Happy New Year

A happy 2013 to you all.

I am well on my way to having a great New Year thanks yet again to the kindness of friends. Yesterday, with the help of Stan and Colin – another moorer at Hunts Lock, I finally completed my three month journey back to my mooring! It was accomplished in the pouring rain but I rewarded the men with a bacon and egg butty on arrival.

It is hard to believe that it was all the way back on 1st October when I was last here on the mooring. It was a little nerve wracking to get off the boat and walk around. I had forgotten how lumpy and how much on a slope my particular mooring is. I stood on the precise spot where I had broken my leg and remembered how it had been.

Bonny is delighted to be back and has been busy re-acquainting herself with all the smells and sights and revelling in at last being able to spend time outside. So far she has been brilliantly behaved – even off the lead.

Meanwhile, my next door neighbour Fitzy told me that he was moving off the mooring as they are going to start living on their boat and are planning to moor in a more convenient place for them. His mooring is much flatter than mine and so that much safer. I asked him if I could move on to his mooring when his notice period was up (you have to give a month’s notice to quit a mooring) He came to see me today and said I could move on immediately! He even gave me some wood for free and sold me his very nice garden bench for a pittance and a bottle of wine! I have written to the moorings officer to tell her what is occurring but she won’t mind as she was concerned about the safety of my mooring anyway, and CaRT lives in fear and trembling that someone will sue them when hurt on one of their moorings.

Finally Harry – yet another of my lovely neighbours -  came along just as I was starting to move the boat forward on to Fitzy’s mooring. He dropped his shopping and not only moved the boat for me, but then moved my coal and other bits and pieces from my old mooring to the new. He said if I needed any other help, I was to call on him any time. Can you believe it? People are just so kind and helpful and I have really noticed that since I injured myself.

So I am sitting here on my new mooring – only a few feet from my old mooring but it still feels like a whole new start. There are less trees here and so my solar panel will work better, but the main advantage is that I can safely walk around the mooring and that is brilliant. It’s going to take a while for Bonny to get used to her garden having moved, but she will adjust. It has helped Neville too as his new boat Percy is longer than Waterlily and he has had to moor partially under trees. He is planning to move up a bit, now there is space and we will both work on the moorings officer to persuade her not to re-auction the remaining space as it is very lumpy and bumpy and someone else might fall on it!

Photos to follow when it finally stops raining – if it ever does!