Scapa and Harry

After last time’s rant, I’m sure people will be very pleased to know that I have little to say for myself this time.

Mostly, we’re preparing for The Expedition to Scapa Flow due to start at Base Camp Rochester on 10 August. One could say that I’m slightly nervous, as I’m the only girly travelling via our Sherpa type bus from Rochester up to the Orkneys; I haven’t quite worked out how to tell the boys that, being biologically different from them, when I need the bathroom, we are going to have to actually stop somewhere. There will be a couple of other girlies joining us at Stromness, fortunately.

Monday 16 July saw the final Duke of Edinburgh class, so we had fun playing with toys in the lecture, and playing games in the pool. We think the girls enjoyed it all; we certainly did.

Our final Scapa meeting was at the end of the week, and we munched choccy biccies and drank beer for the evening as a practice for Expedition food rations.

Saturday dive failed to happen yet again, so Sunday we jumped in the lake so practice could be had carrying a pony (a small cylinder as a back up). Much fun was had doing acrobatics for buoyancy practice, and trying to squeeze through very small gaps with all this extra kit on.

Also, with old camera on its last legs, we acquired new camera with marine housing. Jumped in lake on Wednesday with the intention of trying it out. Played with both new and old cameras and had a lot of fun. Especially as the Pike came to see what we were doing and posed for a couple of shots (see attached).

Had lunch with Mel on Saturday, and had mutual congratulatory session on acquiring our Harry otter books without any queuing.

You have to understand that my postman is a lovely guy, but a lazy sod. He doesn’t bother with trying to deliver anything which might not fit through a standard letterbox, instead electing to write out all his little red cards in advance and delivering those instead. Which means he doesn’t have to carry stuff around, and we don’t have to wait the usual four hours or so for him to take the undeliverable stuff back to the sorting office.

So, knowing this, and having ordered my Harry Potter book from Amazon, I carefully planned the Saturday so that I’d get my red card and get to the post office with minimal queuing and with contingencies for diving or not, etc, etc. So imagine my very pleasant surprise when postie rang my doorbell at 8am precisely and handed me my Harry book with a big grin.

And, yes I’d finished reading it within 24 hours.

And that’s pretty much all I have to say for myself.