Packet Boat

Packet Boat Marina, GU Slough Arm – Friday 2 November 2012

I apologise to my regular reader – I have been remiss in not keeping up with my blog.  Where to begin?

During the visit to RFCA I was asked if I could convert the existing ‘London Reserves’ history from Adobe into Word, of course I said yes but didn’t realise that the layout would require quite so much ‘tweaking’, bits of text ended up on the wrong lines, and sometimes the tables came out with the text from different columns on the same lines (convenient as a tab then re-aligns it) and at others it produced it in a block after the first column!  Very frustrating but all finished eventually.

On the medical front I have been for my annual flu jab, seen the diabetes nurse (had feet sensitivity checked, blood pressure and weight recorded), gone to Hillingdon Hospital for blood to be taken for all sorts of ‘counts’ and finally seen my GP who is satisfied with my progress, the blood counts are all within normal range and the diabetes is under control so I must be doing the right things.

Socially I have visited friends, attended a Regimental Dinner (black tie do – even on the boat I have kept some land clothes) and went to the AGM of the Unit Past & Present Association (at which I was re-selected to be Chairman).  Afterwards I went with a friend to see a film.  On the way the bus we were on had to go through Trafalgar Square where there was a display by the NFL football teams with their mascots, birds, animals and even one in a ‘stars and stripes’ zip-up sleep-suit (at least that’s what it looked like).  The bus was then ‘attacked’ by hundreds of extras from ‘Shaun of the Dead’ who were zombie-ing around and totally ignoring the traffic.  Yeh I know the film has been finished but that’s what it looked like.  When we eventually arrived at Leicester Square the queue for the latest Bond film went from the cinema round to the tube station, we’ve never seen that many queuing before. 

On Sundays I have attended Church (St Columba’s Church of Scotland in Knightsbridge) where I am an Elder.

On the boat and marina side I have continued cleaning, both inside and outside (as other boaters know it is a never ending job).  I am moored with water and electricity to the berth, and laundry, shower, toilets and pump-out facilities provided.  The pump-out is self-service and when I went to use it I couldn’t get it to work even though carefully reading the instructions.  It turned out that one minor instruction was, ahem, inaccurate.  The instructions say “insert card with metal stripe down” when it should have been UP!  I didn’t feel quite so useless when I found that out.

The weather has been as usual, sun, rain, wind hail, fog in fact normal British weather.