On a dry but colder day, organising the garden until Daniel arrived in Horning, after which we drained his speedboat and towed it into the garage for it to be cleaned and have its steering repaired.
Unfortunately, he has fallen out with his girlfriend Angela. I resumed work on the garden and with training a difficult Sam later
Very tired after the last couple of energetic days when, I not only had Sam to cope with, but also had a lot of physical work moving things around in the garden. I continued this morning until Daniel arrived, raking over the newly cleared area and barrowing more gravel to make a tidier surface. Dan eventually got here soon after 11.00am, a bit dubious about starting work in the cold but we soon got down to tackling his speedboat.
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We discarded the old cover and then tilted the boat to drain away all of the winter's rainwater that had collected inside the hull. We cleared the garden, garage and drive and then pushed the boat round on its trailer to get it under cover in the garage. I was employed fetching buckets of warm water, tools and a socket set as Daniel did quite well in wiping out the hull, cleaning it out and then cutting away the old steering system so he could measure the length of cable needed to replace it with something much safer. I took him to lunch in Wroxham at the burgher cafe and we chatted a while.
I was sorry to hear that he seems to have developed a communications/relationship problem with Angela who seems to have cooled off and wants an "independent" time of things. I don't know whether this was just a lover's tiff or something more serious and hoped for the best. I then took Sam for a walk whilst Daniel finished off on his boat and then I was back in time to say goodbye. Sam was difficult today. Firstly, he had been eating scraps of paper and polythene which were working their way down through his system and unsettling his toilet habits. Then he seemed so full of energy rushing around that he was almost impossible to control, and then he was developing a resistance to coming to heel. I think that he was be a handful as an adolescent and look forward to his adulthood.
I worked on this afternoon, clearing vegetation from the fence in the side alleyway and laying down gravel onto the mud but I left off just before dark with much still to be done. A restful evening, watching TV, making telephone calls, and then having a bath before my drink, journal and bed. I also finished off reading Nigel's book on Highland Stalking which I found very interesting, but I agree with Nigel that much of it only confirmed and reinforced that which we had already learnt from our own experience. The weather was dry today but a few degrees colder as a big anticyclone remains anchored over the North Sea.