Time for reflection Lagarde

We sat this morning under “our” tree just looking at “our” Joyeux, thinking about how it had grown on us, how fond we have become of that awful blue, and how cleverly we set it off with the darker fenders and the small splash of red, and we noticed not for the first time that the curtains are still truly awful in that orange colour.

Initially the boat itself was something of an abomination to all that was tasteful and elegant in our eyes.  It was, as most will recall, cheap.  For that reason alone we were able to overlook a few things that were not to our taste.  We would we thought, change them given time, and it was after all quite liveable.

I mentioned just a few days ago that even before we had signed the contract to purchase, Jacques had suggested less than obliquely that perhaps the (what we now know is “Ivory”) interior colour could go in rather a hurry, and I have to confess that on that very same evening I pulled out a borrowed copy of photoshop and began to see what we could do about the blue deck colour as well.

The purple upholstery and vaguely grey-blue floor vinyl, were to be replaced with something more in keeping with the patina of the faded oak laminate and the blotchy beige bulkheads after the first year, but worst of all for us were the orange curtains.   They could not stay.

They needed to be gone as a matter of urgency.  We bought the material to make new ones before we had actually lived aboard.  Our very first purchase after taking delivery was a sewing machine so we could make the new ones without delay, and as these things tend to go, a year or two later apart from those in the galley there was little progress to report.  

Now, almost five years later, as we sit under our tree waiting for parts suppliers and fuel injection people to deal with us urgently, we have decided we cannot live with them a moment longer, the new curtains are underway.   

I think, perhaps just a little bit of the way things should be done France is seeping into our beings.

We have come to understand that there is a difference between urgency and emergency.  Our steering cables my be posted on Monday if sufficient urgency can be impressed, and Duncan may even be here tomorrow, doubtless after lunch, but only if something else urgent doesn’t arise.

Good things come to those who wait.