A busy day!

I thought it was a bout time I published a couple of pictures! The top one shows my flowers on the roof bursting into colour with the hundreds of minature daffs. just beginning to poke through. The bottom one shows my generator poking its nose out the rear doors providing all my 240V needs. I apologise for the picture quality- since the last update, Blogger seems to be highly compressing the pictures - presumably to save space on their server. Until I find out if there's any way of disabling this compression, the pictures will remain blurry and pixelated.

Well, I started the weekend with 6 sets of 35 exam scripts to mark and have succeeded in marking one and half sets so far! The rest will have to be tomorrow.

Re-fuelled the diesel tank this morning then went to Rose Narrowboats to re-fill my diesel drum, purchase 3 bags of coal and a couple of spare lightbulbs I needed, then hoovered, polished, cleaned the fire, walked the dog, filled up with water, ironed my clothes for next week, ran the engine to re-charge the batteries, made myself a coffee and finally sat down to a couple of hours of marking.

A lovely surprise was a visit from Henk and Coby off of NB Double Dutch, (see the website of their boat,) who used to be moored at Trinity and are now very happy at Kings Bromley Marina. A couple of cups of coffee later and we had put the world to rights as boaters are reknown for doing! Within about 15 minutes of them leaving the phone rang and Steve and Julia, (not to forget Cairn Terrier Jess who totally knackered Simba!) from NB Even Balance arrived, (after arriving first at the wrong side of the unfinished bridge!). Many more cups of coffee later and the world was well and truely sorted! Steve and Julia have been up to visit their boat and took the opportunity to visit Ventnor Farm's new extension whilst here. You know Spring is round the corner when boaters start thinking about where to return their boats to after the summer months cruising! Only another couple of months and the cruising season starts again good and proper with the '6 monthers' disappearing out onto the cut - only to return in September/October, the hire boats dominating lock queues once more and the weekends becoming filled with those who have remained 'boat free' for the cold winter months. Darkness is really only set in proper from about 5.00 onwards and I'm already looking forward to shutting the stove down for the summer and planning my Easter holiday cruises, half term cruises and lengthy month long summer cruise.