Cripes, nearly a week since I wrote anything here. I would have written something yesterday but my ISP was having a coniption fit and wouldn't let me stay logged on longer than a couple of seconds.

Whatever. The Bamboo Curtain was a failure. Bertie jumped right through it, screeching as he was scraped by wire and stakes. Thank goodness he didn't impale himself. So now I don't let him out at night. During the day he's ok, he doesn't jump through, but I still watch him while he's out there.

I spent the weekend on a sailing course. Saturday it was "dinghy cruising", Sunday was "dinghy drifting" -- how to drift your dinghy on the tide, with the sails flopping loosely.

We (seven of us in three Wayfarer dinghies, plus two instructors in an inflatable) spent Saturday morning doing triangles, just what I'd hoped NOT to be doing, but I guess they have to assess everyone. We were all good at triangles, so in the afternoon we moved on to anchoring and went for a short spin downriver, just past the rail bridge. The wind had picked up and and we had a great couple of hours sailing, fast and bouncy, with spray flying.

While we were anchoring, I saw what I thought was a haar rolling in, and just before we came in it started raining. Hard. I was wet anyway, so rather than change into dry clothes, I walked home in my sailing kit. Good move -- it rained so hilariously hard I was thoroughly rinsed of salt by the time I got to my door. I dried myself off, changed, and waiting for it to stop raining so I could walk Bertie. It didn't stop, so we walked in the rain. It kept on raining, all night it rained.

In the morning, it was still raining. but the wind had died away almost completely. We looked at the chart and rolled the special ruler over it and calculated the tide and made bearings and came up with a course plan.

We rigged up our boats in the rain and paddled out of the harbour and off upriver, sails flopping. The plan was to sail to Blackness, anchor there for a short while, then head across the river to Charlestown for a picnic lunch, before heading back to Port Edgar. Ha ha. It took us so long to float soggily up to Blackness that we went straight across to Charlestown. We took so interminably long getting across that the instructors had to tow us across the shipping channel to avoid getting in the way of a tanker.

We anchored in Charlestown harbour and climbed into the inflatable, which the instructors then beached. There was a man sitting in his car as we filed up the beach in the rain -- someone suggested we see if there was enough room in there for all of us, it looked quite cosy. There was no sign of a pub -- though it's unlikely a pub would have welcomed nine dripping mariners. We plodded morosely round to a rocky breakwater and sat perched on our lifejackets eating soggy sandwiches. It rained and rained and rained. The fog had been slowly creeping in and by the time we'd finished our lunch we couldn't see across to Blackness. We certainly couldn't see the bridges.

Since we obviously couldn't sail back -- the tide hadn't turned yet and there was not a breath of wind -- the plan changed. The dinghies were tied to the inflatable and we had a glum trip back. We derigged the boats in record time -- I've certainly never folded and stowed a sail that quickly -- got dried off and changed and rushed to the canteen .... which was of course closed. Huh. After a debriefing we went home. Very disappointing end to the course. The annoying thing is that I was booked in to the course in July, and it was cancelled because only I was booked. The weather that weekend was much better.

I'm reading a book by Paul Theroux and the moment that has several of his kayaking stories in it and I'm tempted again by the idea of getting a kayak. He has a collapsible one that packs down into two bags. During the sailing course I was thinking how great it would be to kayak up the Forth -- or better yet, to go to Stirling and kayak home. I could explore the coast for quite a distance on short trips from here.

Today I finally got someone else organised to do the tiling in the kitchen. The last people failed to turn up -- I phoned every week for a month and gave up when the tiler went on holiday for three weeks. "Maybe I should get someone else to do the job," I said. "Yes dear, that would probably be best." This time it's a Linlithgow company, the man will come and look over the job in the next few days. The quote was about £160 less than the last one, so that's a bonus.