Two o'clock

Today must have been two o'clock, because sometime mid morning Michel appeared out of the drizzle with tool box in hand.

Michel is a man of few words, and since my vocabulary in his native tongue revolves entirely around not getting lost, eating, or relieving myself of something I've already eaten, and nothing to do with fixing the electrical system on a marine diesel seems to have the word "chocolat" attached to it, he worked in complete silence as I held an umbrella over him.

At one point as he removed a raggedy wire from it's terminal he shook his head and said a word which I did recognise as having something to do with relieving myself but under the circumstances I thought it best to leave well alone.

So I held the umbrella over him in silence, nodding intelligently each time he reassembled something and hoping he wasn't going to ask questions when he'd finished. 

We now have a boat that with a little luck will provide us with reliable transport for a few more months, is unlikely to sink if we leave it for an hour or two, and the forecast has a few days of rain ahead to keep us exactly where we are at the moment.    It's nice to know we could go if the urge took us, but we have power and water and the internet and we choose not to get wet this week.

We realised yesterday that we can't remember the last time in our lives when we didn't HAVE to do something on any given day, and while we won't run out of things to do here, it's a novel experience not having to do them in any order, or even at all if we don't feel like it.

Perhaps we'll stay here a little longer.