Luvly Jubbly

It’s an odd, odd week. The Good Lady Wife Her Indoors is at home all week* because it is half term. The step-offspring are also home for the same reason. The dogs and cats are home too, obviously. And to make the whole week feel even odder Thursday and Friday are Bank Holidays because of some milestone pertaining to HMtQ.

The village are celebrating this regal (nothing to do with a pack of fags) milestone in piecemeal fashion. Some bunting has gone up here and there, a number of street parties are being planned, music and food and drink will be provided, and a good number of people (names are being withheld to protect the innocent) are leaving this madness behind, and legging it to places where this bedlam isn’t taking place.

Unfortunately our house is right in the centre of one planned street party. The road will be closed for the event but there’s no public liability or 3rd-party insurance, and unfortunately there will be no TRO in place, but I’m sure it’ll all be alright on the day. Except, unfortunately, for the local chapter of Hells Angels that, some months ago, I’d invited round for a barbecue-and-raw-chicken-head-biting funday. Still, I’m sure they’ll be reasonable about it and accept that I have to cancel.

*Except she’s not home all week, she has to go in to school tomorrow on her day off, to work the entire day to make sense out of someone else’s organisational and administrative lack of planning, poor communications, and general cockups.

Amazingly (and coincidentally, obviously), the sailing club has plans to leave this sceptic sceptered isle on Thursday and head to the Isle of Man, returning Sunday afternoon.

As such a journey would comprise a number of personal challenges, this planned passage is both attractive and horrifying in almost equal measures. It’s like the very first time I loaded one of my horses into the lorry and drove a hundred miles, competed in a One Day Event, then drove back, and did it all by myself. Only more challenging by a long, long way.

So for the last couple of days I’ve been ankle deep in various text books, navigation charts, websites, and passage-planning software as I try to put a Plan A and a Plan B down on paper. The factors I need to take into consideration are the high water times, the wind direction and speed, the currents/tides, and the distance/duration of the Irish Sea crossing. And doing it all singlehanded.

Exciting! Scary! I shall write a maritime-related blogpost in due course.

Anyway, whatever you’re up to on this four-day weekend, I hope you have a good one.