Magpie knocked at 4am to enquire about breakfast.

Today was Chris’ No Good Horrible Bad Day. It started off with giving the skipper the wrong distance to the boat in front and resulting in a shunt, progressed through miscommunication when mooring for diesel, throwing the tiller the wrong way through a narrow gap and ended with misjudging the distance between us and an oncoming boat which was a near miss.

Actually, the diesel thing was mostly due to an assistant who wasn’t quite on top of things and therefore gave the wrong information resulting in us doing an interesting park across the bows of several moored boats.

Mum has pointed out to me that I have failed to make fun of my own mistakes in this missive. And my reply was, apart from knocking over my red wine, what mistakes would you be talking about? And she couldn’t think of any. Although I know Dad could point out a few, mostly involving talking at inappropriate moments, however since I am currently sole dealer of mint humbugs on board, maybe I’ll get away with it.

But perhaps here would be the best place to acknowledge that I have made several significant mistakes, but they have all been when no one was looking and therefore they didn’t happen. So, I didn’t let a paddle drop out of control (it helps if one looks to ensure windlass is actually on it before lifting the locking lever off), I have never almost knocked myself out with my own windlass (they really don’t make good cheerleading batons), certainly haven’t dropped a single inch of my bow rope into the canal (I’ve been training the last few weeks to throw my rope *into* the water and I get easily confused) and haven’t really lost a pair of sunglasses when leaning too far over the bow to feed some ducklings (fortunately I brought four pairs with me). It should be noted that if challenged, I shall deny everything.

After Chris had managed to steer without hitting anything for a while, we stopped to ‘pump out’ the latrine tank. As penance, Chris was assigned the indoor role in an exercise that was new to all personnel, since normally the professional pump out people do it. Boat was successfully pumped out, and Chris was successfully gassed by the fumes. I was successfully gassed by the British Waterways toilet.

Dad forgot to switch the freezer off last night resulting in an exploded coke can. He blamed it on too many beers at the pub. At least it meant that lunchtime beers were thoroughly iced.

Lazed away the afternoon through stunning countryside. Chris spotted water vole under bridge and kingfisher buzzed ahead of us.

Chris did a lock all by himself, of which he was incredibly proud. As it was a stop lock, the depth of the lock was an entire inch. I guess being a bloke, every inch counts. That armoury bloke from ‘Time Team’, (not Tony Robinson), watched us alongside wildly gesticulating woman.

Dad had to make a sharp turn on a junction, and did it pretty well with Chris admiring on, however me and Mum were more interested in the Mummy and Daddy moorhen and their ickle baby chickie. We threw some bread out which the adults took, and usually they will feed the bread to the chicks, but the big nasty boat (us) kept chasing them and the adults paddled away quickly with ickle chickie falling behind and paddling as fast its ickle legs would carry it, piping all the way, wait for me, wait for me!

Reached the Fox and Anchor where we were eating tonight. Oncoming boat contained many rather squiffy boys who moored in that classical manner of dodgem cars. Ram the boat in front and them ram the one behind until the space is big enough to park a battleship. Moored a short way up from them, and had a lovely meal.