An Extended Vacation

Hi there

Handed in my notice at work back in June and for the first time since leaving school am now classed as un-employed having clocked up 32 years and 15 days with the Company. Left behind some amazing friends and colleagues who have always left me with a happy feeling when they’ve popped into my office, some when they entered and some when they left. J

Received some great nautical leaving presents, such as a Ships Bell, Bosuns Whistle and a mounted Barometer and Clock, the latter of which along with a gift of a thermometer from our friends Steve and Ang (They like Elvis by the way, but we don’t hold that against them) a few years ago form the now called ‘Badger Sett Weather Centre’. Nicky’s been absolutely amazed at my weather predictions so far and thinks I should get a job at the Met Office. Truth is that I Google their site and is then ready for when her in doors asks what it is looking like for tomorrow, Simples.  

 

The Ships Bell and Bosuns whistle are located at the back blunt bit (sorry the stern I should say) and we’ll be learning how to pipe extinguished visitors aboard. I’m training Nicky as to how the bell works, but starting off with easy lessons at first. One dong means ‘Tea’ followed by one or two further dongs for the amount of ‘Sugar’ that it should come with. Early days, but the results are looking positive so I’ll be increasing Nicky’s ‘Dong Vocabulary’ in the coming weeks.

 

 

 

Only wish I’d cottoned onto this back at work and got a bell for my office as I’m sure our ladies would have been delighted to cater for my Dongs (not). Talking of the office ladies, here are some photo's of a few of them dressed up and ready for a night out, now who said Jersey was a safe place!

 

Planning to be on board now until Christmas when we’re going back home (Jersey) for Christmas and depending on the job front (or not) will either stay over there or come back to the boat for a while longer. So this is us now aboard for eleven weeks for sure, so there should be a few blogs to pick up on.

With the good bits out of the way though, we didn’t get off to a good start, although it came with a happy ending. To cut a long story short, one of our boys (the older one Binks) got hit by a car about six days into our journey, but got up and walked away from it albeit grazes and cuts to his head, around eye and some other places as well. (Little bruv can be seen looking after big bruv in the photo)

 

To see it happen, I still don’t know how we’ve got two dogs on our journey with us and we can’t help but still think ‘what if’. The Nantwich Vet Hospital was absolutely great www.nantwichvet.co.uk as was the lady who hit Binks through absolutely no fault of her own and in fact we’re in no doubt at all that her quick reactions actually saved his life. The happy ending is all that matters though so the BOYS remain on tour.

 

The weather up here so far has been absolutely amazing (as predicted by the Badger Sett Weather Centre of course) and has seen Nicky out and about in T-Shirts which is usually an event saved for the height of the summer. Started to slip the last day or two though so a bit cold and miserable now (the weather that is not Nicky) and this was honestly predicted by weather centre as the Barometer has been steadily dropping and continues too do so.

And just so you know we’re actually on the boat, here’s a picture of us moored up in Middlewich, Badger Sett is the second one up on the right.

Travelling wise, we’ve only managed to clock up 16.5 miles and 4 locks in the last ten days so at this rate we don’t expect having to get our passports stamped on our way out of Cheshire for some time yet. I think our motto should be ‘Nothing to do, all day to do it and no time to do it anyway’. Oh well, if that’s as bad as life gets then I think I could come to like it. 

So as the man on Big Brother says:

Day 10 in the Badger Sett Narrowboat - 16.5 miles and 4 locks further on from when we started.