You know I said the leaks were fixed...?

Today started so well, if a bit earlier than is entirely suitable for Spanners:  at 7.15 am sharp we were in Teddington Lock.

Teddington Lock

This is an address I remember from my childhood as the home of ITV's Magpie - the much cooler alternative to Blue Peter with their wussy Christmas-decorations-out-of coat-hangers malarkey (although I DID like Shep).  Not quite sure what happened after that - somehow I ended up watching Noel Edmonds on Swap Shop rather than Tiswas, a cultural deficit I still feel quite deeply.


But there was no time for reminiscing.  We left at high tide, but within about 10 minutes the ebbing water was carrying us along faster than I think this boat can ever have been. Marble Hill Park and Eel Pie Island went by in a flash, and I completely missed taking photos of Meadowside, the riverside block of flats in East Twickenham I lived in when I ran away to Gary and London aged 17.

Richmond Bridge 

I did catch a glimpse through the trees, though, and thought again of how glad I am that I still know Gary now, nearly 40 years later.   He was as unselfish then as he is now, and the fact that I went back to school and finished my A Levels is almost entirely down to him.  We met up with Steve Goldie last night at Teddington, too (another friend from that time) and I am thoroughly enjoying all these blasts from the past as well as seeing things from the very different perspectives of the river and of middle age.

I did manage to take a photo of the very beautiful Richmond Bridge, though.  I used to walk over it every day to get to my rubbish job as an accounts clerk (yet another oeuvre unsuitable for Spanners, I feel, or certainly for this one: I failed my probationary period, mainly for paying copies of invoices as well as the originals.  Nobody told me there were copies, but they certainly noticed when I paid the one for a quarter of a million twice.  Not one to stay where I'm not wanted, I resigned and went on holiday.   Perhaps, looking back, that's where the die was cast... :)

But back to today.  I was intending to cook a healthy breakfast on the way to Brentford, but things were happening so fast I couldn't even risk making a cup of tea.  I'm not sure I should post this picture as it's so very shameful, but this, dear friends, was what we had...

Moving on very swiftly, we shot past Syon House on the left and Kew Gardens on the right, and thankfully managed to turn onto the Grand Union Canal at Brentford. Calm at last, although - unbelievably - we were told off by the lock-keeper for being late!  How so?  I doubt a helicopter could have got there faster than we did.

We didn't argue though - Brentford Gauging Lock (so called because it was here that cargoes were gauged and tolls levied) has 14-day moorings, drinking water, Elsan disposal facilities, toilets and even showers, so we really thought our luck was in.  Until we peered into the bilge, which, for non-boaters, is the space you don't normally look at, right at the bottom of the boat.  It was rather worryingly full of water...

I didn't take photos of this either - things were a bit fraught - but we've bailed it all out this afternoon, and think and hope that it's a leaking water tank, rather than a hole below the waterline.   We will know one way or the other by the morning, but either way I'm definitely buying lifejackets. xx