Our boat is better - yippee!!

Hi everyone, Debs here. Just wanted to share the exciting news with you that our bo is now better! The Carter's are on the move again - yippee!

It's been a long process getting the boat fixed but at last it is complete, now that the boat has been fully health checked it is time to continue our journey.....

So, yesterday I took an annual leave day and Phil and I set off moving the boat and we are now in Brentford. In terms of who does what, Phil generally does the steering and I become a bit of a mother hen making sure the crew is all fed and watered! It's fun!

Thanks to everyone who is reading and following us on the blog, we've had lots of people let us know that this week, so thanks everyone, it means alot to us to keep in touch with people, especially those of you in Southampton. Although we are having alot of fun - we do miss our lovely friends in southampton and loe having you come to visit! You're welcome anytime!

So today, Phil is doing an intensive NVQ over the weekend in order to become an events assistant at the O2 arena, should be fun doing that and he is looking forward to it, although he is working all weekend in order to get the NVQ. I however, am meeting up with some friends both today and tomorrow so that should be nice - looking forward to seeing you Amy, Becky and Beth!

Anyway, just wanted to fill you all in on that - especially the news that the boat is on the move again! Yippee!

Bye for now,

Debs

Long time no hear ...

Morning blog fans! Phil here, sorry its been soooo long since we last updated the blog, there's just so much going on its hard to find time to update it.

We've had a cool last month, unfortunately our boat is still a bit sick, we came to Sunbury to have a little bit of electrical work done on it and it has turned into a marathon boat-fixing exercise, the last problem that was discovered was a diesel leak in the engine, not ideal! But apart from the boat being a bit of a nightmare we are having a great time.

So lets see what has happened in the last month ...

We've had lots of friends to visit which has been absolutely lovely; Phil and Maggie Orchard came to visit for a weekend at the end of July which was great. Maggie particularly seemed to be in her element on the boat and as you can see from the photo they both had to walk the plank like all of our visitors do! (Don't worry future visitors you don't end up in the water!)

Then the next weekend Becky came to visit and we got our freedom for the weekend and were allowed to venture away from the boatyard for the weekend which was so lovely. We headed up the Thames towards Windsor, eventually ending up in Staines (which isn't as bad as Ali G would have you believe!) Becky thoroughly enjoyed herself and was an excellent shipmate!



Bizarre spot of the weekend was a shrine to one-hit wonder Chesney Hawkes in someones garden backing on to the river!

Jim from work came to visit the following Saturday which was really nice, we borrowed the little motor boat from the boatyard and headed down to pick him up from Hampton Court station which was really nice apart from a very stressful 5 minutes where the boat got stuck in reverse and tried to reverse itself over a weir! Hopefully Jim isn’t too traumatised by the whole experience!



On the Sunday Claire and Steve came to visit and we had a really fun day with them including going to watch a Polo tournament at Ham Polo club (we even went and trod down the divots at half time!) and a little trip down the river in the motorboat and a drink in a pub.



This week my mum and Cecille came to visit on Thursday and we had a great day, they came to see the boat and have a spot of lunch and then we went to Kew Gardens, great fun! Then Mat and Rach came to see the boat on Friday night. Poor Rach decided to stay over but then had to leave at 5 in the morning to get back for an early shift at work, poor girl! Mat stayed around for the morning with us before heading off to the U2 gig at Wembley - swine! (Not that I’m jealous of course).

Other minor events include me giving up my job at IBM! I’d been thinking for quite a while that I’d had enough of sitting in front of a computer all day and the hassle of commuting to Southampton from London 4 days a week was the kick I needed to do something about it, so I’ve left! I’m going to miss all my friends at IBM and the lovely site but it was the right time. So I’m going to start training as an NVQ Assessor at the end of August, so I’m looking forward to that.

In the meantime I’ve been finding a bizarre but enjoyable collection of activities to keep me occupied while I’m not working. The top three in terms of bizarreness are being paid 20 quid to go to a yoga lesson to be guinea pigs for a new yoga teacher whose yoga positions all seemed to be drug related and turned out to be a candid-camera type TV wind up for a comedienne called Olivia Lee, so I’m going to be on TV looking very silly in October! - http://www.comedy.org.uk/guide/tv/olivia_lee_dirty_sexy_funny/

Number 2 was sending in my photo to a modeling agency who were advertising for ‘boy next door’ models for catalogues and music videos etc not expecting to hear anything, being invited to an interview including a photo shoot of me literally doing catalogue poses and then them saying that if I got a professional portfolio of photos done that they would add me to their books! Got to pay for the portfolio though and we’re a bit short of cash at the moment as I’m doing things like this and not earning much money, so don’t think I’m going to do that right now!

Number 3 is that I’ve signed up to ride a rickshaw round the west end for a couple of weeks to try and earn some money! How cool is that! My first trip with a customer was a bit fraught on Saturday, they wanted to go from Covent Garden to the Houses of Parliament, I started off by heading off in completely the wrong direction, i.e. to go over Waterloo bridge, when the Houses of Parliament are on the same side of the river as Covent Garden! Then there were roadworks and I ended up riding the rickshaw on the wrong side of the road on The Strand, oops! And then because I went over waterloo bridge I had to ride about 3 times as far as I should have done because I then had to ride back over Westminster bridge! I was absolutely knackered! Lets hope things go better today!

Debs is on good form, although finding her job a bit difficult, but keeping her chin up well and being entertained by my antics!

Come and visit us soon, we love having visitors!

Phil