?

Lesley (our friend and my boss when I worked at the Home Office back in 2005) brought her dad, Bill, to visit today. In spite of the rain, it was a lovely day with lots of laughter – Lesley does a fine line in rants.

And it has rained much of today, particularly when we were cruising from Mercia Marina to Willington, then of course, the rain held off while we were eating at The Dragon (good food – loved the key lime pie with chilli chocolate ice-cream). After lunch we winded (turned) and cruised back past Mercia Marina and down to Stenson Lock. There is some confusion among the various canal maps and software re where the winding hole is. Upshot was that I had to reverse about 100 metres back to the Stenson Marina entrance to turn. Did it slowly and managed to avoid hitting any of the boats moored on both sides of the cut. Did not manage to avoid a bit of crunching at the marina entrance – fortunately it was raining so no resident boaters came out to comment.

As we cruised back to Willington, it started to rain heavily, and David and Bill stayed inside, Lesley and I got soaked, but we were brave. We moored up in a space with 6 feet to spare between boats and didn’t hit anything – even the Armco! David and I put the pram cover up – getting quick at that now - and then it was inside for cups of tea, Ministry of Food cheese scones, and UK gingernuts (not as good as Griffins, in the opinion of David and Lesley, as they disintegrate when dunked).

Now at 8.30pm, as it’s time for me to go to bed, it is no longer raining …

Status: Green – a lovely day