Ambled along to Atherstone

Barry's so naughty!!! Lol! What's been happening lately is that I write the blog on and off during the day as he's taking his photos. Then in the evening, if we have internet coverage, he’ll do whatever he does with his shots and uploads the ones he wants on. At the beginning of our journeys on the canals I would then re-look at the day’s entry, edit it and add in the captions to the pictures. Silly me – now I let him do the captions as most days he’s up until the wee small hours doing his thing and getting it all sorted – it's a bit of a nightmare getting everything to go where we want it to and can take ages. We’re not sure if we’re just sad spending so much time on it, but it gives us some really special memories of our time here as well as informing our family, friends and anyone else who’s logged on what we are up to.

So this morning when my daughter texted and made a comment about the 'dumplings' photo I thought she was being silly – 'till I realised he'd actually put that on as a caption – he’s just too cheeky! Ah well, it’s all in good fun. I never know until the next day what he’s put on the daft bugger!

Today he went for a long bike ride around Hartshill and got a puncture, luckily it was towards the end of his adventure so he didn’t have to walk with the bike for too long. We didn't travel far on the boat today as we needed to get supplies from the nearest town, which was Atherstone.

He’s trying to learn some English ‘ways’ of speaking and his latest is the saying ‘y’alright?” He can’t quite get it and has found it difficult to understand why people don’t say “Are you alright?” And he finds it a challenge not to answer back – “Well actually, now you ask, no I’m not. I’ve a bit of a bad back and my feet are starting to throb because I’ve been on the bike and then standing driving the boat all day. How about you?” He also can’t help but use an inflection at the end of the rhetorical question, rather than the British way of saying it and the tone of voice lowering! Most kiwi sentences end with a question mark for some reason; it’s just the way it is. Anyway, he’s practicing on everyone now, so watch out if we come into contact with you!

We’ve heard that the weather in Gisborne is terrible, very wet and flooding with schools shutting and homes being evacuated. So we’re hoping our little house is OK and that our belongings stored under the house aren’t now under water!!

We had a call today from a friend of Barry’s, Fred, who lived in Gisborne fro a while many years ago and now normally lives in Sheffield but is in Birmingham for a conference. So Barry's caught the train from just up the road of our mooring in Atherstone, to go and see him and he'll stay there the night (watch out Birmingham!). Meanwhile my friend from Nuneaton, Diane who I worked with when I had a job with the Department of Health in England doing midwfery recruitment and retention, is coming to dinner on the boat. So we both get a night to catch up with friends which is very cool.

No photo’s tonight though, Barry will put today’s ones on tomorrow morning, as long as he finds his way back to the boat!!