Anyone got a spare number 8 stencil?

At last it feels like spring's here. I've just noticed that the new hedge plants and the trees are starting to bud and everywhere has that "wake up" kind of feeling. It has to be my favourite time of year – everywhere has a feeling of optimism and busyness and the bird song (if you take the time to stop and listen) is just amazing. That must be symptomatic of growing older – this thing about stopping and listening – I definitely never bothered to slow down long enough when I was younger...which means there are all those years of beautiful bird song that I missed out on....which surely must be good enough excuse to spend longer doing it now I'm older (I think that follows!).

The other thing which I really enjoy doing is going out in my boat (which, as you may know from my earlier blogs, is a 7 foot long Bic plastic dinghy called Rosie). Saturday presented the perfect opportunity – now it's decent weather we have started numbering the ends of the jetties to make it easier for people to find their moorings – a job best done form a boat. Not waiting for volunteers I was out the door and in the boat like a shot. It seemed like an easy task....float over the the end of the jetty, tape the stencil on and spray with paint. All was going really well until I started to get abuse from the bystanders on the fuel bay who were threatening to reverse over to give me a bit of a soaking. I managed to talk my way out of that one but then took my mind, only to see Number 8 peel off and sink. So if you moor in our marina, it's a great place to be except the numbering system gets a bit dodgy between 7 and 9.