Just one of Those Days!

You know when you wake up and you know it’s going to be “one of those days”….

First thing I noticed at 6:30am was that I had no internet. It’s only been a couple of weeks since I last had the internet engineers out because of a broken fibre cable, and based on the angry red lights emanating from my open reach box I fear there must be some new damage. I naively ask my neighbours if anyone else has lost internet but alas it’s only me. Vodafone say there is an issue in my area that they hope will be resolved in 24-48hrs but if I’m the only person on the island with a problem then it’s unlikely to be a system outage issue…I can’t face Vodafone customer service this morning. My neighbour kindly allows me to use his internet for my work calls this morning and I get on with the day.

I collect the window cleaner from the car park and notice the Teddington RNLI cruising down the river. They say a rowing boat capsized and went over the weir. They are searching for a missing person. This is a very real reminder that while we may have blue skies and sun today, the river is running fast and high from all the rain and it is so dangerous if you get into trouble. I make some progress on building the hot tub deck over my lunch break and commiserate with the window cleaner over the fact that he’s managed to total his new car that he only bought 2 weeks ago. I have to kick him off the island as I have more work meetings to get back to.

It’s now afternoon and I still have no internet. I realise at 2pm that I’ve run out of dog food and the shop where it comes from closes at 3pm so am grateful when my meeting finishes after 15min and I rush off to the shop. As I’m on my way back I get a message from some other islanders reminding me I said I would collect them from the car park as they are just back from their holiday. I rush off to meet them and we pile up the boat with their suitcases. They live on the side of the island where the current is strongest and it’s a challenge mooring up to their house safely.

Once they are off I release myself and turn my boat around to go downstream. I have a moment of confusion as I turn the steering wheel and don’t understand why the boat doesn’t turn, I look down to see the steering cable completely snapped. Panic. Send out emergency rescue message on the island group. Manage to grab onto someone’s boat and tenuously secure myself. Luckily rescuers appear within minutes, but the current is so strong that their boats can’t pull up besides mine. I have to release myself back to the river and once I’m floating away they can come next to me and tow me back to my house.

My plans for the evening were to finish the deck, cook some nice food and relax before a big weekend. Instead Simon and I spend a couple of hours pulling apart the steering mechanism and the wheelhouse of my boat. I’ll need to order several new parts and it will likely take a full day to re install. That’s a problem for next week. Simon and Laurie generously lend me one of their boats for the weekend.

I finally get home at 6pm and I judge there is about an hour of daylight left. As much as I just want to crash, I physically can’t leave a job half done so I get back to working on the deck and manage to finish cladding the top completely. All that is left are the sides but that will have to wait until after the weekend. I feel sad that I haven’t had a chance to work on Betty in last few days but I guess sometimes you have to prioritise things.

7:30pm I decide to be an adult and call Vodafone before their customer services close and get a lovely, yet unhelpful woman who books an engineer to come at any point within the next 24-72hrs. She says not to worry as I won’t need to be around because they won’t need to access inside my house. Even though I try to explain that I live on an island and they will need to meet me to gain access to the outside of my house, the message just doesn’t land. I lose the will to live and give up. I put in a final hour or so of work to make up for the lost time this afternoon. Still using my neighbours internet I watch a tv show and go to bed.

I’m exhausted and it’s been just one of those days!