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The 253 is fairly quiet this evening. S gave me a lift into work this morning. The last few days in no particular order:

Making a couple of aerofoil shaped shelves for Lysander's bathroom.

Tiling what will become a door to a space where we keep the blue and the green.

Spending Saturday afternoon on Amelia with J and T at Roydon and thereabouts on the Stort.

Sunday: Enjoying a Bacio pizza on the riverside in the company of our fellow marina occupiers.

Getting a lift with S on tube strike days.

Friday / Saturday / Sunday; Listening for the bubbles around the boat and feeding the swans and geese.

Tuesday evening: S has gone with L to see a musical tonight (Sister Act?).

Last Monday evening: I surprised myself when demonstrating the stylophone to B.

Monday: Spent some time looking at some hang gliding web sites today. Found a photo of me on the SHGC web site from 1976. The year Lysander was built (approx).

I'm boring myself writing this stuff. The thunderstorms have swollen the river and in the last couple of hours the water level at the mooring has risen over two feet (As I walked across the bridge in the rain and gathering gloom there were flashes of lightning off to the north over the reservoirs).

The first indication I had of this was when the mirror in the bathroom fell from its perch on top of the radiator expansion tank. In fact at one point the boat was listing on its taut centre-line so much that I had to push hard to open and hold open the front door. The water had risen to within about six inches of the top of the bank and the boat was riding high - but has now slowly - very slowly - started to recede. Our neighbour with the smoker's voice and bad teeth told me that he had rung British Waterways and they were 'opening the sluices'.

I have re-tied the centre-line as the faster flow of the river forced the stern of the boat out away from the bank as the level dropped.

A bottle and a plastic football has just swept by in the shadow of the rain clouds.