Saturday 11 June 2011

And here we stay!

Well it was voluntary until late yesterday afternoon.........
We had two leisurely days in this delightful spot.  Iain & Christine came to lunch on Thursday and Geoff went into Oxford on Friday to visit the Pitt-Rivers Museum.   The original intention was to leave on Friday but Emma decided she would like to come for the weekend so we thought we would stay an extra day  so she could leave her car here, cruise down to Oxford with us and come back on the bus on Monday to collect.  Weekend all nicely planned.  Geoff had even googled for which church we would visit on Sunday and I had looked up bus times........now for Boe as well as she had decided to join the weekend party......DO NOT MAKE PLANS
Why are we still here..........THE TOILET IS BROKEN AGAIN!!!!! .  I am not sure which was worse, the toilet breaking or Geoff's sense of humour failure.   He takes these setbacks very personally......
We have had no problems for 4 years but this year we decided to be prudent and have it serviced.   DO NOT HAVE TOILETS SERVICED...remember the motto...If it is not broken don't fix it.
It was 4.45pm when I reached for the phone to call Lee San and of course they shut at 4.30pm on Friday so I could not even tell them we needed an urgent visit on Monday......
Whilst we were having supper 2 hire boats, full of about 20 lads, went past en route to the lifting bridge and the second boat had problems stopping and this was the result...
The lads all thought it was very funny!!!
After supper we repaired to the Jolly Boatman where we had arranged to meet Bones and Maffi and we thought it would be good for morale.   Emma joined us about 9.30 after a double shift in A&E and both Molly and Boots took a shine to her


If you are wondering if we are not drinking here don't worry, the glasses were only moved for the picture!

Anyway a hilarious evening served to temper Geoff's unhappiness......well for a while anyway.  Now he is threatening to go  out and buy a Porta Potti for just such emergencies.....this is being heavily resisted by me due to space requirements.    However I have a feeling he may win and then I shall be the unhappy one.
Our prolonged stay meant we needed water for the weekend and since the 7 day moorings are full we decided the only way to ensure that we kept our place free whilst so doing was to fill up at 6am.   So we snuck back through the bridge very quietly (actually at 5.45am) and by 6.30 we were back in our space.  I would like to say `Not a creature had stirred, not even a mouse`  BUT  those wretched ducks were alive and squawking


Luckily it is a beautiful morning
We are beginning to wonder if we will ever get off the Oxford.  Much as we love it I am looking forward to reaching the Thames and we hope the Kennet & Avon.  We are watching carefully to see what happens to the water levels on the K&A.  They already have restricted lock opening times at the summit however heavy rain is forecast for tomorrow so we hope that may help a little.  

2 comments:

Nb Epiphany said...

We know Thrupp and its residents are lovely (especially two of them!) and hard luck about the loo but ..... are we EVER going to see you! BTW water levels on the Kennet Navigation to Newbury are fine and hopefully with repaired pumps the summit level will improve. Fi xx

MortimerBones said...

I heard ya! I thought you were very keen as you had said 6!