Salad Days

We're working through the list.  The tyre is fixed on the bike, the navigation lights work now, as does the spotlight and the horn and we've got new mooring lines all round.   For years I've told anyone that would listen of the canal networks in Europe, of how one can take a boat to Switzerland, over mountains and through them, and in a day or two or perhaps tomorrow we might even head in that direction ourselves.

It's as though we're preparing for an ocean voyage, not simply crossing some mountains, so we pottered around all day again, making excuses not to leave, and if it's raining tomorrow that's all we'll need to stay one more day as well.  

Besides, tomorrow is changeover day in the port, the day when the charter fleet gets its new eager holiday makers who all head out at a million miles per hour creating havoc on the waterways.   Well they head out at six kilometres per hour actually, but they have a sense of urgency that we do not, trying to cram as much into their week afloat as they can.

We wish them well, and help them at the dock, and watch as they take their urgency with them.

We had dinner on board this evening with some of our own countrymen with whom we could share our lack of urgency, and I was going to remark that the food was just as it is at home, but of course it was.

This is home.