I love the smell of two-stroke in the morning Wednesday 3rd August - Dendermonde to Aalst

It seems as though we were just getting to sleep after the gentle conversations of last night, when the sounds of two stroke engines of the garden weed-whacking variety burst through the stillness that usually heralds that six-fourteen has arrived.

In that stillness normally, that hour goes completely unnoticed unless one has to make a wee excursion before returning to blissful slumber for another hour or three.  If we ignored it, we thought it would go away, but by six-thirty the little thwacks and pings of twigs and clippings and extraneous garden excrement landing on our boat were beginning to annoy.

Then, from somewhere not far away added to the din was the unmistakable sound of someone shouting angrily in Flemish.   Flemish is such a cool language to be angry in, even for those of us who don’t understand a word of it the intent is very clear!   The poor young man guilty of nothing more than carrying out orders (without question), made things a degree or two worse when he attempted to make good by trying to blow off the great mountains of debris stuck to one of the boats by the morning dew with an even noisier two stroke blower.

Just why the manager of the waterways authority had dispatched two of his finest to denude a piece of river bank exactly three boats long at six in the morning was never completely explained.  Perhaps he correctly calculated that it give us time to clean the detritus off the boats before nine (just).  

I do hope his decision was worth the paperwork that he will now have to deal with given the number of emails, telephone calls and written complaints that were buzzing from our neighbours' devices.

Having completed just two thirds of our allotted sleep schedule for the night, there was a great temptation to photograph the debacle, but our memories of this mooring  will be from a time just six hours earlier, of a greener calmer place where the words “quite enjoyment” come to mind.