A Time of the Signs?

Hubby took the dog out for her penultimate wee last night and was gone well over an hour.
I knew what happened, or rather ‘Who’.

When we first arrived on the marina, we knew no-one and nothing about living on a boat. It was all a learning curve, and chatting to some of the old hands in those early days, we became quite a novelty with some. Or should I say one in particular.
A widower in his mid 80s, he comes to his boat every other week and stays for five or six days. We often invited him in for tea or coffee, but he’d never come aboard, though when we discovered he was rather partial to doughnuts, we’d buy a pack for him sometimes, and at Christmas, treated him to a couple of Christmas puds from the supermarket as they were good value and just right for a chap on his own.
Photo of our boat at Stratford Upon Avon July 2016.

He says he misses us as there’s no-one to talk to now, so we try to make a point of going down to the marina when we know he’s there to catch up and spend a couple of hours chinning.
It seems there have been staff changes as well as previous residents moving on (or currently planning to). We knew about the lassie and previous broker leaving, but one of the other staff has also left, so there are now three new faces brushing down the pontoon decks with brooms and dispersing the cobwebs on power bollards with their handbrushes.

We still see, wave and chat to other non-resident regulars, and the plan is to leave little cards with our details in their boats when we move away.
I need to collar this particular gentleman though and get his address so that I can write to him, if he’d like me to of course.

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