he pontoon. Ray extricated us from his berth surprisingly smoothly and then we were off for a lovely meander down the river and, from Shiplake onwards, a nice rubberneck at posh riverside properties, which is always fun. We lunched on the move on past
ies and gazpacho – I thought this an acceptable if probably little-known combination, though Ruth spurned the gazpacho, being of the “Eeuww it’s cold” mentality when it comes to soup. We found the river surprisingly quiet on the Saturday, at least as far as Marsh Lock, just upstream of Henley and a popular spot for a stroll, when I looked up with a mouthful of pasty to discover we had an audience of people apparently entranced by the sight of boats going through locks. A big cruiser was beckoned into the lock by
the lockkeeper after us and I was interested to see how keen they are to give narrowboats a wide berth (that whole fibreglass vs. several tons of steel thing). The weather stayed OK and we eventually moored up just short of Bourne End, sometime after 5pm. Had a brief token stroll to stretch legs and spent a pleas
ant evening eating and drinking.
Sunday was a bit busier and more eventful. Enjoyed the meander back towards Marlow, snapping several of the grand houses sited high above the river on the south side, including one whose riverside lawn Ray apparently maintains – as the main part of the garden looked an almost sheer drop from the house I’ve no idea how they get the necessary machinery down there. Things became more eventful at Marlow lock, the deepest lock on our trip at a drop of 7’ 1”; the others ranged from Sonning at 5’ 4” to Hurley at a piddling 3’ 5”. H
ardly worth it really. Once we were secured in at Marlow, a barge alongside us and at least one cruiser behind, Ruth was warned to hold tight to the rope as the sluice gates were opened as apparently “things can get a bit rough”. Things did indeed, with a rush of 
quite impressive white water; as we were preparing to leave the lockkeeper saw fit to tell us that Marlow’s the roughest sluice on the Thames. How exciting.
Not long out of Marlow lock and heading downstream towards the suspension bridge, we noted a couple of rowers ahead of us, one of whom inexplicably decided to row towards us as we drew closer. The inevitable happened and yes, it upset her more than us. She was duly retrieved by the guy in charge of
the rowing who dragged her off to the side of the river for, hopefully, a bit of a stern chat.
While waiting at Hurley we were hailed by Ray’s current employer Laurence, who owns a Venetian water taxi moored at Freebody’s cute boatyard. They followed us upstream as far as Henley, where we moored up and Ray went to have a cup of tea with them, while Ruth and I nipped into the River & Rowing Museum to see whether the café was still as nice as it was during those mornings eight years ago when I was supposed to be writing my thesis. We had a pleasant lunch and then set off again, finally arriving back at the marina around 6pm. Very civilised.
Discovered from Judith this week that she and her daughter had apparently taken part in an open water swimming contest at Marlow the weekend following our trip. We did see a few women in wetsuits in the river near Bourne End on the Saturday – my initial conclusion was that they were just mad, but with hindsight perhaps they were practising.
Spent 15-17 August on a SAS course at StayAhead Training, around the corner from Barbican tube. Ruth and I t
ravelled in together on the Monday and had breakfast in the Central Café, just opposite the Shelter Building where her offices are. Returned to the café on Day 3 of the course to meet Hannah for more coffee and pains au chocolat – had ordered two of the latter intending one to be for her, but as she is of the (odd, obviously) breed of people who claim not to be able to consume food before about 11am, I ended up eating most of both, so should probably curb the pastry for a bit. The course itself was a bit too intensive for my liking, though I guess I should take comfort from the fact that it was intended for people with at least six months’ SAS programming experience. People in the office had commiserated with me for not managing to book onto a course at the SAS headquarters near Marlow, as apparently you get a good spread at lunch there. We didn’t get lunch at the London site but we did get issued daily with a quite generous £10 
of Luncheon Vouchers (hadn’t known these still existed) – bought Ruth lunch with them on two of the days and used the rest up on grocery shopping in Waitrose.
Ruth and I went for a birthday meal on Tuesday evening at Café Rouge, where we had a surprisingly poor steak. Salad and fries were nice though. Had booked the Thursday and Friday as leave - on the Thursday, met Ray early for a divine-as-ever coffee and bacon sandwich at Julia’s Meadow then went for a quick browse around the shops which, inexplicably, resulted in my arriving back at the house laden with bags. On the Friday, Ruth and I took the
train up to London and visited the BP Portrait Award 2011 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. After a brief lunch we wandered over to Covent Garden, where we spent a short while aimlessly mooching before both acknowledging that neither of us likes it much (too crowded and touristy). We wandered on and, completely unplanned, came across the Aram Store on Drury Lane, exclusive sellers of various iconic pieces of furniture including Jacobsen's Swan and Egg chairs. We drooled for a while and Ruth used their toilets. We then walked a way down Holborn to visit the little church of St Etheldreda in Ely Place, the oldest Roman Catholic church in London (it was taken over by the Church of England after the Reformation, but returned to the Old Faith in the nineteenth century). Afterwards, we had an early dinner at Garfunkel's1 and an expensive drink in the Old Shades on Whitehall before going to see Max Stafford-Clark's production of Caryl Churchill's 'Top Girls' at Trafalgar Studios.
As of today, the Hoppa Bag crisis is continuing. Ruth filled three of these several weekends ago with soil and rubble resulting from digging out a large trench in the garden pri
or to getting some hard landscaping done. Although they are blocking the entrance to the garage, she imagined that they would be speedily collected before I next wanted to park the car in it, as previously Mr Hoppa has always been round promptly to collect the bags. On this occasion, however, despite assuring Ruth that he would be quite able to collect them from the lane at the back of the property, he has still not been to collect them despite repeated chasing. I fear they are going to have to be collected via other means – though I don’t know at the moment quite what those are going to be.
1 Hadn't been to one of these in about 20 years. The formerly quite special salad bar didn't look to be what it used to be, so I played it safe with spicy chicken wings and garlic bread.
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