As the sun is setting across the harbour, I can't say for sure if it's due to doing actual work much of the day again, or being in confined spaces upside down with an angle grinder, or breathing champignon spores or grinding dust or whether it's just not drinking enough red wine, but I'm completely knackered. It's not as if I haven't found things for the smaller of us to do either, scrubbing the inside of a locker that reminded me just too much of one I had to cut myself out of with an angle grinder when we were building Piglet, and she looked to me to be of a size that would actually be able to move while inside.
Perhaps it's the stress of being an "honorary assistant" on Jacques' briefing team for new hirers. He had two Australian customers coming in last night and asked if I'd accompany him during their orientation to translate. Now Jacques speaks perfectly understandable English, and I suspect that besides being a very smart piece of salesmanship on his part by welcoming his customers with a familiar accent, it was really a ruse to get me on the water and moving for a bit because he knows that we've been here for nearly a week and the urge to move on is starting to outweigh the urge to complete the work we've been talking about.
Never the less, the experience was interesting and mostly pleasurable. In the case of one party, (who shall remain nameless but in the unlikely event that they find this blog, you know who you are) it was delightful. After the formalities were over, and "we'd" conquered a lock together, and in the process rescued another hirer from a serious predicament in the same lock, we retired to the comfort of the good ship Joyeux and had coffee and crepes chocked full of banana and nutella and told stories for what was left of the morning until the rain stopped.
I'm fairly certain that after I'd accidentally passed a rope under a lifeline instead of over it, and loudly drew everyone's attention to the fact that they should never ever under any circumstances do as I had just done, that they thought it was part of the show. Fairly certain.
Actually, I don't think I am knackered. Despite the undoubted joy that I get from pulling things apart and putting them back together clean and no longer squeaking, I think I am suffering moving withdrawals.
We can always fix the boat next year.
Or the year after that.
We've got time to get to Sarrebourg if we leave tomorrow.
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