Well now.....

Here's a thing.......

Today I took Pippin into Cambridge for a pump out.

Nothing remarkable about that, you might well think....

No, indeed not.

I arranged to meet Mark (who had moored his boat at the 48's at Clayhithe last night) and give him some badly needed lube oil..... the engine of the narrowboat he and Sheena are on has only recently been coaxed back into working order by The Engineer and it's burning a bit of oil.........)

Actually, strike that, it's burning a shed-load of oil.......

The head may come of for valve-grinding, new valve stem oil seals, and a new head gasket.....

Until then, a top-up can is needed.

So I popped down to Tresco ( The Scilly Isle's Supermarket) to furnish same..

And into Cambridge we duly trolled.

Having pumped out both Mark's boat and Pippin, a restorative ticture was very much in order, so we repaired to The Fort St. George for a couple of pints.

This was a mistake.

The time spent there coincided with most of the rowing clubs of Cambridge University putting their boats in the water for The Lent Bumps.

Do you know what The Bumps are?

No?

Well, don't ask me to explain it to you........

It's fearsomely complicated, involving terms like 'bumped' 'rowed over', going 'up' or 'down' a 'division'....

Oh, it goes on.......

Anyway, it's very like a race, and in the end you can tell who the winners are because they all have fresh leaves in their hair.........

(Which I reckon goes to prove they ain't all locked up yet......)

Now, I speak in jest, (in case you have blundered into this nonsense from some frightfully serious rowing website).....

The work put in throughout the year by all the participants is quite something.

And this is their moment.......

So the skipper of The Mighty Pippin was only ever going to obey the very polite instructions from the marshalls.

Actually, that is really what this post is about: everyone who spoke to me from the bank did so with the utmost courtesy.

No-one bellowed 'Barge! Barge! Stay where you are!' through a megaphone.  (We seem to have moved on from the apoplectic blazer wearing poltroon of four years ago - or was that the town bumps.....? Hmmmm)

No, I have to say the marshalls of the University Boat Clubs were outstanding. They thanked me for my patience, and generally seemed to consider me as a fellow river user, not some pesky annoyance to their fun.

So very well done!

I hope you all had a great time on the river and if you won, then good, (but those leaves do look silly).

If you lost, well, you had a good old go, and in losing, were at least spared the weird greenery of strangeness......

I got Pippin home in the pitch dark by the way, having had to delay somewhat for the racing.

But hey. If I'd not had those beers with Mark, or if I'd checked the website to see what likely restrictions to navigation there might have been, then I wouldn't have been in the way.

So no harm done, and, with luck, a little in the way of an improvement in rower/boater relations achieved.

I hope so.

:-)