Trying to be helpful

My time was up on the Little Thetford mooring and I had to be in London for a couple of days so I decided to leave the boat at Ely.  I needed water and there was a boat just leaving the water point in Ely as I approached and another boat waiting for me to pass before he moved out.  So I thought I’d head straight onto the water point instead of turning first, as I’d intended, then I wouldn’t get in the way of the boat that was letting me through.  It turned out that he wasn’t leaving he was waiting for the water point and I’d just stolen his place. Fortunately they were a friendly couple who accepted my grovelling apology and we tied up together making a cats cradle of hoses and ropes and managed to chat, fill up and empty and leave simultaneously.

The only space available in Ely was outside The Cutter pub it looked big enough but it wasn’t.  With an audience of pub customers I tried to put a 60ft boat into a 58ft space.  The narrow boat in front rapidly undid ropes and pulled up a couple of feet and I squeezed in. They were another friendly couple who tied up my bow ropes and gave me a cup of coffee.  A wide-beam moored alongside for a while to wait for some visitors to arrive and I chatted to the mother of the owner and was invited to stay with her if I ever went to Arizona (well you never know).  So one morning:  three lots of lovely people.  That is a good hit rate because as we all know you can get some surly buggers out on the water (me included).

Ely was packed, boats came back and forth looking for mooring spaces and I felt a bit guilty as I was going to leave the boat and go away so made the decision it might not be EA legal but it would be more considerate of me to go back to Little Thetford and leave the boat there.  So I did, when I left for London my boat was at the end of the mooring in splendid isolation.

I was in London to help my daughter do a pop-up restaurant newcrossdining.co. They were two very hectic but enjoyable (mostly) days.  The food looked good but us staff didn’t get to try any because the bloody paying customers scoffed the lot. At 1.30am on a Sunday morning the tired and hungry staff left the management (daughter and boyfriend)to finish clearing up and went to a crowded MacDonalds in the East End for much needed burgers and fries.

When I arrived back at Little Thetford the boat was no longer in splendid isolation. There were boats fender to fender along the mooring, boats double moored, one moored on the metal bit before the mooring, one moored in the reeds further down.  Ely was probably empty maybe it would have been more considerate of me to stay there. In contrast to the night before, in Central London, all was quiet and rural and I sat in the bow and watched the sun go down, too tired to even open a bottle of wine.