Kenneth Grahame was no fool...

It never fails to amaze me that something as simple and easy to do as paddling can have such a profound effect on me; earlier, I got on the river, paddled for a bit, met a guy in an open boat taking some kids out and had a good chat about everything and anything, went up Osney Lock, paddled a bit more, came back down, talked to the lock-keeper for a while, then sat on the wash of a little cruiser back to town. I then paddled up the Cherwell up to Magdalen bridge and back in the sun, with stunning views of Oxford opening up round just about every corner.

"Is it so nice as all that?" asked the mole, shyly...

"Nice? It's the only thing," said the Water Rat Solemnly, as he leaned forward for his stroke. "Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing, absolutely nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

"Simply messing about in boats, or with boats. In or out of 'em it doesn't matter. Nothing seems to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not."

Too right.

A little bit on fire...

Plenty of excitment at the shop the other day; a brief flicker of the lights, then a smell of smoke. Turns out, the box where the mains power comes into the building and is then split accross various businesses and to 3 phase etc, had been faulty (but for how long we don't really know) and had finally kicked the bucket and caught fire.

It later became evident that at some stage it blew 3 fuses on the pylon a bit further down the estate and took out the 3 phase for the unit at the back. The disturbing thing is that our electricity didn't actually stop even when the supply was on fire...

The Fire Brigade came pretty quick, and the electricity people came a lot later.

End result; no electricity for just over a day. We're back on now, but there's still a hole in the ground, which will be filled in "sometime this week, maybe".

On the plus side; it happened during the day when we were there and no one was hurt, also, we now have posters and brochures in at least 2 fire stations in the area.

Hooray for the Fire Brigade, muted slow hand-clap for the electricity board.

Decision made...

...I'm going boating in Uganda.

Crikey.

The love that dare not speak its name...

...say no more say no more.

[witty title #2]

Tense times; decided to man up and finally go boating with Bethan; despite it absolutely bouncing down across the Midlands for the past few days, there was no water anywhere in Wales.

Rather entertainingly, this meant that there weren't many people at the Tryweryn, as preseumably most were driving around rather pointlessly looking at empty rivers. There was a reasonable 12 cumecs in the river, plenty of sunshine and good times.

Pimms O'Clock

Very very rarely I do something other than go paddling.
It was the 80th Anniversary of my Uncle's business, so we got suited up, rode in the world's fastest taxi, and then drank Pimms in newly promoted Derby County's Stadium.


Hopefully I'll be boating this weekend...