Angel in the sun.

Hi Friends.

What a day I have had, it has been fantastic.
It all began a little less early than previous mornings. I was woken up by the sound of Crow's and Magpie's. It seems that on one side of the cut the Crow's live and on our side the Magpie's live and in the morning's they have a shouting match across the water. Then there were footsteps on the roof of the back cabin. Not sure whether it was a Crow or a Magpie though.
Having crawled out of my pit and got dressed. Paddy needed his walk and yet again he went scampering across the field. This time he caught the scent of something, and was off like a whippet to find the smell. It was probably a Rabbit, which he never did find. Having got back to the boat, I had breakfast and a cup of tea.
I then grabbed my camera and walked back up to the tunnel. This was the morning when the Butty 'Angel' was going to be legged through the tunnel. Roy the British Waterway's man, was there to make sure no boats went into the tunnel and his workmate was at the other end. The tunnel was closed from 8am to 11am.
I have spent a fabulous morning taking photographs of the Butty 'Angel' being legged through Braunston Tunnel and then the butty was pulled along by Gypsy Queen. It was so wonderful to see. It made me ponder about how they used to do boating all those years ago. It took the leggers about an hour and half to leg through Braunston Tunnel, all 2042 yards, 1867 metres. They certainly needed their weetabix this morning. I was joined by Betty from NB Oakfield, who also had her camera to hand. It was a bit of a shame that more people did not turn out to see this wonderful thing take place. Sue Day who is the Chair Person for the Horse Boating Society was there on hand to make sure everything went like clockwork. I happily gave my services to take the photographs for her. It is something I could watch all day.
Gypsy Queen pulled the Butty Angel out of the lock and on to the next lock down the flight. There is something so majestic about this form of transport. It would have been so peaceful on the cut in those days. The cut these days is a little more crowded and this was evident with the boats travelling up the flight. We made every effort to make sure they knew what to do when leaving the lock, because the last thing Sue needed was for a boat to get in between the horse and the boat. Thankfully everyone seemed to grasp what was required of them and the trip went without any hitches. The only real problem I had was the sun. Now I love the sun, I really do. But it did cause problems taking the photos, especially when people were in the way. I left the procession half way down the flight and legged it back to the boat to down load the photos on to a disc for Sue. I then made us some Bacon Sandwiches for lunch, before going back down the flight to hand the disc over the Sue and a couple of others, who had asked for the photos. One of them being the Cheese Boat which is here for the weekend. Geraldine and Micheal have a mooring in the Marina for the weekend. Whilst walking back I caught up with other people we know and who we will see over the weekend. Back onboard I was in need of a drink and a sit down. I really need to get my fitness back up to a better level. It was football time. But with the TV reception at best not good, Keith went and played with the ariel to get us a better picture for BBC1. As he sorted us out a boat pulled in behind us and I heard one of them say "We will stop here, and see if we can get a picture, if not we will go through the tunnel" They must have got a picture, because they stayed until the final whistle and then they undid their ropes and moved off. I wonder if their picture was as poor as ours was??

Ok now I think I said that I would not mention the football on a previous post, or was it the Election, oh well never mind I am going to mention the football, because you cannot have failed to notice that England were playing today again Slovinia and we had to win this match to stay in the World Cup. What a game it was too. The guys did us proud by winning 1-0. In my opinion it should have been more as we had plenty of opportunities to score more. I do wonder how much further we will go in the World Cup. I have a dreadful feeling that we may end up playing Germany next arghhhhh.

Also on the football. I was appauled by the behaviour of the French Coach Raymond Domenech. Domenech refused to shake the South African coach's hand. The snub occurred when Carlos Alberto Parreira, the South African coach, came over to Domenech at the conclusion of the game and wanted to shake his hand. The Frenchman refused to do so mentioning that Parreira had insulted his team by saying that they should not have beaten Ireland in qualifying because of a handball goal by Henry. he was stating the obvious and I bet none of the Irish were crying for the French when they crashed out of the World Cup. Despite what happened there was absolutely no excuse for Raymond Domenech's behaviour. He should be ashamed of himself. Football is supposed to be the beautiful game, there is nothing beautiful about it when people behave like that. Not only that it sets a bad example. Just my opinion though.