Shaun Tanner The week that was !!

Last week was absolute chaos and has left me totally drained and in no position to do anything other than lie down on the settee .. watch England vs Aus at Cricket and the two live games of football !! But hey ... do not feel sorry for me !!

Was due to go up to house in Wales to do some jobs as had taken Mon - wed off in work ... Was topping up the fluids in the car this time last week when I noted with alarm that the tensioner arm had come off .. managed to find a garage that could get the part and do the job on Monday and eventually got car back at 20.45 hrs .. My thanks to island motors for doing the job ..

Got up there at just before midnight and had a few good days and got a load of jobs done ... House is now great and has gone from this !! when times were bloody hard and uncomfortable ... i was sleeping on an old mattress in a freezing cold house with no hot water or heating

to this... spa bath that plays CDs and answers the phone ??? Too technical for me in truth !! and this .. which is the room in which I am standing with all the walls pulled down ..

On the last trip we got a new mantlepiece put up over the burner in the lounge

Managed to spend some quality time with my mother and generally had a good time doing "jobs" to maximise my stay I had decided to get up at 4am on thursday morning and drive directly to work for an 8am start. accordingly I grabbed an early night and was well asleep until people started texting me after 11pm ... I could not get back to sleep and gave up at 01.15 and drove back early ... it certainly made for a long day on Thursday !!

Since returning my good mate Rob has been trying to influence me to buy some extreme add ons to the "Saucy Trout" He is thinking of twin 300hp engines ... a little excessive on a 16ft vessel especially bearing in mind the 40hp we already have is way overpowered but who am I to dampen the boys ardour ... I actually did find something useful to stick on the bow of the boat but it was a bit difficult to nick !!

Whilst up there I drove to a large Builders merchants that has a current advertising campaign stating how skilled all their staff are ... I used to be a bricky ... I used to be a plumber etc etc ... You would have thought that the particular store should have confidence in the construction skills of the staff ... yet when I go to the in store toilet .. I see this !!

I think I will do my own installation rather than use these "craftsmen!!" Oh well must away as the United vs City derby is getting v spikey ... Best wishes from Portland

Shaun

What could possibly go wrong ??

After the bad weather we have recently had the fine weather of Friday made it compulsory to go on a fishing trip on Friday afternoon . A group of four of us , myself Rob Nige and Ross complete with a stunning collection of squid (because bass like tentacly goodness) ragworm and mackerel managed to eventually float the boat (Note to self .. do not go fishing at low tide !!) ready for action...

Problem being the bloody engine would not start and so I had to jump over the side , wade back to the car and get my can of "Easy Start"... This too was a fruitless excersize leaving us with the option of either rowing or going back to the "Hellmouth" and simply having a few beers ... It was too nice a day and so we rowed...

Walking down to Chesil beach on Saturday

this too was a bit of a mistake for although Nige looks and sounds like an old hand of the sea ... and is blessed with size and great strength ....sadly he is far from Steve Redgrave !! As someone cruelly suggested that at a young age his stomach had digested his brain ?? We eventually got out and got on with the fishing when we moored up next to the Mulberry harbours to try and lure bass out from underneath. The mulberrys themselves are the floating concrete structures used and made famous in the D day landings ... Quick historical note there ! Part of the fun of going fishing with portlanders is the words they use ... Some people believe it to be very quaint but Rob reckons it is more to do with the gene pool being very shallow at both ends !! The other day when we caught Squid Ross and Nige were convinced it was a "Quiddle" On this occasion Rob caught a good sized Wrasse ... which Nige called a Cunner but Ross stepped in to correct him as it was in fact a tiger cunner... I give up ... I may look slightly more localised these days but I will never manage to speak proper Portish !!

After a pretty flat session Nige announced that he was "In to something a bit tasty.." he had in fact caught a whiting which was goldfish sized and was about half the size of the bait on the hook .. it had done well as it had clearly had to stretch its mouth to get the hook in ... To add to his misery he caught his hand on his own hook and then got bitten by the ragworms he was trying to put on the hook ... This was a source of great amusement to the rest of us and we decided to head back in with Nige announcing that he would be the rower ... He started rowing like a whirling dervish and really built up a head of steam . Unfortunatley the boat just kept going around in circles ... Nige took this badly .. especially when we started to question his sexuality and began to blame the "Fucking boat.... the Fucking Oars... The fucking tide !!" However if he had looked around he would have noted that it was in fact "Fucking Ross... who had simply grabbed a hold of a buoy and we were spinning around it ....

Another happy and harmonious day on Portland !!