Paddington Basin

One boat pulled out from the pontoon at 8am this morning, the boat next to them pulled across so as to reduce the amount of footfall directly outside their window. The first GoBoat filled with Japanese tourists went past at just gone 9am, no popping of presecco corks on that boat. The world was waking up around us.

The yellow water tank needed sorting and thanks to Tilly the boat floor really needed a wash this morning! We had a good tidy up and then Mick headed back to Little Venice on a bike with recycling and the yellow water for disposal. The custodian of the bins was still on duty. With fewer feet about the place I gave Oleanna’s cabin floor a good wash down.

The forecast had been for lower temperatures today, but it still seemed quite warm. To make sure we didn’t get hypothermia I popped the oven on for a couple of hours to roast a couple of small chickens.

Kath and Sean arrived for Sunday lunch. We haven’t seen Sean for some time, he’s been working when we’ve arranged a meet up. Today, as the weather this last week has been so good, he had a day off. He is a sound engineer and has been working at Wimbledon, no rain meant no play today so he had a day off.

We had a lovely afternoon with them, chatting and eating. The handy M&S next door meant that we could have some ice cream with our strawberries and raspberries despite not having a working freezer at the moment.

After filling our bellies we had a walk up to Little Venice before returning to the boat. Kath and Sean had come by car so that they could pick up a couple of boxes of Geraghty history we’d brought back from the house. They had been fortunate as the nearest parking space to our mooring had been available and free on Sundays, so there wasn’t far to stagger with the boxes.

Mid afternoon our nearest neighbour pulled out, Motor Boat Willow. For two years they worked at Bollington Wharf on the Macclesfield but when they had a baby earlier this year they decided to head south. Tilly now has a better view out of the windows, but there is no longer Thea the cat to stare at.

The title of todays blog? Several boats have come down into the basin today, most of them local boats looking for their next mooring. One such boat spotted the two free spaces on the pontoon and was starting to reverse back into one of them, he then saw the sign. As he moved his boat away he said to Mick ‘Shiny Boat Central!’ Followed by how nice it was to see such boats in Paddington. Just before dark another boat arrived and pulled in to an available space,they looked shiny too!

0 locks, 0 miles, 2 boats gone, 1 boat arrived, 2 chickens, 2 visitors, 2 boxes removed, 0 toe stubbings now, 4 lovely hours, 1 sunny day, 1 bored cat.