Well peeps what has happened since our last blog. Well I spent an enjoyable Monday at the Distillery, formely The Fiddle and Bone, in B'ham joining the other 56 recipients from all over the country of the CRT Gold Badge. This is the badge issued to volunteers who have contributed over 2000 hours. The awards were presented by Richard Parry followed by a very acceptable buffet lunch. Met a lot of interesting people including one chap from Southampton.
Good news of the week is that Volunteer's Vince and Kev have passed their CATTS assessment and are now fully fledged Hillmorton lockies. Keep an eye out for them and give them a smile.
Back at the locks we have had a very busy spell culminating last week with all the hysterical, oops sorry, historical boats heading to Braunston for the Historic boat rally. Lots of motors and butty's to deal with, thank goodness for the twin locks. Met a couple of our Twitter followers, it's always good to put a face to a Twitterer. The lady off A Frayed Knot even produced her book of flowers to confirm that our beautiful orchids were Southern Marsh Orchids. Have a look next time your through. We also had a boat load of Norwegian ladies trying out our canals for the first time. They were very nervous but, together with volunteer Vince, we soon put them at their ease and helped them on their way . Also had my "Dutch Lady" come through. This is a Dutch couple who have been coming here for the last 12 years, hiring a boat from Rose Narrowboats and always brings the lockkeepers a little gift which we reciprocated with a delicious savoury scone, at least I hope they were delicious as they were baked by yours truly.
Managed to aquire a new grass trimmer, funded by donations to our plant fund received from our Book Swap thanks to our customers, so our locks will soon be looking like one of the Royal parks, I can feel the weight of the Towpath Garden trophy.
And Finally A hire boat came through with tw0 couples on board, with the two ladies working the locks. One of the men on the tiller the other one stood at the front supervising. I did point ask the ladies if they were OK with working the locks to which they replied "yes were OK we have two sailors with us who can explain everything". My response to this was that in general sailors tended to experience more trouble than non sailors and they ought to get them up doing the locks. One of the ladies replied that one of the sailors was in fact a commander. "Well he will be no use as he must be used to issueing the orders to his underlings and not actually doing anything". The ladies had to accept my logic.
See yo next time peeps.
