Bartimaeus

I went in to town to get some ingredients for tonight’s dinner. On the way I met a man who asked if I knew the time. I didn’t. He asked if I had my phone. I didn’t- pretty rare , but hadn’t thought I would need it. He joked that the most important call in my life might come in and I would miss it. As I was approaching the shopping area I could hear music. There was a brass band playing in the pedestrian Market Street. Another reason I could have done with my phone, to film them. After zipping round the supermarket, I had to come back again to get a picture.

It was a mild day, which was excellent as we wanted to charge up the batteries. I got off to open a lift bridge but the windlass was too small, I ran back for a different one. As I did so, a passing cyclist called “I hope you haven’t broken it!”. He obviously liked a quip as he had already called to Shane (spotting the hat) “You need to put on some weight before tonight!” Shane passed me an old chunky windlass that had two grip sizes on it. Good job we have a variety of different windlasses! 

After I had closed it again I got a better view of an unusual sculpture, that I had spied while operating the bridge. I wasn’t sure if it was permanent or left over from Halloween but it had a bauble in it so was seasonally adjusted.

All three of the bridges were operated differently: a windlass operated lift bridge, an electronic lift bridge, requiring a key, and a manual swing bridge, also using a key to release the mechanism.

The intention was just to go up to a winding hole and back again, which gave us the chance to take pictures on the return, of anything we had missed on the way there. At the winding hole we saw a heron. It didn’t fly off but was a little away from us. It turned round, plunged itself into the water and caught itself some lunch as we were turning.

Shane was keen for exercise so he did all the bridges on the way back while I drove. He was letting through another boat behind. I was worried I might be slowing them up and upped the speed but needed to give Shane time to close the bridge after they were through then hurry to the next one. And I didn’t want to be hovering around long at a bridge as there were shallow sides and grounding was likely if I drifted at all. All went smoothly though. Shane took the helm again after the bridges and I was able to get more pictures.

I saw two more  Christmas flags today too.

We had David, Nye and Bryn for dinner. David does not like a fuss for his birthday so I didn’t do cake and candles and we just had seasonal treats such as some spiced biscuits and marzipan “potatoes” as dessert – quite went with the German main course of Zwiebelkuchen. They have departed taking the presents from under our tree to put under theirs and we will see them for Christmas dinner. Merry Christmas Everyone!