Sliding away

A boaty weekend at last! Yes, this has been long overdue. I shall start with Saturday, which featured the AGM of HNBOC. As Jim is now on the committee as Fens rep, and the committee meeting prior to the AGM was acheduled to begin at ten o'clock, we left home at seven. Naturally, we were the first to arrive, and were admitted to Braunston Village Hall by a bemused cleaning lady.

The committee meeting lasted from ten until twelve thirty. Lovely people, but very comprehensive. Then it was a mad dash down to the Plough for lunch (and I have now already equalled my February draft beer total), which was very slow in arriving, sadly, so had to be rather fast in the eating, in order to get back to a by now packed village hall for the 2.30 AGM. It wasn't the treasurer's splendid graphs they'd come to see however, but this year's honoured guest: Malcolm Braine and his very large collection of slides. So large in fact that we only got through half of them before it was nearly seven o'clock and time to vacate the hall. With a turnout of 150 it was standing room only at the back. It was certainly fascinating stuff, but what with the packed hall and the two lunchtime pints, slightly soporific too.

There was a break for tea and cake half way through, and enlivened by several cups of the former and a couple of slices of the latter, and with the bonus of getting a seat vacated by a less hardy soul who left at half time, the second half, which kicked off with a marvellous piece of film of Claytons' tar boats, flew by. I also visited the club shop during the break and purchased a couple of second hand books to add to the library. Then we hit the A5 (eventually) and wended our way up and across to Chertsey's mooring ready to give the old girl a bit of long overdue TLC in the morning.