Birthday Treat.......

It was my birthday on January 4th.

January 4th is pretty poor, timing wise, if you wish to celebrate a birthday with a big party, lots of cake, presents and the joy of staying up late.

Everyone's just done all of that ad nauseam.......

Yes, January 4th seems, almost traditionally, the day when we turn our backs on celebration and look forward to the New Year's crop of Inland Revenue Income Tax Returns, credit card and Tax Bills, overdrafts and bank loans.

In short, it's a sod of a day to have a birthday.

I celebrated this year by pulling a ten and a half hour shift in the Hole Making Shop.

Whoop-de-do........

But they did let me off twenty minutes early, so I picked Jackie up from Cambridge station, we phoned-in an order at the Chinese Take-Away in the village, took it back to Pippin and consumed it by the fire with a cheeky red I'd bought, heavily discounted, at Tresco (The Scilly Isles supermarket........)

So far, so mellow.

(After all, now I'm in my 49th year, you can't expect too much in the way of the sort of heads-down-no-nonsense-mindless-boogie behaviour of my (not necessarily birthday) parties of yore that have now passed into legend.....)

I had just started to seriously nod-out in front of the wood-burner, when my sainted wife announced she was unhappy with the state of Pippin's mooring lines and was off to check them.

Did I mention the gale that was blowing outside?

To give you an idea of it's ferocity, our wind turbine charge-indicator normally shows around 3 amps in a stiff breeze. It topped out at 19 amps, switched itself off, then proceeded to make some 'ooh lawd, I've just buggered me bearings' growling-type noises.

All night long.......

But I digress......

I wasn't about to let Jackie prance about on the foredeck alone and unobserved in the teeth of such a gale. So I very sportingly agreed to join her.

We'd just got another line ashore to relieve the strain on our bow mooring post ( a lusty 4" job, but not concreted in, so it was wobbling like a loosening tooth with Pippin's 26 tonnes on the draw-string.........

Then I looked upstream.....

Rob and Julie's "Friendly Fox" had pulled her stern pin and was at right angles to the bank...........

I could go on about the frantic phone calls, frantic bashing on the roof of the boat, the neighbours who came to help, the sleeping tablets, the rain and the wind,( oh, the wind!), but suffice to say, The Fox was eventually safely moored-up with extra pins and double preventer backstays. We then trotted round our wind-blown mooring with torches, pins and sledgehammers in hand making sure everyone else was safe.

Time to bed?

Ten past midnight.

It's good to know I can still show myself a good time.......

Happy Birthday!!!!