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A birthday barge on an English canal

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A long, long time ago in a land far, far away…

Day one…

We finally all got together at about 6 o’clock on Friday night at the canal barge called “1966 ‘n’ all that”. Thom, Katie and Mike had been stuck in various traffic jams and supermarket queues whilst Helen, Neil and I waited around for them. As an atmospheric backdrop the heavens opened up and absolutely pelted us with rain as I learned how to steer the boat and Thom and Mike learned how to do locks.

Rule of thumb for first-time captains – point the stick (technical term) towards the danger you’re trying to avoid because the steering is backward; left is right and right is left.

We set off admist white-squal conditions and I was soaked within about one minute. We got through a few locks and decided to give up for the night, after our 4 mile an hour journey! Thom cooked us a meal of baked camembert followed by baked cod and his delicious creamy leaks. We played a small game of Trivial Pursuit before crawling to bed exhausted.

Day two…

canal barge, narrow boat

Beautiful and serene

We got up in the morning, to more rain, and Neil and Helen cooked a brilliant breakfast of muffins, bacon and scrambly eggs, we ticked along until we got to a little Pub at around lunchtime and Neil and Helen smashed us all at Pool. It started to smell rather a lot of shit in our little boat and we were desperate to find a refuse point for ‘pump out’. Luckily, the sun came out a little and we officially discovered ‘The Front of The Boat’ which was the best location for watching the world go by in complete calm and avoiding the smell from inside.

By Saturday evening we were a bit fed up of locks, rain and moorings so gave up and had our evening meal. Katie and Mike cooked a delicious veggie fajita meal which we tore through before playing a game of Perudo.

AND SUDDENLY….

…Thom stepped out for a fag on the boat at about 11pm, pitch black darkeness by this time, Mike went out with the torch and spotted a swan with her signets nustled into her feathers riding on her back. Mike called us out to have a look and we cooed and ahh’d over them until they started looking a bit twitchy and began to hiss. Thom then pushed us, pretty much literally, into the boat as the Swan started to rear up onto the deck. We all fell about, again literally, laughing and sat back down on the sofa as we all laughed at our fear of a swan. Then madness ensued – the swan, outside the window, reared up and began attacking the window with its beak and freaked the SHIT out of me, Thom and Helen who were in front of the window and Katie who was sat opposite and saw it lunge for us. We then ran about the boat locking windows and closing curtains with our hearts beating faster. None of us could take much more so made a quick retreat to bed!

Day three….MY BIRTHDAY!

Woke up to….SUNSHINE! As always my birthday delivers sun and it was the best weather all weekend. Thom gave me my card that made it clear that he loved me more than Kylie! And gave me the Two Pints boxset, a book of rude cartoons and best of all a handmade superman shield – in red, gold and blue glitter! Fantastic. Mike and Katie gave me a book of robot photography – retro cool and Hel and Neil gave me a cool Wonder Woman card which included a WW sticker!

Most of my birthday involved sailing through the canals, sunbathing and cocktail drinking – Thom’s excellent Canal Water (Rum, Ginger Beer, Sugar Syrup and Lime, apparently a ‘Dark & Stormy’ is its real name) went down a treat and we had a really relaxed day.

There was a little more swan action but only in feeding them some bread. Katie and Mike’s Birthday breakfast was followed later in the day by a wonderful Birthday dinner of chicken or salmon with roast potatoes and dill sauce.  Katie lovingly made me a little ‘S’ shaped birthday cake of chocolate covered bran flakes that was absoultely delicious and in the setting of a fully decorated barge was wonderful. No jokes allowed about it looking a *little* like a turd. It was delicious though…. We finished the day with a Pictionary championship and Katie wowed us all with her ability to draw jaguars (cats), dogs (that looked like cats) and a sword (which didn’t look at all like a cat).

…last day

Thom cooked us another lovely breakfast of ‘What Was Left’ and we did a great job of cleaning up the place after generating a ridiculous volume of rubbish bags!

Thanks to Helen, Neil, Thom, Katie and Mike for helping to make this the best birthday of all!

Captain Sean xxx


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