A lovely surprise.

Yesterday evening, Pam, (associate priest at St. John's Waterbeach) and her husband Trevor popped round to visit the sick, ie me!

I've never been on the receiving end of such a visit before! Hee hee!

It's always lovely to see P & T.

Sadly we had no prosecco cold, but made do with a drop of chilled fino.

Sherry with the vicar, eh? (okay Pam, I know, I know, 'associate priest'....) All delightfully Anglican.

I, of course, eschewed the tipple in favour of fizzy water. Under doctor's orders don'tcha know..... Yes, I'm on the dry until the end of August when I have to get another blood test.

Proper double-drag bummer.

(You may have noticed from the tone of this that I'm feeling tons better: just resting up today and over the weekend ready for work on Monday.)

Once again, thanks to all who have emailled their good wishes.

I am happy to report I'm approaching the wellness continuum!

Lots of nice things.....

Today, fresh eggs from the mooring's hens, lightly scrambled, having slept for another fourteen hours (that's the fourth night in a row)......

The night before last, fresh veg with supper. ( A present from H. who looks after the sheep and has a couple of rows on our landlord's allotment.) I cooked venison burgers which I got at a substantial reduction on yellow stickers from Tesco. Lovely!

I bought a stainless steel bicycle wheel with rare 4-speed Sturmey Archer hub for a reasonable price on ebay. It's in excellent condition, so the restoration of Eric (my classic rod-braked Raleigh saved from the dump at Milton) is a step closer to completion.

I was up with the sparrows on Saturday, having had the requisite sick person's 14 hour kip, and saw the Lucky Ducks as they traversed the lock at the beginning of their summer cruise. They hadn't had any sleep at all, having partied all night at the City Bumps Party, and looked in remarkably good nick, all things considered.

I remember having that sort of energy........

It was lovely to see them! They are now proceeding along the Middle Level at goodly lick (see their blog for latest updates).

Makes me feel tired just thinking about it.

I've been up for over two hours!

Better have a lie-down.

Got to keep my strength up.........

Signed off work.

I saw the doctor this morning having got an appointment. I'm signed off work for a week but will probably return earlier if I've improved enough so I can avoid dying of boredom.

It's a viral illness so will go away in its' own good time.

Right now I have the wood burner lit, am warming up some chicken soup on it and it is a cosy 84F with a light breeze from the Ecofan. Toast following......

Thanks to all for their kind thoughts and to Jaq and Amy for their blog comments. (I think the Pigeon Post has left several messages all over the hood of our car..... Probably not what you meant by compostable healing magic, Jaq, :) but all positive waves are welcome, so thanks again!!)

In short, I'll be fine, if a bit bored.

The one thing I'm not going to do is compound it by boring you all with the details!

More blog posts are be in the offing, and will hopefully serve to keep me and you amused.....

Monthly update.

I am not very well.

It's dull, it's boring, and I would like to be well again soon, please.

I dropped in to my local Doctors surgery on the way home from the Hole-Making Shop where I work. (One cannot make small accurate holes in highly reactive material when pouring with sweat, so they sent me home.) Unfortunately, they can't give me an appointment for at least two weeks, although have gracefully deigned to allow me to ring them at 08.30 tomorrow morning to see if anyone has cancelled.........

I didn't feel at all good last week when I was on annual leave, but didn't bother with the doctors because I knew this would happen. I thought I'd just rest-up and get over it. I thought I had, but clearly have not.

Those of you who know me will realise that for John to take time off is serious.

I don't DO sitting around feeling poorly!

Sorry about this: I feel like nothing on earth and I'm off for a lie-down.

The Greek Goddess of Fixing Things........

is called Araldite........

Sorry.

This came to me at work today, quite why, I know not.......

(And given the badly broken state of the Greek economy, may Araldite smile most beneficently upon them and restore them to robust financial health.)

Okay, so you may well imagine from the rubbish I've just written that I may, of late, have been working too hard.....

Nope.

Just finished another week of annual leave, returning to Hole-Making wizardry this very Solstice day......

Annual leave was fab, by the way, and of which, more another time.

It also explains the absence of any posts since June 7th......

Amonst other things, I mucked about a bit at Emmaus doing-up old bikes and neglected tools, prodded some old bikes of my own and visited my Mum and Dad in Bournemouth.

My Mum has not been very well and is recovering from some fairly major surgery. We await the outcome of histology......

Were I of such a mind, I suppose I could use this Midsummer Solstice to offer a libation to Araldite, in the hope that she might see her way clear to fixing Mum.

Now, I try to be respectful of all faiths and faith in no faith. (Like Bob Hope, I don't wish to be ruled out of Paradise on a technicality), but on further reflection, I think I'll stay firmly within the strict precepts of the Anglican Communion on this one.

This means forgetting about a libation and drinking it instead.

Cheers, Mum, and God Bless. xx

In The Gallery.......

Anyone remember 'Vision On' with the late great Tony Hart?

Cue South Bank Five (Dum de dum dum, dum de dum, dum de dum dum dum) on the xylophone.

Lets go and see whats in The Gallery this week......


Pippin's wind turbine has acquired a 3G antennae


Some shots of the nb we are repainting


The latest batch of cygnets have arrived. Our swans, Flanders and Swan, seem to have learned from past mistakes and haven't yet taken them too close to the weir........



There was some fantastic storm light the other evening


Jackie was given a couple of goose eggs as a present from H.



Occasionally on walkabout, Thomas returned from his latest leave of absence with a couple of new behaviours: namely jumping up on the counter top for milk as soon as the fridge door is opened, and exhibiting a whole new interest in the opening of tins.......

Hmmmmmmmm........


We managed to catch an image of this little Swifty Swallow perched on the rudder bar....

I'll try to post more pictures soon, but since Orange merged with T-mobile, the uploading of pictures via the Ship's computer proceeds at the speed of vegetable growth.

(Jackie uploaded these for me to edit from the superfast broadband hub at work).

Oh well, that's progress for you, I suppose......

More later, I hope..

A most wonderful day......

Well, it all began very auspisciously with a visit from Bones and Boots and Amy Duck.

We all had coffee and a jolly good natter before B & B had to head off to luncheon. Amy stayed aboard while we unmoored and chugged down to The Bridge at Clayhithe.

Some time back, I had mentioned to the staff at the Hole Making Shop that we should all get together for a jolly aboard Pippin.

Today was the day!

Much food was eaten, beer and wine consumed, and all in all, I think a fine time was had.....

And on the way back from Baits Bite Lock, we managed to add to the excitement by rescuing our friends Trevor and Pam on nb Sunflower who had strategically run out of battery (Sunflower is an electric boat....) and then been blown aground.

wb Pippin found a handy telephone box and transmogrified into The Mighty Pippin for the purposes of effecting a rescue.....

We crept past at 2mph, passed a line onto the bows of Sunflower, saw it safely tied off, then accelerated away from the shoaling water with Sunflower in tow with all the assurance that a Beta 50 at full-chat can afford.

Oh Joy!

We rang ahead to Amy aboard The Lucky Duck on the 48's at Clayhithe to make sure she was there to take a line.

Thus, Sunflower was passed to the safety of the bank with every bit as much ease as she had been extracted from the putty.

Shame all my colleagues on board weren't boaters.

To them, it was all par for the course........

I mean, for heavens sake, a round of applause would have been nice.

But all in all, a most wonderful day spent in the very best of company!!!!