After a very very early start -- Bertie barked in my ear at 7am -- I passed an entertaining couple of hours this morning helping Colin scrub out the cockpit of his boat Eraser.


Colin and Eraser in happier times

Eraser's been off the water quite a while now, after a series of mishaps, so it was pretty grimy. But with elbow grease and some special hull-cleaning gunk we got it looking reasonable. It's having an insurance survey on Wednesday I think, and Colin's shifting it from the yacht club to the marina down the road from me on Thursday morning. He's talking about a "shake-down" sail next week -- that's where you gingerly take the boat out and see if anything falls off.

Bertie came along for the ride and was very well behaved. He amused himself for a while but quickly got bored -- he wouldn't go off on his own, which was good, but he couldn't climb up into the boat so once he'd had a look round the area he just hung around whining. I put him in the car with a biscuit and he was happy.

After that I went home to meet the man from the double-glazing firm who came to fix the seal on the door that keeps falling out. He just poked it back in -- which I've already done twice. Hmm.

I did some gardening as well, and took Bertie for another walk. He nearly caught a rabbit again. Poor thing. And nearly ran under a car on the way home, fighting to get into the road to grab what he thought was a hedgehog but was actually an old sponge.