Tuesday, August 28, 2007

lee ward and onward

Entry lee ward and onward

entry Aug 28 2007, 02:46 PM
Its been yonks since my last blog entry, shame on me. Ive been so busy enjoying myself and being on holiday I haven't had the time or mainly the inclination to go near the computer, log on and faff about.

but now Im back at work, let the faffing commence.

yes, now where was I? having had the car broken into at Tottenham Marshes we decided to shuffle up the Lee a bit and settled temporarily at Rammey marsh. The first night was wetter than an otters pocket, a saturday night huddled up in front of the dvd player watching another classic film. Late night to bed and I was dead to the world, but not for long as I was shocked into consciousness 2 hours later when someone kicked the boat, right near our bed.
Yann jumped up and flew open the side hatch doors and shouted "Oy" at them... they replied "Oy what?" and at this point Yann realised his head was at perfect kicking height so changed tactic to "excuse me, please don't kick the boat" which prompted the unexpected reply of "Oh sorry mate, have you got an umbrella?"
A group of people, a little drunk leaving the local fishermans club house it turns out, an unusual occurance for the area we were assured.
On morning during our stay we awoke with difficulty sitting up in bed ( its a cross berth) then realised quickly we were on a bit of a tilt. looked out of the window to see all the other boats on the same angle and saw that the water had gone down by nearly a meter over night. I think some absent minded boater might have forgotten to close the paddles on the lock down from us.

So we stayed at Rammey Marsh as long as we could while we awaited the arrival of a young cousin of mine who has visited me for a week during her summer holidays for the past five years. She's 12 now so I've really seen her change over the years, especially the size of her suitcase!
Our living room is the only spare place available for guests to sleep in and its a bit cosy, we did have a small sofa and an old chrome reclining chair from the 60's. the chair had to go to make room for a teenager in the making, so it was bundled into the back of the car where it was to stay all week. However, the large void left by the chair was soon filled by the largest bag of clothes I think Ive ever seen. I do believe I could have fitted my entire wardrobe in the bag and it would still be less full.
I was entertained with conversations about matching shoes with tops and bottoms all week, plus asked some unusual questions such as:
If you could have some art displayed in a gallery but couldn't sell it), would you prefer it to be something you love but everyone else doesn't, or something you don't like but everyone else loves it?

As usual when I take a week off in this country it bloody pisses down for most of it. I like rain, but when you want to go outside and do some cycling and generally do some sight seeing around London, its miserable. especially when you are trying to do some filming, on a cine camera that needs bright light. So there wasn't much filming done. Although I got some great footage of some prairie dogs at the zoo while my cousin held the umbrella.

However, looking on the brightside, the bonus of all the rain was I saw a fantastic looking poncho on a girl at a lock and now I want one because it looked brilliant and would keep you dryer than the Arid desert on the inside, definitely better than my expensive jacket that needs re-waterproofing. Ponchos ROCK.

We moved the boat up to Cheshunt for the moment and on the first dry and less windy day we nipped up to Broxbourne for diesel and water. It's nice on the river Lee, I think I can recommend it quite highly. Although the locks are truly shit when it comes to pushing gates open. They are such an odd design and not equipped with balance beams as such, but a bar at a funny angle. anyway, they're vein poppingly hard work.

I've also wired up a new stereo, a car stereo and a couple of speakers. Now I've got tunes at the touch of a remote control button.... wicked! ( as the hooded youths might say)