18 JAN10

Just had a word with Kate to wish her a very happy birthday. Most surprised all the parcels arrived by the due date - wish we could give her a great big hug.
Yesterday saw us doing a bit of entertaining. We were having trouble with a mooring buoy crashing into us as it was too close, so Vivien's fiance Steve, who is the diver who looks after us went down and had a good inspection of our mooring and then moved the offending buoy out of the way. Now we won't have to be like gypsies and move about when the wind is in the wrong direction for hitting the thing. So we had Steve and Vivien, Steve's 2 grown up sons, the 2 yr old grandson, Guinness the cocker spaniel (very wet) and Hamish the spring spaniel (exceedingly wet) all down below while Dave provided bacon rolls and real coffee for all. Knowing that we were expecting incoming we had scurried around before church to tidy up - one is so boat proud you know. It was great - Guinness was out of his brain when he saw dave and me, as we haven't seen him for ages. He was all over the place at first and then settled down for a real long grandma cuddle. I have missed Guinness cuddles that is for sure. We really enjoyed the company, more so as we have all been a bit busy of late and with not being able to be alongside for so long have missed seeing each other
Today is drop dead beautiful - calm, chilly but so sunny and blue, wouldn't be anywhere else (more or less!) and we are off to tidy up the cockpit and try to squeeze the biggest things into the smalles spaces.