Ely to The Waits aboard The Lady on a quiet dull and cold boating day *!!!* as the first woman US astronaut returns on the Shuttle
*!!!* A dull, cold day for once with slight rain in the air from time to time. A morning’s shopping in Ely and I retrieve the 2HP Mariner from Ely’s Chandlers after a service and buy a wall mounted gimballed paraffin lamp that is romantic but of poor light source. We cruise back through the Old West River and through locks at Hermitage, Brownshills and St Ives to a shivery end at St Ives Waits Quay.
We are the only craft moored at St Ives Quays this night and only 20 boats locked through St Ives all day. The ‘keeper feels that four poor summer seasons of weather plus the recession are taking their toll. An evening takeaway of hamburgers and chips from the Kentuckian for the kids and then a civil dinner for Diana and I at the Golden Lion Hotel. News today of the return of the Space Shuttle with America’s first woman astronaut aboard and of Chris Evert-Lloyd’s premature elimination from Wimbledon. The colour portable TV has given good entertainment tonight and I am not concerned as the craft’s batteries are by now well charged.
(*!!!* Some content with-held as activities once commonplace are now either illegal or viewed as reprehensible in this era of acute political correctness and so reference has been removed for a further 30years or the lifetime of the subject (whichever is earlier) to avoid incrimination.)