Back in time for a bit more boating

Following my celebration of a thousand Chertsey posts, I thought I's continue counting backwards in hundreds through the posts on my previous blog, Warrior.

So, at -100, we have a brief, unillustrated, record of a day I often recall, with some small degree of pride - the day I steered through Islington tunnel thirteen times. This, in July 2009, is surrounded by posts detailing the excitement of Chertsey's purchase, though none of them fell on the magical 100 mark.

2009 a top posting year, with 267 posts, so it's little wonder that they weren't all exciting. Thus at -200 we have a brief quizzical look at county councils' logos. (I am well aware that I mentioned a county council in yesterday's post.) I wouldn't even bother clicking on that one, to be honest.

So let's hurry on to post -300. This edges us back into 2008, and my brave attempt to create an advent calendar with a Christmas-themed quote for each of 24 randomly selected photos. This one in fact is worth a look - it represents one of my finest sand-sculptural hours (which actually took place in July 2007, my heavens, nearly a decade ago.)

Back to -400, and still no boating. This one sees me at a conference. Extraordinarily, it appears that Boris Johnson was there and gave a speech. And that I had been at an even where Ken Livingstone spoke the previous week. This is extraordinary because I have absolutely no memory of having seen wither of these performers live, and had you asked me, would have sworn I hadn't. It just goes to show how worthwhile it is keeping a blog.

Post -500 features the Bill Fen pumpout. Hooray, a popular boating theme at last. And in the comments Nev introduces us to the concept of 'poking the pyramid'. You may of course rather wish he hadn't. Of course we haven't got a pumpout any more, dumpthrough or otherwise, and neither has Warrior. And I have still never emptied a toilet. I was gearing up to, recently, but the boat was tied up in such a position that I couldn't have got it off and across the other four boats between me and the bank.

Hooray! Post -600 finally sees Warrior on its travels - we are in March, in August 2007, en route to the IWA National at St Ives. I heard the other year that the weeping willow we planted at Floods Ferry before we left in 2005 is no longer there. The cat who attached himself to us at about the same time is still around though.

A return to dullness with -700 - discussions of Warrior's paint, and the painting of the engine - but with no pictures. But I do remember how exciting it was - and how cold - painting Warrior's engine as it sat on a trailer inside a shipping container at Stretton. Warrior has been through a couple of different paint schemes since then, but I don't think the engine has. Ironically, of course, Chertsey's engine is the same colour, Quite possibly the only two engines that colour (muscat) on the entire waterways system, and we've had both of them.

Finally, post -800 (you will recall that there was a total of 859 posts on the Warrior blog). And it's... the start of the original rag rug that still sits on Chertsey's back cabin floor. Others have come and gone, but this first one, the heaviest and densest of them all, endures. I can't believe that it is now over ten years old. It's still doing a brilliant job.

And there we have it. More interesting posts are to be found either side of most of the featured ones, but if you set yourself arbitary parameters you just have to take what you're given.