A Day in the Life of Paddington Basin.

Wednesday seemed a very long, hot (but enjoyable) day.  Starting with the arrival of friends Neil and Pauline (the cup cake queen!) on nb “Waterlily”.  In the excitement of meeting, and the subsequent coffee and cake, we didn’t take any photos but that will be remedied soon.

This was our very tranquil view from the boat on Wednesday morning ……..

……. but further down the basin work was going on apace with the installation of the new pedestrian bridge.

Undeterred by the construction noise, the enormous mirror carp are gathering in greater and greater numbers at the far end of the basin – there are now about a dozen of them basking in the warm surface water and getting a lot of attention from the passers by.

There’s one more ‘finger’ of the five which make up the pedestrian bridge.  Each finger is balanced at one end by a large weighted ‘sail’, with hydraulics for raising and lowering.  The last finger is going to be a problem as the engineers have to work below each finger during installation and there’s no room for them to get out after they’ve finished. Great!

Lunch time means construction and office workers alike make use of the basin for their well deserved hour break.

Some decide to take the deckchairs provided on the lawn to watch Wimbledon on the big screen.

Back at “Chance” there’s no lunch break!  James is half way through summer polishing and Doug can’t stand the spider poo on the Dodger. (Spiders seem to love making their home under the Taff Rail when we’re in the marina!)

Rest and relaxation eventually comes to “Chance” when friend Steve arrives with a big box of doughnuts ………

……… which ‘someone’ is very pleased to see!  Looking at that waistline he shouldn’t get too pleased.

We spent a very nice afternoon with Steve on the rear deck (doughnuts and gin and tonic went down very well for James!).

We had a cormorant diving around the back of the boat which we thought was amazing as it was so close to us.  Little did we know that he’d perch right right next to us and dry his wings – he had no fear at all as we went about our business of wine, nibbles and chatter.  We’ve called him George.