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My sea trip with Daniel and Steve on The Paxton Princess out of Yarmouth, around the North Norfolk coast and then the inshore passage from Blakeney into the Lynn Channel in the spray before cruising straight up the New Bedford to Erith to moor up at Westview Marina after dark. Then eating on board in the absence of any food venues.
I was the first to awake at 5.00am and got dressed and put the kettle on as the others came to. We were ready to go in no time and I made clearance calls to Port Control and to the Yarmouth Coastguard where they were reporting SE 3/4 from yesterday's forecasts. Daniel steered a course from the harbour entrance, whilst I checked around the boat for problems and also got the plotters and auto-pilot working. At first, we could not get the autopilot to home in with small cross track errors until we realised that we had to be exactly on course (or with a cross-track error of less than 0.31) before it came in when it kept us on a very exact course indeed. The exit from Yarmouth was quite wavy as the tide raced in the river mouth to fill the Broads and slack water would have been better but we wanted to get on. Then we turned and were beam-on to the wind, but things settled down as I got in better control of the navigation aids and we started the long haul around the North Norfolk Coast.
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With Steve Bloom and Daniel for our Norfolk trip when we prepared The Paxton Princess for our sea voyage and then cruise to Great Yarmouth to moor up at The Town Hall Quay for the night ready to leave in the morning. Some nice food after which we slept reasonably after some disturbance and worry over the weather forecasts which now had moderate South-Easterly winds for our Yarmouth exit.
The weather forecast had been very good last night but then there were strong wind warnings on the first forecasts that I heard this morning! Most confusing but all I could do was to keep on listening to them as I was up early and working at my desk. Worked on a range of correspondence and then prepared things for the boat trip. Steven Bloom arrived in time for us to set off at 9.30am and, together with Daniel, we loaded up and off we went. Had pleasant conversations with Steve on the journey and then, feeling like rest and refreshment, stopped off at the Snetterton Happy Eater for coffee and buns. Daniel seems a little bit more outgoing lately and easier to chat with (by his standards!) It was just about lunchtime when we arrived at Heronshaw and found Jack there.
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A Cambridge visit with our daughters as well as meetings galore, dropping off the Focus copy, frenetically updated before leaving, and then having coffee on arrival but to time for lunch.
A Glisson Road election campaign meeting and then, after Di helped at Little Paxton School, Chrisula arrived with her girls to use the pool and did not want to go; resulting in my dinner being too late to eat before my HDC Policy Committee in the evening.
I agreed with Daniel and Steven Bloom that we would try to bring the Paxton Princess round during the next couple of day. The national news lately has been of a bank failure and worsening industrial and employment statistics.
By the time I was awake at 7.15am, there were already half a dozen telephone calls on the answering machine, with the latest suggestions and corrections for the FOCUS copy. They were much happier with the revised format and the number of corrections had dwindled to just a few. I was able to implement these and also produce the "Sorry we missed You" and poster copy and to fill in all of the order forms before I left for Cambridge, but it was a close-run thing. In between times, I also ate breakfast as well! We took Daniel and Debbie with us for the trip and met Di's parents for coffee, dropping off the copy for printing at Roman Znajek's house on the way. I was only able to stay for a little while as I had a meeting of the parliamentary campaign at Glisson Road at 10.15am and had already telephoned ahead to say that I was going to be late, and it was 10.45am before I could get there. The meeting went well, and we discussed the theme of the campaign which was to be locally based and highlighting Sue Suttons youth and vigour against the ageing and stodgy incumbent.
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All day working on Ross McKay’s Eaton Socon Election FOCUS requiring rework until 2am in the morning before everybody was satisfied with the final result. In the meanwhile, two of our other recently elected councillors were at cross purposes and I phoned Sally and Michael to ask them to get the problem in hand.
It was quite a day today that did not finish until 2.00am the following morning. The routine was quite normal until Sandie Giles arrived at 8.30am and then we spent from then until mid-afternoon preparing the letters to be sent to former Liberal Democrat supporters identified at the last by-election. I had to produce the material from my combination of photocopier and laser printer and Sandie had to get some £50 worth of stationery from Clover to re-stock my supplies and renew a toner cartridge! During this time, I was trying to compile and lay out the first election FOCUS and this task was the one that kept me up late. The problem was to try to make coherent sense of the copy from Ross and then lay it out to look attractive as well as informative.
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