Last year might never have happened. I put my blog on the shelf and it feels as if I virtually hibernated. Oh I know I must have done something useful but not a lot. So much inaction must be bad for the body – it culminated in my being lifted by helicopter from the island where I live just a couple of days after Christmas 2018 and whisked off to hospital in the middle of the night.

We didn’t even get our boat in the water last ‘summer’ – having rashly stripped the paint and varnish from her during an early spell of sunshine. Unfortunately this was followed by a never-ending wet season – leaving nothing else for it but to put the boat cover back on and pray for another dry spell so we could splash a bit of fresh paint and varnish on her. We had no such luck and she lay forlorn in our backyard all through the winter too.

With my 77th birthday fast approaching next month I reckon I can’t afford to miss out on another year so things called for drastic action. The old boy’s long suffering wallet had to be prised open and that ‘grassed’ area of the backyard is now home to one of those —

No – not only the horsebox but a 20ftx12ft shelter – or ‘Instant Garage’ as the marketing blurb called it.

Best bit of all was that I erected the shelter – pegged her safely down onto 8×4 timbers and had our boat under cover all by myself in about ten hours flat. The ground there gets rather boggy in the winter so having found a source for cheap pallets she is now sporting a full wooden floor. After the boat is done I can get up to all sorts of mischief in there but I best not get too comfortable or the boat might not make it to the water this year either.

No worries – there’s obviously Life in the Old Dog yet.