Stressful Saturday

Today started out fine. Sheena cruised us up to Reading, in the sunshine. When we got there it was stuffed full of boats, as we'd anticipated. But i managed to squeeze us into the bushes just down from the wobbly landing stage. Every time another boat went past it banged us into the overhanging trunk of a tree. but we could live with that for 20 minutes while we did some shopping. So Sheena bravely ventured into tescos on a saturday afternoon. While I (overjoyed to have a net signal at last) sat down to update our blog.

5 minutes later, I hear a loud... "I'm going to moor up next to one of these boats", followed by a massive BONNNNGGG, and much interior rocking about. He'd hit us when trying to come alongside. Wifi signal goes down. GRRRRRR.... Then he is on our deck scrambling about with his ropes. I should have told him to bugger off then, but put myself in his situation, and figured out how grateful I'd be in that situation. He then more or less told me what he was going to do, with a perfunctory "is that alright?" tacked onto the end. Tied up and alongside us, I didn't have the heart to say "no, sod off".

He didn't apologise for crashing into us. He severed our net connection. And he p*ssed me off. bigtime. With his beer belly, stockbrokers shirt, crap steering, and bullying demeanour. Rather than rant and rave every time he and his partner stepped across our boat (and we hit the tree again). I put up with it. So, the reason I'm relaying this sorry tale is...if some time you want to berth up next to us, and I say "no, sorry". It's probably this guy who is to blame.

Thankfully 30 minutes later, we were heading downstream, out of Reading again.

Pictures of our otherwise lovely day...

The extremely rich people who own this big house, and the estate surrounding it (all the way up to the french horn restuarant in Sonning), are not too bothered about boaters mooring on their land. We salute their generosity. Thankyou.

This big 'U' fashioned out of railway line, has just appeared near Uri Geller's mansion. We wonder if he's used his special 'powers' to bend it?