Fish & RIBs

19th Feb went to eye clinic. My left eye is now ready to have the implant tweaked to eliminate the reflection I have. Just got to wait for date now. Excellent drive both ways.

In my fishtank, my three Bristlenoses are being quite entertaining. Bill, the only male who has become very large and whiskery is being very hopeful. He has taken up residence in the tower, and much like the shop windows in the red light district of Amsterdam, awaits in the doorway for a female to come and lay eggs inside. Ben, my little albino girl Bristlenose obligingly laid a batch of eggs… in the wrong place. Under the heater instead of in the tower, where they were promptly eaten by a very happy Keyop (large white silver molly). As Jill pointed out, perhaps the fact that historically Bill spends a lot of time lurking behind the heater confused her. Bill continues to lurk in the doorway.

Weekend of 24/25th Feb, in a slightly impromptu manner, we had a girlie weekend and overanalysed much Supernatural and indulged in some ah, philosophical analysis of NCIS.

Boink kicked Bill out of tower and laid some eggs. Bill is now taking his duties as dad in residence very seriously, constantly tending to them, fanning them and guarding against marauding Keyops and snails.

Weds 28th Feb went to Brighton. Fortunately didn’t have to be there until 2pm, and so was well aware of the gridlocked motorways. Went cross country instead, via Hastings, leaving Ashford at 10.30 (anticipating much traffic). Arrived Brighton 1pm after distinct lack of traffic, although what little there was consisted of; a double decker bus with only one gear, a tractor towing a JCB and a sixteen wheeler lorry that really didn’t belong on that dinky road that goes through Winchelsea and took half an hour to negotiate that really, really tight hairpin bend. Journey back was possibly a tactical error as I gather the motorways were no longer gridlocked, although perhaps not as there was an accident near Gatwick and another on the M25 at that time. Still, only two hours back despite the nose to tail first gear shuffle just outside Brighton. Plus, from Rye to Ashford, played with a Subaru Imprezza. For a variety of reasons I’d decided to take Chris’ Skoda, Leah, and she kept up very well with the Scuby and we had a lot of fun, actually, but shhhhh! Don’t tell Chris…

Last night Mel came around for dinner which was lovely and we caught up with her uh, wide and varied love life.

This morning it seems that Bill has left the tower. If this is so, then its looking likely that the batch of eggs has failed. A depressed Bill with droopy whiskers is a very sad sight, so I hope not.

Today, we hit the River Medway in Medsac 1 to practiced boat handling. Andy, the Dive Officer was taking Chris and I, plus Ian V was coming along for the ride and to get in any experience he could. Unfortunately Ade (Branch Twat) decided that he was bringing out his baby RIB too. So, in the interests of safety, we nominated Ian V to go with Ade, whilst the rest of us took Medsac1, and we would stick roughly together. I started off in the drivers seat (mostly because that was where I’d parked my bum out of the way whilst the big strong boys launched her from the trailer and slip, at least that’s my excuse…), and took her out onto the river. We bimbled around waiting for Ade’s boat which seemed to be taking its time and I took the opportunity to practice the ‘coming alongside’ manoeuvres, which seemed to be a lot easier than last time so I was quite pleased. Eventually, Ade joined us and we pootled gently thru the 6 knot area. We checked Medsac1’s radio, all good, selected the agreed channel to communicate with Ade and found that communication wasn’t happening. His radio seemed to be kaput. Not good, not happy, but it was a flat day, and we agreed to stick together; we weren’t going far.

Hit the delimited sign and the throttle pretty much at the same time and decided to see if I could remember how to do high speed donuts and figure eights. Yup! No problem. Haven’t learnt high speed man overboard yet tho, so good job the boys hung on.

Learnt how to use the echo sounder by putting Medsac onto mid-river mud bank. Most impressed with Chris and Andy jumping out into the three inches of water and pushing Medsac back into deep water. I even remembered to wait until they were both back in the boat before hitting the throttle. We laughed as we realised that Ade had followed us straight onto the bank.

Learnt how to use the GPS as it took us to the wreck The Bulwark and worked out (all by myself) that the GPS is set to how the crow flies, and therefore we needed to follow channel markers to take us around the river to it, rather than try to plow straight through Kingsnorth power station.

At the Bulwark, I agreed to swap boats with Ian V, so that Chris could get his practice in, and perhaps Ian V could have a little go too. Ade, who is a lovely guy when not being Branch Twat, can be incredibly chauvinistic and doesn’t believe women should be behind the wheel or helm of anything. But I get on quite well with him on the whole and he invited me to helm his boat. He gave me strict instructions on the use of the throttle, and threatened me with dire consequences if I stalled it. I was shaking in my boots, and throttled up. And the more I throttled up, the slower the revs got. Until it stalled. Ho hum, felt like twit until Ade realised that he’d run out of fuel. So, not my fault, phew! Threw over anchor, and watched Ian V doing donuts around us while Ade got second fuel tank out and mixed it up, swapped with empty tank, and pulled the cord to fire up the engine. Nothing happened. And when I say nothing, I don’t mean it didn’t fire up, I mean that it didn’t even catch. The cord just rolled back and forth without actually doing anything for quite a long time before Ade was forced to call it a day. It transpired in conversation that the reason he’d taken so long coming out of the marina in the first place was because the engine wouldn’t catch… *headdesk*

Medsac ended up towing Ade’s boat back to the marina. Which meant that Ian V spent an hour pootling slowly and carefully all the way back, Chris was pretty PO’d at not getting to do any practice drills, Ade was not in the least apologetic and Andy was very carefully neutral – he’s deep that boy!

Now back home, taking a break before shooting up to Gravesend to go bowling. Am slightly concerned that my nail extensions are still firmly attached.