Leaving Barry to fend for himself again ...

Tomorrow I'm off the boat for ten days, doing a number of lovely things, including:

1. A Facepainting workshop in Ormskirk
2. A visit to the dentist I've recently registered with close to my parents in Ombersley
3. A night out with some 'old' (maybe previous would be a better word?!) school friends in Sutton Coldfield - I think a pub crawl was mentioned which could get messy remembering some of our antics in years gone by ...
4. A night out with some ex-midwifery colleagues in Mere Green - catching up with some people I haven't seen since I left Good Hope in October 2001 after 14 years
5. A ladies screening test (no need to mention which bodily part is involved I feel!)
6. A two-day NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) course in Birmingham
7. A couple of nights staying with my eldest sister Katherine in Lichfield
8. A night out at a Tapas bar in Lichfield with Kath (due to a great deal via Amazon)
9. Lots of days and nights with my mum and dad
10. Taking dad to his chiropodist appointment in Worcester
11. Visiting another ex-colleague, this time from my time at The Royal Free, in Ashbourne in the beautiful Derbyshire Dales

So I'm packing quite a bit in over a short time! It'll be my last hire car booking with Enterprise Wrexham for a while.

Barry will remain on board, he's not so good with being away from the boat - and he has plenty to keep him occupied!

We're in the process of setting up our new 'Wordpress' blog which will replace this one, ready to launch our new businesses. Our Trading Insurance and Public Liability is sorted, we've got the go-ahead from CRT, and now just need to get the license to trade (it involves printing and photocopying which I'll do tomorrow night). We've been accepted to join the Roving Canal Traders Association (thank you Michael!), and we're booking into lots of lovely boating festivals around the midlands and north west of England from Easter to the end of September.

It's a little scary at times, this living differently malarky, but we feel as though the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle we've been working towards for the past few years are starting to fit together and take shape.

Life is short, follow your dreams - don't wait until it's too late to start living is our motto.