Life!

When I let Suki out in the morning I saw that the garden had burst into bloom while we had been away and was looking absolutely fabulous. I turned up at Chiswick for the 8 am service to find the place full of flowers - with this creation on the font! An interesting challenge for the 8 ringers Monica had lined up to ring for the Festival!  Mind you the church looked absolutely lovely I was particularly taken by the Remembrance one - including the perspex cut out figures representing the fallen who were no longer with us Monica decided that it was only practical to ring the back four, so I was able to get away early without ringing and get a nice early start for Devon - arriving around mid-afternoon - for a week's visit prior to picking Mike up from Intrepid. It was lovely to finally be able to relax and recuperate from the activity and early mornings of the week before.  Suki was a bit clingy for a few days but eventually settled back to h

All Photos Itinerary SUMMARY  Set off Monday evening. Me, Mike, Adrian, Malcolm and Phil on board, joined following morning by Bjørn. Lovely warm sunny weather all week. Slept well because I could sleep in the living room with Suki beside me. Engine needed repairs Tuesday (5 hours delay) and Wednesday (one hour delay). Suki went missing Thursday - thankfully found safe and well - so boat turned round. One hour wait for Harecastle Tunnel.  Boated long hours. We went through locks quickly and efficiently. Arrived in Northwich, on day of  Royal Wedding, one hour ahead of original schedule for handover - much to Mike's delight, relief and amazement. DETAIL Monday 14th May .  Mike had made arrangements to pick up Adrian and Malcolm at 9.30 am at Turnham Green, so I got up at 6 am to walk Suki, pack the car etc on the basis that we would be leaving then. However when he phoned the boatyard it was clear that they were going to be working on it all day and were expecting it

Once the bank holiday weekend was out of the way our attentions turned to Intrepid which was due to start the following Saturday. JJ  went down on the bank holiday weekend to get it ready for us – in particular to pump out the sewage tanks from his previous trip (ugh!) – and discovered that the engine was dead! We waited all week while he got the boatyard to check it out and get it fixed – they discovered that it was the head gasket. They had to order a new one and expected to get it on Friday morning and we hoped they would be able to fit it and get the engine running by the end of the day (they don’t work weekends!). So, we had to assume we would be leaving as intended on Saturday morning. I did the packing over the course of the week and prepared the tower donations. On the Thursday Suki and I went on an adventure to purchase pump out cards. Mike should have ordered these online but had failed to do so and it had got too late to get them delivered in time. So I looked up on t

Not a lot happened over the next couple of weeks - just did all the usual things.  The weather was mixed - sometimes sunny and warm sometimes cold and wet.  It is my favourite time of year for the garden as everything is growing - but tidily unlike August when there are dead leaves and flowers to deal with.  Acton park looked beautiful - the rhododendrons were out in profusion, and the moorhen chicks appeared on the pond.  I took some photos of the rhododendrons - and Google stitched them together and sent the result to me a few days later.  It's rather spooky that it can do that but the result was lovely. I rang a couple of handbell peals - one of Superlative Major on the trebles with Steve, and one of Kent Royal on 7-8 at Guys. I went to fitness classes, walked the dog, sorted all my digital photos out into albums and deleting the duplicates and ones I didn't want.  I also did my first email mail merge - setting up a gmail address for the london bellringing school an